I understand that masturbation (or “pleasuring oneself”) is a mortal sin, and I have no argument with that. What I’m not sure about is exactly WHY it’s a mortal sin.
Those of us who are not aescetic monks tend to seek a lot of pleasure in this life. For example, I love ice cream sandwiches, so I satisfy myself by eating them occassionally. How is this different than occassionally satisfying myself by masturbation?
I’d ask my priest, but I don’t want to make him uncomfortable.
Sorry for such a weird question…
For starters an easier argument. Ice-cream is a pleasure you are entitled to, sexual arousal and release (ejaculation) is not. When you eat too much ice-cream or if you crave it so much it prevents you from being a functional person (and a good Christian), that’s excess. When you reach for premarital sex or masturbation, you reach for something you are not entitled to take at all - not just in excess. Because of this, the two situations are not comparable.
A situation in which people who are married to each other have too much sex could possibly be compared to the excess of eating which is overeating, but ice-cream is just food. You cannot reduce it much. It’s already an item, so you cannot reduce it to one. By contrast, a different human being is a person and when we reduce him or her to an item, a very bad thing happens. We deny the dignity of that person as a child of God. We do the same to ourselves when we masturbate. We use our bodies, but in a way also more than just bodies in the strictest sense, to attain some pleasure to which we are not entitled. We also close ourselves to productive, fruitful love with a different person, love which is compatible with human dignity and love in which no one is an object.
This cannot probably be said without a broader reference to love and to keep it as short as possible, the love to which we are called is the love in which neither of us serves as a tool for each other, but in which we have the same goal as our spouse, we respect each other’s right to have a goal, and we are recognised as goals in our own right, too. The sexual pleasure is just a tiny bit of it and what we really seek is love. Sexual pleasure has a place in love of the kind that is married, but it should be seen as pleasure coming from love - and from acting on love and in love, within the context of love (marital love). It is sexual pleasure which is subjected to love, not the other way round, i.e. love is above sexual pleasure, not below it. We use sex to cement and express love, we don’t use love to gain sex. Now sexual pleasure is even more compartmentalised than sex - sex is intercourse, sexual pleasure is a sensation. If we make a sensation so important to us that few things matter more, then something is wrong.
But don’t be afraid to talk to a priest. He can always recommend you a book or ask you to talk to a different priest if the other one is better prepared to handle a particular subject.
