Vatican on sex education.

Just before Christmas, 1995, the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a 70-page document entitled The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. Signed by the Congregation's Prefect, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, the document supports the oft-repeated Vatican position that the sex education of children is the inviolable right of their parents. It condemns any sex education programme which: 1) promotes "safe sex"; 2) teaches children about contraception, sterilization and homosexuality; 3) employs values clarification techniques; 4) uses classroom exercises in which students make drawings or other representations of genitals; 5) or take tests with questions on genital or erotic subjects.

The document states that so-called "safe sex" and "safer sex" are immoral. They are based "on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against AIDS. Parents must insist on continence outside marriage and fidelity in marriage as the only true and secure education for the prevention of this contagious disease."

Proper sex education

The statement does not ban sex education completely, but it says that it must be provided by trustworthy persons, with particular emphasis on moral teaching. Parents have the right and duty to protect their children from any sex education programme, it states, which violates the latency period, offends modesty, and promotes hedonistic and anti-natalist ideologies. It warns against premature sex education in the "years of innocence."

As an American Catholic commentator on sex education books, James Likoudis, points out,

"All the restrictions found in this document with regard to pedagogy and content of sex education programs demand that such widely used programs as Fully Alive or those published by Benziger, Sadlier, William C. Brown, and others be removed from Catholic schools immediately."

For Canada the major concern is Fully Alive. Fully Alive is the 24-volume series (three for each grade 1-8) produced for Catholic schools in Ontario with the approval of Ontario's bishops. The series was criticized privately by a number of parents and publicly in 1991-1992 by the editor and co-writers of the national prolife monthly The Interim, critics who today are associated with Catholic Insight.

This criticism has been rejected. Just recently the Catholic Register published a feature article praising the series to the sky ("Fully Alive helps parents in fulfilling responsibilities"). Shortly thereafter, the General Editor, Sylvia Santin, stated that "early opposition from some Catholics who opposed sex education in the classroom has all but disappeared." (C.R., Oct. 16, 1995) This is incorrect.

The critique came from parents and others who had actually read the program. Many of those with children switched to home schooling. Others have given up objecting, not because they approve of the program but because they are tired of hitting their heads against a brick wall. Their criticism is as valid today as it was four or five years ago.

At the time we said Fully Alive has the makings of a true alternative to the Planned Parenthood approach to sex education, but we had the following criticisms:

* Its religious pedagogy is inadequate as a defence of the family today.

* Its sexual explicitness undermines the rights and work of parents who conscientiously carry out the tasks given them to do by God on the on ehand; and on the other, contributes little if anything of worth to children of parents who don't care, while quite possibly being psychologically and spiritually dangerous to the child.

* Fully Alive was intended to be a truly Catholic FLE (Family Life Education) program, but the execution of the project does not live up to the intention. While the Curriculum Guideline of 1993 projected a program based on Pope John Paul's teaching on sexuality and sex education in the light of faith, the light of faith was reduced to a minimum.

* "To make the progam acceptable would require changing the points mentioned above and pursuing more vigorously the teacher/parent partnership of which Fully Alive's own Parents' manual for each grade is an ingenious accomplishment."

One may note that when the Archdiocese of Washington turned the program down for use there, its criticisms were that it fails "to integrate the faith perspective in its presentation," and is "not Christ-centred."

Today we feel vindicated by the Vatican statement. Sylvia Santin believes that the notion of a latency period is a Freudian construct which has no basis in fact. But Cardinal Lopez Trujillo insists otherwise. He also writes that sex education programs in schools have become a global problem, "leading to the deformation of consciences." Fully Alive would seem to be part of that problem. Its basic error was to abandon the original guidelines of 1983, which were based on the teachings of Pope John Paul, for the approach of sociology. Until it has been revised, James Likoudis is surely right to say that it should be withdrawn from Catholic schools.

Last October a curriculum on family life education for high schools was announced. It is obvious that this continuation will have to contain far more Catholic theology (which could be done with frequent references to the Catholic Catechism) and far less pop psychology and sociology than Fully Alive does. While this work is under way, we respectfully suggest that the bishops order a revision of Fully Alive itself, to make it conform to the Vatican guidelines.