The Catholic church's view that rape is less bad than masturbation is seriously disordered isn't it?

Question

They have long held the view that rape is less bad than masturbation because at least it can result in pregnancy, how do they manage to arrive at this travesty of morality?

Link for source of information here:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2007/10/prejudicial_concerns.html

Answer 1

If you rely on a 3000 year old book to drive your values, you get the values of the bronze age goat herders who wrote the stuff.

Fortunately for the theists, the founding fathers of our country demanded that these ancient texts would NOT be determining our laws.

Answer 2

I am a lifelong Catholic and a fairly well informed one. I have never heard of this claim.

The link you site is an editorial or a blog and not the official teaching of the Catholic Church. Please use authoritative sources in the future.

Other than warning which sins have the potential of being mortal sins, the Catholic Church is not in the habit of grading sins on a scale or comparing one sin to another.

While the Church does teach that masturbation is gravely disordered, it also teaches that rape is always intrinsically evil.

The Catholic Church has condemned rape as a serious sin since the Church was born and she officially teaches:

Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act.

For the information, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 2356: http://www.nccbuscc.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2art6.htm#2356

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

CCC
2356 Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act. Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them.

2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."

To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.

Answer 4

The Church teaches that rape is intrinsically evil, while masturbation is a grave disorder.

An intrinsic evil is significantly more condemning than a grave disorder.

Answer 5

Shame on you. Trying to pass off as fact a dang editorial.

Liar.

Answer 6

Source please?

EDIT: The linked article is an editorial and certainly not proof of Catholic teaching on any particular subject.

Answer 7

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that thousands of Catholic priests have committed multiple rapes on innocent children?

Answer 8

Wow....

That bothers me just a little bit... but then I remember many of the other distorted things that are either taught, accepted, or perpetuated in many churches.

Answer 9

You are wrong. They are both sins of lust but the rape is far more heinous---what's the matter with you?

Answer 10

This type of post is really troubling...

What is wrong with you?