By John D. O’Brien, S.J.
A starting point for understanding the beautiful Catholic teaching on procreation is remembering that our vision of the human person is not “dualistic”: I am not a soul trapped in a body, as some religions hold. Nor will I be an angel (pure spirit) after my death. On the contrary, the teaching of Christ is that we will have new bodies and souls in the new heavens and new earth. What I am, in this life and the next, is
both body and soul – I am a composite being. And as Christ so dramatically demonstrated, what we do with our bodies matters, as an expression of who I am and how I relate to other bodily beings.
When Paul’s VI’s 1968 encyclical
Humanae Vitae reiterated the normative Christian teaching that contraception was morally harmful, that it split apart the two purposes or ends of the marital act – what did he mean by ends? Let’s first consider how objectively, everything has an end or purpose. The end of a park bench is to be sat upon. The end of an oak tree is to grow to a certain height and produce a acorns. HV reminded us that the ends of the marital act are the unity of the spouses and the procreation of children.
