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LilyM
Guest
And most everyone in the good ol’ fattest-nation-on-earth USA overeats hugely as well. Does that make it OK to overeat? Absolutely not!
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thomfra
Guest
Well people in glass houses LilyM (Australia is not the slimmest nation on earth
)But over-eating has nasty side effects.
A daily masturbation session for a young lad/lady certainly doesn’t. Quite the opposite.
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DL82
Guest
Well that’s just a plain lie. Every time we masturbate our brains become chemically addicted to the chemical reaction released. Every time anyone has any orgasm that happens. There is research about particular consequences out there, but people will probably say it’s biased. I’ll just use a simple logic to explain.Well people in glass houses LilyM (Australia is not the slimmest nation on earth
But over-eating has nasty side effects.
A daily masturbation session for a young lad/lady certainly doesn’t. Quite the opposite.
If every time you picked up a cup of coffee somebody whacked you on the back with a 2by4, you’d pretty soon develop a very strong aversion to coffee. Pretty soon you wouldn’t be able to look at a cup of coffee without feeling your back tense up and all your hairs stand on end with fear.
This is the effect pleasure and pain have on conditioning our natural responses.
Whatever it is you’re fantasizing about when you masturbate, that’s being burned into your head in the same way. You’re burning an image into your head with an intensity of pleasure that will rarely be matched by anything else. Sure, actual sex with another person will match it, but you’re less likely to make it all the way to marriage without sex because the ‘women’ inside your head will always be more strongly linked to your idea of pleasure and desire than the wonderful, loving, real person you’re with. Likewise, you’re going to be less likely to be able to sustain the periods in your marriage where you’re not having regular sex, such as periodic abstinence or the late stages of pregnancy, or just being away from home on work or whatever.
It’s no surprise that people who habitually masturbate, look at pornography, or have casual sex with multiple partners, are less capable of sustaining a loving Catholic marriage later in life.
BUT DON’T DESPAIR - you’re young, and you’re nearly 10 years younger than I was when I finally began to escape this habit by God’s grace. God can repair the damage. The prophet Joel promises that the Lord will restore to you the years the locusts have taken. Trust that promise.
You can avoid these habits. At first, just think of the places and times you are tempted to do this - place a Bible or a cross in the places you are tempted, resolve to pray regularly at the times you are tempted. Sometimes you’ll fall, but each time, repent, and trust God’s promise.
Also, don’t forget that, while confession is necessary for communion, God isn’t limited by His sacraments. Perfect contrition restores us to God’s love - that means repenting of our sins because of the goodness of God, not just because of the fear of hell, and resolving to confess them at the first opportunity. It sounds to me like you want to love God, you want to be the man He wants you to be, you’re not just scared of hell. Trust in that, and make a good act of contrition as soon as you are aware of giving in to the temptation to sin.
Trust in God! St Joseph, chaste spouse of the Immaculate, pray for us men
:getholy:
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DL82
Guest
Oh, one other thing - more fatal accidents happen in the home than anywhere else - so don’t think locking yourself in can lock God out! Instead, open the door of your soul and let His forgiveness and mercy in!
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TLM08
Guest
I used to think that way… when I was doing it!
It will only be by the grace of God if I can stay away from it.
This whole “Everybody’s doing it” garbage is a lie from
the pit of Hell. Stop kidding yourself.
You know what? I WISH it was morally acceptable…
because my desires are as wretched as anyones…but wishing doesn’t make it so.
God hates sin… Therefore we should hate it too.
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thomfra
Guest
ho, ho, ho…that’s a good one. "people how masturbated won’t find sex their wives pleasureable???..find me some reasearch to back that one up…
Yeah - that’s where the masturbation come in.
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thomfra
Guest
It is morally acceptable. It’s only this wafer thin “evidence” from the old testemant, and the define-as-you-go “natural law” which says otherwize).I used to think that way… when I was doing it!
It will only be by the grace of God if I can stay away from it.
This whole “Everybody’s doing it” garbage is a lie from
the pit of Hell. Stop kidding yourself.
You know what? I WISH it was morally acceptable…
because my desires are as wretched as anyones…but wishing doesn’t make it so.
God hates sin… Therefore we should hate it too.
I would *never *tell my kids that masturbation was a sin of any kind.
Its this sort of attitude that causes sexual problems in adult, married life.
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RitaM
Guest
Do you accept the authority of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, thomfra? Read what it has to say about the moral acceptability of masturbation.
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Podo2005
Guest
Masturbation is NOT normal and is NOT healthy, it is a VERY selfish act.
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jwashu
Guest
While I profess to agree with the Church 100% I will do so but there is a lot of conflicting information on this and there are many who believe that we have it wrong.Well people in glass houses LilyM (Australia is not the slimmest nation on earth
But over-eating has nasty side effects.
A daily masturbation session for a young lad/lady certainly doesn’t. Quite the opposite.
Science has shown that regular masturbation can greatly reduce the risk of prostrate cancer and there is suggestive evidence it could reduce the possibility of erectile dysfunction later in life.
No protestant groups teach that it’s wrong anymore and many encourage it to stave off fornication which the Bible is clearly against.
The Bible is not clear on this subject just like it’s not exactly clear on contraception. However at this time the Church has deemed that in many cases this is indeed a mortal sin.
How much I agree or disagree isn’t the issue anymore. If I profess to believe the Church HL&S then I profess to believe this. Do I believe it might change in the future? yes actually I do. However until that point, be it in my lifetime or not, I will do my best to follow the teachings of Christ’s Church.
Here is the most important point though. When God forgives sins it’s not like your mom or grandpa. Ten years later your family may say… remember that time you did X? and it’s the worst thing you have ever done and completely embarrassing. God isn’t going to do that. God KNOWS your weaknesses AND your strengths, there is NOTHING you can hide from him.
This goes back to my first post on this thread. We are not perfect. We each have our crosses to bear, some may be more visible than others
but they are still things we struggle with… sometimes on a daily basis.Know that when you ask for forgiveness for a venial sin and go to confession for a mortal one that sin is forgotten. I believe that if you are truly sorry and will seek confession as early as possible that even mortal sins are forgiven. (Fr. Serpa has some responses that this may be the case in the Ask and Apologist Section).
The point is that don’t let the SIN rule your life. That is the biggest crime you can do against Christ and His Church. So you sin, you are only human. Don’t let that keep you from doing His work, from being who HE wants you to be. As you continue to focus on Him you will find that those pet sins become less and less of a habit… and eventually will fall away.
Joe
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thomfra
Guest
Well to put it simply. I don’t accept what the RCC has to say about masturbation. I haven’t heard one convincing argument that would lead me to change my views.
But I’m all ears! Feel free to convince me with cold hard evidence.
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thomfra
Guest
It IS normal. It IS healthy. Is is selfish - in the same way that eating, sleeping and going to bathroom is selfish.
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RitaM
Guest
At least now we know for sure where you stand, thomfra. This is the CATHOLIC Answers Forum, not the dissenters’ opinions forum. You are free to believe as you do, and I’m sure it makes things a lot easier for you than they are for people like catholicsouth08 and myself, but some of us here are seeking the truth that we believe the Church has to offer us. Just because masturbation is an extremely hard habit to break and probably the most common serious sin that people commit does not make it OK. Neither is it the nastiest thing in the world. Many of us have a constant daily struggle year in and year out, but we believe that it’s a battle worth fighting because living according to God’s commandments is the only way to find true and lasting happiness (see psalm 119, the long one).
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thomfra
Guest
“everybody does it” or “it’s hard to stop” are not justifications for committing any sin. I agree with you there.
The reason masturbation (in my eyes) is morally neutral, is that there is no victim. It harms nobody.
Find me some **unbiased **scientific studies to the contrary and I could reconsider.
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Cairone
Guest
At which point, you’ve essentially claimed there is nothing anyone can say to change your mind. But maybe you’ll help us out and tell us which journals you’ll accept, and what counts as “cold hard evidence”.
If you want evidence, then my life should suffice. (But it won’t, because you want me to quote an invasive study that doesn’t exist that maps, mathematically, masturbation to tangible negative outcomes, like rape and molestation, with no margin of error.) But let me explain my life. I began masturbating when I was 11. I continued doing so, daily, for 15 years. I was addicted, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t until this past March that I was willing to admit it.
Every relationship I entered, I started immediately into sexual contact (groping, heaving kissing, petting), and even into sex, even after just a short period of dating. To me, because I had trained myself to believe that the important aspect was the pleasure (and masturbation is only, can only, will ever only be about the pleasure), taking pleasure from these relationships was what I was after. And every relationship suffered because of it. I pressured my wife into having sex shortly after we started dating, well before we were engaged, well before we were married. And our relationship suffered because of it. She pleaded with me to stop having sex, because she claimed she was feeling used.
And she was being used. Because once you accept that seeking pleasure from sexual acts is okay, every sexual act becomes masturbation, and it is very, very, very difficult to “fix” sex so that it is the loving, giving act. Keep this in mind: every time we had sex, I was just masturbating, using her as my tool for masturbation.
Even worse, though she begged that we stop having sex until marriage (pregnancy was a worry for her, too), I still would force myself on her, arousing her will she was sleeping and taking advantage of her somnolent state and arousal to have sex.
Because, once you accept masturbation, sex itself is just masturbation, because you’re only after the pleasure.
I had a pornography habit that was miles wide and leagues deep. It grew like a cancer, because once you start masturbating and find that you want the pleasure, you need to keep finding ways to keep it pleasurable. Moreover, you have to keep finding ways to make it more pleasurable. So I did. Until it nearly destroyed me.
Now, you will argue that I’ve simply gone off the deep end, that many people don’t go that far. Fine, but I’m just talking about myself, and what I have learned from direct experience. But if you want to say that we can’t generalize from that, then maybe you could help us out again with the journals you accept as properly scientific so we know what grounds we can argue this on.
Now, you’ll also argue that my wife and past relationships aside, when I’m masturbating, I’m not hurting anyone. Yet even that is wrong. I’m hurting myself. Masturbation is fundamentally exacerbating that disharmony that has existed in man since the Fall. It is pitting mind against body. It treats the body as no more than a pitiful tool to be used and abused. And if that doesn’t immediately resonate, then you really need to consider the role of body and soul.
Body and soul are not suppose to be two separate entities (as they kind of are in our fallen state, and will become when we die), but are supposed to be one, whole unit, as will happen after the Resurrection.
Just as another person’s body is not meant to be your plaything, neither is your own body supposed to be your plaything. That strikes against the dignity you possess as a human being, and it strike against self-respect. Masturbation is the statement that you’re willing to abuse your body’s natural functions solely for the purpose of yoking pleasure out of it.
To claim this is not harmful is ludicrous. Now, the degree of harm may very. Some people drink heavily, but never become alcoholics. There’s not necessarily any rhyme or reason to it. Just so, someone can masturbate heavily and still go out and have a satisfying relationship with a woman for many years, and it looks as though little harm was done. Others can masturbate infrequently, and yet find themselves hurting others sexually. The extent of the damage is always variable, always contingent on other factors, but it is always real, always present.
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bilop
Guest
Who’s the victim in fornication? Would you reccomend fornication to your children?
You might be suprised to know, but Scholastic Theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, held masturbation to be a worse sin than simple fornication.
I agree with them. At least fornication is often driven by love, and is the misuse of a natural act.
Masturbation is driven only by lust and selfishness, and is completely unnatural. It serves no purpose, and twists the mind as to the nature and meaning of sex.
Please stop spreading the lie that masturbating is good.
God Bless
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Cairone
Guest
For the OP:
A few suggestions for you.
A few suggestions for you.
- In emergencies, such as immediate death, perfect contrition foots the bill. But part of perfect contrition is a willingness and intent to seek out confession as soon as possible.
- Regardless of any mitigation of sinfulness due to the addictive aspect of masturbation, don’t even try to worry about gray areas. If you’re really serious about kicking the habit, treat every instance as a mortal sin, and get thee to confession after each time. You cannot be permissive in this battle; it causes too much backsliding.
- The question of cold turkey or “cool” turkey is a tough one. There are many opinions on that. Mine is that cold turkey is the only way to go. You might fail (I do so still), but I feel that the permissiveness of “cool” turkey just makes a game out of the whole thing that is ultimately unproductive. The hard reality is that you have to be willing to give up this free, easily-accessible pleasure for life. Not for X days, not for Y years, but for life.
- Never, never, never, never despair. Despair in this regard is not really hopelessness, but an excuse to give up. Any time you feel really down about failure, you’re really trying to convince yourself to stop trying to quit, to simply go back and indulge. Of course there is the distinct discomfort from the cognitive dissonance (wanting to obey God and avoid Hell versus wanting that immediate, easy pleasure), but the despair itself is not the discomfort. So if you start feeling down, take a moment. Rejoice in your battle, even if it is going poorly.
- Breaking a habit requires mindfulness. Any time you find yourself wanting to indulge, you have to kick the old brain into action once again. Now, your brain plays into a number of patterns, but there’s a line of thought in psychology that there are three main areas in contention: thinking, feeling, and behaving. A lot of times, we expend a lot of effort in dialogue between thinking and feeling (convincing ourselves to act or not act) before we ever act. Habit, though, comes when we’ve disengaged the thinking-feeling argument and go straight from feeling to behaving. Bringing the brain back into the picture starts the argument going again, and once the argument is going, you can start to win.
- Addiction comes from a desire to avoid discomfort. Whenever you start to feel uncomfortable, you want to indulge in the addictive behavior to alleviate the discomfort. Force yourself to endure the discomfort. Delay acting on the discomfort, even just for an hour. When you start feeling the temptation to indulge, force yourself to do something that occupies both your hands and your mind (playing video games, or a sport, or playing cards with a friend…). Also, place yourself deliberately into uncomfortable situations so that you can better handle discomfort. This is where fasting comes into play.
- Keep a rosary always at hand. Pray it daily. And keep it explicitly in hand when you start to feel tempted.
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RitaM
Guest
It can also be argued that consensual homosexual sex between partners who do not have STDs harms nobody. Sleeping late on Sunday if you’re too tired to go to Mass harms nobody, and there’s no scientific evidence that doing so once in a while is harmful. Stealing some cheap item from the store owned by a greedy CEO harms nobody. Looking at pornography as long as you didn’t pay for it and financially contribute to the exploitation of the person whose picture it is harms nobody.
Sin harms you when you do it. You are a part of the Body of Christ. Sin harms all of us.
Sin harms you when you do it. You are a part of the Body of Christ. Sin harms all of us.
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bobolink
Guest
I found a couple of things really helped.
One is essential: daily prayer and most especially at the times of temptation - prayer. Distraction is needed too: useful pastimes and suchlike.
I say the Rosary every day now and I used to grow tired of those who advocated a daily Rosary. Now I do not miss it. My spiritual life has definitely improved since starting this. I therefore recommend a daily Rosary, and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Brown scapular and Benedictine Crucifix too, and Holy Pictures. I make an association between the Lord I see in the Divine Mercy image, and the one I see nailed to the cross because of my sins.
A REALLY good book is CLEAN OF HEART, BY ROSEMARIE SCOTT, RAGE MEDIA. Amazon should have it, or just Google it.
To be honest, I think habitual sinners, with strong attachment to their sins, and I was one, need more than hearing about the love of God, they also need the fear of God, and the fear of hell, to shake them out of their bad habits. One sermon helped me, by Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, ‘The Little Number of Those Who are Saved’. Some people just don’t get it. I was one of those people, and this sermon knocked some sense into me. I still fall sometimes, but it is much rarer, and please God, taking one day at a time, we can avoid these sins, by asking for His Grace always. Mother Mary is also our powerful ally in this battle, as well as the saints, especially Saints Michael, Benedict, Francis, and Maria Gorretti, for me personally. Make no mistake, sins of impurity are very serious indeed. But do not despair. Read the book I recommended. It is a wonderful resource - I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I found it useful to pray for purity, chastity, but also, recently, I have prayed to God to give me the grace of a great hatred for the sin, and a greater love for God.
Finally, fasting is very useful practice spiritually. I must say, I have been prone to a lot of sins against purity, and gluttony. As a saint once said, conquer one and you will conquer the other. It’s in the book, Clean of Heart.
Hope this helps, God bless you!
One is essential: daily prayer and most especially at the times of temptation - prayer. Distraction is needed too: useful pastimes and suchlike.
I say the Rosary every day now and I used to grow tired of those who advocated a daily Rosary. Now I do not miss it. My spiritual life has definitely improved since starting this. I therefore recommend a daily Rosary, and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Brown scapular and Benedictine Crucifix too, and Holy Pictures. I make an association between the Lord I see in the Divine Mercy image, and the one I see nailed to the cross because of my sins.
A REALLY good book is CLEAN OF HEART, BY ROSEMARIE SCOTT, RAGE MEDIA. Amazon should have it, or just Google it.
To be honest, I think habitual sinners, with strong attachment to their sins, and I was one, need more than hearing about the love of God, they also need the fear of God, and the fear of hell, to shake them out of their bad habits. One sermon helped me, by Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, ‘The Little Number of Those Who are Saved’. Some people just don’t get it. I was one of those people, and this sermon knocked some sense into me. I still fall sometimes, but it is much rarer, and please God, taking one day at a time, we can avoid these sins, by asking for His Grace always. Mother Mary is also our powerful ally in this battle, as well as the saints, especially Saints Michael, Benedict, Francis, and Maria Gorretti, for me personally. Make no mistake, sins of impurity are very serious indeed. But do not despair. Read the book I recommended. It is a wonderful resource - I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I found it useful to pray for purity, chastity, but also, recently, I have prayed to God to give me the grace of a great hatred for the sin, and a greater love for God.
Finally, fasting is very useful practice spiritually. I must say, I have been prone to a lot of sins against purity, and gluttony. As a saint once said, conquer one and you will conquer the other. It’s in the book, Clean of Heart.
Hope this helps, God bless you!
P
Podo2005
Guest
Those things are essential, you need to eat to get nutrients to survive, you need to sleep to regain energy and you need to go to the bathroom to empty yourself of wastes. You DONT need to masturbate. The only reason one would masturbate would be because of the selfish desire to gratify himself/herself instead of abstaining from it and preparing his or her body to share with another person in marriage.
And if it was so normal how come its causing this person so much distress to the point where hes afraid of leaving his own house? How come so many men are becoming addicted to it?
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