Boys are introduced to pornography and masturbation at a very early age. For some, they are introduced to it even before their bodies develop what is needed to enjoy such activities. Some of the men I have known have been viewing pornography and masturbating to it since puberty and have never had a wet dream before.
Here are some of the reasons why people who continue to use pornography to masturbate give to justify their uses, and the corresponding response I would give:
1. It feels good.
- Can’t deny that, but it doesn’t feel good every time. Sometimes it’s just not satisfactory. At other times, you feel damned guilty afterwards. Still at other times, you left a big mess in the room and you have to clean up and make sure you don’t get caught. Then there’s that nagging guilt and suspicion of other people using the computer and chancing across your porn files.
Life’s more than about feeling good. It’s more than about such fleeting feelings are. Abstaining from instant gratification, not just masturbation, helps create a better, more permanent form of happiness by introducing you to real love, instead of lust.
2. It doesn’t harm anyone.
- Actually it does. It harms you, because you are taking that love you have that is meant for others and directing it towards yourself. Basically, you are having a sexually intimate relationship with yourself which can only lead to the detriment of the loving relationships you have with others.
3. It doesn’t harm anyone else.
- Why is it wrong and against the law, both legal and moral, to commit suicide? It doesn’t harm anyone else too. It is because the ones who love him are harmed when they realize that their loved one had problems and that they could not be trusted to share his secret. There is a great sense of betrayal of trust in the persons.
4. No one loves me. It doesn’t harm anyone else.
- The one who commits suicide harms society as a whole because it deprives the society of one person’s gifts. Similarly, masturbation deprives society of the love you could be giving to other members of the society and giving it to yourself instead. Thus, not only is the rest of society harmed by this selfish action, the rest of society doesn’t benefit from it either.
5. It’s my body, and I can do what I want with it.
- Really? Then make your hair move on its own. It’s your body, isn’t it? Why can’t you move it? Or how about never falling sick. It’s your body, isn’t it? Why can’t you always remain healthy? Simply because your body doesn’t belong to you. It’s been loaned to you to take care of.
Your human body is not yours, contrary to what you might think. You need to return it when you’re done with it. It’s like borrowing someone’s mobile phone to make a call. You don’t use the phone to knock in a nail when you borrow it, do you? No, you treat it carefully because it’s not yours. You use it only for what it’s supposed to be used for. Masturbation is not what the genitals are supposed to be used for.
6. I need to masturbate in order release this sexual tension in me. It’s the natural thing to do.
- What happens if you don’t release it? Will it collect until you pop? Actually yes. When you sleep at night, your body will release the sperm periodically in a totally natural way. That’s the truly natural thing to do – to allow nature to take its course.
7. But it’s so inconvenient to get up in the middle of the night to wash up after wet dreams.
- The natural thing to do isn’t always the most convenient thing to do. You do have to make a trip to the toilet to pee, don’t you? And no one complains about that inconvenience, except maybe the elderly. But really, this excuse of inconvenience is really all there is to it – an inconvenience… because you and I know that it’s not the real reason why a guy jerks off once a week or more. We do it for pleasure. This excuse of inconvenience is just an excuse to make us feel justified while jerking off.
There are, of course, more reasons, but those are not reasons that I have ever used to justify myself. Maybe I will write another post on that in future.
Filed under: Chastity, Culture of Death, Life Reflections, Love, Masturbation, Pornography, Sex, Theology of the Body
Dear Catholic Writer,
Hi, its been years that I’ve been sinning with the addiction of pornography and masturbation. I’ve been trying to get rid of this disgusting habit by reading the different ways from self help books, websites and the bible. Times I have resisted myself from the temptation only as long as a month and I get back into that sinful cycle. Its ripping my relationship with God.
I’m really afraid now, cause I’ve built a numbness to the lustful sin that I don’t feel guilty, is there something wrong with me? I know God is merciful and forgiving, but I’ve taken his mercy for granted. It has been years and I cannot get away from lust. I love God, I don’t want him to be crucified the cross again for my sins. Do help me, thanks! I miss and long to see the glory and love of our Lord Jesus Christ again.
Thank you Catholic Writer! I’m really glad that you’ve come out with this website.
I just stumbled on this blog and am completely amazed at the vast ignorance displayed here. Allow me to be clear: here is nothing wrong with masturbation whatsoever. i masturbated several times daily as a teenager and now have a very robust sex life with my wife. “Catholic Writer” is on some sort of weird crusade apparently fueled by his own sexual confusion. These problems attributed to masturbation are symptoms of much deeper, underlying causes. This page is very sad and troubling.
Hi Brad,
Thanks for sharing. Do you still continue to masturbate several times a day now? If not, why not?
God bless,
Catholic Writer
Hi Catholic Writer
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. Unfortunately I’m still struggling with this problem. I managed to resist the temptation for the past two weeks but tonight regrettably, I gave into temptation. On average since about June 2007 I’ve been masturbating around 3 or 4 times per week. I’ve had some good periods like the past 2 weeks where I’ve managed not to masturbate but sometimes it feels like I’m just postponing the inevitable. Once I start masturbating again I just seem to get into a rut of porn, lust & masturbation. I feel I’m letting God down constantly. He has given me so many blessings yet I cannot help myself from giving into temptation.
Thanks for listening and God Bless
http://boysunderattack.com/masturbation-limits.html
What do you think?
Hi Dolours,
Here is my response to the article:
The article assumes that the Bible is the sole authority for deciding what is a sin and what is not. That is not true, as there are modern sins, such as pollution of the environment, drug abuse, and genetic manipulation, which are also not in the Bible. As Catholics, we need to look at the authority behind the Bible. It is not just the Holy Spirit that produced the Bible, but in cooperation with the universal church which in AD 393 at the Synod of Hippo, inspired by the Holy Spirit, compiled the books of the Bible in the canon we now use. These books accurately reflected the teaching of the Apostles.
If masturbation is seen as “a healthy way of relieving sexual tensions which build up in those who do not have the option of marital relations as a way of easing the physical need”, it must be noted that it is not natural. A biologically natural means of relieving “sexual tensions” – incidently a phrase used only by those who masturbate – is noctural emissions (or wet dreams). In a sense masturbation is sinful because a person takes into his own hands (literally) a task that would have come naturally for a person who waited for his body to naturally perform.
It is untrue that a teenage boy is powerless to overcome the sin of masturbation. A teenage boy has as much capability of not masturbating as we have of not committing sin i.e. we cannot succeed if not given the grace of God to avoid sin. However, it is also true that hormonal reasons can lessen the weight of a sin and hence the subjective guilt of a person. It must be noted that the act of masturbation remains an intrinsically disordered act (i.e. by itself, it is an act which is not according to the natural order for human beings).
I agree that it is the responsibility of parents and the church to offer young men and women a sane and workable alternation to the questions of masturbation. It is a subject that will definitely crop up in the development of young men and women, and should be addressed frankly and honestly. It is my opinion that a young man or woman should be taught that masturbation is a sin (i.e. God does not desire it of us, and committing this act is disobedience to God), and that they, as free human beings, have a choice whether or not to obey or disobey God.
It is untrue that just because Scripture does not directly condemn the act of masturbation, it is therefore reasonably to assume that it is an act with the potential to honour God and in accord with the fact that the Holy Spirit lives in the believer. As mentioned above, there are many modern sins that are not listed in the Bible, possibly because those sins were not a concern of the people then, possibly because people married young then. The Bible is not a rulebook for listing out what actions are sinful and what are not. That is not the purpose of the Bible. This assumption by the writer of the article is stretching the truth, and could constitute sinful in itself, because it is an attempt to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong – the sin that Adam and Eve committed.
Solitary masturbation can be harmful to an individual’s body when one takes into consideration the method used and the intensity and frequency of the act performed. By itself, the action induces a response of the body to an artificial stimulus. This in itself is potentially troublesome for the body as it trains the body to respond to an artificial stimulus, so much so that it may no longer respond well to a real stimulus. Masturbation is often the reason why married men find it hard to be sexually aroused by their partners, especially when they compare their partners to the virtual stimulation that frequently accompanies masturbation.
The writer of the article rightly recognizes that “the body is designed by God to respond to sexual stimulation, but it was never designed to respond exclusively to impure thoughts”, but fails to recognize that frequent masturbation trains the body to respond exclusively to impure thoughts. It is not merely an act that is right or wrong, but must be considered as part of the formation of a lifelong habit.
I agree with the writer that there should be no difference between sacred and secular thought (from the third boundary scripture).
However, just because it is possible to masturbate without straying into sinful thoughts doesn’t make the action right. The writer of the article considers only impure thoughts that can lead to sin, but overlooks the reality of sinful actions. Masturbation in itself is a sinful action because it induces a response to a stimulus that is not real. It is an abuse of the design of the body, which is why masturbation is sometimes referred to as “self abuse”.
If the writer can argue that it is right and good to masturbate giving thanks to God for the pleasure that the masturbating person is feeling, can it also be argued that it is right and good to consume drugs while giving thanks to God for the pleasure that consuming these drugs bring? The writer’s argument is flawed (for the above reasons), and if one accepts his argument, it stands to reason that one can justify any harmful action that is not explicitly condemned by the Bible.
In summary, the basic underlying presumption that the writer makes is that the Bible is meant to tell us what is sinful and what is not. That’s not the purpose of the Bible. The purpose of the Bible is to tell us the Good News and to give us a record of the relationship that God has with His people, so that we may continue in the tradition of our spiritual ancestors and learn the kind of relationship that God wants to have with us. What constitutes a sin and what doesn’t has to be reflected on based on the teachings of the Apostles as given to them by Jesus Christ – stuff that is not written in the Bible but seen through the life of the Church. It also has to be in continuity with the practice of the life of the Church.
Even though we may all have within us the presence of the Holy Spirit, not all of us are given the authority and right to interpret Scripture. This authority was given by Jesus Christ to His Apostles and to those that they chose to succeed them.
God bless,
Catholic Writer
The issue here is lust. Not masturbation. Lust is what poisons the whole tree. In the OT, for example in Leviticus, God was so precise on laws, regulations but nothing was ever mentioned about masturbation. Sure, there is talk about ejaculation, but that can come from other ways such as intercourse, nocturnal emissions, etc. A person can masturbate without having any lustful thoughts. In Romans, we read St. Paul telling us to master every thought in our mind (take every thought captive to obedience of Christ). We can, with God’s grace control those thoughts, free ourselves from them and masturbate without feeling guilty about it. Now, I am not encouraging masturbation. What I am saying is that one ought not to masturbate because of lust. That is wrong.
Anyway, masturbation was not considered as a sin for the first 1000 years or so of the church. During the Middle Ages it was believed that male sperm contained the entire fetus and the womb was merely the ground in which the seed was planted & matured. Thus to masturbate was to have a spontaneous abortion. In light of today’s medical science, we know that this is not true.
If masturbation causes you to lust, stop masturbating. If not masturbating causes you to lust, masturbate. Its as simple as this.
I’m Catholic but I love to masturbate. It’s a hidden secret I have had for years.
Roy,
It may be a secret to your friends, family, and clergy but it is not hidden from the Lord who “probes the hearts and loins of men”.
I think you need to examine why you ‘love’ masturbation. The Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit teaches us that masturbation is a “intrinsically and disordered action” (CCC 2352).
You admitted that you sexual activity is done in secret and that no one knows. Ask yourself: “Am I living a double life?”
As Christians, we are called to live within Godly boundaries and not lead double lives. Our lives are to be molded after that of Jesus’ divine countenance.
Sexual addiction is compulsive, enslaves us, and eventually leads to a detrimental pattern in our thinking and behavior.
I would also suppose that masturbation has become essential for you and you would find it difficult to live without sexual passion. Ask yourself once more: “Is sex the most important thing in my life?” For if you have been mastered by masturbation, you have been a slave to it! (cf. II Peter 2:XIX).
Enter into prayer with God and ask the Holy Spirit to give you direction and the conviction to stop masturbating. There are greater more lasting pleasures in life. Do you want to exchange that for a mere few minutes alone under the sheets deceiving yourself by pretending to be something more than your true God-given self?
Pray about it! Help is never too far away!
P.s. CW, hope you don’t mind me using this space to write my thoughts on the matter.