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Question
Dearest F. Angelo,
I’ve been married for 8 years, however my marriage has not thus far produced children. My wife and I decided to undergo testing to evaluate our fertility. I started by taking a spermiogram which involved performing an autoerotic act in the ambulatory.
I’ll start out by saying that I’m active in my parish and my wife and I regularly attend Sunday Mass.
Overcoming the embarrassment around our condition, I talked about this with our parish priest who told me that I was in a state of sin because of what I did (the spermiogram), telling me I should have had intercourse with my wife in the ambulatory or at home using a condom and then have the seminal fluid collected in this way analyzed.
I am very shy so I was taken back by this answer and didn’t have the courage to continue the conversation, however I am still doubtful. I’m asking myself: isn’t the act described in fact equally immoral since, as we were told during our premarital classes, the procreative dimension of the act is removed? What is the difference then? At this point, I’m asking myself whether taking this kind of exam (the spermiogram) is moral at all and which are the ways the Church recommends to test male fertility (and female fertility as well since my wife has yet to undergo any examination).
I thank you in advance for your answer and I apologize about my long-windedness.
Nicola L.
Priest’s answer
Dear Nicola,
- Your priest’s answer is almost entirely correct.
I say almost because – as you also noticed – it wasn’t convincing on one point: having intercourse at home while using a condom.
In other words, he recommended contraception.
However, contraception alters God’s design for sexuality and human love and, for this reason, is never licit.
You noticed this incongruence yourself.
It is possible that your priest added something that you, in your commotion, didn’t pay attention to. This would be the use of a perforated condom, which doesn’t compromise the procreative end. - Taking a spermiogram is not wrong. The problem lies in the way the male gamete is retrieved.
Some researchers advise against collecting the sample through masturbation on grounds that the semen collected is supposedly of lesser quality, meaning it has a lower semen count and less motility.
Therefore, some people could be advised against pursuing assisted reproduction because of an error in the evaluation of the sample.
The researchers mentioned are Zavos and colleagues (Zavos p. m., Characteristics of human ejaculates collected via masturbation and a new silastic seminal fluid collection device, Fertil. Steril. 1985, 43:491; cfr. di pietro, spagnuolo, sgreccia, in Metanalisi della GIFT, in Medicina e Morale, 1/1990, p. 21). - I would hate for you to be told that you have few chances of procreating because of oligospermia.
It would be an error of assessment.
For this reason, researchers suggest collecting sperm samples using the postcoital technique of using a special condom made out of silastic which doesn’t alter the spermatozoa. - On a document on this specific topic, the Italian National Committee of Bioethics writes about autoerotic acts: “These would then be scientifically invalid methods which are therefore unethical in themselves, independently from any moral judgment, since masturbation itself – almost always weighed down by the psychological difficulties of the subject, regardless of his religious beliefs – can result in seminal liquid that is not perfectly “physiological”.
Furthermore, many individuals, because of psychological and cultural difficulties, refuse to produce seminal liquid in the context of a healthcare setting; and transportation from an external location can, as it is known, change the characteristics of the sample profoundly.”. - The same Italian National Committee of Bioethics recommends other ways.
It writes: “Recently [1989], a different collection method using a “silastic” [a new kind of plastic material] apparatus has been proposed: the sample collected appears to be, based on a comparative study, of better quality than that collected by masturbation. In different specialized centers, devices which produce ejaculation without erotic stimulation have been developed and used. Once the scientific quality of these methods has been validated by the comparative studies which are underway, proving the “physiological” correspondence of the seminal liquid, these will certainly be valid solutions to overcome religious, personal and cultural objections to masturbation as a collection method. (C. Romano – G. Grassani, Bioetica, pp. 563-564). - I like to highlight how the National Committee of Bioethics wrote: “these will certainly be valid methods to overcome religious, personal and cultural objections to masturbation as a collection method”. It cites religious objections, but alongside “personal and cultural” objections. In other words, even people who don’t adhere to Christian morality, refuse to perform acts which do not uphold the dignity of the person.
- Next to the scientific reasons we have the statements of the Church Magisterium which believers are bound to in good conscience.
It suffices to quote what the Magisterium of Pius XII said during a speech pronounced on May 19th 1956 on the topic of conjugal sterility and artificial insemination: “This norm of behavior we likewise mentioned in our Address before the Congress of the Association of Urological Physicians, on the 8th day in the month of October in the year 1953, in which we decided these things, saying: “concerning the rest, the Holy Office has already decided on the 2nd of August, 1929 (Acts of the Apostolic See, vol. 21, year 1929, p. 490, II) that “masturbation directly procured so as to obtain sperm” is not licit, no matter what the purpose of the exam may be.
But when it was reported to us that this depraved mode of behavior had increased greatly in his place, we considered it an opportunity to warn, to recall, and again to instruct, now just as then. If this mode of behavior is being used to satisfy the libido, even the natural sensibility of man, by his own free will, rejects these things, and much more so the judgments of the mind, as often as he considers the matter, maturely and rightly.
Now the same acts ought to be likewise repudiated, even when they are used for grave reasons, which would seem to remove them from culpability: for example, for use as a remedy for those who are troubled by an excess of nervous tension or abnormal outbursts of emotion; for the medical inspection of the sperm, under the power of the microscope, to determine with which venereal or other kinds of bacterial disease it may be infected; for various types of examinations, from which, it is ordinarily agreed, the semen may be diagnosed by the vitality of the sperm, the presence of components, the number, quality, form, strength, and other conditions of that type.” - Pius XII goes on to say: This mode of procuring human seed, by the effect of masturbation, cannot be viewed as anything other than direct, for it is not in accord with nature, in its full exercise of the generative faculty in the human person. Indeed, because this full exercise was done outside of conjugal intercourse, it bears within itself the direct and improper usurpation of the use of this same faculty. In this way, the improper use of this faculty is rightly considered an intrinsic violation of the principles of morality. For by no means does the human person have the right to any exercise of the sexual faculty beyond a certain point, because he received the very same faculty from nature.
Certainly, to the human person (aside from other things which pertain also to irrational animals) the right and power for the use and exercise of the same faculty is bestowed only on those who have entered into a valid marriage, and then it is confined to the matrimonial right, as it has been handed down and received with respect to marriage itself. And this shows the human person that the sole reason for which he has received from nature this responsibility, with respect to the sexual faculty, is nothing other than to have the power and right to enter into matrimony.
Yet this right, which pertains to the object and scope of the natural law, has not been assigned to the will of human persons. By the force of this law of nature, the human person does not possess the right and power to the full exercise of the sexual faculty, directly intended, except when he performs the conjugal act according to the norms defined and imposed by nature itself. Outside of this natural act, it is not even given within the matrimonial right itself to enjoy this sexual faculty fully. These are the limits to the particular right of which we are speaking, and they circumscribe its use according to nature.
Consequently, since the full exercise of the sexual faculty is circumscribed within this absolute limit of conjugal intercourse, the same faculty is intrinsically made fit to achieve the fullness of the natural end of matrimony (which is not only the generation, but also the education of offspring), but its exercise must be joined together with said end.
This being so, masturbation is entirely outside of the aforementioned natural capacity of the full exercise of the sexual faculty, and therefore it is also outside that connection to the end ordained by nature. For that same reason, it is deprived of any designation as a right, and also it is contrary to nature and the moral law, even if it is intended to serve a usefulness which is just and not improper. - The declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – Donum Vitae (February 22nd 1987) – reiterates this negative verdict: “Masturbation, through which the sperm is normally obtained, is another sign of this dissociation: even when it is done for the purpose of procreation, the act remains deprived of its unitive meaning: “It lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes ‘the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love’” (DV II, 6).
- There aren’t analogous moral problems when it comes to women. Regarding men, the National Committee of Bioethics proposes “collection in a perforated condom post-coitus, prostatic or urethral extraction, epididymal puncture for diagnostic purposes”.
- There are then supernatural ways: having Holy Masses celebrated, novenas, prayers…
But you certainly know about these means already.
For my part, I assure you that I will remember you in my prayers and in the celebration of the Holy Mass so that our Lord may grant you and your wife that which you desire.
I thank you for your trust and bless you.
Father Angelo