A certain famous movie actress recently pronounced in her autobiography: "I am devoted to masturbation … I had and have no guilt whatsoever when it comes to pleasuring myself." (Time, Time Canada Ltd., September 6, 1999, p.67)*

Masturbation is no longer defined as pathological by many medical doctors and health care workers today. However, deliberate and conscious masturbation -- like a physical homosexual act -- is in many instances a mortal or serious sin against God, as well as against one's body and soul as created and indwelt by the infinitely holy, omnipresent, Eternal Judge. One can be doing so all the way into everlasting Hell. Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2352 reads: "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.'[CDF, 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.'[CDF, 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 or even extenuate moral culpability."

* More than many would like to admit, such an evil habit or practice seems to have been happening no less infrequently among the male population also. By quoting this example from a famous magazine, we do not mean to pick on a special gender. It just happened that the example quoted was being publicized so far and wide. A certain response was thereby called forth. We do this to promote the kind of purity which truly pleases God. Married or not, Catholic or not, is it not true that we are all called to live an angelic life?