How the ‘Catholic’ version of Ontario’s sex ed grooms kids for the Sexual Revolution: a grade-by-grade breakdown
Pete Baklinski
TORONTO, September 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- Ontario’s Liberal government paid $250,000 to have a Catholic educators’ organization attempt to reframe lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne’s controversial sex-education program so that it squares with Catholic teaching. But faithful Catholic parents scanning through the resources will likely be outraged — and even feel betrayed by Catholic leadership — over how much the resources deviate from authentic Catholic teaching.
A Freedom of Information request earlier this month found that The Institute of Catholic Education (ICE), group of Catholic educators overseen by Ontario bishops, was paid the quarter-million dollars to develop materials to support staff in teaching the new expectations in the sex-ed curriculum as outlined by the government. The ministry has allowed Catholic schools to deliver the province’s sex-ed expectations through the schools’ already existing “Fully Alive” program.
While there are smatterings of genuine Catholic content mixed throughout the resources (for example, teachings on chastity, saving sex until marriage, calling porn use and masturbation ‘sinful,’ etc.), it is the numerous instances of non-Catholic content that parents will find alarming.
The newly developed Catholic resources begin, almost innocuously, in grade one by teaching kids in a mixed classroom about sexual difference and giving them keywords like “gender” and “diversity.” But, by the time the kids hit grade eight, practically every major outcome of the 1960s sexual revolt has been inculcated into them, including often-neutral portrayals of contraception, homosexuality, transgenderism, and gender theory.
While ICE authors state that the resources have been “developed to align with Catholic teaching,” at no point are premarital sex (fornication), contraception within marriage, or homosexual acts referred to as spiritually deadly sins (mortal) that cut off the life of God’s grace in the soul and jeopardize one’s eternal life. Instead, teachers are told that they must offer students no “moral evaluations” on issues such as abortion, divorce, and homosexuality.
The ICE states in a preamble to each new resource that “much of the discussion about the Health and Physical Education (2015) curriculum was narrowly focused around issues of human sexuality, and how such issues would be taught within the context of the classroom.” It boasts that the recourses it came up with for Catholic schools “confirms that the HPE curriculum can be implemented in a manner that is respectful of, and consistent with the perspective and mandate of Catholic schools.”
But Tanya Granic Allen, President of Parents as First Educators, told LifeSiteNews that the underlying problems of the Liberal’s Health and Physical Education curriculum are not fixed by the ICE resources.
“The HPE contains inappropriate information, delivered to children at inappropriate age-levels. This problem still exists within the new ICE teaching resource,” she said.
“ICE has attempted to apply a ‘Catholic lens’ to the implementation of the HPE, however the underlying curriculum is the problem. If the tree is rotten, then no lens can make the fruit edible.”
Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International and creator of new groundbreaking sex-ed exposé documentary The War on Children, agrees, telling LifeSiteNews that Ontario Catholic parents should be “very concerned” about the ICE resources for the Fully Alive curriculum and should “organize to remove such programs from their schools.”
“It seems this curriculum is the typical ‘cockroach in the ice cream’ sex-ed program. It purports to be all ice-cream for kids, giving a nod to Catholic teachings while hoping that parents will not notice the cockroaches that are cleverly hidden inside. This is typical of most comprehensive sexuality education programs,” she said.
“Many bad programs like this one will mention abstaining, but then the bulk of the curriculum assumes they won't abstain and teaches them how to have sex, which just negates anything taught about abstaining,” she added.
Bishop calls Fully Alive an ‘education in evil’
The attempt to baptize Wynne’s hugely controversial Health and Physical Education (HPE) was promised by Catholic leadership from the earliest roll-out of the government program. When the Ontario Liberal government released its sex-ed curriculum in February 2015, Cardinal Collins of Toronto responded that same day, not by denouncing the curriculum and saying it had no place in Catholic schools, but by declaring that Catholic schools would teach it after some adaptations had been made to it. The archdiocese then put out a statement the following day telling concerned parents that the ministry’s sex-ed would be adapted by the Institute for Catholic Education (ICE) to work with the bishops’ own controversial family life program “Fully Alive,” a program with developmental ties to the Sexuality Information and Education Council for the United States (SIECUS), an organization founded by abortion giant Planned Parenthood.Fully Alive, which has been used in Ontario Catholic schools for decades, has been criticized for sexualizing children from a young age, ignoring the Church’s teaching on grace, sin, and modesty, and presenting an overall anthropology at odds with the Church’s vision of the human person.
In 1998, the now deceased Bishop Roman Danylak of Toronto criticized the Fully Alive sex-ed program as “gravely flawed” because it “deviates from the Church's teaching on family life education.”
“The Fully Alive program ignores the latency period of our children and therefore can contribute to the loss of innocence. It gives group instruction in intimate sexual matters although the Church has specifically forbidden this. It is woefully deficient in its treatment of moral principles. It often ignores the Church's teaching on sin and grace and modesty,” he wrote. “The Fully Alive program is not a program for formation in Christian virtue but a program of imparting sexual knowledge to children.”
Bishop Danylak went as far as stating that the grade seven and eight material, with its explicit sexual information on cervical mucus, erection, ejaculation, homosexuality, masturbation, rape, and sexual molestation, “descend[ed] to the level of child abuse.”
“This education in evil can only promote sexual experimentation and sins,” he wrote.
Monsignor Vincent Foy, a Toronto canon lawyer, strongly criticized Fully Alive for “victimiz[ing] children” by its “inherent desacralization of sex,” by “desensitizing them in the sacred and private area of sexuality,” and by “leaving them prone to sexual experimentation.”
He took issue with the program’s insistence on refusing to call sexual activity outside of marriage ‘sin.’
“Fully Alive is afraid of the words sin and mortal sin. The Church is not. The Church teaches that all deliberate sexual pleasure outside of marriage is gravely sinful. Fully Alive does not know this. It is not known to Fully Alive that our sexuality needs redemption and that all through our lives Christ’s redemptive blood needs to be applied to our souls through prayer, penance, the sacraments and other means or our sexuality will betray us,” he wrote.
The ICE’s newly released resources for implementing the Liberal government’s sex-ed within Catholic schools will now add the following content to the already used Fully Alive program:
Grade-by-grade breakdown of the new ICE resources for Catholic schools
Grade 1Six-year-old children learn about “different genders” and are taught to identify the “benefits of diversity.”
Grade 2
Seven-year-old children learning about the “physical differences between boys and girls” are told in a mixed classroom setting that “girls have a vagina” and that “boys have a penis.” Teachers are told to explain if asked that the “vulva is the folds of skin on the outside of a girl’s body, and the scrotum is under a boy’s penis.”
Grade 4
Nine-year-old children are taught about puberty and learn keywords such as “healthy relationships” and about making “decisions.”
Grade 5
Ten-year-old children are told that “to be human is to be sexual.” A description of the “organs of the adult female and male reproductive systems” is given in detail. Boys and girls in the same class are given information about the “specific changes” that happen to males and females as the reproductive system begins to mature.
Children have now learned at this point that “new human life begins with conception, and they have traced its development from a single cell created by the union of sperm and ovum to the birth of a baby.”
Grade 6
Students “explore” what it means to give consent. “What does it look like and sound like when someone gives consent? (there is an unmistakable positive response or ‘yes,’ freely given, verbally and/or by nodding of one’s head.)” Teachers are explicitly told in a note: “The students need to understand the importance of knowing if, and when, consent has been given.”
Children learn about “homosexuality, homophobia, gender identity, gender expression, and gender role.” They are taught to avoid “stereotypes” based on “sexual orientation and gender.”
Teachers are told that they are to offer no “moral evaluation” if students raise questions about what they might do about family members who say they are “gay.” They are told to tell students that “it is not our place to judge others.”
If a student asks what gay/lesbian or homosexual means, teachers are to respond: “It is a word used to describe people who are sexually attracted only (or mostly) to people of the same sex.” At no point are teachers told that they should discusses the often deadly health risks associated with homosexual activity.
Teachers are told to define the following terms in this way:
- Homophobia - “a fear or strong disapproval of people whose sexual orientation is homosexual (those who may identify as LGBT)”
- Sexual orientation - “the direction of a person’s sexual attraction, for example, to people of the opposite sex or to people of the same sex”
- Gender identity - “a person’s sense of self, with respect to being male or female”
- Gender expression - “the manner in which individuals express their gender identity to others”
Regarding homosexuality, the resource quotes a document from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops which quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church that persons with homosexual inclinations “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.” At no point does the document use the language of the Catechism in describing homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered.”
Grade 7
Twelve-year-old students are taught about “intimacy and consent in healthy relationships.” Building on previous lessons, they are told that an intimate relationship gives one the “confidence to give or withhold consent for shared decisions.”
“What does it mean to exploit another person sexually?” one teacher prompt asks. Answer: This happens when one “engage(s) in sexual activity without a person’s clear consent; a clear YES is the only way someone can give their consent.”
While students are taught that the “Church teaches that contraception is wrong,” they are immediately introduced to contraception as a way to prevent “unwanted pregnancy.”
“Those who are sexually active may therefore choose to use contraceptives. Contraceptives are devices or chemicals that interfere with fertility and prevent contraception. The most common method of contraception to prevent both STIs and pregnancy is condoms. Condoms are an example of a barrier method of contraception. As the word barrier suggests, something is put between the sperm and the ovum. A condom is a rubber sheath worn by the man,” the resource states.
One teacher aid about how to answer a question about sexual temptation seems to suggest that sexual wrongdoing only happens when people do not obtain mutual consent.
“People can feel pressured to do things that they know are wrong and against God’s plan for the gift of sexuality. Sometimes our friends can try to convince us that we want to do something that we truly do not, or know we should not. A clear yes is the only way to communicate consent,” the resource states.
At no point is premarital sex called ‘fornication’ or ‘mortal sin.’ Instead, students are told that the “danger of premarital sex is the possibility of bonding to the wrong person for an indefinite period of time, increasing the risk of unwanted pregnancies and STIs.”
Grade 8
Students are taught what the resource calls the “Catholic understanding of gender identity and gender expression.” They learn the “concepts of transgender and gender expression…Students will examine Catholic teaching on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and the factors that help all individuals develop a healthy self-concept.”
Teachers are warned that they must not recommend to students “any kind of gender transitioning actions such as hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery” not because such actions are considered by the Church to be gravely immoral, but because teachers are “not counsellors or physicians, and such recommendations are clearly not ours to make.”
Teachers discuss with students “sexual feelings, differences between males and females regarding sexual arousal, sexual fantasies.”
Students are drilled about the difference between gender and sex. “Our biological sex refers to the body parts, external genitals, internal reproductive organs…Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings and behaviours,” the resource states.
The resource states that while the Catholic Church “teaches that sex and gender are biologically determined, and cannot be separated” it casts the position into doubt by immediately stating that some people, as well as various governments, “define and understand these two terms differently.”
“While understanding or defining sex and gender as separate and distinct terms is not consistent with the teaching of the Catholic church, and does not reflect a Catholic understanding of the human person and the nature of human sexuality, it is a perspective that is recognized in law and should be acknowledged and respected,” the resource states.
Students are taught that “to be truly Catholic is to respect diversity.”
Students are drilled about avoiding stereotyping. “A stereotype is a general belief about a group of people that may reduce human persons to a single aspect of their identity. They are often untrue and may be harmful because they may lead to unfair judgement, prejudice, and discrimination,” the resource states, adding that girls playing with dolls and boys playing with trucks is an example of stereotyping.
“We must be careful not to stereotype, judge, and attach labels to others,” students are told.
Students are told that Natural Family Planning is a “way of managing fertility without the use of chemicals or devices,” and this method is juxtaposed along with an explanation of the “barrier method” and the “chemical method” of contraception.
One teacher prompt ambiguously states: “You might highlight the important point that all methods of family planning involve fundamental values, in particular, the gift of fertility.”
‘They're mixing up these children’
Anne Stewart, an activist opposing the sex-ed who filed the Freedom of Information request to find out the cost paid to ICE to reframe the sex-ed according to Catholic teaching, called the taxpayer money spent a waste. She said it’s impossible to reframe material that is already deeply flawed.“It doesn't do anything to counteract what the government is putting in,” Stewart told reporters, noting at what great lengths the provincial government is willing to go to make sure Ontario students are exposed to the radical ideas in the new sex-ed.
Stewart criticized the Catholic Church for not standing up to the provincial government and saying “no, we are not doing this.”
“They're mixing up these children. It's not right. It's Premier Wynne and her agenda and they're putting that on our children. And parents aren't aware of what's going on,” she said.
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