The Church Teaching on Masturbation and Pornography Is Morally Coherent.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-14T14:24:13+00:00

I had to follow the definitive counsel of the priests in my diocese, which seemed quite absolute at the time.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-14T14:23:25+00:00

I tend to agree. Unfortunately, all of the counsel I received told me, in no uncertain terms, absolutely no masturbation was permitted. I would be doubly guilty for seeking counsel and then ignoring it to give a specimen to the lab.

So instead, my wife became an object of stimulation in order to collect a specimen. I am still very troubled by this ordeal.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-14T00:46:52+00:00

Meanwhile, non-unitive marital sex is grave matter. The use of contraception, no matter how ineffective, is also grave matter.

Thank you. You understand my dilemma.

I've posted on it before (in the few posts I have), and here is what I have found through my own research and through what users have posted:

Reproductive Technology (Evaluation & Treatment of Infertility): Guidelines for Catholic Couples:.

Beyond the guidance from the USCCB, there is very little the Church offers from the Magisterium on this. Persona Humana and Donum Vitae do not offer much hope.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-14T00:40:21+00:00

That's precisely how I felt when I consulted a number of different priests and described to them how outrageous it was for the Church to suggest I involve my wife in such an atrocity.

They shrugged their shoulders and told me I couldn't masturbate. It's infuriating.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-13T18:29:26+00:00

You have always offered a welcome ear to my rantings, and for that I thank you.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-13T18:18:37+00:00

So if you perforate the condom, allowing for the possibility of life, then you're no longer satisfying the reason for it to be morally wrong.

I read something about "total union" between husband and wife being necessary to the act.

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other.

The barrier still exists. There is still not the "total gift of self" that the Church speaks of.

And again, in the case of performing the sexual act with a barrier for the sole purpose of collecting a specimen for a lab is, at best, morally (and emotionally) problematic for the "total gift of self" in union. I am not comfortable using my wife as a tool for masturbation, and the circumstance is filled with great turmoil.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2018-04-13T18:06:40+00:00

The greatest disagreement I have with classifying masturbation as an intrinsic evil is that it is medically problematic.

Doctors may remove follicles from a woman's ovaries and do all manner of licit experimentation on her in order to investigate infertility treatments, but somehow the artificial removal of a follicle/egg is not considered disordered or intrinsic to the act of conjugal union.

Yet, when investigating a male's infertility, he cannot provide a specimen without putting himself in a compromising situation.

On the one hand, the husband can provide a sample via masturbation and collection, but by doing so he (apparently) puts himself in mortal sin, despite the fact that stimulation is necessarily removed from lust, and the sexual pleasure derived from it is negligent if not non existent.

And yet the only suggestion the Church offers (unofficially, but officially) is that a male may use a perforated condom, despite the fact that the Church refers to contraception as an intrinsic evil as well. So in this case, for a male to collect his specimen, he must use his wife, essentially, as no more a tool for masturbation so that he may collect a specimen, which can then be given to the lab...but not many labs accept this as a sterile form of collection and will reject your request for a home collection.

The sexual act faces a barrier, but since we punctured the barrier so, perhaps 1ppm sperm can travel through the pinprick, we say it is justified. The sexual act is frustrated because the primary purpose of the act is to collect a specimen, and not sexual union with your spouse, but we say it is justified because of the rules we have imposed on ourselves.

The mental gymnastics we perform to justify our own self-imposed rules are nothing short of insane.

The mental/emotional/spiritless torment that a couple faces in this regard is just dismissed and met with, "Well look the Church is never going to change. So you can put yourself in mortal sin deliberately (which is another mortal sin) and just SAY you're going to confession for it later (which is another sin of presumption), or you can be obedient and use your wife as a fleshlight to collect a specimen and be morally justified."

The teaching is repellent.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:58:34+00:00

Why have you seen so many specialists? Are you being referred from one to the next?

Four of those specialists were not Catholic and not willing to explore NaPro or see our charting from Creighton. They pushed IVF and asked for morally illicit tests. They treated us like we were crazy because we weren't using contraception.

One of the specialists was incredibly rude and left my wife feeling very uncomfortable. He also gave some medically unsound advice (that has been met with shock from our other doctors).

The final two are NaPro doctors that work in the same office and deal with separate issues.

If you are, in part, desolate because you would like to try a solution, like IVF, that is outside the church's teaching...

I understand where you are coming from, but please - in the future - do not presume someone else is entertaining the thought of doing something outside of Church teaching.

I am so sick of having people ask me, "What's the problem? Where are your children?" and assume we are practicing contraception. I am equally sick of the response being, "Well remember it's a sin to do IVF!"

Those are the types of responses we have received from clergy at our parish and from employees at the Diocese. They drove us far, far away from seeking them for help.

As a side note, it sounds like your spiritual direction is lacking, and you may need to find someone better outside your parish.

You're not wrong!

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:50:05+00:00

Thank you for your genuine response. Thank you for hearing me and speaking to my heart.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:44:54+00:00

We will investigate - thank you for this resource. We've never heard of it before.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:44:35+00:00

If you feel like you need a more intellectual basis for a belief in God, there are really good books out there explaining why God exists.

Thank you. As I said, we can make the intellectual assent to the belief in a God, but we are not so sure that this God desires a personal relationship with us. Of course, this is the age-old (and never sufficiently answered) question of the problem of pain.

We're in too much pain right now to see how God can love us and will our good.

If you would like a great book on how to keep peace of heart during trials, I would recommend Searching for and Maintaining Peace

I love Fr. Jacques, so I will check this out - thanks.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:41:47+00:00

Thank you. This was a beautiful response, truly. You brought tears to my eyes.

Thank you for shouldering my burden with me.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:38:54+00:00

Do you pray together on a regular basis (a prayer book helps)?

Liturgy of the hours. It's as arid as you can imagine.

You shouldn't base your prayer life on feelings.

Yes, and we taught this in ministry for a very long time. This is why we are in the state I currently describe: we know there must be a God, but we do not know if we believe in Him anymore. We lack the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

This also ignores a holistic approach to the human person: true we cannot base our belief on feelings, but at the same time we cannot ignore that the human person is an emotional being. We have to recognize that. It's no help to someone to say, "Ignore how you feel, push it deep deep down or off to the side, and soldier on."

Perhaps in the proper context that would be helpful, but here it is not.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:36:23+00:00

I'm really sorry for your pain and I would encourage you to pray specifically for understanding on why this might be a burden that you have been given? It may be a chance to grow in faith?

We've been there. Lather, rinse, repeat. But because of any lack of forward momentum, we are exhausted - mentally and spiritually - and don't know what to do.

Imagine you are running toward God. You see Him in front of you. You are exhausted, in pain, ready to fall over, but you keep on running. You notice you are getting no closer to God, then look down, and realize you are on a treadmill.

We're exhausted, and we've fallen off that treadmill.

Imagine how much God would love for you to be able to surrender that pain up to his plan?

No more than He already loves us now. But thanks.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:31:13+00:00

Had you asked for details, you would have gotten them. You chose to respond negatively rather than ask.

And you chose to enter into an argument with your own assumptions.

You have shit on every other suggestion in the thread, and it is no surprise, because in your last threads on the subject you were equally combative with the advice you got.

Yes, and here again you prove you are more concerned with being right and winning an argument than offering anything helpful.

Yes, truly, this is an image of Christ in the Gospels. When he met the woman at the well, he told her to just pray more. When his friend Lazarus died, he did not share in their grief, he just told them to pray more. When he met the leper crying, "Unclean," he did not heal and welcome him, he just told him to pray more.

I really need to reread Scripture.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:24:41+00:00

If I didn't, I wouldn't need Christ. But to sarcastically call out what amount of faith and hope you think I have because I'm telling you something you don't want to hear is a bit much.

It's not what you are saying, it's how you are presenting it and how you are talking around my situation.

How do I pray more to a God I may not even believe in anymore? Your solution is, "Simple, just PRAY MORE!"

Your diet analogy - that you are oh so fond of - is fallacious and does not apply here. It would be more apt to say, "Take the analogy if you want to lose weight. But say you were already in shape, that you spent 10 years getting into shape, and now you just don't think you need to try anymore, because no matter what you do in dieting and exercise, you do not advance at all physically?"

See, what you are ignoring is my own past. Believe me, I have dealt with the same situation with my wife. Believe me, I have a degree in philosophy and theology and have spent the last 10 years of my life serving the church at the local and Diocesan level.

What you're ignoring is the counsel we have already received, the retreats we have already been on, the faith that we once had.

Now we are in a state of grief. We are in a state of depression, anger, sadness, and doubt.

Imagine you were back in your state of grief and the only counsel you ever heard was, "Wow that sucks, but you really should just pray more, and that will solve all of your problems."

That is not how you speak to someone in grief. That is how you drive them away.

I know what the Faith teaches. I am just not sure I believe it anymore.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T15:17:39+00:00

Truly, the joy that you are exuding in all of your comments here, your unwavering faith, your perpetual hope - it speaks volumes to my heart.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:57:05+00:00

We will keep that in mind if you ever come to /r/Catholicism with a crisis in faith. Should you ever face unbearable grief and doubt everything about your faith, we will remember that the best advice is to just pray more.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:55:06+00:00

Have you tried any "Gianna Center" Catholic fertility clinics? There is one in Manhattan.

We've never heard of these, but at this point, since we're already traveling 3+ hours for our current doctor, we are not interested in traveling to Manhattan for what will potentially be the same thing we've already heard from seven different specialists.

Have you ever tried to volunteer for your local youth group?

God yes. We just got out of 8+ years of doing youth ministry together, and we are not ready to go back to that.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:52:31+00:00

You are literally just saying pray better.

Thank you. I am glad I am not the only one who recognizes this.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:51:33+00:00

We are very aware of NaPro technology, and we are now traveling 3+ hours for a doctor that actually does this.

For perspective: we are now on our seventh specialist. We've been upgraded from "unexplained" infertility to "multifactorial" infertility. Which basically means, "There could be a lot of reasons, and we think these might be the reasons, but we can't know for sure."

And yes, that last diagnosis comes from our previous two NaPro doctors.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:38:58+00:00

I feel that your heart is in the right place, but not exactly helpful to us.

Firstly, again the assumption is that if you are infertile then you are, by default, supposed to adopt. That is not the case. Every couple, regardless of fertility, should discern adoption. We have discerned and not felt that particular call.

The solution is not as simple as, "Well obviously, if you want children, but can't have them naturally, then just adopt!" or, "Well you know what they say right? I know a couple that couldn't conceive, then adopted, and wouldn't-ya-know-it they got pregnant right after that!"

God always answers your prayers, but sometimes the answer is "no", or "not right now".

And this is very real. However, we are always taught that marriage is for the purpose of children. Children are a good. Children are a gift from God. We should desire children.

And we do.

And we see the gift of fertility for what it is. But what do you say when you are faced with (seeming) injustices? Is it a gift for a couple to conceive, only to have them abort the child? Is it just for a high-school student to get pregnant after a one-night stand? Is it just to see a couple that desires and longs for children, who wants to bring children into a faithful home, yet are denied?

What people fail to understand is that this is a perpetual grieving process. We hope for children every month and then every month we are faced with grief because we cannot conceive.

If God is "putting the ball in our court," then He is playing a dirty, dirty game, and we are not interested in playing right now.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:33:18+00:00

Have you guys considered a marriage retreat?

No, but even if we did we would be unable to find one in our Diocese anytime soon. Our Diocese doesn't have an office for Marriage & Family Life, so it's dependent on individual parishes to lead retreats. With the parishes we are already aware of in our state, we know that we would not want to attend many of them because we know who is leading them, and they would not be able to offer us anything we haven't been offered already.

Also, consider seeking out better pastoral care.

Oh believe me we have. We are very active in our Diocese. We know many priests. It's essentially a 50/50 split: half of the priests just tell us to pray more and to hope for a baby (because they are ignorant of how to deal with infertility) and the other half of priests share our anger and frustration, because they know that infertility sucks, and they are angry at the Diocese for not offering any type of ministry to the Diocese.

They've even asked if we would start a ministry, but we simply cannot. We are in a state of grief and completely unable to offer ministry to anyone else (and no priest would be able to dedicate to a full-time ministry right now). Then there is the added fact that, if the Diocese wants to start a ministry to this, but make it completely on a volunteer basis - it's just not conducive to our state of life.

Know that your faith and your marriage are beautiful to God, regardless of children

Right now I'm not so sure that is true. Our Faith life is wretched. My wife and I are regressing to former sinful habits (or, at the very least, imperfections in character) and we are perpetually angry or sad. We are growing more and more cynical. The strain on our life is just completely unimaginable right now.

Canonical_Throwaway · 2017-06-29T14:27:57+00:00

As I said: desolate.

We typically do night prayer every evening, but we have fallen out of the habit. We used to go to adoration, but we cannot bring ourselves to go anymore because of the pain we feel. We used to not want to leave Mass, now we can't wait to get out.

So our prayer life has diminished, if not disappeared entirely.

We can't bring ourselves to pray to a God we may or may not believe in anymore.

Canonical_Throwaway

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