If we look at contemporary society, we are struck immediately by its obsession with sex, with sexual desire and its results. Marriage, divorce and sexual aberration are always news. The politician, the police, the social planner, the psychogist, the moralist, are concerned with population figures, juvenile delinquency, family planning, unmarried mothers, and sexual neurosis, resulting sometimes in complete inhibition, sometimes in complete promiscuity. They are all concerned with the family, and with what is happening at the root of the family, with the relationship between husband and wife. If we look at Christianity we find at its centre a doctrine of love, a sacramental doctrine which has its common realization in marriage; we find the sacrament of the family with its root in the relationship between husband and wife.

The most publicized aspect of the relationship between husband and wife today is the control of the number of children born to them. Various methods are used to prevent conception ensuing from intercourse. The most frequently heard aspect of the relationship from the Catholic point of view concerns the same subject.