When Pope Francis released a widely anticipated document on family life last week, he didn’t just weigh in on controversial topics like whether remarried Catholics may take communion (maybe) and whether the Catholic church will approve gay marriages (definitely not).

He said something more likely to be overlooked but also very unusual for a Catholic leader: He wrote about the joy of sex.

In the document, called Amoris Laetitia, Francis frankly addressed sex as a practice married couples work at over a lifetime. His approach to sex and contraception is notable for its affirmation of sexual passion, its realism about what can go wrong in marital relationships and its focus on growing in intimacy. All three are unusual in official Catholic teaching.

Affirming passion

The pope wrote in this apostolic exhortation that he seeks to avoid continuing a tradition of “almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation” combined with a “far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage.”

Source: The Washington Post