"If x causes you to sin, cut it off" applied to castration

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On most issues, we as Catholics seemed to be encouraged to avoid the near-occasion of sin by cutting out things that tempt us from our lives.

There is also a small but significant percentage of Catholics who remain single for their entire lives, whose sexual organs serve nothing but to tempt them. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why castration is not allowed is so that single Catholics are always open to the possibility of a procreative marriage.

Throwing gasoline on the fire, I ran into this quote on CAF the other day.
Your sexual attraction to your fiance should be so strong that you could not live in the same room with her before marriage and resist temptation. If it isn’t, I fear that you do not have the proper amount of attraction to each other to sustain a marriage for the rest of your lives.
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Which makes it seem like it’s a sin to cut off sexual temptation from your life.

Anyway, I’m just a little confused on all of this sexual temptation business and would appreciate some clarification.

Thanks,
 
JChapel said:
On most issues, we as Catholics seemed to be encouraged to avoid the near-occasion of sin by cutting out things that tempt us from our lives.

There is also a small but significant percentage of Catholics who remain single for their entire lives, whose sexual organs serve nothing but to tempt them. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why castration is not allowed is so that single Catholics are always open to the possibility of a procreative marriage.

Throwing gasoline on the fire, I ran into this quote on CAF the other day.

Which makes it seem like it’s a sin to cut off sexual temptation from your life.

Anyway, I’m just a little confused on all of this sexual temptation business and would appreciate some clarification.

Thanks,
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Whoever you’re quoting is wrong. And as for the issue of castration, this was a subject which Origen took literally, castrating himself. The First Council of Nicea ultimately banned the practice, refusing to consecrate any priests who had done this, because it’s a total misinterpretation of Jesus’s (metaphoric) words.
 
Note that suicide would also eliminate temptation and subsequent sin, but it carries its own penalties.
 
So… just to clarify, is it true that what I quoted is wrong and we should avoid sexual temptation however possible, so long as we aren’t mutilating our bodies?
 
I think the term ‘cut it off’ meant something like what we say when someone is ‘cut off’ at a bar, not allowed to buy anymore; or when someone ‘cuts off’ an account, because they don’t want to spend any more. Think about ‘they cut me off’ in terms of someone interrupting you when you speak. There are more meanings to the term than to literally several something with a knife. I really don’t think Our Lord wanted people to go around plucking out their eyes. :rolleyes: The most reasonable meaning is that He wanted us to not sin, and to stop or not go near sinful behavior.
 
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