Here is an example of how the new YouCat communicates the Catholic faith in regards to an issue of sexual morality. Several Catholics that I know who have read through it , including priests are finding it seriously problematic. Below is how it answers the question of self abuse. Remember, this is written for our youth. Tell me, how would the answer given effect how our youth views this particular act? Would it make it clear that it is completely immoral, or does it make it seem as if it is not really an evil act? The YouCat plainly says that the Church does not demonize self abuse. Demonize is generally defined as "to mark out or describe as evil." Is this not what the Church has always taught? Is not self abuse an act against the natural law? St. Thomas along with the entire Church has always taught that sins which go against the natural law are more serious than others and that they are even more reprehensible than sacrilege.
"Vices against nature are also against God, as stated above (ad 1), and are so much more grievous than the depravity of sacrilege, as the order impressed on human nature is prior to and more firm than any subsequently established order." (
ST II, II Q154, A 11) That makes it an evil act, period. Yet, this is not what the new YouCat is teaching. This is just one of many questionable texts. You decide. Do you want your kids using this?
(See other article on quotes)
Question 409 (Page 222)
Is Masturbation an offense against love?
Masturbation is an offense against love, because it makes the excitement of sexual pleasure an end in itself and uncouples it from the holistic unfolding of love between a man and a women. That is why “sex with yourself” is a contradiction in terms.
The Church does not demonize masturbation, but she warns against trivializing it. In fact many young people and adults are in danger of becoming isolated in their consumption of lewd pictures, films, and Internet services instead of finding love in a personal relationship. Loneliness can lead to a blind alley in which masturbation becomes an addiction. Living by the motto ‘“For sex I do not need anyone; i will have it myself, however and whenever I need it” makes nobody happy.
4 comments:
Even before I scrolled down I knew you were talking about masturbation. It is indeed a sin against human nature and God, Who is the Author of that nature and Who is Love.
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that masturbation, an "unnatural vice" which is a species of lust in the same category as bestiality and sodomy, "by procuring pollution [i.e., ejaculation apart from intercourse], without any copulation, for the sake of venereal pleasure [...] pertains to the sin of 'uncleanness' which some call 'effeminacy' [Latin: mollitiem, lit. 'softness, unmanliness']." [Summa Theologica IIª-IIae, q. 154 a. 11 co. (in Latin)]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church 2352. calls masturbation a "gravely disordered action."
I like how YouCat says "between a man and a woman" because that emphasizes two things that saying "between a husband and a wife" would not: (1) that masturbation is worse than heterosexual fornication and (2) that sexual relation is something shared between people of the opposite sex, with the implication that they should be a husband and a wife, the exclusiveness of which YouCat probably emphasizes elsewhere.
Wait! "The Church does not demonize masturbation" etc. is your quote from YouCat? This is a problem! I thought this is what you wrote because it wasn't bold. This is akin to Her considering NFP the best of all merely "good" forms of contraception! So masturbation is evil solely because it makes one lonely?
Read Persona Humana section IX for a perfect refutation of the YouCat heresy regarding masturbation. It explicitly refutes how masturbation is not wrong because it is closed in one oneself; it is an intrinsically disordered act.
YouCat ought to be made to scat! I hope Pope Benedict reads this thing and orders it to be thrown into a bonfire!
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