Sex Education

Last Summer of 2011, when the riots that caused headlines such as 'London's Burning' were emblazoned across newspapers, many different reasons were given for the sudden and totally unexpected explosion of youth riots that occurred in London and then provincial cities and towns across the United Kingdom.

Different commentators offered different insights into why this shocking behaviour by Britains' youth occurred. And yet, perhaps the most informative insight was given by the Holy Father himself. The Catholic Herald reported that:

'In a speech welcoming Nigel Baker, Britain’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Benedict XVI said: “When policies do not presume or promote objective values, the resulting moral relativism, instead of leading to a society that is free, fair, just and compassionate, tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others.'

The fact that these riots involved a great many children and young people is telling. What the Holy Father indicated is that the riots in the Summer were an outer manifestation of an inner reality. The British youth, those who rioted, were educated under liberalism, according to the values, or distorted values of liberalism, and showed the world just how effective liberalism can be in destroying objective moral values. The riots, now seemingly forgotten, were bad. The riots were frightening.

The riots themselves, however, were just a snapshot of what is already here in the United Kingdom and what is to come. This does not necessarily mean weekly riots in the United Kingdom, no, because riots themselves can be quashed and policed. What it means is that we have reached a point in the history of the United Kingdom when children are brought up without objective moral values to such a degree that the moral landscape of Britain is enshrouded in darkness. The buildings of various cities burned last Summer, but the charred remains were symbolic of a generation of children who believed that nothing around them was of value but that which could be stolen.

As Marxists say of capitalism, liberalism's long and winding march to collapse is borne out of its inherent contradictions. Marxists believe that capitalism will collapse because of its inherent contradictions which will lead inexorably to anarchy. Liberalism, on the other hand, unleashes a different kind of anarchy. The anarchy that liberalism unleashes is moral anarchy. The difference is that even though liberal societies will collapse due to their inherent contradictions, moral anarchy can, perversely, be managed. It can only be managed, however, by an incredibly strong, over-bearing and all-powerful State.

For let us be in no doubt. The State raised these children and will continue to raise children who believe exactly what the State has taught them - namely - that there are no objective moral values or timeless truths which appeal to the development of their virtue. For a long time now, the State, in its education of the young has been teaching children to do quite as they please, regardless of the consequences. This is not to say that the State has been teaching children to steal from shops. No, that would be false. No school teacher tells children to steal. However, children have been taught 'explicitly' how not to cherish the most sacred and intimate arena of human life. That is, sex and human sexuality.

Liberals believe that when religious people talk of the sacredness of human sexuality and of the human need for marriage in order for sexual activity to be given dignity, that those religious people are mere 'prudes' who find sex disgusting and repulsive. For the most part, this simply is not true. The Christian religion sees sex as a gift from Almighty God for the union of a man and a woman in a unitive and procreative relationship, indeed, an exclusive relationship, until Death parts them. Liberals often ask why the Church is 'obsessed with sex'. The answer is that if the Church is obsessed with sex, it is because the Church acknowledges that sexual activity is the most intimate activity which can take place between two people in all of human life. Two people can pray together, that is a lofty and indeed holy bond between those persons. However, the most intimate activity that two people can engage in together will always be sexual intercourse. It is precisely because sex is the most intimate activity that can take place between two people in human life that it is vital that children are taught to respect it as if it were holy and sacred.

Now, as everybody knows, it has been a long while since children were taught in the United Kingdom anything that remotely resembles a Christian vision of sexual morality, because it has become fashionable for it to be disregarded or even ridiculed by society at large. In fact, if a teacher held a traditional Chrisitan notion of sexual morality and tried to pass that on to his or her pupils, he or she may even find themselves without a job, because the State has placed strict rules on sex education in the classrooms of schools, indeed, even Christian schools. The rules are not strict in the traditional sense of the word. They are strict in as much as sex education is to be taught with as little moral content as possible, because to give an objective moral character to sex education would be to defy liberalism's chief tenet - that there is no objective moral order from which we can derive our values.

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, there are forces at work who may even benefit from the results of this approach in terms of teenage pregnancy, homosexuality, contraception and abortion, but we shall examine these issues later. Let us remain focused on the point I have made. If the most intimate activity that any human being can engage in with another human being has been taught to children to have no objective moral character whatsoever, and sex is emptied of its high and noble meaning, then for the child, why should any activity in human life have any objective moral meaning, and even if it does, how can it be respected? If what goes to the very heart of what it means to be human is deprived of objective moral meaning, then how can any area of morality have any objective moral meaning?

Children take things at face value because they trust those who instruct and educate them both at home and in school. Liberalism treats sex and human sexuality incredibly lightly. Too lightly. In modern Britain, sex takes place in a moral vacuum. Liberalism espouses the view that Christian morality deprives or robs sex of its meaning - a meaning founded on the pleasure principle. It is this principle, the pleasure principle, that is most valued and protected by liberalism to the exclusion of a set of objective moral values which can be given to sexual activity. Perhaps, here, we can see, in liberalism, the hangover or a rejection of the Protestant Reformation in the United Kingdom and many parts of Europe which equates all sex with impurity - Puritanism - a heresy which denies the essential good the Creator gave to man and woman in giving man and woman the gift of spousal love and the conjugal relationship. Britain's uneasy relationship with even marital sex can be seen from the phrase 'No Sex Please, We're British', lampooned by a British Broadway play in 1971. Carry On films also took a comedic slant on British discomfort with sex.

Culturally speaking, the sexual revolution of the 1960s perhaps owes as much in the United Kingdom to an innate British discomfort with sexuality and attending sexual repression as it does to the alluring appeal of the so-called 'free love' generation that dismantled it. The same can be said of the USA which was also never truly exposed to the Catholic vision of human sexuality and which was dominated by Puritan ideology. It is therefore understandable, more so here and in the US, than in culturally Catholic Spain, Italy or France that the pleasure principle is defended so vehemently against any Christian morality, since it is widely believed that Christianity destroys the unique joy of sexual love that the Church proclaims to be sacred and given a holy purpose and unique dignity within holy matrimony.

It is only when we appreciate the huge polar shift in the cultural psyche that therefore occurred in the 1960s, and what preceded it, that we understand why it is now that the pleasure principle is defended to the exclusion of Christian morality in schools and in the home, because Christianity is perceived to be a threat to human freedom, when, in fact, it is the opposite. True Christianity is now and always will be the liberator of the enslaved. It is only when we appreciate how vehemently the pleasure principle is defended in the school and in society to the exclusion of a Christian vision of human sexuality that we can appreciate why we are fashioning for ourselves generations of children with no objective morality and who have become now and will continue to become 'a law unto themselves'. For let us be in no doubt. True Christian sexual morality, as taught by the Catholic Church, is more subversive to the present political, social and moral order of the United Kingdom than is any other human ideology or, indeed, any terrorist.

The State and society, governed and ruled largely by people who hold the 1960s up as the turning point for a more progressive and tolerant society founded on individual, subjective, personal freedoms will defend, to the last, the pleasure principle in sexual morality to the exclusion of Christian morality because to go 'back' to a traditional Christian morality which is by all accounts objectively healthier for all of society, morally, culturally, spiritually, would be to abandon a social project that is simply too big to fail. It is a social project that the State will always bail out, no matter what the cost because the liberal social project is ideologically 'too big to fail'. It is 'too big to fail' because it defines what society is now as opposed to what society once was deemed to be and what society must never be again - sexually repressive.

Prime Minister, David Cameron himself has suggested that the riots are evidence of 'Broken Britain'. Unfortunately, his problem (and the problem for all of the United Kingdom) is that unless objective moral values are once again placed at the heart of what children learn about sexual morality then the problem will become bigger and the State will have to become bigger in order to deal with the consequences. That is why the United Kingdom will become a dystopia. As we are seeing in the USA, the defense of the liberal cause will even resort to force against the Church because there can be 'no going back'. There, in order to defend the pleasure principle to the exclusion of Christian sexual morality, the Church must be compelled to acquiesce with the liberal agenda or She will have Her freedom removed. In order to defend licence, the Church's licence must be removed.

As we see with David Cameron's desire to redefine marriage in the United Kingdom to contradict its original meaning, the liberal agenda is not necessarily conspiratorial against the Church in intention. Only the paranoid would imagine that parliamentarians are sitting around together considering the best way to crush and silence the Catholic Church. No. It is just that the liberal cause guided by the pleasure principle unleashed to the exclusion of Christian morality in the 1960s is a cause held so dear, by so very many, that even when the education of the nation's children, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI 'tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others' the guiding principle must be upheld and if the Catholic Church has to be silenced as part of the process, then that is a freedom worth sacrificing for the good of the social project. Even the Conservative Party in the 21st century would rather that the power and size of the State become bigger and more all-pervasive over human activity than at any time in history, than for that guiding principle to be lost.

As I have said, the Catholic Church is under threat in the United Kingdom and large parts of the Western world because of sex and sexuality and the advancement of the liberal interpretation of both. We Catholics know what we believe about these things. We may not always live up to the high ideals that God desires that we live up to, but we do know what we believe and if for some reason we do not know what we believe, then we as Catholics have a moral duty to educate ourselves and others on what we believe and why.

Both sex and sexuality are treated with such frivolous contempt in modern society that even children are educated within our schools on how to put on condoms of a myriad different colours and flavours, but next to nothing about when to have sex and who to have sex with. And yes, I am talking about Catholic schools as well. So, what is the Catholic response to the question 'When should I have sex?' The answer is, 'When you are married'. What is the answer to the question, 'Who should I have sex with?' The answer is, 'Your husband or wife, who is the opposite of your gender.' Catholic teaching on sex and sexuality really is that simple, yet even in Catholic schools, so we hear, this is not taught very effectively. Why? Well, partly because we have over-complicated things for ourselves and partly because things have been made more complicated for us.

In a particularly highly sexualised society in which human beings are reduced to sexual commodities, sexual imagery is everywhere in newspapers, magazines, on TV, the internet, billboard posters and shop windows. People who complain about this are, again, derided as Victorian prudes, but the obvious outcome, whether you take a liberal view on this, or not, is that the very adult world of sexuality is introduced to children at a very tender age. If you take what the government tell its citizens about their response to rates of teenage pregnancy and the ongoing rise of STIs at face value, then the idea of throwing artificial contraception at pubescent children and hoping for the best is simply the best that we can do because as soon as childrens' bodies start changing, 'they are going to do it anyway'. Well, in a highly charged sexualised society, they very well might. The question is, is that really the best that we can do for children, or even, dare I say it, ourselves?

St Ignatius of Loyola said, "Give me a child his first seven years and I'll give you the man". Nowadays, I suppose that quote would receive jeers from those who believe that because a proportionally very small minority of Catholic priests have been guilty of crimes against the child, that that is a jolly funny quote. That would, however, miss the point of what the Saint was saying. Ignatius was saying that it is an adult educator's task to assist the child to develop virtue because it is virtue that makes the man, rather than vice. Vice will lead children not only away from their Creator, but into teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. It is not the educator’s role to decide or to pre-empt what children will do on becoming adults. That will always be the choice of the child or the teenager or the adult. It is the educator's role to encourage children to acquire virtue and to pass on those values that will help that child to flourish as a child into an adult. Even if an educator retains a natural pessimism about the human condition, frail as it is, or even knows that not all of his or her students will respond favourably to an education in virtue, his or her chief role is to do his or her best to help the student to attain it.

Now, while words like 'virtue' and 'vice' are rather unfashionable in modern day Britain, there is little doubt about that, objectively speaking, we know that these things exist. We know these things exist because we see them in operation in ourselves and we read about them in the newspapers every day. And despite what liberal parents and indeed most parents believe about sex in their personal lives, few parents are happy if they receive the news that their young daughter is pregnant at the age of 14. Nowadays, the phrase that is used when teenagers become pregnant is 'Why did they not use protection?'

Yet, surely, this is missing the point. Surely, a better question is, 'Why is my 14-year-old having sex when she is still, really, a child?' And, sadly, the reason that this question is asked less and less is because children are sexualised so very early in their lives that many parents assume that their children are already having sex. If a parent is shocked that their child is having sex at 14, or younger, even though the national legal age of consent is 16, then another factor comes into play. It may be that parents in modern Britain feel that, even if they want that which is best for their child, for the child to be chaste until marriage, or, in modern parlance 'to find a suitable partner at a suitable age' that they find it hard to say that because to say that would be 'judgmental' and if there is one thing you must not be in liberal society, it is 'judgmental'. No, not even as a parent towards your child. In many cases, peer pressure only adds to teenage boys' and girls' difficulties in resisting temptation at such a young age.

The Catholic Church does not deny for a moment the many pressures facing youngsters in their formative years to have sex very early in their lives. What the Catholic Church does say is that condoms and artificial contraception have, year upon year, study after study, statistic after statistic, failed to reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs among our young. Certainly, the rates of STIs or teenage pregnancies may go up or down slightly year to year, but the trend is clear. Condoms and other means of artificial contraception have not altered a trend towards early sexual activity and sexual promiscuity among the young at all. The opposite is the case. It is becoming more apparent that the State's reliance upon giving artificial contraception to the young exacerbates the problem.

So, why could that be? Let us return to the quote from St Ignatius of Loyola. St Ignatius was saying that the educator's role is to instil in the young moral values that will 'make the man' or, we could add, 'make the woman'. Now, while it is true that St Ignatius taught children to pray to God for help to become virtuous, and while it is true that the Catholic Church would never deny that virtue comes from God, who alone is All Good, there is no reason why virtue should not be encouraged and taught to children whether parents and teachers are Catholic or, indeed, not. Indeed, it is perhaps because Catholic schools are widely perceived to be centres of academic excellence which pass on timeless moral values that even non-Catholics wish to send their children to be educated by within their walls. Whether Catholic schools actually do that in modern Britain is another question which we can address later on.

The point is that whatever parents across the political, religious and social spectrum may think of Catholicism, whatever prejudices they may hold, the ideal taught by Catholicism, that children remain chaste in order to prepare for marriage to that 'special someone' is an objectively good teaching. Certainly, I believe, the overwhelming majority of parents would be happier for their children to come home to them at the age of 21 to tell them that they are to get married to someone with whom they are head over heels in love, rather than the news that they have fallen pregnant at the age of 14 to a boy of 15 or older, who had no interest in her whatsoever, other than a prize with which to impress his mates.

The likely response to this advice, given by the Church, is that 'it is unrealistic' or 'impossible' or 'unhelpful' or 'intolerant' even, to expect this ideal from children. Well, it is unrealistic, it is impossible, it isn't helpful and it will likely not be tolerated when government is content to play to the lowest common moral denominator imaginable to children, by aiming straight at their groins. If you expect children to have sex and you give children condoms, then children will have sex. If you make it clear you do not expect children to have sex, then at least they know where the boundaries are and will think even twice about crossing them. Furthermore, if you give children condoms telling them that these will protect them from STIs then you are deceiving them because, as we all know, the spread of various genital diseases, such as herpes, are not prevented by condoms and certainly are not prevented by the pill and I think I can speak for all parents when I say that no parent wants their child to contract herpes.

Yet, herpes is just what State schools, including Catholic schools, are promoting when they promote 'safe sex'. And, while 'safe sex' is doing little for the rates of STIs, neither is 'safe sex' doing a great deal for the heavily-government subsidised efforts to curb teenage pregnancy. There will be a veritable array of reasons why this is so, among which will be that all artificial contraception, including implants, condoms and the pill have 'failure rates' of which we are not really told. No artificial contraception, we know, claims to be 100% contraceptive. Condoms say so on the side of the packets in small writing. Then, as well as 'mechanical' error, we have the possibility for 'human error' in which girls and boys, one or both, decide that sex doesn't feel as good with a condom as it does without it. It surely does not take them long to discover that. Some condoms, as is well known, split. Then, we have, with the pill, the 'human error' that girls can forget to take it, as well as the 'medicinal error' that the best 'medication' in the world will always be vulnerable to failure in the world of storming human hormones. Nature, as they say, finds a way, like weeds grow from the cracks in concrete. Whatever the reasons, one thing is becoming more apparent annually. The current government approach is not working. So, if the current approach is not working, then why not change it? Unfortunately, the answer to that question depends on whether sex education, as it is, is for children, or some other party entirely.

These resources will refrain from entering into dispute over whether there are any vested interests involved in the continuation of a morally value-free sex education for children, other than to say that while sexually-transmitted infection and teenage pregnancy rates continue to remain steadily high in the United Kingdom, abortion rates, too, remain exponentially high. Everybody knows, I believe, what the Catholic Church teaches about abortion and why, but it will suffice for me to say that however many times the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) reassure the government and the citizens of the United Kingdom that abortion is a highly regrettable event for every woman, or indeed child, who enters their doors or those of Marie Stopes to procure one, the value-free sex education received by the modern British child continues to bring them more visitors on average, year upon year.

We must, naturally, take this charitable organisation at face value that they claim to work towards a society in which fewer abortions are desirable, even though they have been given the go-ahead by the UK Adverstising Standards Agency (ASA) to advertise their services on Channel 4. Could that possibly be a little reckless? Time will tell. There are lots of resources online which examine the pernicious evils of the abortion industry in greater detail, far more thoroughly than on this resource page with regard to abortion and they can be easily located.

Sorrowfully, however, offering an explanation for the Catholic Church's view of what sex education should be, but is not, cannot be completed without touching on a service present even in Catholic schools which should raise the temperature of the blood of all parents in the United Kingdom, whether they are Catholic or not. For, while it is true to say that in modern Britain, some parents, in seeking to protect their daughter's future, accompany the girl to the abortion clinic themselves, other parents do not even hear of their daughter's abortion at all. How can that be? More importantly, how can that be tolerated by the British public? The reason for this is that the Government's service to State schools called 'Connexions' is able to freely offer children a comprehensive and confidential counselling service which may result in a teenager obtaining an abortion referral, the morning-after pill, a medical or surgical abortion without the consent of parents.

While it is true to say that all parents in the United Kingdom may know the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion and artificial contraception, it is also most likely true to say that not all parents in the United Kingdom are aware that their teenage daughters, their own children, flesh and blood, are able to obtain both abortions and abortifacients through the confidential service offered by the government's school nurses without parental consent. Whatever the populace believes about abortion, I would have thought that it is every parents right to know if a daughter has had one, or is going to have one. After all, while the Catholic Church teaches that all children belong to God, who is the Father of all mankind, parents naturally regard children as their own. They are their own responsibility and their little treasures, princes and princesses.

That the government supply a chain of young customers to abortion clinics and serve children abortion pills without the consent of parents must surely raise serious concerns over whether the State believes that parents are the primary educators of children, within the care of parent's, or whether the State believes that children are the property of the State, who are now in competition with parents for parenthood of those children. More recently, in referring again to contraception, the Southampton NHS Trust has come under the spotlight for running a pilot scheme to give girls as young as 13 contraceptive implants, similarly, without their parents consent. Welcome to dystopia. Welcome to the brave new world. Welcome to the future of your country. Sadly and to the lamentable shame of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the services availed by 'Connexions' have been allegedly offered and accepted in Catholic schools as well. Quite how many referrals have taken place, we may never know, because, you see, its all confidential. It's just between your the child and the State and that leads us nicely into the next part of the essay.