In reality, it's about as much use as telling kids they could try using crossed fingers as contraception.

It has no relevance to the real conditions in which they will find themselves.

Parents know this.

They see the uselessness of lecturing Gen Z children that "the church's teaching on marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted" when, according to a recent US poll, nearly 40pc of their age group identify as LGBTQ+.

They recognise the futility of trying to insert Catholic morals into a conversation on sex when, by the time they are 12 years of age, 53pc of Irish boys and 23pc of girls have already accessed pornography online and will be using it as the basis for their own self-directed learning about the etiquette and norms surrounding sexuality in the digital age.

They despair of the fruitlessness of framing sexuality as an expression and instrument of God's love when, in a few years' time, they will be waving their children off to third-level institutions where the rates of sexual harassment and assault are shockingly high.

There's not much that prayer can do to protect them then.

Social Democrat TD Gary Gannon wants to see access to secular, medically-based sex education guaranteed to every school-going child in the State, starting from primary.

Last week, he introduced a bill that would enshrine that right in law.

He is concerned sex education should not cast old shadows of shame over relationships that do not conform to the ones sanctioned by the church.

He wants a programme that provides "objective information, precisely because of religious teaching that places one form of relationship in a hierarchy over others".

Most Irish adults would probably agree sex education should be inclusive.

But in this regard, society and the dynamism of youth has already done a great deal of the work.

It's hard to imagine that teenagers today, confronted with much of the material in the Flourish programme, with its heteronormative message, would do anything other than laughing it off as a ridiculous relic from another age.

I finished my primary education in the early 1990s.

I was in an all-girls convent school and I still remember the collective mortification the day our headmistress, Sister Dominic, made an ill-judged attempt to enlighten us about the ways of the world before we headed off to the bright lights of secondary school.

She got a few sentences into her speech about the birds and the bees, but fell apart at the word "penis".

After a few failed attempts to say it, she turned bright red and ran out of the room.

But we can't afford to be blushing and running out of the room where sex education is concerned, especially given the challenges facing school-age children today as they approach adulthood.

A new Relationships and Sexuality Education programme is being drafted that places consent front and centre, which is welcome and much needed. Policy-makers, we are assured, are in the process of re-evaluating what we need sex education to achieve.

At the moment, the goal of risk reduction and sexual health means sex education programmes are concerned mostly with avoiding accidental pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease.

But a more enlightened approach to sex education in schools would follow the Norwegian model and would not balk at the notion of addressing the importance of sex for pleasure and as an instrument of personal and relational well-being. Continue reading

The document is titled He Anga Whakamarama - Te Matauranga Hokakatanga: He puka arahi ma nga hapori Katorika o Aotearoa (Framing Document - Human Sexuality Education: A guide for Catholic communities in Aotearoa New Zealand).

It examines the Catholic Church's understanding of human sexuality and the reasons why it is an essential area for exploration and teaching within Catholic schools and communities.

"The Framing Document offers both the foundations for why we should teach about human sexuality as well as practical guidance for what should be taught, how and by whom at appropriate ages," says Colin MacLeod Director of the National Centre for Religious Studies.

"It also places this rich Catholic teaching in the context of Aotearoa."

In his forward Bishop Patrick Dunn says: "He Anga Whakamarama, Te Matauranga Hokakatanga: He puka arahi ma nga hapori Katorika o Aotearoa provides a considerable level of detail and thoughtfulness to support human sexuality education in Aotearoa."

"It is grounded in rich Catholic understanding and gives practical and constructive guidance for educators working in this field, particularly for those in Catholic schools".

"The Catholic Bishops of Aotearoa New Zealand wish to commend this document as a guide for human sexuality education in this land, and to assure educators and whanau of their prayerful support."

Macleod says the National Centre for Religious Studies believes that the document will be a significant reference, particularly for Catholic schools, and a resource for broader dialogue about this wonderful area in the development of the human person.

Click here to read He Anga Whakamarama - Te Matauranga Hokakatanga: He puka arahi ma nga hapori Katorika o Aotearoa

Source:

• Supplied: David McLoughlin
  Communications Adviser, NZ Catholic Bishops
  Te Huinga o nga Pihopa Katorika o Aotearoa
• Image: screenshot faithcentral

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 teachers more skills and tools to manage more sensitive issues, such as consent, sexual violence, and the harmful impact of pornography. Read more

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 every single day," she said. "They want me and they don't want me."

On June 10, the Vatican released a document that seems to seek to clarify the ambivalence Fay and other transgender Catholics have described.

It is the most comprehensive document on gender identity the Vatican has ever released.

Called "Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Questions of Gender Theory in Education," the document aims to address what it calls "educational crisis" surrounding sexuality and gender.

But its conclusion has not been received favorably by trans Catholics; it says that Catholic schools must help teach young people that gender is fixed at birth.

According to the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican office that released the document, "gender theory" has misled people to think that gender is different from biological sex.

"Oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative' display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks', and one which, in fact, ignores the suffering of those who have to live situations of sexual indeterminacy," the authors write.

The announcement comes at a time when trans people's rights are under threat on a national level.

Last month the Trump administration announced a proposal to roll back protections for discrimination against trans people by healthcare providers.

Transgender people make up only 0.6 percent of the US population, and they are about 8 times as likely to report attempting suicide than the rest of the population.

This rate rises even higher depending on the type of discrimination they are subject to, says a 2014 study by the Williams Institute.

It is not clear why the Congregation for Catholic Education has decided to weigh in on gender identity now.

The past few years have seen a rapid increase in conversations about LGBTQ Catholics within the church — the Vatican used the acronym LGBT for the first time in June of last year, in a document written for a meeting of bishops in Rome. In a final version of the document, the acronym was removed.

In the United States, attitudes of Catholics have been shifting.

Sixty-eight percent of Catholics in the United States say they feel more supportive toward transgender rights than they did five years ago, compared to 62 percent of the general population, according to a survey conducted this year by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

In 2017, Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, wrote "Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBTQ Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity," a book that affirmed LGBTQ Catholics and received praise from several bishops as well as members of the LGBTQ community for advancing the conversation on this topic.

The new document talks about gender and transgender people in a less polemical way than the church has done previously. (Pope Francis, for example, has in the past compared arguments for transgender rights to those for nuclear weapons.)

It dedicates a section to "Listening" and "Points of Agreement" that concedes that "unjust discrimination" has been "a sad fact of history" and has taken place within the church.

But it also reiterates views that the pope and the US bishops has expressed which characterize transgender people as "choosing" their gender on gender, which themselves have been called transphobic and discriminatory by some trans Catholics.

So what does this mean for transgender Catholics? Here, five trans Catholics respond. Continue reading

• Image: ABC

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.

Catholic schools must help parents teach young people that biological sex and gender are naturally fixed at birth and part of God's plan for creation, the Congregation says.

However the document, published during LGBT Pride Month, was immediately denounced by LGBT Catholics as contributing to bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people.

Gay advocacy group New Ways Ministry says the document, which rejects the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insists on the sexual "complementarity" of men and women to make babies, would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm.

The Congregation rejects this idea, saying the Catholic Church and those proposing a looser definition of gender can find common ground.

It says common ground can be found in "a laudable desire to combat all expressions of unjust discrimination," in educating children to respect all people "in their peculiarity and difference," in respecting the "equal dignity of men and women" and in promoting respect for "the values of femininity."

While agreeing it's important to be very careful to respect and provide care for persons who "live situations of sexual indeterminacy," the document also points out that those who teach in the name of the Catholic Church must help young people understand that being created male and masculine or female and feminine is part of God's plan for them.

Those who see gender as a personal choice or discovery unconnected to biological sex are, in fact, promoting a vision of the human person that is "opposed to faith and right reason," the document says.

Not so, says Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who wrote "Building a Bridge" - a book about improving Catholic Church outreach to the LGBT community.

"The real-life experiences of LGBT people seem entirely absent from this document."

"We should welcome the Congregation's call to dialogue and listening on gender, and I hope that conversation will now begin," he says.

Image

• PBS News Hour
• CNS
• AP
• The Guardian
• Vatican News
• Image:Crux Now

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 taught if it arrives as previously advertised".

The new curriculum has been reported as being "soft on sexual consent in marriage and denigrates the lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) community".

Regardless of what the curriculum developers say, Notley says the health and well-being of students comes first.

"Nowhere do the rights of religious freedom extend to that person's right to somehow attack or hurt others — and that's what's happening here," Notley told the Canadian Press last week.

"We will not use public dollars to have sexual health programmes that deny science, that deny evidence, and that deny human rights.

"They [the developers] can continue to work on the proposal all they want, but we ultimately approve the curriculum that goes into schools — and this kind of curriculum will not happen."

Catholic school superintendents crafting the curriculum say the government's teaching plan clashes with faith-based instruction.

They reject the current curriculum because it includes, among other topics, homosexual relationships and gender identity that is different from one's biological sex.

In documents filed with the province, the superintendents also take issue with sexual consent by a partner in marriage.

They say it is only one of many factors to be considered along with morality, family and wellness.

Notley says consent is paramount and no debate will be entered into.

Source

• Patheos
• CBC News
• The Globe and Mail
• CTV News
• Image: Blog Canoe.com

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 the 1960s and 70s" . This is no longer occurring, he says.

"I don't think our kids have that now, and I don't think the church authorities would want us to have it."

Swindells told Thomas he did not like the word abstinence.

"I always like to say your sexuality is a gift, it's something precious, and the church teaches us we should save it till we're married.

"But we also understand not everyone can do that, and we're not sitting in judgment.

"In a way, the new Pope has given us considerable freedom to try to be relevant to the kids and the times that we're teaching in."

Different types of contraception - including the IUD, the pill and the emergency contraceptive are taught at the school under an umbrella of "fertility awareness".

Director of religious education Sarah Parkinson is realistic about what students are up to.

She knows there are some sexually active year nines at the school, she knows what research says about pornography and she knows some students are gay.

Recently a student stood up in assembly and said they wanted to start an LGBT group. Now it has about ten members and roughly four staff who support it.

The students say accepting minority groups all comes down to the greatest commandment - treat others as you would like to be treated.

"It coincides with when we get taught about human dignity - everyone has the same value of life," year 12 student Bernard Tolovaa says.

Sexuality education is one of seven key areas of learning in Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum.

In December 2001 it became a requirement for sexuality education to be taught within a broader programme up to and including Year Ten.

At senior levels, students' achievements can be assessed against unit or achievement standards within the National Qualifications Framework.

Boards of trustees are required to consult their community at least every two years on how the school intends to implement their draft health curriculum.

Schools try hard to respect differences in culture and religion.

A parent or caregiver has the right to withdraw their child from particular parts of sexuality education by writing to the principal.

Source

• Stuff
• TKI
• Ministry of Education
• Ministry for Women
• Image: Stuff

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.

Some of its conclusions were startling and probably for many, unexpected.

The studies in the Cochrane review were all randomised controlled trials from Europe, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Most were of high quality and had follow-ups at between 18 months and seven years.

The sex education programmes they investigated included peer and teacher-led education and "innovative uses" of drama and group work.

What did the Cochrane Review find?

One finding of the review was that providing a small cash payment, or giving away a free school uniform, can encourage students to remain at school, especially in places where there are financial barriers to attending.

Such incentives to stay at school reduced pregnancy rates by around a quarter and also reduced sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in both girls and boys.

However, the more surprising, and no doubt controversial, finding (to many) will be the admission that the mainstay of the current approach to sex education is not working.

School-based sexual and reproductive health programmes are widely accepted and implemented as an approach to reducing high-risk sexual behaviour among adolescents.

But the Cochrane review found that sex education programmes do not reduce pregnancy and STIs among the young. In fact, they have no effect on adolescent pregnancy and STI rates.

"As they are currently designed, sex education programmes alone probably have no effect on the number of young people infected with HIV, other STIs or the number of pregnancies," said lead author of the review, Dr Mason-Jones. Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet article by Philippa Taylor, head of public policy for the Christian Medical Fellowship in the UK.
• Image: Wiki Sex Education

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. Rick Fitzgibbons, a counseling center director who has been a consultant to the Congregation for the Clergy at the Vatican and has served as adjunct professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America.

In an essay published by LifeSiteNews, Fitzgibbons warns that the material found in the Vatican's newly-released sex education program The Meeting Point "constitutes sexual abuse of Catholic adolescents" and contains pornographic images "similar to those used by adult sexual predators of adolescents.

"In a culture in which youth are bombarded by pornography, I was particularly shocked by the images contained in this new sex education program, some of which are clearly pornographic," Fitzgibbons wrote.

"My immediate professional reaction was that this obscene or pornographic approach abuses youth psychologically and spiritually.

"… As a professional who has treated both priest perpetrators and the victims of the abuse crisis in the Church, what I found particularly troubling was that the pornographic images in this program are similar to those used by adult sexual predators of adolescents."

Fitzgibbons called for Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who oversaw the development and release of the program when he was head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to be evaluated according to norms adopted by the United States Catholic Bishops in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.

Paglia "should be required in justice to go through an evaluation by a review board as described in the Dallas Charter norms for placing youth at risk," Fitzgibbons wrote.

Source

• WND
• Image: faithandreason.com

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 July.

Headed by Italian Archbishop Vicenzo Paglia, the Council launched a website with materials both for students and educators called "The Meeting Point, project for affective and sexual formation."

"Cultural, legislative and educational projects directly or indirectly challenge the Christian vision of the body, of the difference and the complementarity between man and woman, the exercise of sexuality, marriage and the family," Paglia wrote in the project's introduction.

These projects, he wrote, want to legitimize the different ways in which sexuality is lived in society.

This will be achieved "by proposing visions that constitute a real anthropological change, which impedes the affirmation of sexual identity, virtues, values and attitudes that integrate the body and the affections in the vocation to love that is the basis of the whole project of human life and of the good life according to the Gospel."

As of Sept.1, Paglia's office will be absorbed by a new, larger Vatican department, the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, headed by American Bishop Kevin Farrell.

Paglia was recently appointed by Pope Francis as head of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.

Divided into six units, the project is a response to Francis' document on the family, Amoris Laetitia.

In one of its passages, the pontiff writes: "It is not easy to approach the issue of sex education in an age when sexuality tends to be trivialized and impoverished.

"It can only be seen within the broader framework of an education for love, for mutual self-giving."

Source

• Crux
• Image: time.com

Speaking in response to questions raised by the Fiji Times newspaper about explicit sex education for Year 7 and Year 8 students, the church's secretary for education, Waisake Ravatu, said they were already aware of and had raised concerns with the Education Ministry about sex education in a subject called Healthy Living.

Concerns have been raised by parents, grandparents and the Fiji Teachers Union about what children were taught.

The grandparent of a child at a prominent primary school in Lautoka has raised his concerns about sexually explicit material being taught and boyfriend-girlfriend relationships being encouraged during Healthy Living classes.

"I cannot believe they are exposing 11 and 12-year-old children to these types of teachings because it goes totally against what we teach our children at home," said the grandparent.

"My grandson was very upset by what was taught because we teach our children Christian beliefs that build character by upholding the virtues in the Holy Bible."

The Fiji Teachers Union has called on the Ministry of Education to immediately remove sex education material in text books for Years 7 and 8 students.

Teachers have said since the subject was introduced last year, there had been a marked change in the behaviour of students of the opposite sex towards each other.

Education Minister Dr Mahendra Reddy has ordered an investigation into claims by concerned parents that inappropriate information was being shared in the Year 7 and Year 8 Healthy Living tutorials.

Source

• fijitimes.com
• fijitimes.com
• fijtimes.com
• Image: i.telegraph.co.uk

The subtitle for the session was "teaching pleasure within your sexuality education programme."

At the conference teachers were shown pamphlets that said sex talks should include a discussion about pleasure.

"There is a fear of talking about pleasure," it said.

Family Planning health promoter Vicky Burgess-Munro said traditional sex education focused on "negative findings" like avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

She said research in 2005 by New Zealand-based Louisa Allen showed pupils were looking for a more positive view of sexuality.

"They were sick of being told just the basics ... They wanted to know how to be good lovers, how to get the most, and most positive, out of their relationships."

Some secondary school principals have been left feeling uneasy.

Christchurch Boys' High principal Nic Hill said it was "interesting ground" but he could not imagine his staff wanting to "get in to technique."

"I'm a little surprised. I don't think that will be happening at Boys' High."

Burnside High School principal Phil Holstein, who is also Canterbury Westland Secondary Principals' Association chairman, said he did not feel comfortable with the advice and he was sure his teachers would feel the same.

"Nor is it appropriate in the form of the health syllabus. I don't think it was ever intended that those things be discussed."

Family Planning provides a range of services to schools, including co-teaching, teacher professional development and resources.

The Ministry of Education recently overhauled its sexuality education guidelines for the first time in more than 10 years. Sexuality education: a guide for principals, boards of trustees, and teachers was released in May.

At the time, student achievement deputy secretary Graham Stoop said schools wanted to be able to give students with the right skills to navigate relationships and keep themselves safe.

Sexuality education is a compulsory part of the health curriculum but schools are free to decide how they teach it.

They do this in consultation with their school community and must consult every two years.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: penz.org.nz

In an article in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Dr Neil Pickering and Dr Lynley Anderson from the university's Bioethics Centre and Dr Helen Paterson from its Department of Women's and Children's Health say teen pregnancy places significant costs on the individual and society, and is associated with higher perinatal mortality.

Dr Pickering says there is a good case for making it an opt-out programme which provides adolescents with the opportunity to have a LARC, rather than having to go and seek care. Continue reading

The chief executive of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, Br Sir Patrick Lynch, spoke about an experiment at James Cook High School in south Auckland.

Condoms were given to teens as young as 15 as they went on study break for their end of year exams in 2011.

According to an article on the Stuff website, the experiment has been deemed so successful in terms of lowering teen pregnancy rates that researchers are calling for the approach to be rolled out at schools across the country.

The article reported Br Sir Patrick saying parents should be told if condoms are being given to teens as young as 15.

"It's skidding on thin ice if they are not telling parents," he said.

"We're not talking about 30-year-olds or 20-year-olds, we're talking about minors."

When it comes to reducing teen pregnancy rates, parents and schools must work together, he said.

"You must build a trust environment with the parents."

The condom give-aways were prompted after James Cook High discovered 12 of its girls returned to school pregnant after the summer holidays in 2011.

Three Auckland University nursing students came up with the idea of distributing the free condoms, which were put inside sex education pamphlets.

Among the advice given in the pamphlets was information as to where to get the morning after pill.

Now, four years later, no teens have returned to decile one school pregnant after the summer.

And the school's NCEA academic results have improved by 30 per cent since that time.

But principal Vaughan Couillault said there's more to the academic improvement than a minor intervention in sexual health guidance.

He said the school provides a range of services, with quality teaching being the main driver behind student achievement.

James Cook High has an on-site health clinic offering sex education advice.

New Zealand has the second highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world.

Sources

• Stuff
• Newstalk ZB
• ABC

The Ministry of Education is due to release the new blueprint in December, nine months after an advisory panel recommended teens be taught respectful attitudes as a core part of the overhaul.

The health select committee recommendations were designed to push the focus of what teens learn beyond the physical mechanics of sex and reproduction after an 18-month inquiry found "fragmented and uneven programmes", which it partly blamed for the high teenage pregnancy rate. Read More

Indeed, it's true that many Catholic universities traditionally ended the conversations on sex and underage drinking with a simple, "just say no!"

And yet, students attending Catholic colleges do not differ from students at other colleges, with sex and drinking nationally starting before college.

Recent surveys suggest the average age Americans start having sex is 17, and the average age of first use of alcohol is 14.

With 95 percent of Americans having sex before marriage, it's safe to say there's a bit of a gap between the official university policies and actual student behavior.

Moving beyond the stereotype, I suspect the traditional Catholic abstinence-only model isn't as black and white as some people may have painted it.

I spoke the other day with a recently graduated R.A. from a Catholic college who told me the way he was trained to handle sexual issues on campus.

"Sex is not allowed at this school between unmarried students," his Resident Director told him in training.

"But if sexual situations occur, including unwanted sexual acts," he said, dropping to a more hushed tone, "there are some off-campus resources for you to give students including counseling and comprehensive health centers that I'll email you."

This workaround mentality, while well-intentioned, doesn't seem that effective for students who may be uneducated about sexual responsibility, alcohol's effect on the sexual experience, and the shame reaction that occurs after sexual assault.

With a recent poll claiming 1 in 5 women experience sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during college, the "sex doesn't happen, but if it does, deal with it off campus" attitude seems to be a major pastoral missed opportunity.

This week's video, however, proves this stereotype is becoming less and less accurate. Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Week

A Herald-DigiPoll survey shows the there is support for this recommendation. Three-quarters believed that high-school pupils needed to be taught more than the mechanics of sex.

The Prime Minister, however, has reservations. He suggested the Government would have to tread carefully because some parents felt expanded sex education would cut across their responsibilities and rights. Continue reading

The guidelines commissioned by Family Planning are designed to help teachers of students in Years 1 to 4, and will cover body parts and differences between boys and girls - but not sex.

Co-author and Canterbury University education lecturer Tracy Clelland said the guidelines focused on identity, self-worth, friendships, relationships, being confident in yourself and expressing emotions. Continue reading

The report, released today, concludes that the overall message to young people is that sex is okay as long as you use a condom.

But schools and sex education providers say the report - commissioned by conservative lobby group Family First - is sometimes homophobic and fails to recognise the changing world in which young people live. Continue reading