Aquinas condemned
masturbation as worse than fornication, though less heinous than
other sexual offences against Nature; in opposition, also, to
those who believed that _distillatio_ usually takes place without
pleasure, he observed that it was often caused by sexual emotion,
and should, therefore, always be mentioned to the confessor.
Liguori also regarded masturbation as a graver sin than
fornication, and even said that _distillatio_, if voluntary and
with notable physical commotion, is without doubt a mortal sin,
for in such a case it is the beginning of a pollution. On the
other hand, some theologians have thought that _distillatio_ may
be permitted, even if there is some commotion, so long as it has
not been voluntarily procured, and Caramuel, who has been
described as a theological _enfant terrible_, declared that
"natural law does not forbid masturbation," but that proposition
was condemned by Innocent XI. The most enlightened modern
Catholic view is probably represented by Debreyne, who, after
remarking that he has known pious and intelligent persons who had
an irresistible impulse to masturbate, continues: "Must we
excuse, or condemn, these people? Neither the one nor the other.
If you condemn and repulse absolutely these persons as altogether
guilty, against their own convictions, you will perhaps throw
them into despair; if, on the contrary, you completely excuse
them, you maintain them in a disorder from which they may,
perhaps, never emerge.
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