“The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality:
Guidelines for Education within the Family”
Pontifical Council for the Family, 1995
By Bishop Peter J. Elliott
In late 1995, the Pontifical Council for the Family published: The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family. These guidelines put parents and the family back at the centre of forming children in human sexuality. They overturn a widespread assumption that “sex education” should normally happen outside the family, usually in schools, through books or courses presented by people who are not members of the family.
The family-centred approach taken in The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality will not seem revolutionary to anyone who has read the teaching of Pope John Paul 11 in Familiaris Consortio 36 and 37. The Holy Father has consistently maintained and applied the classical Natural Law position of the Church: that the ”first educators” are parents, that their rights and duties must be respected and hence that they are to be helped to fulfil those rights and duties. In practice, however, these principles have not been observed well and educating children and young people in human sexuality has become a very unsettled and uncertain field, even within the Catholic Church.
Background
In 1983, the Congregation for Catholic Education published guidelines for Catholic teachers, Educational Guidance in Human Love. But the appearance of this useful document, which upheld the rights and role of parents, obviously underlined the need for other guidelines, specifically addressed to the parents themselves. The Holy Father entrusted this task to the competent Dicastery, or Vatican Department, the Pontifical Council for the Family.
There were also been many pressing requests for these guidelines. The Pontifical Council for the Family received letters and documentation from Catholic parents in countries where their natural rights and, in effect, their freedom of religion, were being violated by amoral or even immoral sex education, promoted by the State and planned by those who oppose the Church. The Council also received many other complaints because, even within the Church, some imagined that they were better equipped than parents to impart information concerning sexuality, at times even resorting to methods which are little different from those promoted by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which is very active through its fronts and affiliated bodies in many countries, including Australia, always spreading sex education focussed on genital activity and contraception.
Because of the complex questions involved and the many different cultural and social situations around the world, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality was prepared with great care over a period of more than ten years. Experts in various fields were consulted, always drawing on the wisdom and experience of parents themselves. These detailed and richly textured guidelines are offered to Catholic families to be read carefully and taken seriously, for they go far beyond ideals or theories. They get down to what is to be done – and what is to be avoided.
A journey through the document
The structure of the The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, Guidelines for Education within the Family is simple. After an introduction, the chapters followed a logical sequence in four stages: 1. Doctrine (chapters 103), 2. Pastoral principles (chapters four and five), 3. Concrete applications (chapter six) and 4. Practical recommendations and norms (chapter seven). Chapter eight provides a short, but significant, conclusion.
The Introduction presents the current situation, but it does not dwell on problems rather it sets the positive tone of the whole document – encouragement and help for parents “who possess the secrets and resources of true love”. (n. 7). The introduction anticipates what is to follow, with an emphasis on love and a personalist understanding of sexuality (n. 3), the virtue and discipline of chastity (nn. 4,5) and the indispensable role of parents and the family (n. 7).
The Doctrinal Basis
- Christian Anthropology
The three doctrinal chapters present a Christian anthropology. The human person, created in the image of God, is an embodied soul with a vocation to love and a particular vocation in life. Each person has an eternal destiny, and human sexuality is to be lived in marriage or celibacy according to the virtue of chastity. This “philosophy” of The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality also explained some hostile media reaction to the document on the part of secularists, who reject this “truth of the person”. These same secularists are promoting their kind of “sex education” in many countries and it was the same approach taken by the Communists – sex without sound values, but now promoted in the perspective of erotic pleasure and controlling population through contraception, sterilization and abortion.
This is why the guidelines of the Pontifical Council are so important for the future. If young people are corrupted by godless “value free” sex education, our mission of evangelization is undermined. More people will continue to suffer the tragic effects of an assault on the family and marriage. The truth of the human person stands at the heart of the struggle against the sexual corruption of the young. But there is also a political dimension to our task.
Just as Marxist anthropology (or lack of an anthropology!) destroyed human freedom by corrupting people in many ways, so the new international secularism that emerged fully after 1989 at United Nations Conferences has political and social implications. The Head of the Holy See’s Delegation at the Beijing conference on Women, Professor Mary Ann Glendon, argued that freedom is being undermined by giving people access to sexual pleasures, in the name of “sexual and reproductive rights”, instead of giving people participation in self-government, based on universal human rights. She has compared this to the “bread and circuses” which the Roman emperors used to distract people from their state of servitude.[1] We thus see that giving the “truth and meaning of human sexuality” to young people is a way of liberating them from a slavery that could well bind them in a destructive cycle that make forming stable and loving relationships ultimately impossible.
- Love and Chastity
The doctrinal chapters of The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality contain the wisdom on which a true education for chastity is based, especially what “chastity” means and how education in human sexuality is only one part of a wider and deeper education for love. This is an important theme, emphasising a wider and deeper personalist context for education in human sexuality. The scriptural, patristic and magisterial references underline the divine finality of the Gospel: our love of God and our union with God through sacraments and prayer remain paramount. Therefore, these guidelines unashamedly express the Catholic Faith.
The first chapter, “Called to True Love”, thus centres around love as self-giving, divine and human (n. 9). Love is presented in the context of human sexuality and marriage, open to new life (nn. 10-15). By making the divine gift of love the central theme of the document (n. 12), The Truth and Meaning of Human sexuality echoes and compliments the 1983 document of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Educational Guidance in Human Love. But this new guide goes much further in presenting love within marriage and the family, inspired especially by the Holy Father’s Letter to Families, Gratissimam sane.
In the second chapter, “True Love and Chastity”, the virtue of chastity is presented as self-giving and self-mastery, especially in marriage (nn. 20-21), thus requiring what the Holy Father calls “education for chastity” (Familiaris Consortio 37). This explains why these guidelines tend to avoid, whenever possible, those banal terms “sex education”, although these terms are used in describing part of education in human sexuality, but always and only with the whole Catholic doctrinal, spiritual and ascetical tradition. We should also note the healthy recovery of ascetical tradition in these guidelines.
- Vocation
The third chapter “In the Light of Vocation”, first presents marriage as a vocation, a call to conjugal love (nn. 27-30). But today many parents are very concerned about the capacity of their children to enter a happy and stable marriage (nn. 31-33). By providing a good education for chastity, they are preparing their children for their vocation in life. The vocation to virginity or celibacy is then presented as another goal of formation, to help parents cultivate priestly and religious vocations, based on a mature understanding of chastity (nn. 35-36).
Pastoral Principles
The pastoral principles are introduced in terms of parents’ rights and duties in chapter four, “Father and Mother as Educators”. This chapter is the basis for the recommendations which later appear in chapter seven. But parental rights and duties must not be separated from the responsibilities and duties involved in being a parent. Attention is paid to the particular needs of single parents (n. 38).
The essential value of the home as an environment for formation is developed in chapter five, “Paths of Formation within the Family”. As the true “school of the virtues”, the home is the place where the qualities of decency, modesty, privacy, self-control can develop. Parents are the best role-models for their children (nn. 59-60) and the family is “the sanctuary of life and faith” (nn. 61-63).
From these chapters we infer these general principles: (a) that parents have innate rights in this field, (b) that these rights imply duties with regard to their children, (c) that the family, the home is the normal place for education for chastity and hence for imparting information on sexual matters, (d) this information is only one part of a wider and deeper education for love and chastity, where moral values always predominate and where these are often learnt in an indirect way through the word and example of parents.
Concrete Applications
- Principles for Education
The concrete applications centre around the parent-child relationship, which is described in chapter six, “Learning Stages”. This is one of the most interesting parts of the guidelines, obviously enriched by the experiences of parents themselves and other educators who helped prepare this document.
Four principles are first offered to help parents impart moral and sexual information during the various stages of a child’s life: 2. “Each child is a unique and unrepeatable person and must receive individualized formation.” (n. 65); 2. “The moral dimension must always be part of their (parents’) explanations.” (n. 68); 3. “Formation in chastity and timely information regarding sexuality must be provided in the broadest context of education for love.” (n. 70); 4. “Parents should provide this information with great delicacy, but clearly and at the appropriate time.” (n. 75). With an emphasis on the individual child, on his or her needs, questions and problems, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality thus strikes a balance between a parent-centred and a child-centred approach to formation.
- Learning Stages of Children and Young People
Four major phases of development are then set out in which the principles are to be applied: 1. The “years of innocence” (nn. 78-86), 2. Puberty (nn. 87-97), 3. Adolescence (nn. 98-108), and 4. Early adulthood (nn. 109-111). The “years of innocence” represent a peaceful phase of development when pre-pubescent children should not be given premature information. This phase is recognized by parents and described by child psychologists in various ways. But no particular psychological description is favoured in this document, such as the Freudian terms “latency phase”.
A strong spiritual emphasis is found in the sections dealing with puberty and adolescence, taking up once more the doctrinal theme of vocation and formation of conscience (n. 95). Advice on problems such as masturbation (n. 103) and homosexuality (n. 104) is appropriately included. The final section “Towards adulthood” is not detailed, as this pertains more to the guidelines set out in Preparation for the Sacrament of Marriage which the Pontifical Council for the Family also published.
Practical Recommendations and Norms
- Protecting Rights and Duties
The seventh chapter, Practical Guidelines, is based on the rights of parents (chapter four), the priority of the home (chapter five) and the principles and phases of child development (chapter six). Various “recommendations for parents and educators” are made (nn. 113-120). But what is the status of these “recommendations”?
When examined in the light of their authoritative sources, such as the Charter of the Rights of the Family, indicated in footnotes 140 to 150, they are the kind of “recommendation” which only an irresponsible person would ignore. In fact, they set out how parents should associate and how they should defend their children and their own rights in difficult situations (nn. 114-117). At the same time, while the child has a right to be informed, the child must not have his or her “right to chastity” violated. This is clearly recognized (nn. 118-120) for it is a truth which is so often overlooked in this field. This is a key section of the guidelines.
- Norms to Follow
Four “working principles and their particular norms” follow, to guide parents and educators (121-127). These principles represent the norms in the guidelines.
- “Human sexuality is a sacred mystery and must be presented according to the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church, always bearing in mind the effects of original sin”. This first principle is described as “doctrinal”. It brings together Christian reverence for the mystery of sexuality and Christian realism in the face of the effects of original sin and our need for grace and a formed conscience (n. 123).
- “Only information proportionate to each phase of their individual development should be present to children and young people” (n. 124). This “principle of timing” is obviously a synthesis of key points in chapter six. Only parents, who know a child as an individual person, can decide when that child is ready to receive information.
- “No material of an erotic nature should be presented to children or young people of any age, individually or in a group” (n. 126). This “principle of decency” rejects erotic material and method and cites four magisterial words: “positive and prudent” and “clear and delicate”, taken from Vatican II, Gravissimum Educationis n. 1 and Familiaris Consortio n. 37 respectively. Footnote 155 indicates examples of unacceptable material and method.
- “No one should every be invited, let alone obliged, to act in any way that could objectively offend against modesty or which could subjectively offend against his or her own delicacy or sense of privacy” (n. 127). The fourth “principle of respect for the child” embodies the recommendations made in nn. 118-120 to protect children.
- Methods to Follow – and Avoid
These recommendations and norms are immediately applied to the critical issue of methods. Some methods are recommended (nn. 129-134), especially those which favour parental involvement. Other methods are rejected (nn. 135-142). These include: anti-life and anti-natalist sex education which was promoted through United Nations Conferences, methods of sex-educators, sex-counsellors and sex therapists, bad methods linked to AIDS education (especially programmes promoting the condom), the “values clarification” method and inserting sexual instruction into other subjects, including catechetics. What seems to be common to unacceptable methods is not only immoral content but that they are always beyond parental control, hence they undermine what the Catholic home represents. Those who know of the policy of totalitarians of the Left and the Right concerning the school and the home will understand the menace of imposing educational methods that are beyond parental control.
Chapter seven concludes with reference to inculturation in this field (nn. 143-144). Obviously this section is of great importance, but here one finds an interesting balance; you cannot use inculturation to justify premature and explicit sex information in a liberal secularized society such as Australia (n. 143), just as you cannot deny a child the right to adequate information in a traditional society (n. 144).
- Encouraging Parents
The concluding chapter of the guidelines encourages parents and calls on others in the Church to support them, for example with good resources (n. 147). But chapter eight is not only an exhortation. It includes an application of the Church’s favoured principle of subsidiarity (nn. 145-146): “… the role which others can carry out in helping parents is always (a) subsidiary, because the formative role of the family is always preferable, and (b) subordinate, that is, subject to the parents’ attentive guidance and control” (n. 145). The conclusion is a message of solidarity, hope and confidence in parents’ capacity to be the best educators. Even if they usually need the support and guidance of other educators, parents in fact do carry out education in chastity and human sexuality much better than anyone else.
Understanding the Guidelines
It is important that The Truth and Meaning of Human sexuality be read as a whole. It is not enough to go directly to the practical guidelines or the study of the parents’ role during the phases of child development. These applications depend on the rich doctrinal chapters. Education for chastity can only be understood correctly in the deeper context of a sound doctrine of married life and love, a sense of vocation in life, the meaning of parenthood, and above all, God’s love for us, our love for God and our shared pilgrimage of faith towards eternal life.
The richer chapters therefore contain the higher principles on which a true education for chastity is based, especially what “chastity” means and the constant underlying theme, that education in human sexuality is only one part of a wider and deeper education for love. The Pontifical Council for the Family therefore based its guidelines on the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II, especially Familiaris Consortio and the Letter to Families, with relevant paragraphs of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The many notes and references are a key to his magisterial teaching, not only on this question, but on human sexuality itself. Catechesis on the mystery of being a man or a woman is one of the greatest gifts to the Church of Pope John Paul II, the “Pope of the Family”, as he was called by Cardinal López Trujillo at the great World Meeting of the Holy Father with Families, October 9, 1994.
A Programme for Action
Looking at the guidelines as a whole, The Truth and Meaning of Human sexuality marks more than “a shift of emphasis” in forming children and young people. This is a total programme for action. It calls for more than cosmetic changes to books or courses. It calls for a “re-visioning” of education in human sexuality. Parents have to be not merely “taken into account” in some existing educational process, based in schools. The whole process has to be handed back to them, because it is theirs by innate right. Other agents and structures exist to serve them, in our situation the Catholic schools. But these should sustain parents, support, guide and help them, preparing them and empowering them to carry out their right and duty in the home.
In some countries, this programme of action will arm parents to face the unjust intrusion of the state. State-sponsored sex education attacks parents’ rights – and the faith and morals of their children. The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality also reminds us that secularist sex-education is often the work of organizations in favour of abortion and population-control (n. 136) or self-styled “sex therapists” (n. 138). In the face of these challenges, parents are encouraged to associate, to organize themselves (n. 114), not only to protect their rights and their children, but to promote what is true and good in society.
Elsewhere, parents’ rights and duties have not been taken seriously by other Catholics. In some countries, parents have been ignored, patronized, even penalized when they question various courses or methods authorised by ecclesiastical educational authorities. However, the role of other Catholic educational agents is not to provide the intimate sexual instruction, but to assist parents to do this. At the same time, the schools, parish catechetical circles, youth movements must provide a strong moral catechesis outside the home to support parents and encourage them to form their children in the normal and natural environment of the family (n. 133). Within the Church, the challenge ahead is how to provide help for parents and how to collaborate with them effectively and creatively.
In working out strategies in this field, we have to take into account the problems of our own culture. I will open up some problematic areas.
- Traditions
Reserve, modesty and reverence for the mystery of sexuality are good traditional values, strongly affirmed by the Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. Nevertheless a problem could arise when traditionally-minded Catholic parents say: “But in our ethnic culture we never talk to our sons and daughters about sex!” Today, in a changing pluralist society, this reserve can become dangerous. If you cling to the strict interpretation of a tradition that forbids parents discussing sex with their children, you will not meet the challenge of the secularist sex-educators and, more potent still, the perverse influence of the media and the Internet. If parents do nothing in the name of ethnic traditions, strangers can move in with their anti-life and immoral “value free” information and they will corrupt vulnerable children and young people.
At the same time, at the opposite extreme, Catholic parents who are very much a part of our secularised society can be drawn into the “tell them everything as early as possible” approach. So called “sex educators”, who appear regularly on television, have been pushing this line for many years, failing to see what child psychologists appreciate, the subtle stages of child development which indicate when would be appropriate and when it would be premature to impart information of sexuality to children. When small children are exposed to explicit sexual imagery and information they may interpret sex as a form of violence. Just reflect for a moment on how much harm that will bring in later life.
Then there is the problem, getting publicity at last, of popular magazines directed at older children and particularly girls in puberty and early adolescence. Often the sex-information that is featured in these magazines is crude, inaccurate and premature, that is, giving information about “dating” or “keeping a boy” to emotionally immature teenagers. Access to pornography and dangerous web-sites is another issue when parents do not monitor the use of the Internet and the mobile phone.
The range of issues in this problem calls for a well-planned re-education process, directed at the parents and based on meetings and discussions within parishes, usually based in the parish school. When we organise meetings for parents, and offer them resources to help them enter a dialogue with their growing children, we soon find a warm and positive response. We should give them at least a summary of The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, if not the whole text of the document. Nor should we hesitate to explain the harm secularist sex-educators. various magazines and the Internet can do to their children. This process of forming and encouraging parents will also be a pastoral way of helping adults who participate to face up to some of their own problems in this area.
- Remedial Education
In our situation, the transmission of moral values and facts will often be remedial, to correct an immoral pornographic or brutalised view of sexuality which some children have already absorbed through the media and the Internet. To discern the effects of these influences we must read “the signs of the times” and identify problems involved when premature information has been absorbed with resulting confusion or unhealthy preoccupation.
Careful positive catechesis on the Sixth Commandment, on the virtue of chastity and respect for ourselves and for other people, is essential, so it is especially important to teach young Catholics in the phases of puberty and adolescence how to make a good confession and hence a worthy Holy Communion. The spiritual remedies of prayer and the sacraments draw on the grace of God and they are our greatest assets. Here we must have recourse to Our Lady, the Mother of Fair Love and Queen of the Family, and never hesitate to present her to our young women and young men as the model and ideal of purity, strength and courage in living Christian motherhood and fatherhood or in responding to other vocations in life.
- Vigilance
A further question is the need to be vigilant about bad resources and influences. Here Catholics cannot be naïve. It is just not good enough to add a nice Catholic “supplement” or “spin” to some bad course on AIDS prevention or a government-sponsored sex-education program when we can see that it was written by people from some family planning organisation or homosexual lobby. We do not tack our values onto the “facts of life”, rather we centre our teaching on Christian morality and marriage and then in that deeper context we add the “facts of life” to the values. This radical difference in approaches is brought out clearly in The Truth and Meaning of Human sexuality n. 65. Moreover, as various warnings in these guidelines indicate, the very way you impart biological information or the “facts of life” itself teaches values. This is why it is absurd to talk about “value free” sex education. There is no such animal!
Nevertheless, faced with this great task, we should be confident. When it is understood well, and properly applied to meet our needs, this program for action should become a project of enrichment, growth and renewal. We will then be able to put aside those narrow words “sex education”, because “sex education” will be replaced by family-centred education for love and chastity, supported and up-skilled by experienced educators. We may hope that these guidelines of the Pontifical Council for the Family will cultivate trust, dialogue, cooperation and collaboration between parents and those invited to assist them, above all Catholic teachers. We may hope that The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality will encourage families to value their Christian priorities: God’s love for us, our love for God, our love for one another, and our hope of eternal salvation.
[1] Cf. Mary Ann Glendon, in “The End of Democracy? A Discussion Continued”, First Things, Number 69, January 1997, p. 23.
