The Vatican’s Depraved Sex-Ed Program
for Youth
In July of 2016, its release timed to disseminate at the World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow, the Pontifical Council for the Family launched a website titled “Affective Sexual Education for Young People” that is geared to present teenagers with the facts of life that are traditionally taught by parents. This project, also called “The Meeting Point,” was composed by married couples in Spain with the collaboration of the Catholic University of San Antonio over the course of several years.
The materials are free – in English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese – and includes texts for high school students and teachers, activity books and movie recommendations. Calling itself a “complement or aid to the task of parents,” this Vatican sponsored program is actually a radical move that tramples on the protective role of parents, placing sex education instructors on or above the level of parent and priest.
The target audience is the students of Catholic high schools (13-18 years old) around the world. The lessons will be presented in co-ed classes of young men and women, with each year corresponding to new lessons to be covered. Divided into six units, the curriculum provides material intended to offer a new kind of sex education that takes into consideration the development of modern psychology, pedagogy and teaching.
As the reader can see from the pictures presented on this page, the program presents without condemning the casual customs and immoral clothing of “teen culture,” offering exercises, worksheets, images and movies screenings (often from R-rated movies) for the students to discuss.
Before examining the deplorable aspects of the program, it should be noted that there are some good elements in this curriculum. The brief condemnation of in-vitro fertilization, the sanctity of life from conception to death and a lack of gender “options” outside of male/female are positions that are reinforced by some lessons. However, this small good is corrupted by a large presence of evil, so these few positive points do not serve to redeem the massive amounts of filth that pervade the curriculum.
In matters of morals, we do well to apply the traditional Church adage: Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocunque defectu (An action is good when good in every respect; it is wrong when wrong in any respect),
The 'tent' person and immoral imagery
The most immediately jarring aspect of the program is its use of imagery. In the units and introductory video titled “Your Story, Your Words,” presented on the Vatican website, we find shots of a casually clothed group of youth, young men and women, cooperating in the construction of tents in a wilderness. All the units implement building the “tent” as a metaphor of the human person building relationships.
Youth with immodest clothing & positions building 'tents' – an indirect approval of sleeping together; below, silly assignments with immoral images
The final lesson ends by suggestively asking the students to decide who they want to invite into their tent – with no distinctions made about whether it is young man inviting a girl or vice-versa or a person of the same sex.
This program bombards youth with images that can only be defined as pornographic. Students are depicted as half nude or fully nude men and women embracing in sensuous exchanges of passion. Notes to the teacher state that these are intentionally provided in order to “provoke” reactions among the students for the sake of discussion.
The mixed classes of students are given ludicrous assignments, such as to analyze the differences between nude male and female statues.
At one point the boys and girls are separated and asked to define what sex means to them, after which the two groups re-gather and are actually told to share their thoughts with each other. As if this were not enough, students are also requested to point out where sexuality is located in the bodies of boys and girls.
Following in the footsteps of Vatican II, this sex-ed program redefines terminology to suit its ends. The coursework defines a sexual relationship as any relationship where the person is “giving” himself or herself to the other. The only sin – which is a word almost never mentioned, by the way – "in the context of education for love" is considered the lack of "reciprocal giving."
A photograph of an elderly couple smiling at each other is compared to a picture of mostly naked youths entwined in a passionate embrace. Both couples are equally defined as being in a “sexual relationship,” with no denunciation of cohabitation before or outside of marriage.
Censurable movies and pictures of openly promiscuous famous figures (such as Michael Jackson) and immoral super stars are presented as models. Many of the movie clips used are from films with R-ratings earned for their sexually explicit content.
Modern morals, no morality
For parents concerned about the formation of their children, the morals taught in this program are loose at best. Dating outside of courtship is encouraged, and warm displays of affection are alright so long as the couples are truly “in love.”
Is this teaching a 'healthy' love or promoting sex?
Perhaps most shocking for a course that purports to teach morals, no mention is made of the Ten Commandments (not even the 6th or 9th), Hell, or the depraved sinfulness of deviant behavior like homosexuality. Instead teachers are instructed to invite students to “discover” their heterosexuality. Consider whether this confusing instruction is not favoring homosexuality:
Sexual education must keep in mind “the different stages in the construction of one’s personality in relation to the configuration of his/her ‘sexual identity’ or mature acknowledgement of his/her own sexuality, with moments that are differentiated according to the sexes.”
Very little is directly said about the dangers of pornography or solitary sins that corrupt the lives of so many of today’s youths. Such vices are condemned only for leading to loneliness, distortion of human meaning and reducing the body to an object of pleasure.
Sleeping with someone out of wedlock is only evil because it reduces the person to a “thing.” The punishment for vice is not eternal suffering in Hell and separation from God, but rather the lack of spiritual fulfillment. Respect for the human body of self and others, not the Laws of God or nature, is the primary lesson being taught by this course.
The preoccupation and focus of this curriculum is so strongly geared towards conjugal love that the consecrated virginal state is given only cursory attention, of secondary importance compared to the grandeur of “giving” oneself to a member of the opposite sex.
A philosophical swamp of filth
The questionable ideology presented in this program is a consequence of the Personalism of John Paul II found in his Theology of the Body.
According to this philosophy, a person only fulfills the purpose and meaning of his existence when he makes himself a gift to the other. The ultimate fulfillment of man is when he gives himself freely, body and soul, to a woman and vice-versa. Humanity is only complete in the eyes of God when both sexes are physically united in the “self giving” of the sexual act.
Provocative imagery unsuitable for youth to illustrate advertising's abuse of sex
Revealing the syrupy sentimentality of this program, the term “love” is bandied about so frequently that it practically loses its meaning. Students are taught, regarding their life’s purpose, that they are solely “made to love.” Virtue is loosely defined as the “strategies for love” and sin as the “wounds of love.” The greatest evils, according to this program, are having lovelessness towards one’s relations and “living love badly.” Modesty is that which allows us to discover the “beauty of love.”
Conclusion
The material offered in this Vatican sex education program is a saccharine cake mixed with poisonous filth. Despite the occasional good points, the pernicious material is so egregious and so pervasive that it belays any attempt at justification.
The program, on the whole is, therefore, bad, and the fact that it “could be worse” is no consolation compared to the price of a youth’s chastity. It leads one to wonder how Italian Archbishop Vicenzo Paglia, who launched the program at the end of July, could review the results and say “I approve.”
From the convoluted re-hashing of John Paul II’s Personalism to the presentation of pornographic material to mixed classes of boys and girls for analysis and discussion, it could be surmised that this curriculum was specifically formulated to corrupt what remains of the innocence and chastity of modern Catholic youth, all in an attempt to bring them into line with the errant progressivist philosophy of the post-Vatican II Church.
This is the Vatican backed sex-education program: At times it seems almost a confessors’ program of study for the help of depraved sex addicts.