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It is also curious that 'onanism' so prominent in Western canonists' catalogues of sins is nowhere mentioned as a grave sin in any of the Ecumenical Canons or the canons of the Fathers incorporated by reference by the Ecumenical Councils.

The councils generally didn't issue definitions unless a doctrine were in dispute. If they had wanted to quote some, there were plenty:
Clement of Alexandria
"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 [A.D. 191]).

"To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (ibid., 2:10:95:3).

Hippolytus
"[Christian women with male concubines], on account of their prominent ancestry and great property, the so-called faithful want no children from slaves or lowborn commoners, [so] they use drugs of sterility or bind themselves tightly in order to expel a fetus which has already been engendered" (Refutation of All Heresies 9:12 [A.D. 225]).

Lactantius
"[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife" (Divine Institutes 6:20 [A.D. 307]).

"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital [’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (ibid., 6:23:18).

Epiphanius of Salamis
"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).

I was not refering to conciliar definitions, but to conciliar canons, which include by reference many of the canons of the Fathers. You may find a collection in English translation with selected commentary from Greek and Latin canonists in the Eerdmann's multivolume set of the Ante- and Post-Nicean Fathers (I think its volume 38).

to findingtruth:

The patristic condemnation of the gnostic and Manichean sects who believed that engendering offspring is sinful (because it imprisons souls in the material world) hardly applies to the Orthodox approach to family planning. No spiritual father would bless a couple to remain childless throughout their entire marriage unless the woman suffered from a condition which would endanger her life were she to become pregnant.

We Orthodox judge not the individual conjugal act, but the totality of conjugal relations between husband and wife, for obedience to the divine command to be fruitful and multiply (though St. John Chrysostom himself did address the question of the world already being well-populated by our kind, suggesting that marriage now serves chastity more than procreation).

As FormerLib has pointed out, this topic is a distraction to the orginal point of the thread, so I will not now post further on the subject.

I would be glad to discuss it further, but only if you have read Fr. John Meyendorff's Marriage: an Orthodox Perspective first. That will save me having to get the copy out of our mission library and typing the patristic quote from his discussion of this issue.

to FormerLib:

See what I mean about the futility of discussing this with Latins?