David Quinn
Pope Francis Bishops must answer Pope’s challenge on sex education, writes David Quinn
Amoris Laetitia is a long and complex document with many parts dealing with diverse topics, but all relating in the end to the family, the Church’s concept of the family and how people can be led, sometimes bit by bit, to see the wisdom of it.
Almost all of the attention so far has been given to the sections of Amoris Laetitia that deal with how the Church should treat couples living in ‘irregular’ situations, such as in a second marriage after the first marriage ended in divorce.
It would do the document no justice at all if it was reduced to this alone or if the impression was given that the Church has now moved its teachings about marriage, the family and sex into some kind of unreachable realm of ideals that has little to do with real life.
Pope Francis may be insistent that those living in ‘irregular’ situations are not simply condemned by the Church and turned away, but he is also insistent that people in these situations be brought bit by bit to ‘regularise’ their situations, so that the cohabiting couple, for example, will soon marry. If a pastor was not moving a cohabiting couple towards marriage, he would be failing to live to the vision of Pope Francis and, much more importantly, of Jesus.
What the exhortation has to say about abortion, gender ideology, fatherhood, parents passing on their faith to their children and sex education have barely been covered so far.
Amoris Laetitia is strong in its endorsement of the role of fathers. This is very counter-cultural in the West today because the role of fathers is often belittled or overlooked. We find it very hard to say now that it is a loss when a child grows up without a good father. Someone who says this will quickly find themselves condemned as ‘judgemental’ and ‘offensive’.
Integration
But the Pope says categorically: “The absence of a father gravely affects family life and the upbringing of children and their integration into society.”
He then goes on to deal with gender ideology, saying it “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family”.
The document allows that the roles men and women fulfil can vary, so in that sense what it is to be male and female shouldn’t be too narrowly defined.
However, it says that it is wrong to pretend that our sexual identity has nothing to do with our biological sex. This leads to the notion that a ‘woman’ can be biologically male in every single way but nonetheless should have admission to women’s toilets and changing rooms and sports teams.
Pope Francis is concerned that this ideology is finding its way into schools and is thereby telling children, often very young, that the differences between boys and girls are not real and that the gender we are born into has nothing to do with the gender that we believe we are in our minds.
Amoris Laetitia devotes several pages to sex education. It quotes Vatican II where it spoke of the need for a “positive and prudent sex education” to be imparted to children and adolescents “as they grow older”.
Challenge
Pope Francis wonders whether “our educational institutions have taken up this challenge”. The answer in Ireland to date is mostly no, which is why the bishops are now reportedly starting preliminary work on a sex education programme of their own.
The Pope is entirely realistic about the pressures young people today are being exposed to, including pornography and an overemphasis on “safe sex”.
He quotes from The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm where it says, “sexual attraction creates, for the moment, the illusion of union, yet, without love, this ‘union’ leave strangers as far apart as they were before”.
Some people want to separate sex from love, of course. But how many parents want this for their children, and ultimately how conducive is it to human flourishing to separate sex from its relational aspects, never mind from marriage?
Amoris Laetitia praises modesty which it describes as “a natural means whereby we defend our personal privacy and prevent ourselves from being turned into objects to be used”.
This is the total opposite of what is happening on social media platforms like Facebook every single day.
The pressing question now is whether the Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere is brave enough to take up the challenge Pope Francis lays before us in respect of sex education.
One group that is brave enough to take up the challenge is, of course, Pure in Heart, which brings the radical Christian message about sex and relationships into our schools and is almost invariably well received by the students who hear it, whether or not they end up living it out.
The pity is that they do not go into far more schools. If our bishops are serious about pupils in Catholic schools hearing what Christianity has to say about sex and relationships, and if they are serious about implementing Amoris Laetitia is all in aspects, and not just the less challenging aspects, then something like what Pure in Heart offers needs to be heard in vastly more schools than at present.
If not, then they will be failing one very important part of the challenge Pope Francis has put before them.