By William Mahoney, PhD
Former abortion provider Carol Everett has said that sexual education programs “break down the natural modesty (of students), they separate them from their parents and their values.” This is done to create a gap between parents and children so that the children develop a mentality that their parents do not understand. “That’s when we gave them the low-dose birth control we know they’ll get pregnant on,” claimed Everett. Abortion providers, like Planned Parenthood, use sex education to manipulate children so that there are more babies to abort, since more abortions mean more money.
The Pontifical Council for the Family’s new sex education program, The Meeting Point: Project for Affective and Sexual Formation, clearly seeks to bring sex education—Planned Parenthood style—into Catholic school classrooms around the world.
The Catholic Church has made it clear in many places that parents are the primary educators of their children.
Pius XI: “Now it is certain that both by the law of nature and of God this right and duty of educating their offspring belongs in the first place to those who began the work of nature by giving them birth, and they are indeed forbidden to leave unfinished this work and so expose it to certain ruin” (Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930).
John Paul II: “Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them” (Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981).
Pontifical Council for the Family: “There are various ways of helping and supporting parents in fulfilling their fundamental right and duty to educate their children for love. Such assistance never means taking from parents or diminishing their formative right and duty, because they remain ‘original and primary,’ ‘irreplaceable and inalienable.’” (The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family, December 8, 1995).
The Meeting Point equivocally mentions parents in the presentation, but in reality, does not keep parents in the loop and puts sex education in the hands of others. This is contrary to Church teaching and frighteningly similar to Planned Parenthood’s method. Subverting parents is reason enough to jettison this project, but alarmingly, there is more.
The Meeting Point asks a mixed classroom to point out where sexuality is located in boys and girls; neither names nor denounces sexual behaviors such as fornication, adultery, masturbation, and homosexual activity; provides no teaching on the commandments, salvation, damnation, and the sacraments; shows suggestive images; recommends sexually explicit movies for catalysts to discussion; and does not mention Christ’s teaching on marriage—and this list is not exhaustive.
The Meeting Point is a treacherous project that strays dangerously far from Church teaching while drawing all too close to sex education as offered by Planned Parenthood. While the executives at the International Planned Parenthood Federation are celebrating this program, Catholic parents need to demand of their pastors, dioceses, and principals that this program be kept far from their children.
William Mahoney, PhD, is editor of ALL’s Celebrate Life Magazine, is a Doctor of Theology, and also holds a Dogmatic Licentiate of Sacred Theology.
