Your side on masturbation

[xSteven]

What's your side on it? I personally believe it is not a sin for many reasons.

1) When we don't masturbate, we get more lustful thoughts in our heads making us sin more, and think/do/say bad things.

2) we have wet dreams so we are still spilling the "seed" and wet dreams is still masturbating in our sleep

3) Some people don't masturbate for pleasure all the time. It can be used to get rid of stress, and our lustful thoughts. I remember I just coulden't focus on anything, all i could think of was lusful thoughts and I would tell myself "STOP! This is not what God wants!" I just couldent focus to pray to him, or get these thoughts out of my head. How else would I get them out?

4) If you shoot someone, the gun isn't the sinful part. So masturbation is the gun, and lust, addiction are the killing things. I just believe in that.

P.S. I am a Roman Catholic and I am sitll confused on wether masturbation is a sin or not. I do go to church every sunday and pray daily.

Thanks! Bless you all!

[Corki]

Originally Posted by xSteven

What's your side on it? I personally believe it is not a sin for many reasons.


P.S. I am a Roman Catholic and I am sitll confused on wether masturbation is a sin or not. I do go to church every sunday and pray daily.

Thanks! Bless you all!

Personal beliefs regarding issues of morality are not just based on what we "think" something is or should be but rather on what the Church teaches and why.

From the Catechism:

2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."
To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.

So it's wrong, definately. But whether it's a mortal sin is something you need to discuss with your priest in Confession.

Also, if you feel this is an addiction (as noted in your #4) , you need to get help to overcome it.

[edward_george]

Originally Posted by xSteven

What's your side on it? I personally believe it is not a sin for many reasons.

1) When we don't masturbate, we get more lustful thoughts in our heads making us sin more, and think/do/say bad things.

This is not correct, since the hormone rush that comes from masturbating can actually exacerbate lustful thoughts; one comes to associate lustful thoughts with the rush of hormones and becomes even more attached to both harboring those thoughts and masturbating, thus producing an addictive tendency.

2) we have wet dreams so we are still spilling the "seed" and wet dreams is still masturbating in our sleep

Not correct. This is based on the assumption that "spilling seed" is the reason masturbation is sinful, which it is not--the reason is that it decontextualizes the sexual act, turning it from an act of mutual self-giving into an act of self-centered pleasure. One cannot be willfully selfish in his sleep, and so the sin of masturbation is not occurring with a nocturnal emission. One cannot sin without consent.

3) Some people don't masturbate for pleasure all the time. It can be used to get rid of stress, and our lustful thoughts. I remember I just coulden't focus on anything, all i could think of was lusful thoughts and I would tell myself "STOP! This is not what God wants!" I just couldent focus to pray to him, or get these thoughts out of my head. How else would I get them out?

See above for why it doesn't get rid of lustful thoughts. It can get rid of stress, but so can any manner of things--people become addicted to drugs and alcohol and nicotine because they use them to relieve stress. There are better ways to cope with stress than by acting out in this way. You can get those thoughts out of your head by controlling what goes into your head in the first place, for one. If you are watching pornography or other lewd materials, cut it out. If this is not the case, then perhaps it is a matter of making sure you have something else to focus on. Whenever that first thought comes along, snap yourself on the wrist with a rubber band--if it has reached the point that the thoughts are intrusive. If the thoughts are really becoming detrimental to your focus, you might see your priest about this, and maybe a counselor, who can give you better advice on how to deal with it. But masturbation, as I said above, will not help those thoughts, but only make the situation worse. Because the situation is worsening, then stress and anxiety will actually increase after you have committed such a sin.

4) If you shoot someone, the gun isn't the sinful part. So masturbation is the gun, and lust, addiction are the killing things. I just believe in that.

This does not quite follow. If you shoot someone, you are quite right that the gun is morally neutral, and I'm glad that you figured that out. But I'm not sure how you arrive at masturbation being morally neutral. As I said above, it is a grave matter--you are removing the sexual act from its proper context (mutual self-giving love directed at the procreation of life) and placing it in the context of self-gratifying pleasure. A gun is morally neutral, but by using it to murder someone you are taking it out of its proper context (perhaps it is a hunting rifle and is intended to be hunted with) and placing it in a sinful context.

I might add that you say you don't think it is a sin for all of those reasons, but none of the reasons you stated address at all the fact that masturbation is a sin--it is a sin because it is a disordered use of one's sexuality, not because it is the contrary of the reasons you stated. Even if it did excise our lustful thoughts, that wouldn't be a reason to do it--it is still sinful, the end does not justify the means, especially if it is a bad means directed at a good end. One can justify all sorts of bad things by saying they have a good end, and this is how our society tends to excuse itself from sin in general.

P.S. I am a Roman Catholic and I am sitll confused on wether masturbation is a sin or not. I do go to church every sunday and pray daily.



Keep praying and going to Mass. Your confusion will be abated as you continue to grow in your faith. I think you know that it is wrong, and you are trying to find some way to validate it anyway. Do not believe the lie that our society tells, and do not fall into that trap. Grow close to Our Lord through the Sacraments, as they will be your strength in any trial.

Thanks! Bless you all!

[Padraig1972]

Originally Posted by xSteven

What's your side on it? I personally believe it is not a sin for many reasons.

1) When we don't masturbate, we get more lustful thoughts in our heads making us sin more, and think/do/say bad things.

Answer: These are your personal thoughts, not what the church teach us to follow and live after.

2) we have wet dreams so we are still spilling the "seed" and wet dreams is still masturbating in our sleep

Answer: One cannot control your body while being at sleep, why do you encourage your own personal issues?

3) Some people don't masturbate for pleasure all the time. It can be used to get rid of stress, and our lustful thoughts. I remember I just coulden't focus on anything, all i could think of was lusful thoughts and I would tell myself "STOP! This is not what God wants!" I just couldent focus to pray to him, or get these thoughts out of my head. How else would I get them out?

Answer: By praying, do charity, spend time with friends and focus less on your own needs (selfishness, greed, lust, inpure thoughts)

4) If you shoot someone, the gun isn't the sinful part. So masturbation is the gun, and lust, addiction are the killing things. I just believe in that.

Answer: The worst thing you do, is try explaining a sin. Confront it, ask what it wants, pray three Haily Marys and three Our Fathers.

P.S. I am a Roman Catholic and I am sitll confused on wether masturbation is a sin or not. I do go to church every sunday and pray daily.

Comment: That is good, but focus less on your needs and more on God. Forget masturbation, but live, smile, pray and be happy.

Thanks! Bless you all!

God bless you.

[xSteven]

Thank you all for your replies but I still do not see how it is a sin. Here's a writer I saw when I was doing research on here and this is what he said. It's kind of lengthy, sorry.
P.S Here's the whole thing, I couldent fit it on here. http://growingupboys.info/Answers2008/20080622a.html

When I began writing the Growing Up in the Lord books, I wanted to explain in clear language why God laid out certain rules regarding sexual matters. It was my hope to demonstrate that God's way makes sense. Obviously the issue of masturbation is related to sex and it is one people have struggled with for thousands of years.

Before getting to my conclusions, I need to cover some basics. Every action in this world can be labeled as right or wrong. Let's use a more neutral topic for the moment. Eating can be seen as something that is right. "Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God" (Ecclesiastes 2:24). Yet Satan often finds ways to twist what is normally right and make it into something that is wrong. While it is right to eat, eating poison would be wrong because poison causes harm to the body. "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" (I Corinthians 6:19). While eating is right in general, overeating becomes something sinful -- the sin of gluttony.

In addition, something that is right can become a sin for individuals in some cases. The Bible is quite clear that eating meat is perfectly acceptable (I Timothy 4:3-5). However, some people strongly object to eating meat. From a biblical viewpoint, they are doubting what God said. But since there is no harm in not eating meat, then it is fine for that individual to choose not to eat meat. There is a whole chapter on this topic in Romans 14. What other Christians have to learn is not to force their views on other people when the views held by other people are not wrong or not harmful. That is something a lot of Christians have a hard time doing.

What I concluded (see "Is masturbation unacceptable?" for details) is that masturbation is only indirectly mentioned in the Bible. The Old Testament had laws dealing with uncleanness and releasing semen fell under the category of unclean, whether it was due to sex, masturbation, or a wet dream. What many people don't understand is that unclean doesn't mean it was sinful. A woman's monthly blood flow is unclean, but it doesn't mean she sins every month by having a blood flow. All releasing of semen was unclean, including when a husband and wife had sex. It did not mean sex between a husband and wife was sinful, it was just in the category of unclean.

God used the concept of clean and unclean to illustrate the nature of sin. The things He used were not sinful in themselves, but they served as a model for understanding what sin was like. There is an article called "Uncleanness" that talks about this in great detail, if you are interested.

Wet dreams would fall under the category of unclean even though a man has no control over it. But then women have no control over their monthly blood flows either. Wet dreams are nothing more than a normal bodily function that God put in us to deal with excess semen. While it is called unclean in the Old Testament, it is never called sinful -- and for a good reason. Sin is the breaking of God's law. Wet dreams don't break any law of God; they are the consequence of how God made us.

The problem, as I see it, is that wet dreams causes men to masturbate in their sleep. I puzzled over whether you can rightly condemn a voluntary action while justifying an involuntary action. Very few attempt to wrestle with the issue. Whatever is stated must be consistently applied to both wet dreams and masturbation.

My ultimate conclusion was that viewed independently, masturbation is not much different than controlling when bodily functions take place. By itself, it is not sinful. Whether it happens in one's sleep or a boy discovers it when bathing, I have not found a command being violated.

However, because of the nature sexual release and the intense pleasure it brings, it becomes a ripe ground for being twisted by Satan into something that is wrong.

I have talked with many boys who have been caught up in the pleasure of ejaculation to the point that they are completely consumed in getting their next high. A few masturbate so often that they literally rub their penis raw. That is wrong for reasons similar to why overeating is wrong. It is doing harm to the body and it putting desires of the flesh as first priority in a person's life.

[Pfaffenhoffen]

Originally Posted by xSteven

What's your side on it? I personally believe it is not a sin for many reasons.

1) When we don't masturbate, we get more lustful thoughts in our heads making us sin more, and think/do/say bad things.

2) we have wet dreams so we are still spilling the "seed" and wet dreams is still masturbating in our sleep

3) Some people don't masturbate for pleasure all the time. It can be used to get rid of stress, and our lustful thoughts. I remember I just coulden't focus on anything, all i could think of was lusful thoughts and I would tell myself "STOP! This is not what God wants!" I just couldent focus to pray to him, or get these thoughts out of my head. How else would I get them out?

4) If you shoot someone, the gun isn't the sinful part. So masturbation is the gun, and lust, addiction are the killing things. I just believe in that.

P.S. I am a Roman Catholic and I am sitll confused on wether masturbation is a sin or not. I do go to church every sunday and pray daily.

Thanks! Bless you all!

You ask the wrong question, so you get all kind of answers.
If you did not ask whether masturbation was a sin and asked whether it is good to have a balanced sexual life instead, maybe the answer would be different.
What are you asking when you ask whether masturbation is a sin? That you go to hell if you die after masturbation? What is the question?

I think that you should drive well for the safety of everybody. But if you park at the wrong place you will not get 25 years in jail for that or death penalty. Do you get?

So, what were you asking when you ask what you asked?

[edward_george]

Again, the reason that it is wrong is not any sense of "uncleanness" in the Old Testament fashion. Rather. the sexual act is supposed to be an act of mutual self-giving open to giving life. Whenever either the unitive or procreative end of the sexual act is frustrated--in other words, whenever it no longer serves to unite two people, but simply to provide for the pleasure of one or both, or when it is closed off to the procreation of life, then the sexual act is sinful. God created us with our sexuality to be used toward those two ends, and masturbation simply fails to be directed toward either one of them. The author you cite seems to be trying to justify it by twisting the language around and ignoring what our sexuality is all about. As I said in my previous post, which answers all that the author brings up, it's not about uncleanness or anything like that--it's about what our sexuality is ordered toward and how masturbation is a disordered action in that context.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say:

2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."
To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.

Once again, it is fairly easy to see why it is a sin--our sexuality is intended for something, masturbation uses it for a lesser end. A sin is the choosing of a lesser good over a higher one.

You remain in my prayers.

-ACEGC

[xSteven]

I would also check out this.
http://carm.org/masturbation

Sorry for all the questions, and things to check out. I'm very confused about this topic.

[xSteven]

Originally Posted by Pfaffenhoffen

You ask the wrong question, so you get all kind of answers.
If you did not ask whether masturbation was a sin and asked whether it is good to have a balanced sexual life instead, maybe the answer would be different.
What are you asking when you ask whether masturbation is a sin? That you go to hell if you die after masturbation? What is the question?

I think that you should drive well for the safety of everybody. But if you park at the wrong place you will not get 25 years in jail for that or death penalty. Do you get?

So, what were you asking when you ask what you asked?

I am asking, would masturbation be a sin if I'm only doing it to get stress off, and or to get all my sexual feelings out. I am young and going through puberty and I always have these days were I have my hormones going crazy and I have nothing to do about it. I go to sleep just to get it off my mind and I always pray before I go to sleep and these lustful thoughts go in my mind and it annoys me! I get so stressed, and just tense from all this. I have nothing to get rid of it and before I knew masturbation was a sin I used to masturbate to get rid of stress and these feelings.

Of course I don't masturbate now, because I'm unsure if it's a sin or not for the reasons why I do it. I've read Catholic Forums some saying that It's not a sin for certain reasons, and some saying it is!

I'm so unsure, and some of these things you guys are saying aren't making sense to me. Make your replies kid friendly please, so I can understand.

Thank you all, and bless you all!

[edward_george]

Originally Posted by xSteven

I would also check out this.
http://carm.org/masturbation

Sorry for all the questions, and things to check out. I'm very confused about this topic.

The website carm.org is a notoriously anti-Catholic fundamentalist website. If you're interested in what the Church teaches on this and why, I would say to study the resources available here: http://chastity.com/, as well as the things people have already referenced, like the quotation I provided from the Catechism.

-ACEGC

[Corki]

Originally Posted by xSteven

Thank you all for your replies but I still do not see how it is a sin. Here's a writer I saw when I was doing research on here and this is what he said. It's kind of lengthy, sorry.
http://growingupboys.info/Answers2008/20080622a.html

.

Not a Catholic site so not a good source for forming your conscience on a moral issue.

Originally Posted by xSteven

I would also check out this.
http://carm.org/masturbation

A blatantly anti-Catholic site -- even worse.

Sorry for all the questions, and things to check out. I'm very confused about this topic

If you are confused, stop trying to justify your actions with non-Catholic material. It's a question of morality and sin. As a Catholic, you are obligated to properly form your conscience on the matter using the teachings of the Church.

[triumphguy]

Yes, it's tough trying to be a Catholic living what we are called to be by our baptism.

We have a choice: pick the easy way and justify it

Choose the right way, and struggle to live it.

The struggle makes us better.

Masturbation is wrong for many, many reasons, not just because the Church says so.

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. Deut 30:19

[giuseppeTO]

Steve,

The church maintains that this act is mortal sin. There can be very exceptional mitigating circumstances that you can discuss with a priest. But as Roman Catholics, we don't need to necessarily understand why it is mortal sin. The church, whom Christ gave the power to determine what is lawful and what is not has spoken clearly on the subject.

So, the fact that it does not seem reasonable that this be considered a grave sin is inconsequential to the gravity. When one is addicted to any sin, like any addict, we will try and find any justification to that action.

All men, regardless of their state in life has suffered to some degree with this issue - you are not the first. Only through prayer and consecration of yourself to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady will you find the grace and strength to deal with this.

What is most important is that you cultivate the control of this sin at a young age because if you allow yourself to be ruled by this passion at a young age, it will not stop once you are married. If you haven't conquered it by then, then this sin will become doubly serious in the married state because it will still be a mortal sin against your personal purity and it will be a sin against your marriage.

You are only confused because you are seeking (and finding) sources that justify the sin but there is only one source for the truth on this, regardless of how you feel about it.

[xSteven]

Originally Posted by edward_george

The website carm.org is a notoriously anti-Catholic fundamentalist website. If you're interested in what the Church teaches on this and why, I would say to study the resources available here: http://chastity.com/, as well as the things people have already referenced, like the quotation I provided from the Catechism.

-ACEGC

Thank you for that site. That helped me a lot. I read all about it. I still have a few questions.

I understand that masturbation can be for pleasure. It stated that it is not used for love between two. Can't married couples have sex just for the pleasure also?

Also how do we know this is a sin? Where does it say in the Bible?

[giuseppeTO]

Originally Posted by xSteven

Thank you for that site. That helped me a lot. I read all about it. I still have a few questions.

I understand that masturbation can be for pleasure. It stated that it is not used for love between two. Can't married couples have sex just for the pleasure also?

Also how do we know this is a sin? Where does it say in the Bible?

Steven,

You are a Roman Catholic. When the church rules on what constitutes a sin, you do not need to find it in the Bible. But please check out the apologetics section for the basis of the church's teaching. There is no moral correlation between masturbation which is selfish, and the conjugal act between married couples. However, masturbation is also sinful within the context of marriage.