Wonderful Gift and Awesome Responsibility

There are several themes in the article which I was familiar with. For example, they emphasized how it was a big responsibility. If you are sexually active, you should be prepared both financially physically and emotionally for a pregnancy. It should also be with somebody who you truly love and it should be a bonding experience, not just an act for physical pleasure. Obviously, they also promote chastity until marriage, and no sexual intercourse for gay or lesbian couples.

Some new aspects which I learned from the article is that they looked at intercourse in two different dimensions. The unitive dimension talks about sex as an expression of vulnerability. A two-in-one bonding experience this dimension also relates to marriage. The second dimension is the procreative dimension, which is pretty self-explanatory. Although I knew about both sides, I did not know how the church looked at each of them. I knew about the latter, but did not really think about the former. They also mentioned that if a married couple does not want kids they could "make use of the infertile time" which I thought was pretty funny.

There are themes that I think should be talked about, but were not mentioned in the article. For example, I know that the church does not agree with methods of contraception, but I feel that they should at least be mentioned more than they were. I also think it would benefit them to mention something about sexual predators for young children and teach the younger children that if something inappropriate happened to them that it is a huge issue that cannot be ignored because a traumatic experience like that can lead to later problems in life if it is not addressed. It also mentioned that the two persons should have a "stable relationship" but did not go as in-depth and explain what a stable relationship is. For example if a a man and a woman are married and have kids, and one of the parents is abusive, I would not call that a stable relationship. But they are married, so everything is okay right? NO! I think that the church should address that and make the meaning of a "stable relationship" clearer.