Fr. Shenan J. Boquet: Marriage and True Love versus “Contraceptive Love”

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, Human Life International, March 11, 2025

It is not uncommon to question why the Catholic Church is interested in contraception. Further, because the subject is rarely preached about or spoken of, it is often unclear what exactly the Church teaches and why.

Modern society idolizes what it perceives as freedom, especially regarding human sexuality. Some assert that “love is love.” Sex is seen primarily as a matter of “self-expression” or “self-fulfillment.” This means one can love whoever they want and however they wish. However, proponents of this view never define what “love” is, or acknowledge the potential harm this view creates. After all, not everything someone does in the name of “love” is truly loving or beneficial to others. In other words, there is no understanding that genuine love involves an unwavering commitment of the will to seek the true good of the other, respecting their dignity and one’s own.

If one believes that “love is love,” any act is permissible, even when it violates the good that is relative to one’s sexual powers. The responsibility, morality, and dignity which belong to any Christian view of human sexuality are absent. This point of view inevitably leads to the “contraceptive mentality.” This is the mentality that one can have sex without consequences, but it must be free from the “burden” of conception. The result of encouraging this kind of sex leads to the destruction of any sound idea of marriage and family life. Human sexuality becomes unhinged from the necessity of self-denial. Sexuality is thus divorced not only from possible procreation but also from marriage itself. Once it is accepted that human sexuality is concerned primarily with “self-expression” or “self-fulfillment” there logically is no need to be married. Contraception is what makes this plausible. …

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