Please is hugging and holding hands with your girl friend sinful?

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Please is hugging and holding of hands with your girlfriend sinful?
 
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Hugging is not sinful if their is distance between the mans chest and the forward-most part of the females chest.

Your 2 feet should be on the ground and her 2 feet should be on the ground, thus sin will be less likely to occur. If both of your feet are not on the ground, one of you is on top of the other on a bed or couch.
 
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Of course not. Hug away, do whatever that doesn’t result in sexual arousal.
 
It depends. Does hugging sexually arouse either of you? If so, it is best avoided. If it is friendly without revving the engine, then it is fine.
 
I know we need to avoid all occasions of sin, but I’m not really sure how you could discern marriage with someone without ever so much as hugging them. Your relationship would be colder and more sterile than most platonic friendships.
 
Talk to your priest/confessor. No one on the forums can answer that for you.
 
That is rather tame, compared to what some couples do these days.
 
Hugging, considered only by itself, is not sinful. Nor is holding hands. If it causes you to lust and you cannot get that part of yourself under control, well, that’s different. Note that even then, it is the lust that is sinful, not the hugging itself.

But I do want to go further. Hugging and hand holding are types of communication. When you hug your girlfriend you are saying something and the type of hug changes what you are saying. Think about how you hug her, what it says, and whether that matches what you are trying to say.
 
I made a mistake. Physical affection should not happen at the friendship phase of courting. It’s when a couple is engaged to be married that they can hold hands and hug.

 
The question took me right back to a senior religion class 55 years ago at a Jesuit high school. In the words of the priest teaching the class - who was constantly peppered with theoretical questions: “Well, it depends.”

And I have often wondered since, if in his mind he didn’t ask the question “And why is this a concern of yours?”
 
Seems like you might struggle with scruples. Been there done that. Please talk to your priest.
 
Yes, if you’re married to someone else.
Otherwise, probably not. It depends.
 
Yea, but young people it’s a burning sexual energy.
I think in young impulsive young people’s life even the breath of a partner on a short distance burns a passion.
So, I think it’s forbidden
 
That’s one priest’s opinion. In some cultures, straight male friends hold each other’s hands. In some cultures, platonic friends of either sex kiss each other (and this includes cultures that are very Catholic).
 
LittleFlower378 said:
I made a mistake. Physical affection should not happen at the friendship phase of courting. It’s when a couple is engaged to be married that they can hold hands and hug.
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I will have to watch Fr Ripperger’s video some other time when I can spare 45 minutes — I homeschool my son and I care for my elderly parents, just tonight my father fell on the hard kitchen tile floor and we feared he had broken his hip. He is resting comfortably now.

But anyway. It has always been my understanding that chaste affections (kisses, hugs, holding hands, sitting side by side on the couch and relaxing, etc.) are permissible within dating and courtship, as long as any physical arousal is merely tolerated and neither wanted nor encouraged. The kisses and other embraces may not be lengthy, that is indeed “going too far”. If the arousal becomes too profound or intense, then that is time to do something else, go for a walk, take a car ride together, watch a movie, or whatever, to remove the emphasis from affection and unwanted arousal.

If I have been wrong all these years, I’d be interested to know that, responses from priests or laypeople schooled in moral theology or similar fields preferred.
 
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