I'll get back to my Lenten reading project tomorrow, but Mark Shea has written a long piece on masturbation. A long and, I'm sorry to report, rather confused, piece. I read it and thought, 'Well, that's interesting'. But the more I thought about it the more it seemed to me that I could not in good conscience let this one go without comment.
Is masturbation worse or as bad as adultery?
The Internet barroom stools are spinning because Mark Shea seems to have said that masturbation is worse than adultery.
So, does he say that? Short answer: not really. His exact words were the following:
And then he rambles, meanders, goes off on tangents and generally confuses things for a few hundred words. He remains absolutely clear on one point and that is that masturbation is wrong but he never really gets around to saying why. He does quote church teaching but never gets around to really explaining it.
So let's begin there, with the church teaching according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Readers will note that the crucial church teaching is that sex is morally good when it meets two conditions:
Okay, but what does "grave sin" mean here. Well, that is one of the places it starts to get tricky. For there is a paragraph immediately below the one cited above that I have left aside for a moment. Here it is:
Let me show you, for hypothetical reasons alone, how someone could, in the privacy of their conscience, use the above paragraph to excuse everything they do.
Is masturbation really only or mostly a problem for men?
By the way, if you read the Shea piece again, you might think that the only people who masturbate are men. Odd that isn't it? You might be inclined to say, well women don't masturbate as often as men but read what the Catechism says more carefully before you try that one.
Read how the catechism defines masturbation: "By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure." It says pleasure not orgasm. And that opens up an ocean of difficulties because, as you will soon see, that is a standard that is mind-bogglingly tough to meet.
Look, here is Sheila riding home on the bus and, remembering some moment of pleasure with her husband, she squeezes her thighs together. That's masturbation. You might say, well, only if it is deliberate. But who are you trying to fool here? Sheila is no teenager. She understands her body and how it works and she knows perfectly well what she is doing here. Her actions are deliberate.
The ghost haunting the whole discussion
The odd thing some readers might sense as they go through Shea's odd, meandering piece, is the feeling that there is something going on in the background. That there is some other concern somewhere that isn't being mentioned out loud. You can't help but get the sense that the real concern is not really the deliberate stimulation of the sexual organs for pleasure. For starters, Shea doesn't really even begin to take seriously the issues that he ought to be if that is the real sin as we can see in the example of Sheila above.
For the odd feeling you can't help but get when people like Shea discuss the issue is that, for them at least, the real concern is not pleasure but ejaculation. For we might further note that the definition doesn't specify who is doing it. Shea goes on and on about the selfishness of masturbation but it would be every bit as much a sin in the Church's view if a wife, out of the goodness of her heart, deliberately stimulated her husbands genitals with her hands or mouth until he ejaculated. But only if until he ejaculates. Deliberately stimulating him until he is hard enough to enter her is just fine. So is deliberately stimulating him simply to make him feel good so long as it is part of a larger series of actions that ends with him ejaculating inside her vagina.
And, to further complicate matters, he can deliberately stimulate her genitals until she reaches orgasm with his hand, tongue or otherwise and that is just fine. In fact, he ought to for the simple reason that direct stimulation is the only way most women can reach orgasm and not doing that really would be selfish. So why is it okay to do this for her but not the reverse? Because no matter what is being said about pleasure here, the real concern is where a man ejaculates. No matter the literal meaning of the words being used, the actual rule here is not that it is wrong to deliberately stimulate genitals for pleasure but rather the real rule is that a man must always ejaculate in his wife's vagina and never! never! never! ejaculate anywhere else. And that is not in any way a rule about "masturbation" as defined in the catechism. It is because the real concern is about where men ejaculate that people like Mark Shea write as if only men masturbate.
Ostensibly, the reason for this is the open-to-procreation aspect but that isn't really clear. Because, with natural family planning or NFP, it is quite possible to have sex in ways that a man always ejaculates in his wife's vagina but are really only open to procreation in a way that really amounts to a technicality and are not all open in spirit. Which is why some traditionalist Catholics argue that NFP is also a sin even though the Church says it isn't.
Anyway, there is spectre haunting this whole argument and it is an argument from Aquinas. For Aquinas believed, as all the best science of his era seemed to indicate, that semen is the very source of human life and that it is the act of placing semen inside a woman that begins reproduction. As we now know, that isn't true. It is conception that is the key thing.
But imagine two things. Imagine that, rather than the two conditions specified in the Catechism, you really only believed that procreation mattered (and not mutual self giving) and that you, like Aquinas, really believed that diverting semen from inside a woman's vagina amounted to something like a low-level abortion? Then your conclusion would be much more decisive wouldn't it?
The bottom line
Many, many Catholic authorities used to argue as in the paragraph above. For a long time sex had one and only one purpose and that purpose was procreation. Mutual self-giving was a side benefit at best and deeply suspect at worst. Relatively recently (relative by church standards although it is actually since before most people now alive were born) the Church has begun to insist that mutual self giving in marriage is every bit as important as procreation. And the church has allowed that there are conditions (NFP) under which you can have sex while minimizing the chances of conception and still meet both the above conditions.
The Church has also, as it always does, begun accommodating its teaching to the best science. However, the church also wants to accommodate present teaching to past teaching; it wants the basic rules about what you can or can't do to remain pretty close to what they have always been. And there it gets tricky because neither recent science nor the theology of the body really gives a solid basis for maintaining the rules such as the church has taught in the past.
Finally, as noted above, the Church is well aware that most people (probably everyone outside of a very small percentage in fact) do not meet the letter of the law.
So you put all those things together and the only obvious conclusion is that ... well, the only obvious conclusion is that there are no obvious conclusions. You can see, however, why nobody likes to talk about this much. Except, of course, people who really want hard and fast rules for themselves and others. And, perhaps, we might be forgiven for thinking that they really want to hard and fast rules for others most of all.
Meanwhile, things are not clear and they are not going to become clear any time in the near future. But that's not so bad is it? And here we can see why Shea's reader raised the question in the first place. In both her public pronouncements and her private teachings, the Church is sending a very clear message that there are other more important things to focus on for Catholics.
Is masturbation worse or as bad as adultery?
The Internet barroom stools are spinning because Mark Shea seems to have said that masturbation is worse than adultery.
So, does he say that? Short answer: not really. His exact words were the following:
Indeed, I would note that it can (not must, but can) be argued that it is, in fact, graver than adultery. After all, which sin -- adultery or masturbation -- at least involves the disordered love of another person and so participates, to that degree, in divine love (albeit, I repeat, in a radically disordered way)? Answer: adultery. With masturbation, even disordered love of another person is totally excluded.The crucial phrase here is "not must, but can". But he doesn't really answer the question does he? He says, hypothetically speaking, you could argue this but he owes us more than that because we want to know 'Is it worse?' in fact, if we go back to the reader question that inspired the piece, the reader says, "To my mind, adultery is a far more heinous offense, but perhaps I am missing something."To which Mark Shea says the equivalent of, well, you can see why someone might argue this.
And then he rambles, meanders, goes off on tangents and generally confuses things for a few hundred words. He remains absolutely clear on one point and that is that masturbation is wrong but he never really gets around to saying why. He does quote church teaching but never gets around to really explaining it.
So let's begin there, with the church teaching according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
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."There is a lot of stuff here but the most important words in that paragraph are the ones I have emphasized.
Readers will note that the crucial church teaching is that sex is morally good when it meets two conditions:
- When the total meaning of mutual self-giving in the context of true love is respected.
- When the total meaning of human procreation in the context of true love is respected.
Okay, but what does "grave sin" mean here. Well, that is one of the places it starts to get tricky. For there is a paragraph immediately below the one cited above that I have left aside for a moment. Here it is:
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.Now, one obvious question is, Who exactly is forming this judgment? God will, of course, but he doesn't need the Catechism to help him. A confessor might if a Catholic goes to him seeking advice or absolution. But, really, the primary person making the judgment is you, the masturbator. And the surprising thing about that paragraph is how much wiggle room it leaves. That's not a loophole it's a giant rift in the space-time continuum that leaves enough space for an entire universe of justification to slip through.
Let me show you, for hypothetical reasons alone, how someone could, in the privacy of their conscience, use the above paragraph to excuse everything they do.
- 'When did you start masturbating?' Why when I was a teenager when I was immature and my sex drive was very strong.
- 'Why did you keep going into adulthood?' Because I acquired the habit when I was teenager.
- 'Wait a minute, I'm not going to let you get away with that. I know and you know that even if it is a habit it is a bad habit, you should be fighting it. Why aren't you?' I only do this when the psychological pressure overwhelms me.
Is masturbation really only or mostly a problem for men?
By the way, if you read the Shea piece again, you might think that the only people who masturbate are men. Odd that isn't it? You might be inclined to say, well women don't masturbate as often as men but read what the Catechism says more carefully before you try that one.
Read how the catechism defines masturbation: "By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure." It says pleasure not orgasm. And that opens up an ocean of difficulties because, as you will soon see, that is a standard that is mind-bogglingly tough to meet.
Look, here is Sheila riding home on the bus and, remembering some moment of pleasure with her husband, she squeezes her thighs together. That's masturbation. You might say, well, only if it is deliberate. But who are you trying to fool here? Sheila is no teenager. She understands her body and how it works and she knows perfectly well what she is doing here. Her actions are deliberate.
The ghost haunting the whole discussion
The odd thing some readers might sense as they go through Shea's odd, meandering piece, is the feeling that there is something going on in the background. That there is some other concern somewhere that isn't being mentioned out loud. You can't help but get the sense that the real concern is not really the deliberate stimulation of the sexual organs for pleasure. For starters, Shea doesn't really even begin to take seriously the issues that he ought to be if that is the real sin as we can see in the example of Sheila above.
For the odd feeling you can't help but get when people like Shea discuss the issue is that, for them at least, the real concern is not pleasure but ejaculation. For we might further note that the definition doesn't specify who is doing it. Shea goes on and on about the selfishness of masturbation but it would be every bit as much a sin in the Church's view if a wife, out of the goodness of her heart, deliberately stimulated her husbands genitals with her hands or mouth until he ejaculated. But only if until he ejaculates. Deliberately stimulating him until he is hard enough to enter her is just fine. So is deliberately stimulating him simply to make him feel good so long as it is part of a larger series of actions that ends with him ejaculating inside her vagina.
And, to further complicate matters, he can deliberately stimulate her genitals until she reaches orgasm with his hand, tongue or otherwise and that is just fine. In fact, he ought to for the simple reason that direct stimulation is the only way most women can reach orgasm and not doing that really would be selfish. So why is it okay to do this for her but not the reverse? Because no matter what is being said about pleasure here, the real concern is where a man ejaculates. No matter the literal meaning of the words being used, the actual rule here is not that it is wrong to deliberately stimulate genitals for pleasure but rather the real rule is that a man must always ejaculate in his wife's vagina and never! never! never! ejaculate anywhere else. And that is not in any way a rule about "masturbation" as defined in the catechism. It is because the real concern is about where men ejaculate that people like Mark Shea write as if only men masturbate.
Ostensibly, the reason for this is the open-to-procreation aspect but that isn't really clear. Because, with natural family planning or NFP, it is quite possible to have sex in ways that a man always ejaculates in his wife's vagina but are really only open to procreation in a way that really amounts to a technicality and are not all open in spirit. Which is why some traditionalist Catholics argue that NFP is also a sin even though the Church says it isn't.
Anyway, there is spectre haunting this whole argument and it is an argument from Aquinas. For Aquinas believed, as all the best science of his era seemed to indicate, that semen is the very source of human life and that it is the act of placing semen inside a woman that begins reproduction. As we now know, that isn't true. It is conception that is the key thing.
But imagine two things. Imagine that, rather than the two conditions specified in the Catechism, you really only believed that procreation mattered (and not mutual self giving) and that you, like Aquinas, really believed that diverting semen from inside a woman's vagina amounted to something like a low-level abortion? Then your conclusion would be much more decisive wouldn't it?
The bottom line
Many, many Catholic authorities used to argue as in the paragraph above. For a long time sex had one and only one purpose and that purpose was procreation. Mutual self-giving was a side benefit at best and deeply suspect at worst. Relatively recently (relative by church standards although it is actually since before most people now alive were born) the Church has begun to insist that mutual self giving in marriage is every bit as important as procreation. And the church has allowed that there are conditions (NFP) under which you can have sex while minimizing the chances of conception and still meet both the above conditions.
The Church has also, as it always does, begun accommodating its teaching to the best science. However, the church also wants to accommodate present teaching to past teaching; it wants the basic rules about what you can or can't do to remain pretty close to what they have always been. And there it gets tricky because neither recent science nor the theology of the body really gives a solid basis for maintaining the rules such as the church has taught in the past.
Finally, as noted above, the Church is well aware that most people (probably everyone outside of a very small percentage in fact) do not meet the letter of the law.
So you put all those things together and the only obvious conclusion is that ... well, the only obvious conclusion is that there are no obvious conclusions. You can see, however, why nobody likes to talk about this much. Except, of course, people who really want hard and fast rules for themselves and others. And, perhaps, we might be forgiven for thinking that they really want to hard and fast rules for others most of all.
Meanwhile, things are not clear and they are not going to become clear any time in the near future. But that's not so bad is it? And here we can see why Shea's reader raised the question in the first place. In both her public pronouncements and her private teachings, the Church is sending a very clear message that there are other more important things to focus on for Catholics.
No comments:
Post a Comment