What harm is there in masturbation according to Catholic doctrine?

WHAT IS EVIL IN MASTURBATION?

The exclusion of love

Masturbation uses the language of love to express selfishness. Therefore it can never be justified in itself. As long as sexuality remains separate from love, it will never be in compliance with the demands of morality.

Masturbation has in itself a dangerous charge because it blocks the growth of love. It represents the shortcut of pleasure, a narcissistic attitude in which the person's attitude and interest are blocked on himself and in this way he remains incapable of true love. These people seriously risk living a poor and unhappy married life. The repetition of an egoistic gesture such as masturbation also irreversibly hurts the ability to love in an authentic way.

Commit to growing

Those who are victims of this habit must commit themselves to growing in love and to overcome this situation of immaturity. He must therefore fight against masturbation with serenity and seriousness, he must mature his personality by exercising altruism, engaging in study and work, cultivating the ability to communicate, opening up to others, widening the horizon of his own interests and deepening his own life of faith, using all the means and energies of grace.

In certain more serious cases and in the presence of psychic disorders, the help of a serious and prepared psychologist, trained in the principles of Catholic morality, will benefit.

The spiritual direction of a wise director, friend and life teacher is of great help.

Overcoming the selfish mentality will gradually lead to victory over this habit and the discovery of a greater capacity to love.

4 - THE LOVE OF ADOLESCENTS

An educational concern

Today the opportunities for meeting boys and girls have multiplied and the permissiveness towards sentimental and emotional relationships has increased between them.

The Church expresses some perplexity or distrust towards these teenage couples. The reason is very realistic: are they ripe for truly loving each other? Because the maturation of love can suffer deviations and serious injuries when it is blocked or delayed by out of season and out of season experiences.

The balance between love and sexuality is a growing balance that must be built gradually with sacrifices and sacrifices. Unripe harvested fruits are never really tasty and are often indigestible.

Constructive friendships

We have said that the Church expresses some perplexity or distrust, but not absolute opposition, to the friendships between teenage boys and girls. There are forms of friendship, of encounter, of collaboration, of genuine emotional relationship which are very good, very educational and useful for the development of the ability to love.

Certain forms of meeting between boys and girls are moments of apprenticeship of love. But which encounters and which relationships? Is it possible to determine the positive and negative notes of these reports? Certainly. For example, the exploitation of the friend represents a negative element. While mutual encounter, collaboration at study and work level, common enjoyment and also genuine emotional relationships are positive when they are serious, respectful, sincere, when each person's dignity and personality are respected and condition to develop harmoniously.

A wise education cannot aim to prevent and absolutely prevent uncertainties and errors in the growth of the personality of young people. The important thing is not to call evil good and not to deceive oneself to progress when one regresses: it takes a sincere will to overcome and grow. We need a continuous and fair verification of our attitudes and a sincere will to impose the renunciations and sacrifices required by the growth of love.

The most suitable tool for this verification is the examination of conscience and the penitential dialogue in the celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation.

The danger of playing with love

Beside substantially positive forms of encounter and relationship there are also negative ones which are not on the line of the growth of love, but which are a degradation and a pervert of love.

This occurs when the encounters between boys and girls are conducted in a general climate of disengagement and emptiness, when friendship is actually a play on love in the worst sense of the term.

Love without authenticity immediately gives green light to sexual attraction and the search for immediate satisfactions. Everything takes place in an atmosphere of superficiality and without any concern for spiritual enrichment and mutual personal promotion.

The wonderful possibilities of psychological and sexual evolution are thus quickly burned by untimely and banal experiences that lead to disappointment and the inability to believe in love and dry up the personality.

This does not only happen in borderline cases, but is an ever-present danger on this wonderful and delicate phase of learning love.

The love that deludes

Often there is the risk of confusing falling in love with love. From these forms of falling in love a number of early marriages are born, often destined for an equally early failure and unhappiness It is difficult to make these immature couples understand that their love is still too idealized and not mature enough to support a life together, with its joys and difficulties.

Yet one must have the courage to tell them this clearly, even at the cost of losing their friendship. Too often this love deludes itself. They do not love the other, but an idealized image of the man or woman they carry within themselves and which does not have a real correspondence in reality.

The more blind and idealized their love, the greater the probability that they will face serious disappointments and a dramatic break. These early forms of love are often the unconscious response to a form of affection not satiated enough in childhood.

Each person is linked to his culture also in the rhythms of psychic development. The extreme complexity of our society and culture imposes inevitable delays in this psychological and social maturation. So it takes more calm and thoughtfulness to avoid painful experiences and irreparable steps.