This outstanding song from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life answers any questions one might have with respects to the Catholic Church’s perspective on masturbation and contraception.
The sketch is about a Catholic couple, played by Michael Palin & Terry Jones, and their 63 lovely children. Unable to support their large Catholic family, the parents decide to sell their children for medical experimentation purposes.
When word reaches the children, they are none to pleased to say the least. They ask their father why they don’t use contraception or sterilization. Dad of course breaks in to song and explains that:
Every sperm is sacred,
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
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Related posts:
- Monty Python’s–The Bishop
- Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life
- Muslims Desecrate Sacred Tree For Allah
Of course, since un-expressed sperm is destroyed and reabsorbed by the body, I find that I need to masturbate every hour, saving the results in the freezer, in order to meet my Catholic obligations.
Catholic reasoning is truly amazing. On one hand you’re not supposed to used contraception, but on the other hand, a zygote is already a human with a soul, so abortion is murder. Yet, most embryos never implant, so any time you’re having unprotected sex and not getting pregnant, you’re probably ‘killing babies’. But then the church is against in vitro fertilization also. Try wrapping your head around that mess.
Even worse, even if you do have sex constantly, and have an infinite ammount of women to impregnate, you’re STILL killing millions of babies
Very well put, alcari. Number of sperms > number of ovums. Did God design humans to be baby killers? Or is it just God’s way of showing us that sex is equal to murder, thus sin? He truly works in mysterious ways…
hehe… i can’t help the feeling that a god would design the man to ejaculate exactly one sperm every time, and that one sperm would make it 100% of times. but then again, unlike religious people, i can’t claim to know what god would do.
I support stem cell research, but only as a byproduct of my support for killing babies.
This reminds me of the sperm waiting room in Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask.” One of the white-suited guys says, “Man, I hope he isn’t jerking off. I’d hate to land on the ceiling or something.”
I also notice that the Catholic Church never mentions wet dreams . . . if you come in your sleep, is it still the sin of Onan? Or is there a dispensation you get or an indulgence you can buy? Considering the fact that damn near everyone masturbates at some point in their lives (man and woman, mind you), Hell must be a crowded place . . . not to mention all the dead, unbaptized zygotes that have to be floating around the place.
nono, all the dead babies and fetusses go to limbo. Well, depending on who’s pope at the moment. I believe limbo has been retroactively recalled and reinstated about four times now…
Yeah, but limbo is often described as “just outside of Hell.” So they *could* be floating “around” the place. It’s been a while since I read the classic trilogy of fantasy, “The Divine Comedy.” Do you recall offhand?
I have just read it. Limbo is a garden with no punishment just outside Hell and the first for Dante to visit. There he meet noble men born before Christ.
Man, if god gets pissed when you masturbate, he must REALLY hate me.
great topic!.. i really like reading it
It’s interesting, because never once in the Bible is masturbation declared to be a sin, much less is it mentioned.
You’d think that something God would be able to foresee as such a big issue of the future generations would receive a mention if it were, in fact, a sin.
And, erm, pardon me for saying so, but didn’t some “Good Book” once say that the way into heaven was by accepting Christ’s gift of salvation? Where would masturbation cancel that out?
It’s interesting to see how many things the Catholic Church interjects into their faith that weren’t actually written in the Bible.
as hilarious and sarcastic as this thread is i figured i’d educate to prevent any further slander.
First of all, yes the church teaches abortion is a grievous sin as it prevents the life of a child that God has created.
Also, contraception is also sinful as is taught by the church because it, like abortion, prevents life which essentially takes God out of the equation,who is life, and without God,turns into a venture of lust which can be clearly seen by turning on the tv and watching popular culture.
And yes, although not directly, the church does acknowledge “wet dreams”. According to the church, in order for a sin to be a sin three basic principles need to be met:
1- it must be a grave or serious matter.
2- the sinner must have full knowledge of what they are doing and what it entails in the eyes of God.
3- the sinner must have full consent and willfully commit this sin
so no, wet dreams are NOT a sin in the eyes of the church because while asleep, you do NOT have full control over your facilities including morality and rational thought.
And in response to the sperm that die naturally the comparison is rubbish for lack of a better word. When sperms die naturally in the ovum they are not killed intentionally and die of a natural process which makes life ultimately possible.
Abortion and contraception on the other hand PREVENT life and intentionally destroy it.
Sorry for the long read you gave me a lot of ground to cover. I may not have expressed the church’s views with perfect clarity but I could only respond with what I knew so before so bash any institution, especially one of religious affiliation, why not research lest you realize your mistaken.
God Bless
Re post 14, and to take Monty Python’s tone, it is “your mistaken”, not ours :-).
Seriously, your views on contraception and abortion are obsolete and harmful. You are speaking of the same Catholic church that, as is well documented, has repeatedly tried to hide and trample on scientific disccovery and reason, even, just to take one example, opposing the heliocentric view of our solar system. The Catholic misrepresentation of human life is similarly absurd. The Catholic church has had to reverse its stance re science many times, most notably of late, on evolution. Better that you just abandon Catholicism entirely; it’s a farce ripe for more Pythonesque skits.
Catholic preaching about sin is tiresome and simply hypocritical. It’s high time you left your obsolete religious myth behind and joined the modern world.
Religion is ridiculous.
ah but you seem to misunderstand the purpose of my post. Ya see friend, I’m not here to convert, nor am I here to change your beliefs. I wouldn’t expect you to accept religion from a website anyway. The purpose was to correct the misconceptions stated about what the church teaches.
Got a problem with the church? Really couldn’t care less, I’ll stick with my beliefs you stick with yours.
So before you get all gungho on how hypocritical catholicism is and how religion is a joke, understand your audience.
Save your tangents I’ve heard most of them.
“2- the sinner must have full knowledge of what they are doing and what it entails in the eyes of God.”
By that logic people who don’t believe in God have no fear of committing sin since they don’t believe in the thing that defines sin. If those who don’t believe in God cannot sin, they cannot be sent to hell. If they cannot be sent to hell what reason would they ever have to believe in God if such belief would then make them subject to the possibility of eternal torture imposed on them by a being who loves them. This is yet another example of how your silly little religion just doesn’t work.
Re post 16, your church is obviously a problem for the world (and that world, by the way, is not flat such as Catholic powers insisted it was).
You’ve heard reason and you are unable to understand it. That is your own problem.
And, you’re “a catholic”, and you admit it? Now that’s funny.
Religion is ridiculous.
I find it interesting that some posters feel so comfortable condemning others based on religious affiliation alone. It goes to show how quickly Christians (or more specifically, Catholics) are thrown beneath the lens of scrutiny as if they are faultless humans (a claim that they have never made). To magnify the mistakes of any man when clearly we are all imperfect is hypocrisy, plain and simple. Hasty generalizations that bash a Christian denomination are no less criminal than racial bigotry.
I applaud “a catholic” for politely sharing and defending what he believes in.
Lynn,
That’s a nice attempt at nice sentiments, but all Christianity is deserving of criticism and ridicule. (Perhaps you didn’t notice the title of the site that you were posting on.) Catholicism is merely a particular basket case of Christian freakdom.
There is no applause deserved by either Catholicism or its (fortunately) diminishing set of adherents. Rather, there is much apology that is deserved from catholic leadership to the world. The catholic church has centuries of evil, including all manner of human abuse, suppression of scientific advances and free speech, and much more, to apologize for, before catholicism finally is consigned to the dustbin of history.
Yes, I’m 100% absolutely comfortable in criticizing religious believers. It’s high time for religion to be under scrutiny, and for Catholics in particular to be squirming.
Religion is ridiculous.
Korgan,
You are certainly brave to make the charges that you do against Catholicism (part of humanity, just as yourself, lest you forget), but why are you so angry? Is forgiveness a concept you don’t subscribe to? I can’t help but ask myself, what, if anything do YOU stand for? Perhaps you are a skeptic. An atheist. An agnostic. An antagonist. A free-thinker. A naturalist. A Protestant. Whatever your personal convictions may be, you need to humbly realize that you are not alone in your thought processes. Every person is unique and no two are alike but I’d be willing to bet you have some brethren that share your ideologies. Whether you choose to admit it or not, you and your thoughts are a “religion” you choose to follow. I would never castigate you for expressing yourself but I wonder if you’re equally willing to scrutinize your own beliefs like you do everyone else’s. If you truly are a one-of-a-kind and no one can label you, then what is your goal for posting at all? If you wish to remain a single movement and don’t wish to garner support and believers (dare I say evangelize), then isn’t this really just a waste of your time? Those that believe other than you only become more rooted in their faith when challenged. So, thanks.
Yes, dear Korgan, even YOU are every bit the religious freak I am.
Regards.
No, Lynn, I am not religious. I am a skeptic, and I have made it very clear what I stand for, with reason.
Again, you are conflating faith and probability. I’m quite surprised that you would repeat that mistake after acknowledging it so recently. Superstition cannot be equated with reason, no matter how you try.
Religion is ridiculous.
“Superstition cannot be equated with reason, no matter how you try.” -Korgan
So were you going for irony in this statement or are you aware that the statement in itself is an oxymoron?
Do you realize that superstition is defined as belief without fact or reason? When has the church stated that what they teach is complete, and infallible fact?
Christianity in all its forms are based on scripture and FAITH, not complete tangible evidence. You’re arguments against all forms of religion being built on myth and being suppressive to scientific advancement is ironically enough, myth.
Please bear with me this will be lengthy:
First of all, the Church is not anti-scientific. It has supported scientific endeavors for centuries. During Galileo’s time, the Jesuits had a highly respected group of astronomers and scientists in Rome. In addition, many notable scientists received encouragement and funding from the Church and from individual Church officials. Many of the scientific advances during this period were made either by clerics or as a result of Church funding.
Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated his most famous work, On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, in which he gave an excellent account of heliocentricity, to Pope Paul III. Copernicus entrusted this work to Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran clergyman who knew that Protestant reaction to it would be negative, since Martin Luther seemed to have condemned the new theory, and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory that would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did—something Copernicus did not intend.
Ten years prior to Galileo, Johannes Kepler
published a heliocentric work that expanded on Copernicus’ work. As a result, Kepler also found opposition among his fellow Protestants for his heliocentric views and found a welcome reception among some Jesuits who were known for their scientific achievements.
Centuries earlier, Aristotle had refuted heliocentricity, and by Galileo’s time, nearly every major thinker subscribed to a geocentric view. Copernicus refrained from publishing his heliocentric theory for some time, not out of fear of censure from the Church, but out of fear of ridicule from his colleagues.
Many people wrongly believe Galileo proved heliocentricity. He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun. However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed. It would require more sensitive measuring equipment than was available in Galileo’s day to document the existence of these shifts, given the stars’ great distance. Until then, the available evidence suggested that the stars were fixed in their positions relative to the earth, and, thus, that the earth and the stars were not moving in space—only the sun, moon, and planets were.
Thus Galileo did not prove the theory by the Aristotelian standards of science in his day. In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina and other documents, Galileo claimed that the Copernican theory had the “sensible demonstrations” needed according to Aristotelian science, but most knew that such demonstrations were not yet forthcoming. Most astronomers in that day were not convinced of the great distance of the stars that the Copernican theory required to account for the absence of observable parallax shifts. This is one of the main reasons why the respected astronomer Tycho Brahe refused to adopt Copernicus fully.
Galileo could have safely proposed heliocentricity as a theory or a method to more simply account for the planets’ motions. His problem arose when he stopped proposing it as a scientific theory and began proclaiming it as truth, though there was no conclusive proof of it at the time. Even so, Galileo would not have been in so much trouble if he had chosen to stay within the realm of science and out of the realm of theology. But, despite his friends’ warnings, he insisted on moving the debate onto theological grounds.
I will gladly give you my sources if you wish because no, I did not write this article.
In addition, you have not expressed what you believe from what I’ve seen but please correct me if I’m mistaken. What you have done is state what people SHOULDN’T believe with great hostility with arguments that are rather vague. If you want to elaborate on those arguments a bit more I’d be happy to listen and politely debate but the more hostile you are, the less anyone will listen
Thanks for the lengthy copy and paste job (not), unreferenced at that. Catholicism only “supported” science to the extent that it toed the Catholic line, and that is ultimately not valid science support.
You would prefer that theological “truth”, with no support in evidence, be taken as more valid than evidence-supported science. That’s ridiculous, and typical of religion.
At least you agree with my statement about superstition; you are possibly making progress there at last, but a real step forward would be to put your arcane superstition known as Catholicism behind you. Its day has gone, and it never should have been.
Religion is ridiculous.
1- I said I didn’t write the article and would provide sources if wanted.
2- Please by all means show me this science supported evidence that refutes the evidence I researched and provided for you. Your arguments hold no water in that you give no support. All you’ve put forth is, “No, thats not true, you’d much rather believe something with historical evidence to back it i.e. my “copy and paste job”, rather than believe your rants on the fallacies of organized religion which are based purely on accusation without evidence. In other words set up an argument with more sophistication than “YOUR BELIEFS ARE OLD, AND THEREFORE OUTDATED AND WRONG”
3- I didn’t agree with anything, I merely commented on the irony of your ludicris statement suggesting catholicism states faith as fact.
Hey, a catholic, thanks for the post. I too am growing impatient with Korgan. He seems to conduct himself more as a “bully” here at ReligiousFreaks.com and has, as far as I’m concerned, done little to definitively disprove religion’s validity let alone defend logistically his own beliefs as a skeptic. But then, what can a skeptic believe without question?
Without coherently providing valid evidential proofs for his arguments I cannot conclude that he even is a skeptic. I say he is more of an antagonist, striving only to aggravate those that oppose his view. Clearly he feels threatened by Christianity otherwise he wouldn’t be so adamant about trying to discredit it.
What troubles me most is Korgan erroneously reasons that all individuals who claim to have religious beliefs are, to use his signature catch-phrase, “ridiculous” and don’t understand how logic works. (This may come as a shock, but yes Korgan, even Christians understand reason. The response that “a catholic” gave shows a distinct ability to dissect an argument and make points.)
Regards.
See here for the post of a bully. You might find me blunt, but I’m really not on the same scale of bully-ness as poster Keith Gault.
Christianity is a threat to rational people everywhere, and long has been. That is part of why I and others are, and will remain, adamant about pointing out the obvious flaws in it. MarcDLS’s post 17 is a great example of that.
My point earlier was not that Christianity is wrong merely because it is old, but rather because the flawed world view that it has presented, such as a young, flat earth, and some very odd and obsolete views of how the earth was populated, and how diseases propagate, has been superseded (or should have been, perhaps with a better education system) by the better understanding that advances in science have provided. In that light, I personally view Christianity as absolutely nothing more than a quaint collection of myths, no more valid or supportable than Greek mythology (and much less entertaining and interesting).
Religion is ridiculous.
Coming into this a year too late but…
Much of the recent drivel has to do with Galileo and whether or not the earth revolved around the sun. If I recall, some parts of the Catholic church resisted turning the solar/earth system into an article of faith because, if they were proven wrong, they would look like idiots and nobody but idiots would take them seriously again. They lost out and that was a turning point, beyond which, faith would often require voluntary idiocy.
Earlier, (POST 14) The Catholic gave a valiant attempt at excusing the ludicrous logic behind the sacredness of sperm.
contraception is also sinful…because it…prevents life which essentially takes God out of the equation,who is life, and without God,turns into a venture of lust which can be clearly seen by turning on the tv and watching popular culture.
What a weak and pathetic God! Stopped in his tracks by a thin piece of rubber! Pansy!
But by that logic, anything that “prevents life” aka egg fertilization is a sin. So every egg that exits a vag without being fertilized is a sin. Therefore, abstinence is a SIN because abstaining prevents life! Every woman must attempt to get pregnant every month.
Well boys, we better get to it. We have a lot of life-prevention to prevent!
According to the church, in order for a sin to be a sin three basic principles need to be met…2- the sinner must have full knowledge of what they are doing and what it entails in the eyes of God. 3- the sinner must have full consent and willfully commit this sin
So, if a guy doesn’t know punchin’ the munchkin doesn’t kill sperm, then he can bop his baloney all day long and it isn’t a sin? But the guy who knows has to keep it in his pants?
First, this seems to imply than an idiot may be sin-proof. It certainly protects ignorance and punishes knowledge, a longstanding criticism of religion.
No time to waste choking my chicken to Internet porn. Now that I know that every wasted sperm is a sin and every egg must be fertilized to prevent “life prevention” I have a lot of vaginas to fill with my sperm every month.
I’m thinking of converting!
When sperms die naturally in the ovum they are not killed intentionally and die of a natural process which makes life ultimately possible. Abortion and contraception on the other hand PREVENT life and intentionally destroy it.
I just knowingly sent 999,999,999 sperm to their deaths so that one sperm could -although not assuredly- do his duty and knock that egg up. That’s not a sin. But if I wasted ONE more sperm by splattering onto my hand, THAT’s a sin?
This is an end-justifying-the-means argument that legitimizes colossal waste of life because one MIGHT achieve the mission. This is the same kind of sacrificial logic that sent millions of soldiers over the trenches in WW1′s war of stalemate and attrition.
At the end of the day, every “every sperm is sacred” argument is illogical or contraditory. For example, Catholic fetus worshipping and life-prevention prevention has helped over populate the planet, leading to starvation disease and ecological crisis that has -and will- result in the deaths of millions…or maybe that’s “natural” too.
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