NLM makes a good point here, and it’s one I’ve wondered about from time to time myself. I think ultimately he’s wrong, but let’s not dismiss him so easily.
Masturbation is always wrong. I grant this freely and eagerly. I think most everyone in this conversation does. We are most of us faithful, loyal, Magisterium-following Catholics. I certainly am.
However, according to the Church, “By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure.” This is the Church’s official and complete definition of masturbation. Anything that falls within that category is masturbation. Anything that falls outside that category is not.
Deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to wash them is not masturbation.
Deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to aim urine in the right direction despite an unruly organ is not masturbation.
So is deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to accomplish a legitimate medical objective masturbation?
It seems to me that the immediately obvious answer is no. Thus, perfect obedience to the Church could allow or even require deliberate stimulation of the male genitals to the point of ejaculation in particular circumstances, so long as the object is not sexual pleasure.
Take another example: the Church has rules on killing. Namely, it is always wrong to intentionally kill another human being. Full stop. “2263. The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing.” However, we have a principle, derived from Aquinas, called double effect: an act with evil consequences can be legitimate if the object and intent of the act (they’re two different things, by the way) are legitimate, while the evil consequences, though foreseen, do not outweigh the good and are not a means to the good. This is why we are able to kill in self-defense and in war: we act legitimately to disable our assailant, and this disabling can (and, in war, very usually does) end in his death. But the killing, for a Catholic, must not be the object, but merely a foreseen consequence of an act taken for the legitimate aims of self-defense.
The classic example for double effect is that of the ectopic pregnancy. The direct killing of an unborn child is always wrong. Full stop. But in an ectopic pregnancy, the baby ends up in the wall of the Fallopian tube instead of the uterus. Both mother and child will die without intervention, and the child is too young to survive outside the womb. God does not allow abortion, for this would be murder. (The intent might be to save the mother, but the object of the action of taking a knife to a small child and cutting it into pieces is to kill the child. Killing the child is a means to the end of saving the mother, and therefore does not pass the double effect “test”.) However, surgical removal of the fallopian tube itself is permissible. This action has the intent of saving the mother (a good aim), the object of removing an organ (a morally neutral object), and the foreseen consequence of the child’s likely death – a terrible evil, but one which could not be avoided, and which here is partially offset by the fact that the mother will likely live. And, if the child does beat the odds and live, so much the better! The object was never to kill the baby, and the baby’s fate – like that of the wounded soldier – is left in God’s hands, not man’s.
And so we come back to the question before us. Is deliberate stimulation of the genital organs as part of a medical test masturbation? The intent is a great good – these medical tests do help couples solve medical problems that are preventing the natural and powerfully good fecundity of marriage. Is the object the emission of semen – an act that is, inherently, morally neutral, despite being bound up in many highly morally charged issues – or is the object the generation of sexual pleasure – which would make the act “deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to “in order to” = “with the object to”] derive sexual pleasure”?
I am not certain of my answer. I am not a trained theologian. But it appears to me that the object of rubbing one’s genitals repeatedly in a pleasurable manner is sexual pleasure, regardless of one’s ultimately good intent. The emission of semen is a foreseen consequence (morally neutral). Thus, manually causing ejaculation in the course of a medical test is masturbation, as defined by the Church. And, since the ends (completing the medical test) don’t justify the means (masturbation), the act is not legitmate.
Moral culpability in this case would likely be reduced from the typical culpability for masturbation, because (1) the moral principles involved are confusing and, to the untrained believer, apparently contradictory, which prevents “full knowledge”, and (2) the intent is a noble one, whereas the typical masturbator’s intent is entirely ignoble. However, masturbating for a medical test would remain a sin, and the evil grave. This is not acceptable to Christ. Christians are not called to account for “realities of life that can’t be ignored” or to “do the best they can on their daily walk.” Christians are called to perfection. Period. Christ demands this of us. The Church does all it can to help us achieve it. We may not succeed – scratch that, we will not succeed – in this life, and we could never make it without the grace of God… but nothing less than perfection will do. Moral persons must either jump through some facially weird hoops like using condoms with holes in them, or find a way to ejaculate without sexual pleasure as the object of the action.
Incidentally, has anyone heard of electroejaculation? It seems that that might be useful in those very rare circumstances where extraction by syringe won’t do the trick and perforated-condom intercourse is impossible. I’m don’t even resemble someone who knows anything about medicine or biology, though, so I don’t know whether it can be done on humans and/or would be dangerous and/or extremely painful.
Pray for them I suppose - because they just don’t seem to get it.