Father Matthew Wiering Podcast
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
10/7/18: 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Contraception and Natural Family Planning
In today's Gospel we have Jesus's challenging words on the indissolubility of marriage, but in the second which seems to flow out of this teaching on marriage, we hear Jesus say to his disciples, "Let the children come to me. Do not prevent them." It seems that Jesus is giving a nod to the two essential aspects of marriage: the unitive dimension, by which a bond of love is formed and strengthened between the couple, and the procreative dimension. Uncoincidentally, these are also the two essential aspects of sexual intercourse (the one-flesh union spoken of in our first reading from Genesis and by Jesus himself in the Gospel). The Church has always taught that if we intentionally disrupt either of these two essential aspects of sex-- the unitive, or loving, dimension, or the procreative dimension, we turn sex into something that is not true to itself. The blessing of Natural Family Planning (NFP) is that it helps couples to follow the signs present in the woman's own body to avoid pregnancy if they have a good reason not to seek a child at that time.
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