Topic:  Is masturbation a sin if you aren't in a relationship?

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: February 10, 2003

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question:   I go to The Citadel along with one of my friends that wrote yall about a month ago. We were wondering if it was sinful for us to masturbate because in a response one of the priests gave on this website he said that the only way it could be considered seriously sinful is if you do it to avoid sex with one's spouse. Well neither of us are married, and we don't even have girlfriends right now. We are stuck in an all male environment all week and sometimes on the weekends too. The temptation to do it is all around us because there are many fellow cadets that masturbate fairly frequently and say how great it is. They show us articles that say that if you do it three times a week you can reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke by 50%. This is really a testosterone filled environment. If you were not do it in a lustful way or with sex on the mind, you only did it for relief of tension or something to that effect would it be sinful?

Answer: 

Hey, Travis...

Thanks for writing to us at www.CatholicQandA.org; we're always pleased when this web site is helpful to college students -- even at The Citadel!

In your question, you alluded to Father John's response to a question about masturbation. I hope you will also look in our FAQ Library, under "Subjects" for "Sexual Morality," and there you will find a "Topic" entitled "More thoughts on masturbation" which I encourage you to look through. At some length and with specific reference to "The Catechism of the Catholic Church," I tried to give a fairly detailed answer to another male college student's question on masturbation. So, I won't try to go through all that again.

I will, however, make a couple of comments with regard to your specific question(s).

First, I cannot tell you if something is sinful -- seriously or venially -- since I am not "there" and since I don't know you, your own personal moral development, or the situation in which you find yourself. Only if I were to know those things -- which email and the web cannot make happen -- could I offer you, as a spiritual director or confessor, a reasonable response to your question.

I can say that you SEEM to be a really good guy. And you SEEM to be a person of real faith.

Next, I would want to say that even if masturbation reduces a person's risk of heart attack and stroke by 50% that, in itself, does not make it ok. An act has to be morally unobjectionable in itself. And while there may be some good 'side effects,' that doesn't justify any act if it is intrinsically wrong.

Besides that, just because something is printed in an article doesn't always make it true. It just makes it printed. :-)

You would need to investigate to find out the credibility of the publication, the scientific basis of the studies, and the population on which the research was conducted before you could come to anything like an informed judgment about whether the articles that your friends showed you could have any relevance to your situation.

Finally, though, we come to what is the crux of the matter, I think: You are in your late adolescence, in -- as you say -- a "testosterone filled environment." Those facts may very well be what the Catechism calls "extenuating circumstances." IF that is the case, then I can hardly see how masturbation would be seriously sinful although it would, according to the mind of the Church, remain an objectively disordered action.

My suggestion is that you need to find a campus minister, a priest, or other qualified spiritual director with whom you can talk about this question in your own life. That guidance would be a real boon to your well-being and peace-of-mind, I think.

Blessings to you, Travis; you seem like a great guy!
Father Phillip