ponsibility in decisions which relate to procreation of new life" (Thomas 140). Responsibility is the key concept in explaining why the Church accepts NFP and rejects ABC. NFP involves a great deal of attention to the various stages of female sexuality and keeps a couple aware of the great meaning of conjugal love. ABC on the other hand devalues the divinity of conjugal love. When couples use ABC, "'they act as arbiters of the divine plan and they manipulate and degrade human sexuality and with it themselves and their married partner by altering its value of total self-giving'" (Thomas 143).The Catholic understanding of embodiment is also important to the second task of marriage. The significance of embodiment must be realized by a married couple for proper accomplishment of serving life through the education of children. The human person is an embodied image of God, because God created man and woman in his own image and likeness in the form of a physical body. The physical part of our existence is the part that makes us embodied and gives us a historical and sexual existence. Following from this point, we have the responsibility to further cultivate God's creation in his own image through education. "As the Second Vatican Council recalled, 'since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring'" (FC 59). Embodiment requires the participatory act of creation with God through procreation and education, and it would be morally wrong to participate in procreation and not education.As it has been stated, service to life through procreation and education constitutes the second task of marriage. This essay has outlined various reasons why a Catholic understanding of the concepts of love, sexuality and embodiment are intrinsic to this second task. It is quite evident that these three concepts are important to the second task as they offer guidance to married couples who s...
