Here is an excerpt from the chapter I’m contributing to a book about marriage:
Children give our bodies purpose. I always have to laugh when people complain, “The Church treats women like baby-making machines!” The truth is, the secular world is the one that treats women that way—and expends tremendous amounts of money and effort in trying to find the “off” button, often putting women through years of physical and psychological contortions with one kind of contraception after another.
The Church, on the other hand, teaches that the bodies of men and women are designed the way they are, reproductive systems and all, because they have a specific purpose in life. What is that purpose? Something huge: to make love, literally — to create something, to bring new love into the world. Sometimes this looks like physically bearing children (whether many or few); sometimes it looks like adopting; sometimes it looks like simply becoming aware that we are all here to love and to be loved.
When we can witness our own, familiar bodies actually doing this right before our very eyes – making something where there used to be nothing, bringing something new into the world – we are compelled to think about why we are here, and why God made us, and what it means to make love.
The book is by Our Sunday Visitor Press. Will share more details when I get the green light! It looks like it’s going to be a great project.