Is masturbation a sin?

[Rau]

This isn’t necessarily responsive to that post, but I do find it interesting that masturbation is the one part of the Catechism where the Church goes out of its way to point out the ways in which the sin can be mitigated. Technically, that’s true of all mortal sins: culpability can always be mitigated if an element is missing. Masturbation is the one sin where the Church feels the need to remind everyone of the possibility of mitigation. Seems to me to be hinting that, practically speaking, it very often IS mitigated.

Could be. I think the culpability issue is also addressed somewhere else in the catechism, probably in a general context.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

This isn’t necessarily responsive to that post, but I do find it interesting that masturbation is the one part of the Catechism where the Church goes out of its way to point out the ways in which the sin can be mitigated. Technically, that’s true of all mortal sins: culpability can always be mitigated if an element is missing. Masturbation is the one sin where the Church feels the need to remind everyone of the possibility of mitigation. Seems to me to be hinting that, practically speaking, it very often IS mitigated.

In fact, the formulation had much consideration behind it.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I am in no position to advise anyone whether or not they may be in mortal sin through

masturbation, although I acknowledge that it is objectively a mortal sin. To step back for a

moment, though, it is very clear, from the frequency with which it is discussed on this forum,

that this particular sin is an enormous cause of anxiety, worry and despair among so many

men, and of course women. Some young and some not so young. I can recall reading

posts from people who seemed to be wishing for an early death, almost suicidal because

of their inability to refrain from this sin.

The anxieties faced by those I have described are intense. The thought that by one

unconfessed act of impurity one may effectively be damning oneself for all eternity is

terrifying.

A most thoughtful post…

The vantage point that one has after having spent so many many years of one’s life as a confessor is quite an extraordinary one.

 

[RomanoAmerio]

A most thoughtful post…

The vantage point that one has after having spent so many many years of one’s life as a confessor is quite an extraordinary one.

Dear Don Ruggero,

I agree.

As the late Josef Pieper once wrote, especially in the young, it is not always advisable to take a condemnatory stance when it comes to solitary sin.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Dear Don Ruggero,

I agree.

As the late Josef Pieper once wrote, especially in the young, it is not always advisable to take a condemnatory stance when it comes to solitary sin.

Josef was such an extraordinary person. A truly exceptional gift from the Lord to the Church…in who he was as well as what he did and all that he left behind. It is hard to process that he has been gone already as many years as he has, as I stop to count them.

 

[RomanoAmerio]

Josef was such an extraordinary person. A truly exceptional gift from the Lord to the Church…in who he was as well as what he did and all that he left behind. It is hard to process that he has been gone already as many years as he has, as I stop to count them.

Dear Don Ruggero,

I wholeheartedly agree.

I still find his book on “The Four Cardinal Virtues” an absolutely essential text, and one that modern psychologists would do well to study.