From the Present: 

Well, not literally inside a church (though surely it’s been done). But this journal entry deals with masturbating while being a Catholic and buying into The Church’s teaching on masturbation–that it’s a mortal sin and you’ll go to hell if you do it.

I hesitate to post the following journal entry because it comes from a very low point in my life–a time when I felt very bad about who I was and what I was doing. But I guess going into the 2Points4Honesty project I made a decision to post the good and the bad.

And Then Came Puberty 

I was raised Catholic, and raised no just too be a fair-weather Catholic who hits up a mass on Easter and Christmas, but was really immersed in Catholicism (my parents were daily mass goers). This was all fine and dandy until puberty when I did what every normal pubescent boy did since the history of pubescent boys: I touched myself at night (and sometimes during the day [and often in the basement]).

Because I took my faith seriously at the time, this caused some some horrible inner strife. I learned to really loath myself because of my newfound past-time and would frequently wake up at 6am to go to the early morning confession where I would resolve to never touch myself again. This usually lasted a few days before I was back in the basement.

Looking back now, I look at my 13 year old self with some passion, remembering what I he went through. But at the time, I was obsessed with the fact that more times out of not I thought my soul was in a situation that would lead me to hell.

It seems to be in the sexual arena where the Catholic Church’s teaching go most against our own biology. For years during my teenage years, and even into my early adulthood, I had conditioned myself to associate the feeling of an orgasm with feelings of guilt. This isn’t healthy, and is unfortunate that an antiquated, medieval teaching is still so pervasive in our modern world. While studying philosophy in college, I studied how this belief made it into the catechism of the church and it’s silly to see it still sit there. I’ll post a more detailed account of that later. For now, I post with some hesitation one of my journal entries from a time when biology was pulling me one way and a misguided religious teaching the other.

Also rather embarassing is I guess I was using shampoo back then…. Oh well, better than an unamed brother of mine who wants told me about the woes of using toothpaste… do NOT try….

May 2, 1999 – Age 13

Life… it sucks. I need help… but I know I have to deal with this by myself. I can’t though… now I say, ya, I will never do it again, but tomorrow I will be getting out the shampoo. 

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