Human Sexuality and Contraception – Episode 9

Bio - Who are Angelina and Peter?

The Church's teaching on contraception is challenging for many Catholics. In our modern age, increased economic pressures on families and issues of public health make it difficult, at times, to see how contraception is incompatible with responsible parenting and citizenship. What, then, is the gospel message of life that inspires the Church’s position on contraception?

Angelina Steenstra, co-founder of Second Chance Ministry, and Peter Taras, father of three children, discuss the morality of contraception within the context of Catholic understandings of human sexuality and human life.

Angelina, with her husband Walter and Father Vince Heffernan, is a founder of Second Chance Ministry, a post-abortion outreach based in Scarborough, Ontario. Over the past thirteen years Angelina has presented her testimony, ‘Abortion and Its Aftermath’, at numerous public forums including The Canadian National Pro-Life Conference, The Canadian March for Life, seminaries, high schools, youth conferences and retreats. Peter is a proponent of Natural Family Planning (NFP) who struggled with fertility issues during the first few years of his marriage. He and his wife Susan used NFP to chart fertility cycles, and now have three children. Peter shares that 'Love and Responsibility,' by Karol Wojtyla, has helped him to understand the relationship between the church's rejection of contraception and the dignity of the human person.

Q&A - For further reflection…
  • How does the sexual expression of
    love reflect the love of Christ for his Church?
    Read Humanae Vitae, 9.
  • In what way does the use of contraception
    impair or wound married love?
    Read Humanae Vitae, 10, 12-13.
  • How does natural family planning differ from artificial contraception? It seems that both are methods of inhibiting and/or controlling birth.
    Read Humanae Vitae    , 16.
  • What is the “gospel of life” and how is the use of contraceptives incompatible with it?
    Read Evangelium Vitae, 13 and 81.

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