Sex education is a controversial topic but necessary. The Catholic Times had an article on a seminar sponsored by a diocesan ministry to the young on the need and direction to be taken.
Society has made sex into a recreational pastime and all the participants have with one voice stressed that contraception is not what sex is all about. The first speaker spoke about the way the media has made sex a recreational activity without commitment and destroyed its meaning for reproduction and responsibility. For many sex education is enjoying sex but preventing pregnancy.
The first speaker, before speaking of contraception there is the need to stress: 'life, responsibility, character, self-restraint, and chastity'. Hedonism which is spread widely in society by the media requires that programs in media literacy be inaugurated in schools.
One of the speakers mentioned how in schools sex education is comprised of contraception, abortion, sex diseases, a very negative approach to the whole topic. The positive beauty and seriousness of the act needs to be explained: responsibility to life.
The final participator, a priest, working in a parish expressed his experience in the pastoral work with the young and what they understand about sex. There is no connection with their religious belief and ignorance of the responsibility of sex; a sign that little education was present in the community of faith.
We need groups within the Church who are sympathetic to the cause of education for sexuality in the schools and want to stress the need to internalize love, responsibility, and temperance in sexuality.
Some parents present at the seminar have made known that the elementary school children have already been exposed to education in sexuality from the culture in which we live and it is not what we want. Consequently, from the 5th grade on we need programs in the schools.
