By LOUISE KIRK
With the Family Synod now only a couple of months away, few of us are unaware of tensions over the divorced and practicing homosexuals. I cannot be alone in wondering if there is not another equally dangerous issue threatening the Church from underneath.
I am talking about sex education and the fight for the souls (and bodies) of the next generation. These are the young people who, even as you read this, are being guided toward, or away from, the very behaviors which cause dilemmas. Yet outside very specific circles we hear almost nothing on the subject.
I was reminded forcefully of this last week, when in England UN Goodwill Ambassador for Sexual Health Goedele Liekens stormed our televisions with an “innovative, experimental, and distinctive way” of tackling sex education.
Large on the board in front of a school group of 15- and 16-year-olds, and on our screens, was a pastiche of photographs of women’s pubic parts, which the boys were invited to rate according to their attractiveness. Those bold enough to utter were berated for their choice since it apparently reflected the influence of porn. The girls were sent away with mirrors, and for their homework were asked to make good their “shocking” ignorance of their own bodies, with the recommendation that they take ownership by touch.
The course ended with a school-type exam. At least in England the glamorous Goedele Liekens held back from giving out sex toys.
The excuse for this remarkable form of sex education is that 83 percent of young people in the UK are said to have viewed porn by the age of 13 and have therefore been given “an unrealistic view of sex and what is acceptable.” Liekens did indeed get the boys to make frank statements about their viewing and other habits, but nowhere did she suggest that they change them. In fact, she is seen to sweep into the office of Graham Stuart, MP, who chaired an important parliamentary report in February recommending that sex education be made compulsory in primary as well as secondary schools.
The former Miss Belgium tells Stuart that she is a “warrior” for sexual pleasure and that having compulsory sex education is not enough. It is the content which needs to be compulsory as well, and a public exam would be better still.
Channel 4 has chosen to show the program during August when teachers and many parents are away. It is part of a vociferous international campaign to make sex education compulsory in exactly the way that Liekens suggests. England is but one country within its sights. It will be a coveted plum, given that whatever happens here has an impact both in Europe and in other English-speaking countries.
We are also in the lead-up to ratification of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These are due to be settled in September and include Comprehensive Sex Education as a specific target. The Goals may not have legislative force, but they put countries under immense pressure to comply, and also tie millions of dollars to their achievement. If Comprehensive Sex Education is passed into a Goal next month, it will be much more difficult for Catholics to do anything about it the month after.
Channel 4’s film has evoked no protest that I have seen, even from the Church. I asked a friend what she thought of it and I think her reply would be typical of many older Catholics. She said that, while there were some unsavory aspects to it, the broad message that young people need to be better prepared to understand sex was a good one, and she liked the idea that adults should be encouraged to be more open.
What has happened that Catholics don’t react when children are taught to masturbate in a school class? Why is there such confusion between the roles of sexual pleasure and sexual unity?
Could it be that my friend is right and we are paying the penalty now for a dire lack of sex education in the past? I have met many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, for whom sex education touches a similar nerve. They reveal, sometimes bitterly, how lost they were when young. For them, any sex education is better than none. Into this vacuum steps Miss Belgium, and Planned Parenthood and all the other bodies pressing their wares upon schoolchildren everywhere.
The Church is aware of the need. In his relatio, or blueprint, for the 1980 General Synod of the Family, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger spoke specifically about education and its essence in love. He said that “sex education cannot consist of a purely scientific instruction but must always be a teaching toward love and responsibility,” and the young should be prepared for “the ascetic values of the so-called natural methods of natural family planning.”
Philip Trower in giving his “Final Impressions” of that synod thought more time should have gone to the subject. He thought the omission strange, given that many of the evils the synod fathers were confronting were traceable to the wrong sort of classroom education.
Amusingly, he also thought that Archbishop Joseph Bernardin’s call for “a more positive theology of sexuality” was as needed as “a call for more automobiles, freezers, or anything else there is a glut of. What seems to be needed now is a more realistic theology of sexuality which reduces it to its proper place and sees it in perspective.”
Little did he know how the Pope himself was to take charge of both issues, the theology and the education. St. John Paul’s Theology of the Body was only beginning to take shape in 1980. It has since given enough material for courses in its own right.
But John Paul was also passionate about how to reach the young. In 1981, he set up the Pontifical Council for the Family whose first task was to draw up guidelines on teaching sexuality to children. The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality took ten years to produce, and was published in 1995. It amplifies his statement in Familiaris Consortio that parents’ rights and duties in this area can neither be taken away or given away.
Truth and Meaning freely admits that many parents have not done their task adequately in the past. Help should be offered them, normally through schools and parishes, but never so as to take from them their own key function, other than in exceptional circumstances.
Truth and Meaning has inspired many parents. It has given them the courage to stand up against societal pressures and to insist upon their rights. Some families have gone to the lengths of home educating.
However, it was always going to be difficult to spread across the board and in many dioceses Truth and Meaning has been sadly neglected. How do you get parents who are contracepting themselves to teach their children in a different way? How do you get schools to resist pressure to take the job over themselves?
Alarm Bells
It is an urgent matter for the General Synod this autumn. Its Instrumentum Laboris raises it, but in a way that has already set alarm bells ringing. Paragraph 86 says that, in today’s social and cultural context, the family “cannot be the only place for teaching sexuality.”
I believe this to be both false, and true. Good families mixing with other good Catholic families can of course teach their own children and well. But we will never change the world, which is our mission, by caring only for good families. We must have a way of reaching every child, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, and for this we have to rely on schools.
My suggestion is a radical one. It would involve a three-pronged approach to take over the slots already given to Personal and Sexual Education in many schools. (I am taking it for granted that Theology of the Body would be taught separately in Religious Education):
First, there should be a program of workshops for parents giving them the resources to teach their own children, especially at primary level. This could be done in parishes as well as schools.
Second, there should be programs of values or character education, to show children all the good qualities which make for a successful adult life. This type of education has been pioneered by people like Mark Seligman and Christine Vollmer, and is newly being promoted in England. The novelty would be to make sure that marriage and correct family values always feature in their center.
Third, at secondary level, children should be taught how to live the ecology of the body in a holistic way. No child should leave school without understanding, e.g., the truth of fertility and how to manage it, the economics of marriage, the damage caused by contraception, the dangers of depopulation. Science has proved to be on the side of the Church and we have nothing to fear from teaching it.
The fruits of the coming synod will rest on Pope Francis. He is a very different man from John Paul II, but one of his strengths is his ability to reach people. In April he was telling parents to come forward and teach their own children. Let us hope that he does it, strongly, again.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress