Article I: Concerning Solitary Sin, or Pollution

I. The sin which, from the ordinary circumstance of the agent, is called solitary; from the liquid secretion emitted in it, pollution (immunditia, zelfbevlekking); from the weakness of soul which it manifests, softness; from the more frequent mode by which it is committed, masturbation (manus-turbatio), is defined: the separated complete use of the genitals and consequently of satiative venereal pleasure without concubitus. There is indicated:

A. the genus: complete use, and so forth. For thus it is distinguished from immodesty or the imperfect acts of lust, which are nothing but the beginning and preparation of complete lust; and from these it differs in species as the mere beginning of a work and the consummation, beginning and term, means and end, and as an incomplete species from a complete species.¹

¹ Saint Thomas, I-II, q. 72, a. 7.

B. the difference: without concubitus, because if it is done in natural concubitus, it will be fornication or another species according to nature; if in unnatural concubitus, or in an undue organ, it will be another species against nature. Therefore, from the fact that it is a solitary vice, pollution differs in species from the other consummated sins according to and against nature.

Therefore it is badly defined as: a. perfect satiative venereal pleasure outside concubitus. For pleasure is for the sake of the act and is essentially joined to the act as its consequence, and therefore it would not be evil unless the act itself were disordered. Hence, although complete pleasure outside legitimate concubitus is evil, nevertheless it is not the principal and specifically distinctive malice of pollution;²

² Hence a certain more recent author writes inconsiderately: "According to Saint Thomas the malice of lust does not consist, not even partially, as some have wished, in the frustration of semen, but is wholly situated in the pleasure which is proper to seminal emission," alleging Disputed Question De Veritate XV, a. 4, ad 3. For the holy Doctor does not say that the inordination is from the pleasure, but on the contrary that this pleasure is from the inordination of the act: "The whole inordination of fornication, from whatever source it occurs, redounds into the pleasure which is caused by it."

b. the fruitless effusion of semen, or the voluntary effusion outside concubitus.³ For its fundamental malice is not in the loss of semen, although in men this is an acceding gravity, because in them semen is specifically necessary for generation and therefore the complete use of the generative faculty of itself expels semen. But the malice is in this, that separately and solely for the individual good someone enjoys an operation which can be loved and sought only for the sake of the species.

³ Thus also Billuart: "Pollution or softness is the voluntary emission of human semen outside concubitus," and he attributes the definition to Saint Thomas, art. 11. But the holy Doctor does not say precisely this, but this: "that without any concubitus, for the sake of venereal pleasure, pollution is procured."

Hence the sin of pollution, just as in men, so also exists and does not differ in species:

1. in women: although in them there is no effusion of semen, nevertheless there is the complete use of the genital organs, distinct from imperfect use, from the movement and contraction of the female genital canal with satiative pleasure, which is usually accompanied by an abundant distillation of liquid of the female canal which contributes nothing directly to generation but assists copulation and the act of generation;⁴

⁴ Aristotle already denied that the seed of woman is true seed. Saint Thomas holds it as imperfect and not necessary for generation: "Such seed is not the matter which is required of necessity for conception" (III, q. 31, a. 5, ad 3). Afterwards many scholastics doubted whether there is seed in woman. Nevertheless all constantly taught that in the female there is a solitary sin distinct in species from incomplete lust, nor did they affirm this from a false assimilation of humor to seed properly so called. Hence one or another modern author who contradicts or doubts concerning this is not to be heard. Thus Noldin; but Father Schmitt, in more recent editions of the same work, has now amended this.

2. in youths and old men, because they are capable of copulation and have the complete use of the genitals, namely perfect erection and motion of the genital member, which ejaculation of semen is apt to follow, even if this is not always ejaculated, or is not always prolific, for example because of the absence of zoospermata;

3. in the impubescent who do not have semen, provided that they have the complete satiative use of the genital organ, namely are capable of perfect erection and copulation, or are able to effect intromission into the female genital canal;

4. likewise in those who have undergone vasectomy (zaadleiders-afsnijding), because they remain capable of copulation and satiative pleasure, indeed they preserve a perfect sexual appetite and semen, although they cannot emit that semen;

5. in eunuchs, not indeed those who were born so or were made so before the seventh year, but those who were castrated at adult age and retained the virile member, as long as they remain capable of satiative erection and copulation, which usually endures for some time; on the contrary:

6. not in infants and boys, even if perhaps they emit some liquid in a solitary act, because they are not capable of perfect erection and copulation; whence their act is always the imperfect and begun use of the genital organ. Likewise, not in those eunuchs who do not have perfect erection.

II. Pollution is either active or voluntary, or passive or involuntary.

A. Active pollution per se is an act essentially, and indeed gravely, evil, prohibited by the law of nature.

It is proved: 1. from the Scriptures, which say that the soft, the unclean, and the immodest will not obtain the kingdom of heaven: I Cor. VI, 10; Gal. V, 19; Eph. V, 3. This also regards the gentiles, since the newly converted are said to have been washed from it, who hitherto had been subject only to the natural law.

2. From the condemnation of proposition 49 by Innocent XI.⁵

⁵ "Softness is not prohibited by the law of nature. Hence, if God had not forbidden it, it would often be good and sometimes obligatory under mortal sin."

3. By reason: pollution is an act by which the complete use of the genitals and the pleasure attached to it are sought outside marriage and are ordered to the individual good, whereas they are destined solely to the social good, the generation of offspring. But this is a perversion of order, by which the act is frustrated of its primary end intended by nature; it is a grave inordination, because it is directly against the greatest good necessary to human society: its conservation and propagation. Therefore pollution is a grave perversion of order.

Confirmation: a. if pollution were not prohibited, or were prohibited only under light sin, many, content with this pleasure, would bid farewell to the burdens of marriage with the greatest detriment to society. Thus too the end intended by nature would be frustrated.

b. If simple fornication according to nature is gravely illicit, although it is against the education of offspring alone, a fortiori a sin against nature, which is much graver, as being against propagation itself.

Hence pollution is mortal sin:

a. if it is voluntary in itself;

b. if it is voluntary in a cause which is placed without sufficient reason and per se proximately and gravely influences it; otherwise, if it influences lightly, because then it is venial.⁶ But it should be noted that every cause which per se and gravely influences a carnal motion does not for that reason gravely and per se influence pollution itself; thus, for example, an instantaneous consent to carnal pleasure.

⁶ Compare above, Question II, nn. VI and VII.

B. Passive pollution according to itself is only an effect physically evil, the emission of humor. This evil of itself is not grave nor altogether to be avoided, even for men, because of itself it is gravely harmful to no one. For semen does not have to be conserved with special solicitude, both because nature itself sometimes expels it, and because it pours it forth and prepares it more abundantly than is needed for the conservation of the species. Hence:

a. merely to permit such a foreseen effect, while it could be impeded, without sufficient reason, is only a venial sin: an inordinate motion of concupiscence admitted without reason; unless per accidens there is present a proximate danger of consent;

b. not to repress an arisen pollution by a positive effort is no sin, because it is judged too difficult.

III. Merely natural pollution, proceeding from nature alone disburdening itself, which ordinarily is nocturnal,⁷ is in itself in no way evil nor worthy of any reprehension. Hence it is licit with a simple inefficacious affection to desire it on account of the advantages which follow and to rejoice over it after it has followed, provided one guards against a present excitation of lust or consent. Nevertheless it is not licit to procure it or assist it or do something so that it may happen, because then it would not be merely natural, but voluntary.

⁷ Not every passive pollution is merely natural: that one can arise from various causes, even external, which someone undergoes involuntarily; this one is from the physical disposition of nature, or from nature alone disburdening itself. In some, pollution occurs once; in others, twice in a week; in others, scarcely once in a month. It also sometimes succeeds itself immediately two or three times. But if it is accustomed to occur more frequently, there is reason to have recourse to a physician.

Father Vermeersch, however, judges that a man who experiences nocturnal emissions with greater difficulty and more rarely, and therefore is ill-affected nervously during the day, can take a remedy not directly to obtain pollution, but directly so that the body may be well tempered and composed, such that nature can act regularly, from which then a more frequent pollution will further follow naturally. Thus, provided the good composition of the body does not come from the pollution itself.

In the case in which nocturnal pollution is voluntary, the principles explained in the preceding number and in Question Two, number VII, come to be applied. Hence:

1. it is mortally evil if it is willed in itself and directly sought, for example if someone drinks much or lies down in a certain posture precisely so that he may suffer pollution;

2. likewise it is mortally evil if it is voluntary in a cause per se proximately and gravely influencing it, from which it is foreseen to follow, for example if it comes from impure thoughts, pleasures, or desires voluntarily and for a long time nourished before sleep while awake,⁸ a fortiori if from external acts which greatly dispose to it;

⁸ For an instantaneous consent to carnal pleasure does not gravely influence pollution. But lest nocturnal pollution be judged voluntary in the cause because more or less dishonorable phantasms provoke and accompany it: for, as Saint Thomas says, II-II, q. 154, a. 5, this also can occur naturally: "when seminal humor superabounds in the body or when a release of humor has occurred, ... the sleeper dreams those things which pertain to the expulsion of this kind of abundant or released humor." Hence a threefold cause of nocturnal pollution is distinguished by the holy Doctor: 1. one bodily, concerning which the things said hold; 2. another animal and interior, or preceding thoughts and pleasures while awake; 3. spiritual, namely the action of the demon. In the first case pollution does not have the notion of fault, except sometimes from its cause, if the abundance or release of humor is from a culpable cause, for example from excess in food or drink. But a cause of this kind is a cause per accidens which of itself influences remotely and lightly. In the second case, it is voluntary in the cause; and it has the notion of fault if the cause is culpable; indeed it is a fault more or less grave according to the gravity of the cause and of its influence. In the third case, it is not sin; nevertheless sometimes it is with preceding sin, namely negligence in preparing oneself against the illusions of the demon.

3. it is venially evil if it is voluntary in a cause lightly and remotely influencing it, or in a cause per accidens, from which it is foreseen to follow, for example if it comes from drunkenness or more abundant food;

4. it is no sin if there is a sufficient reason for placing the cause on account of necessity or utility.

IV. Every voluntary pollution of itself is a sin of the same species in whatever mode it is procured, whether namely by the mind, imagination, or sight; by the touch of the hand; by the use of some instrument; or by contact with a physical thing, or an animal, or an unaware living person, provided affection toward the person or toward concubitus is absent and pollution alone is intended. This is also verified in women, among whom pollution, whether clitoral or of the female canal, for example by the insertion of a finger, candle, carrot, and so forth, or by the use of an artificial virile member, that is, an instrument which imitates the virile member, or procured by another touch in a less honorable part, for example around the external pudendum, on the thighs, in the pubic region, by compression of the thighs, on the mammary papillae of the breasts, and so forth, are of the same notion.

Per accidens it can contract specifically diverse malice when certain circumstances accede, which therefore must be declared in confession, qualified pollution, and indeed:

1. from the circumstance of the agent; and thus the pollutions of an unmarried person, of one bound by vow, and of a married person differ;

2. from the circumstance of internal intention or affection; pollution from simple affection differs from that which is done from fornicary, sodomitical, bestial, adulterous, incestuous, or sacrilegious affection, whether someone intends these sins by absolute desire, or whether he precisely takes complacency in them as such;

3. from the circumstance of the special mode by which it is carried out, namely by touches of another person conscious of this matter, either because of scandal and complicity if the person consents, or because of unjust violence if the person resists. But if the person is married, bound by vow, or related by blood, a diverse species is contracted.

V. Observations. 1. Whoever has sought in vain the complete use of the genitals in such a way that he has not tasted satiative pleasure, which is the sign of complete use, has committed the sin of pollution by affection, but effectively he is not guilty of consummated lust.

2. Similarly, he who, after a chance pollution has been experienced involuntarily, consents to the pleasure, because the pollution is only willed, not voluntary, unless he wished to augment the arisen pollution. Nevertheless it is gravely sinful, because thus he wills the pleasure which has been ordered by God solely to conjugal copulation, by which generation is apt to occur in the due mode. Hence Saint Thomas has these things concerning nocturnal pollution: "It can happen that in the very awakening sin arises, if indeed, on account of the pleasure, what happened is pleasing. This will be a venial sin if such pleasure is by surreption, but mortal if it is with deliberating consent, and especially with appetite for the future. That pleasure does not make the past pollution a sin, because it is not its cause, but it is a sin in itself.⁹ But if it is pleasing as an exoneration and alleviation of nature, it is not believed to be a sin."

⁹ Saint Thomas, on IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 5. Recently this was denied, or called into doubt, even by Antonelli, Medicina Pastoralis, in the most recent edition, t. II, c. XIII. Against this is what Vermeersch wrote in Periodica, XXII, p. 122: "Concerning the harmful passing over, in the matter of chastity, of Saint Thomas's principle concerning pleasure"; likewise in Th. M., 3rd ed., IV, n. 101. Consequently Antonelli's work was prohibited in universities, seminaries, and other houses of studies.

3. Active pollution, because essentially evil, cannot be licitly procured even for preserving life, because the active use of the genitals is not licit except on account of the good of the species, and because semen pertains to the species, whence the individual man does not have dominion over it. Nevertheless someone could take a medicine which would immediately procure health and at the same time expel semen, because it would be to place a cause with a twofold effect, of which the good is intended and the evil permitted. Yet it is not licit to procure health by means of the emission of semen.

Billuart gives the testimony of the Thomistic school, diss. 6, a. 11: "Semen is not a part of the body nor instituted for the good of the individual but of the whole species; whence we cannot use it except in the mode by which it can serve generation.... Semen is not a part of the body nor for its good, but for generation alone."¹⁰

¹⁰ Similarly Sporer exhibits to us the doctrine of the Franciscan school, Theol. sacr., p. 4, n. 641: "It is altogether licit for preserving life and the whole suppositum for a man to cut off some member ... but truly semen by its nature is ordered principally, by no means to the use or conservation of this suppositum in the individual, but to the generation, propagation, and conservation of the whole species; whence nature in no way allows it to be cast away for the sake of preserving the individual, and thus to neglect the species by reason of the individual." Lessius gives the testimony of the Society of Jesus, o. c., l. 4, c. 3, d. 14, n. 96: The testes "are a part of the body, whence concerning them, as concerning other parts of the body, we can determine. But semen is not a part of the body, nor was it instituted for its good, but for the sake of offspring, as its rudiment." And although Thomas Sanchez, De Matrimonio, l. 9, d. 17, n. 16, opposes certain restrictions and tries to correct the argumentation according to his own sense, nevertheless he is compelled to testify that this is the opinion which they commonly hand down.

4. Hence it is gravely illicit for a man to expel semen by pollution and collect it and introduce it by art into the female genital canal or uterus of his wife, so that by that artificial process she may be fertilized, as the Holy Office decreed on March 24, 1897; or directly to procure pollution so that sperm may be obtained by which a contagious disease may be scientifically detected and, as far as possible, cured, as it decreed on July 24, 1929. And in the same way it seems gravely illicit, whatever some have said, to extract semen from the testicles by a certain puncture, whether to institute a chemical analysis or even to fertilize one's own wife.

For man does not have dominion over semen: for just as he does not have dominion over human life, so neither over that which is nothing but the principle of human life, or that which is man in potency, and human life in proximate potency.¹¹ Namely, he has over this not dominion except useful dominion or use, and only in order to generation to be procured by the natural means of conjugal copulation.

¹¹ Thus Saint Thomas, Disputed Question De Malo XV, a. 2.

Or also: semen, the whole of what it is, exists solely for generation. Therefore any use whatever of semen for another end and impeding generation is illicit, because it is essentially against the very nature of semen, which is only for generation.

And so every direct taking or expulsion of semen is illicit outside that which is done in conjugal copulation. Hence, in the case, even if the semen is employed to fertilize the wife: the action by which it is expelled or extracted from the testicles, so far as concerns itself, from its own nature and from the mode by which it is done, emits semen in such a way that generation is naturally impeded; even if per accidens, from another consequent action, this defect is remedied so that the semen contributes to generation in an artificial mode. This nevertheless is insufficient for restoring rectitude in the prior action.

Nor does it stand in the way that the emission, in the case of puncture, is done without pleasure; for no act is evil according to itself because it has pleasure attached, but on the contrary the accompanying pleasure is good or evil according to the nature of the act. Hence pollution is not evil because it is done with pleasure, but the pleasure is evil because it is done in an act emitting semen outside conjugal copulation. But if semen could licitly be taken in this way for scientific analysis or for the artificial fertilization of the wife, why would it not be licit to take it for this end by the ordinary and easier way which nature indicates, and to permit the pleasure? For it would be a cause with a twofold effect, which it is licit to place for a proportionate reason. Why, namely, this would not be licit escapes us. Indeed, in the concession made by the adversaries, there would seem no longer to be any reason why pollution would be an act against natural right: for an action is specified by its term, not the term by the action. The term of the action is not evil because it proceeds from such an action, but rather the action according to species is evil because it has an illicit term. Hence the emission of semen is not so much evil because it is done by the undue use of the genital organ outside conjugal copulation, but on the contrary the use of the genital organ in a man is undue and evil because of itself it is terminated in the emission of semen outside copulation.

5. Any motion or impulse of the body deliberately employed without sufficient reason, by which the effect of pollution follows, is evil. Nevertheless, from deliberate motions there are to be distinguished instinctive motions or impulses, which arise spontaneously in the body by force of nature disburdening itself so that the effect of pollution may be completed.

6. It is licit, even with danger of pollution, to drive away itching in the dishonorable parts by touch or rubbing, unless it comes from libido. Concerning this it should be noted:

a. generally it is better to tolerate itching, if it is slight or easily tolerable;

b. if the itching is not venereal, but arises from some inflammation or acrimony of the blood, it is licit to drive it away, because a true utility is present, provided the danger of consenting to venereal pleasure is absent;

c. if it is venereal in such a way that it arises solely from abundance of semen or the ardor of libido by which it tends into pollution, it is illicit to drive it away with danger of pollution, because it is directly to excite pollution; for the touch tends to quieting the trouble not by rubbing, but by pollution; but it is not licit to use evil as a means to an end even good;

d. natural itching is distinguished from venereal itching in that the former is alleviated by mere rubbing and sometimes without pleasure, the latter by pollution alone;

e. in doubt the itching is supposed not venereal, until it is certain that it is provoked solely by libido;

f. girls who are accustomed to pollute themselves by touches should not easily be believed under the pretext of such ardor.

7. From the solitary sin of pollution there are to be distinguished:

a. in men, simple distillation, namely the emission of flowing humor without ejaculation and complete pleasure. This nevertheless can be gravely evil, like incomplete lust, if venereal pleasure is directly sought in it, or if without sufficient reason a cause is voluntarily placed which per se gravely influences a great distillation which occurs with notable commotion and venereal pleasure;

b. in women, both spontaneous ovulation, or the discharge of the ovum each month, and menstruation. For these are no sin, but occur merely physiologically, nor is any venereal pleasure joined to them.

VI. Warning. As to questions in confession, let it be noted:

1. boys or girls are not to be asked whether an effusion of semen or humor was present;

2. nor women, except indirectly, whether they have satisfied passion, felt complete satisfaction (zelfvoldoening), vehement pleasure;

3. but others, confessing touches, are to be asked whether pollution followed;

4. on the contrary, those polluting themselves are to be asked also about immodest touches separated from pollution and are to be warned concerning their gravity;

5. but if someone is ignorant, even invincibly, that pollution is a sin, he is altogether to be instructed lest he acquire an evil habit.