Expert: Fr. Michael - 4/8/2004

Question
Hello. My name is Caitlin and I'm 19 years old.  I have a question about mortal sin and salvation.  I've never really questioned much the way the church defines mortal sin - it's always sorta made since to me.  However, I recently was hanging out with my boyfriend and he was reading an article on msnbc.com which said frequent ejaculation decreases the risk of prostate cancer.  After reading that he looked up "Is masterbation a sin" on google and read that it is.  The site he read outlined the reasons why it is and at the end said, "now that you know this, it's a mortal sin." Now my boyfriend, who is also Catholic, didn't know before that it's a sin. He was really upset by this because he's afraid now that he's going to hell because if he does that again it will be a mortal sin. We talked about this and the three conditions and he said that either the 3 conditions are impossible (or almost impossible) to meet, and therefore no one goes to hell, or they are easy to meet (ie. masterbating after learning its a sin) and everyone will go to hell.  I'd never thought much about it, but according the catechism, it does seem to be worded rather evasively.  Masterbating is something a lot of people do, is there a magic switch that as soon as the learn it's wrong, they will now go to hell if they do it? Is it hard to commit a mortal sin or easy?  This seems like a big problem and I can't find an answer to it.  Sorry, if this is kind of long and complicated, I don't konw if I expressed myself well. Any advise you have would be appreciated.

Caitlin

Answer
Yes, disorientation of the purposes of the human faculties that God gave us is a serious matter.  Hell is very real; it is mentioned scores of times in the Bible, and the Saints indicate that it is heavily populated.  We can't stick our heads in the sand and say nothing we do is important enough to merit Hell.  If that were the case, nothing is important enough for us to merit Heaven, or even Purgatory for that matter.