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I saw a video on masturbation and why it's a sin, and a priest said technically, if you do it without any lustful thoughts or for the purpose of pleasure, it's technically not a sin.
I want to know if this is true.
I have extremely bad cramps during my period. Not even painkillers help. The only thing that does is masturbation because of the hormones it releases.
I was wondering if masturbation would be OK in this case, or not.
Nevaeh
{ Is what this priest said on the acceptability of masturbation true and would masturbation be OK in this medical situation? }
Mike replied:
Dear Nevaeh,
You said: I saw a video on masturbation and why it's a sin, and a priest said technically, if you do it without any lustful thoughts or for the purpose of pleasure, it's technically not a sin.
I want to know if this is true.
No, it is not true.
What is true is that this is a struggle every living, breathing person will have until they are 6 feet under the ground : ) (until they pass from this Earthly life.)
Many attack the Church for this, but here is some commonsense reasoning behind why the Church teaches what She does. The key issue is understanding the purpose of the hierarchy of pleasures in each and every person. This posting should help:
Masturbation is mentioned twice in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Your priest should be familiar with them:
Offenses against chastity.
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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." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana 9)
"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." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana 9)
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.
Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), pp. 564–65
In Brief.
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2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.
I would recommend finding a priest who is faithful to the Church's teaching and using him as a spiritual Confessor. Regular Confession, Sunday Mass, and praying the Rosary can make a good 1-2-3, punch in this spiritual warfare.
We can't answer your original question, because it falls into the area of "Questions we don't answer", but I've done the best I can do.
