A programme in 2021 that attempts to instruct children that puberty is a gift from God and “sexual love” is best expressed within the sacrament of marriage might reflect the church’s best hopes for our youth. In reality, it’s about as much use as telling kids they could try using crossed fingers as contraception. It Read more
The National Centre for Religious Studies has produced a new framing document for Catholic Schools and the wider Aotearoa Catholic community on human sexuality education. The document is titled He Anga Whakamārama – Te Mātauranga Hōkakatanga: He puka ārahi mā ngā hapori Katorika o Aotearoa (Framing Document – Human Sexuality Education: A guide for Catholic Read more
The Ministry of Education says in a one-month period 300,000 searches for pornographic material were blocked on school networks. Ministry representatives appeared before the Education and Workforce select committee to discuss a petition calling for better, more inclusive sex education. Associate deputy secretary Pauline Cleaver said the ministry is working on a plan to give Read more
When Colleen Fay of Mount Rainier, Maryland, came out as transgender 12 years ago to her parish music director, she was fired from her position on the choir. She later described feeling like she was in “doctrinal limbo” because there is no universal teaching on gender from the church. “I’m hurt by the Catholic Church Read more
The Vatican’s new gender education document “Male and female he created them” seeks to tackle what it calls “an educational crisis”. The Holy See’s Congregation for Catholic Education says the document is intended to help guide Catholic contributions to the ongoing debate about human sexuality and to address the challenges that emerge from gender ideology. Read more
A Catholic sex-education curriculum that questions the importance of “sexual consent” in marriage is causing a row in Canada. The curriculum, which is being developed for students from kindergarten to Grade 12 in Alberta, Canada, is being rejected by the province’s Premier Rachel Notley. Describing the curriculum as “dangerous”, Notley says it “will never be Read more
St Patrick’s College Wellington was one of four schools Stuff journalist Rachael Thomas asked recently how they teach sex and sexuality. The Rector of St Patrick’s, Neal Swindells, told her the Catholic perspective still plays a huge part. However, he believes that creating a sense of guilt was ” the worst thing the Catholic church did in Read more
Newly released last week, to muted publicity, was a comprehensive, reliable and rigorous Cochrane review of studies reviewing school-based interventions on sex education. This was a large review, combining peer-reviewed data from more than 55,000 young people from around the world. Cochrane reviews are internationally recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based health care resources. Read more
A sex education program recently released by the Vatican has been condemned by a renowned psychiatrist who has worked with victims of priestly sexual abuse and priest abusers. He says it is abusive and “the most dangerous threat to Catholic youth” he has seen in the past 40 years. The gravely concerned psychiatrist is Dr. Read more
A sex education guide from the Vatican seeks to avoid approaches that teach either too much about human sexuality to impressionable youth or too little. The move by the Pontifical Council for the Family came amid the frenzy of World Youth Day, which gathered millions of young people in Krakow, Poland at the end of Read more