The Church's basic moral principle regarding reproductive technologies is this: if a given technology assists the marital embrace in achieving its natural end, it can be morally acceptable, even praiseworthy. However, if it replaces the marital embrace as the means by which the child is conceived, it's not in keeping with God's design.

The free exchange of consent properly witnessed by the Church establishes the marriage bond. Sexual union consummates it - seals it, completes it, perfects it. Sexual union, then, is where the words of the wedding vows become flesh.

Holiness is not first a matter of doing anything. It is first and foremost a matter of letting it be done. Holiness is to conceive the love of God within and to bring it forth to the world.

Grace flows through wounds.

For those with the purity to see it, a nursing mother is one of the most precious, most beautiful, and most holy of all possible images of woman.

Marital love is a reflection of how God loves. It is free, total, faithful and fruitful.

The idea that 'preaching the Gospel' has nothing to do with sex and that 'preaching about sex' has nothing to do with the Gospel betrays layers and layers of seriously misguided thinking. When we divorce God's love from sexual love, as Pope Benedict says, 'the essence of Christianity' becomes 'decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.'