Article II: On Complete Use Against Nature

I. Pollution,. so called from the liquid excretion which then is customarily emitted, means the separated complete act of the venereal faculty.

It can be involuntary and merely bodily: the non-delightful emission of seed by which those who are affected with spermatorrhea often suffer. This lies outside the notion of sin, but it is to be cared for, because it can become very harmful to health. - It can be involuntary and at the same time animal: that which, without a culpable cause and without consent, for example from an excited imagination, happens with pleasure by night, or even by day. - It can be voluntarily excited, or at least voluntarily admitted, and then it is a sin, which is called solitary, from the ordinary circumstance of the agent; softness, from the weakness of soul which it betrays; masturbation, from the more frequent mode by which it is committed (inasmuch as, not very scientifically, they understand masturbation as though a defilement made by hand).

1. That there is grave malice in voluntary pollution, or in pollution voluntarily admitted, even from the law of nature itself, is the common and certain opinion of Catholics. But in the demonstration they labor not a little;

a) some appeal to the useless emission of seed, whose exclusive destination is the good of the human species. That argumentation is subject to a double difficulty: nature herself, even against man's will, lavishes that seed. Why would the same thing not be lawful for me on account of a just cause? Indeed, useless profusion is permitted to men themselves in copulations which have no other immediate utilities besides generation. Therefore seed is not prepared by nature on account of the generation of offspring alone. Accordingly, why it is not lawful by pollution to lavish what is permitted to be lavished in other ways will never be drawn from profusion as such, but from another reason which will manifest to us the formal malice of pollution;

b) others have placed the malice of pollution in perfect venereal pleasure. But the contrary is true: the moral judgment of pleasure must be taken from the operation to which it is joined, so that the first reason of goodness or malice cannot be found in it. Besides, pleasure is the immediate good of the individual, which can be referred to the species only mediately. Therefore the reason of malice would be individual, while all feel that by this sin one immediately sins against the good of the species;

c) others gather the reason of grave prohibition from intense pleasure, and this on account of the consequent danger of frequent abuse. These therefore approach:

d) those who flee to an extrinsic reason, arguing from the inconveniences or dangers of abuses which would be opposed to the good of the species if moderate pollution, or pollution in certain circumstances, were lawful or not gravely reproved.

We do not deny that force is present in this reason, observing that the harms are not gathered from acts as facts, but from lawful pollutions. Yet its perpetual efficacy can deservedly be doubted, for example when there is question of "physiological" pollution, or pollution on account of the health of the body; or of pollution which may serve the multiplication of the race, as in reproved artificial fecundation. And an extrinsic reason supposes an intrinsic reason, which must be detected.

Wherefore, deceived by this demonstration of theirs, there are already not lacking those who will indulge pollution procured by venereal excitation to him to whom, in a special case, a physician shall have declared that it is necessary either for driving away or for preventing a grave disease.

We use the brief argument already employed above. Voluntary pollution contains a substantial violation of the essential order, since the man or woman who pollute themselves exercise, as individuals, an act which was to be exercised by common work as an act of the species.

Consent to casual pollution also is gravely evil, because that consent is not a mere intellectual approval of a physiological fact, but brings a participation of the mind, a concurrence which influences the very delightful commotion, increasing it, and physically changes it. By this active participation reason is again snatched away by sense to enjoy singly an operation which can be loved only as pertaining to the species. This malice, although lesser in degree, is of the same generic (not specific) character as voluntary pollution, and is necessarily grave.

The argument made is confirmed by various considerations which make up the extrinsic demonstration to which most flee.

2. The malice of pollution differs specifically from imperfect lust, and this in both sexes.

For after it was discovered that every true seminal emission is absent of itself from female pollution, there were those who thought that it could be specifically reduced to imperfect lust. Those who derive the proper malice of pollution from the profusion of human seed will refute this opinion with greater difficulty.

But for us this easy argument is at hand. In both sexes, non-consummated acts of lust mean, according to themselves, the preparation of a consummated act, and they immediately draw their morality from order to the consummated act, while a consummated act is judged good or evil from the order to generation which it has or of which it is deprived. Therefore, although we concede that these acts are referred to the same complete species, nevertheless they differ specifically from one another as the begun and the completed, the beginning and the term, the means and the end. (Cf. the principle concerning specific distinction in St. Thomas, I-II, q. 72, art. 7, c. and ad 3; and vol. I, p. 446, 2.)

This principle must be held firmly; for the worst consequences flow in an easy channel from the opposite error.

Corollaries. 1. The essential malice of pollution is contained in the description by which pollution is defined: the separated complete use of the generative faculty.

2. Pollution of a man and of a woman do not differ in species, so that one who accuses pollution is not to be questioned concerning sex. Nor is it established that distillation is necessary for the notion of female pollution. Once a woman has declared "satisfaction," or satiety, she will be judged guilty of pollution.

3. Pollution of a young man and of an old man, of a pubescent and of an impubescent person who nevertheless is capable of copulation, and of a eunuch, so long as he remains capable of copulation, do not differ in species from one another. From those pollutions there differ in species the pollutions of infants, and of those in whom erection is lacking.

4. Because the part exists for the whole, to cut off the testicles on account of the health of the body is certainly lawful. Here no operation against nature is performed.

5. On account of a much lesser cause (for example, scientific experiment) it will be lawful directly to extract some seed, say by puncture, while always avoiding venereal excitation or use of the generative faculty.

— Natural nocturnal pollution objectively incurs no reprehension. Wherefore, while nevertheless guarding against the present excitation of lust, it is lawful to desire it with a simple affection, on account of the advantages which may follow it, and to rejoice over it when it has occurred. Yet it will not be lawful to intend any determinate one, or directly to procure it by a suitable means. For since it does not happen without commotion of the body and pleasure of sense, he who intends it completes and perfects the pollution itself in his mind. Nor can pollution which is artificially produced now be called natural. But he who experiences spontaneous emissions as more difficult or rarer can take a remedy so that evacuation in general may be made easier. He directly effects nothing else than to temper his body so that nature can act regularly. But it is not lawful to take a remedy while awake so that from it pollution may be had in sleep. For this would have to be called voluntary.

He who by itself or per accidens has sought complete use in vain, so that he has remained without the satiating pleasure which is the sign of complete use, has committed, in affection, the sin of pollution; in effect, the sin of non-consummated lust. But the impubescent, especially so long as they are sufficiently distant from puberty, are rather presumed immune from that affection, while that affection is very easily judged to be present in the impure attempts of eunuchs.

Specifications. 1. They vary in species: from the subject, pollution of an unmarried person, of a married person, of a person bound by vow; - from voluntariness, sought pollution and pollution simply admitted; pollution produced by a general appetite only of venereal pleasure, or even without a formal appetite of this kind, and pollution with a fornicatorian, or sodomitic, or bestial, or otherwise perverse affection; - pollution with an inefficacious desire of copulation or of another sin. - A special affection is customarily betrayed in the accompanying phantastic image.

2. Pollution does not vary in species either on account of the mode by which it is completed, or on account of the place of the body whose excitation has induced pollution. Yet there will have to be declared, on account of scandal, the complicity of another, or an easily accompanying affection of fornication, sodomy, etc.; pollution procured by another's touches, but not that which is produced by contact with a person unaware, for example one sleeping or in a crowd.

II. Sodomy. is defined as the lustful concubitus of two persons of the same sex.

For the moral essence of the sin no penetration into a certain vessel is required, while for the canonical notion of perfect sodomy emission into the anus seems to pertain. Performed with a boy, it obtains the special name of pederasty. Yet this word is also used to designate every sodomy; while the more benign or more general form of propensity to the same sex is called homosexuality.

The circumstance of agent or patient (the latter formerly was called pathicus or mollis) does not change the species, but in the patient pollution is not presumed as it is in the agent.

The circumstances of vow, relationship, and the conjugal bond add specific malices.

Pollution performed in the mouth is to be judged from the affection, as is the very use of a woman in another vessel, which is often marked by the name of imperfect sodomy.

From sodomy there must be distinguished mutual pollution by touches alone, to which, nevertheless, a sodomitic affection can accede.

III. Bestiality. is coitus with a beast. For the moral essence of that infamous sin, it is necessary that the sinner has wished to enjoy a beast; but it can very easily happen that someone has wished merely to use a smaller beast as an instrument of pollution, with fornicatorian affection.

For the canonical essence of the reserved sin, if nothing more severe has been declared, the concubitus of consummated copulation is required and suffices.

It does not matter of what genus or sex the beast may have been. That no offspring is to be feared from that abomination is today ascertained.

IV. Several other perversions against nature lack a proper name. They will be sufficiently accused if, excluding sodomy and bestiality, copulation against nature is declared to have been done.

Formerly they used to say many things concerning intercourse with a demon, in whose power this alone seems to be: that, under the figure of a human person or even of an animal, human seed having been brought, he may perform a certain artificial fecundation whose fruit will be a man. No fact of this kind is narrated today.

Comparative Gravity. 1. On account of the greater departure from nature, bestiality is, among those things which have a proper name, the worst sin of lust, although affection toward a demon contains a most grave malice against religion. But it is clear that sodomy is worse than fornication.

2. The gravity of pollution. Although, considering only the genus of lust, pollution is graver than fornication, nevertheless absolutely it must be said to contain lesser guilt: scandal is absent, an accomplice is absent; it supposes a lesser boldness of will. And often affection against nature is absent.

Today, as pollution, it does not now violate a church. Wherefore, unless from the public manner in which it is done or from the cooperation of another it savors of formal contempt of a sacred place, we judge that grave guilt of local sacrilege is absent from that act.

3. Onanistic fornication. But fornication today is often done onanistically. According to affection and intention, this will be graver or less grave than perfect fornication. He who chooses onanistic copulation so that he may do less harm to the woman and to society is led by a less perverse affection than he who disregards the burdens to be feared by the woman so that he may more fully satisfy himself. But he who seeks pleasure without burden will sin more than he who has decided to bear the connected burdens with a resigned soul, so that he may act according to nature.

Indeed, fornication naturally completed differs specifically from fornication performed onanistically. But that distinction is unknown by most sinners; nor does an admonition seem spiritually useful. Wherefore the confessor will be able to abstain from questioning concerning the natural or onanistic mode. Yet he must prudently ask whether something perhaps has been attempted against offspring that may have been conceived.

SUMMARY

I. Extra-conjugal complete use according to nature occurs in fornication, which is natural extra-conjugal copulation.

It can be simple or be increased accidentally by concubinage or prostitution, or even be mixed with grave injustice by adultery, stuprum, or abduction; or with impiety, by incest, to which is referred copulation with a person spiritually or legally related; or with sacrilege if one sins, even by complicity alone, with a person consecrated to God by a vow (at least a public one) of chastity, or by sacred order in the Latin Church. (Violation of a simple vow of chastity always induces grave malice against religion.) Fornication admitted within a half-hour after Communion will also be really sacrilegious; and fornication performed so publicly in a church or solemnly blessed oratory that it effects an impious use of that place is locally sacrilegious. A carnal sin with a person whose spiritual care one must bear from office is also opposed to justice and piety.

But every fornication is, from the law of nature itself, a mortal sin, since that carnal commerce is deprived of the order which the common good of the human species demands.

II. Complete use against nature occurs: 1. By voluntary pollution, which, in both sexes, is a sin of the same species, and, as a complete act, differs specifically from imperfect lust. Its essential malice is the separated complete use of the generative faculty. And it is grave, since it contains a substantial violation of the essential order: sinners exercise as individuals an act which ought to be exercised by common work as an act of the species. Pollution varies specifically according to the quality of the person, according to the accompanying affection, according to voluntariness, that is, according as it is sought or simply admitted.

Natural nocturnal pollution objectively incurs no reprehension. Yet it cannot be intended or procured by a direct means. Concerning indirectly voluntary pollution no solicitude seems to have to be borne.

2. It occurs also by sodomy, from which mutual pollution by touches alone is to be distinguished; and by bestiality, which, besides the act, supposes affection toward a beast; finally by several other perversions which lack a proper name.

3. The more one departs from the order of nature, the graver of itself is the objective malice of the act. Nevertheless solitary lust is less grave than fornication; and concerning fornication performed onanistically or naturally, one judgment must not be made. The various reason and intention must be distinguished.