I don’t know if anyone is still checking this thread, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently.
I’m hardly an ignorant Catholic. I grew up in a very orthodox home, I’ve taught CCD and religion classes, been involved in online apologetics, and have a BA in Theology from Franciscan University. I’ve taken classes specifically on the nature of Christian Marriage.
And until a year or two ago, I didn’t question anything. Then things changed.
OraLabora, you wrote:
*I have a funny feeling that many on this list haven’t been through their dark night of the soul. If you read St John of the Cross, it’s an essential waypoint on the path to spiritual maturity. I am convinced that anyone who has lived through it, will show considerable more mercy than the spiritual soldiers of this list. *
That is where I am, and I haven’t read St. John yet, but I think I need to. I have a feeling of distance from God and detachment from the Church that I’ve never experienced before. While I’ve had my struggles with faith, it never took long for me to come back around. I just innately gravitated toward the Church and her teachings, and always found my way back to God. But in this past couple years, feeling so far from His presence, I’ve begun to question things on the basis of whether or not they make sense to me. And Catholic sexual teaching strikes me as deficient from a logical standpoint.
This entire discussion is hinting at a significant question that lies at the center of the whole debate: why does the Church teach that every sexual act must be a marital, procreative act?
I first began to really wonder about this question myself during my wife’s last pregnancy. When we had the opportunity to be intimate, the question was moot - there was no possibility of another conception. I found myself repeatedly questioning how such marital acts were procreative in any substantive way, and subsequently, why it was strictly necessary that they reached completion within the context of intercourse.
My understanding of the Church’s teaching on the necessity of every marital act being open to life is one of nature - namely, that the nature of a man’s sexual faculty is essentially life-giving, and therefore it is, as the Church says, “gravely disordered” to order such an act intentionally to a non-procreative end.
But nature seems to tell us otherwise. Pregnancy is one example, but so is the infertility in a woman’s cycle, to a lesser extent. While this latter is less certain, NFP advocates certainly claim that it’s more effective than any artificial method, making it statistically highly improbable (when used correctly) that it will be substantively procreative, even if it is technically “open to life”.
Then, also, there is the nature of a man’s reproductive system. Nocturnal emissions are a part of every man’s life, provided that he is engaged in no sexual activity for prolonged periods of time. The body naturally creates an involuntary context for orgasm to expel excess semen because the buildup, one assumes, isn’t good for us. If our body, in virtue of its very nature, “spills seed” because of a biological necessity to do so, how does this fit in with the absolute necessity for every male orgasm to be procreative?
I know some will argue that it’s the very involuntary aspect that changes things, but I’m arguing from nature here - nature provides us with exceptions to the rule, so the rule, by definition, cannot be absolute from the standpoint of nature.
Now, there are various reasons why a man might want to masturbate. Release of sexual tension can be high among them, especially if occasions of intimacy with one’s wife are infrequent for various reasons. But there is also the aspect so emphasized in the Theology of the Body crowd, namely, the importance of bringing one’s wife to climax. The provision for doing so after the man has finished is, to be frank, unappealing. One would hope that a mutual experience like marital intimacy could bring both spouses to conclusion together. Masturbation is most often prescribed as a remedy to premature ejaculation - which I think most men will tell you is more likely the longer they go without sex - and can thus lead to a more enriching procreative intimacy between both spouses on such occasions as they do have together.
I admit that I never struggled with this sin before I was married. I followed a strict, “because the Church says so” scrupulosity, and avoided impurity like the plague - largely because my sexual appetite was strong, and thus needed strong control. But after the psychological release that came with marriage, and my wife’s frequent comments to me that I was “too sensitive” to various sexual stimuli - be it her touch, or the sight of a naked woman on a movie, etc. - I let my guard down more. I wanted to be desensitized, because it felt unhealthy to be so sensitive, and so riddled with guilt for every fall.
To this day, I find that when I do fall into the sin of masturbation, I make an immediate act of contrition to God, but one wherein I indicate to Him that I sincerely do not understand the logic of why this sin offends Him. I can’t imagine that it pleases Him, and I do sense that it is a selfish act, but I struggle with the inherent logic (or lack thereof) in the teaching on it. As someone mentioned in another comment, it seems that the punishment does not fit the crime, and something that is such a natural temptation (and not likely to be naturally avoided without the guidance of the Church, thus indicating that it is not a strong point of natural law) seems hard to describe as “gravely disordered” and soul-destroying.
I don’t want to find justification for a sin I sometimes struggle with. I want faith not to contradict reason, and I’m having a very hard time with that.
