Comment: And what does church teaching do to, let's say to a 15-year-old boy when it insists that masturbation is a mortal sin punishable by God in the fires of hell for all eternity.  No, this is normative developmental and universal sexual behavior.  And by universal I that means that it is practiced by all human beings at one time or another in their lives.  And that means by clergy and laity alike.  As I have already said, such church teachings lead to unnecessary shame & guilt especially among those young people who do not have parents sophisticated enough to set them straight.  This kind of shame and guilt can, with other factors, lead to arrested psychosexual development.  Unfortunately, this can lead to a psychic disconnect in which a person as an adult begins to lead 2 lives, a public good life which he or she can admit to and a private one which has been unnecessarily labeled as “evil” one by the church which he or she cannot admit to.  (1 of 2)