The Report of the Cardinal's Ad Hoc Committee
The Ad Hoc Committee, set in place to deal with the Grayson report, met on Tuesday, November 30, 1993 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. to discuss all of the materials submitted by Mrs. Grayson. There were four people who discussed the materials for approximately one hour and a half. Two other individuals who were unable to be present submitted extensive reviews.
The general consensus on the part of the six participants was that they agreed with Mrs. Grayson that sex education is an area of serious concern for all people involved in the Catholic education enterprise. At the same time they would have difficulty with some of her positions and her judgments on certain programs. In a particular way they would differ with her view that no type of education on sexuality can take place in the classroom setting.
The following observations emerged as a result of the discussion at the meeting and the critiques that were submitted in written form
Areas of agreement with Mrs. Grayson;
* The entire area of sexuality education in public, private and Catholic school settings as well as in parish programs is and should remain a matter of serious concern for catholic parents and for the Church.
* The way sexuality is taught in the public schools tends to be highly problematic. The way it is taught in Catholic schools and in parish programs could, under certain circumstances, be problematic as well. (Some Catholic teachers for example may not possess clarity or accuracy or understanding of church teaching on the moral dimensions of sexuality. Some might also be in outright dissent from that teaching.)
* All educational programs that deal with sexuality need careful evalua tion and monitoring. This applies to both school and parish settings. It is clear that sexuality education must always be presented by the Church within the context of moral catechisis. This is a sine ia non if one is to approach this area at all.
* Catholic educational programs and publications that deal with sexuality will soon be coming under review from the perspective of both the forthcoming Catechism of the Catholic Church and the recent encyclical Splendor Veritatis This is something that is inevitable and holds potential for significant improvement, in approaches to teaching.
* Highly trained and very loyal Catholic theologians and educators are aware of and are working on the several areas of concern covered here in this work of Mrs. Grayson.
* The realm of sexuality education in the public school setting is where the real battle has to be fought.
* Catholic sex educators at times do use planned parenthood terminology. One mignt agree with her in this observation and that is unfortunate. We can also agree with the idea she espouses that the subject of sexuality should be involved with spiritual formation and not reduced to sheer methodology.
* The Christian view is seen in a good fashion in Familiaris Consortio.
* One can agree with her in saying that language sometimes should be more abstract than descriptive.
* The matter of language can be crucial.
* On page 120 she makes a good distinction between the home and the classroom.
* She feels that the new view on CSE works on the principle that knowledge is a virtue.
* We can agree with her that teachers do need continued training.
* Good decisions of conscience need to be informed. Young people today are being bombarded by sexual situations and sexual innuendoes and the single family phenomenon is some thing that we have to contend with today. The church is obliged to be active in the area of education in sexuality.
* All educational programs that deal with sexuality need careful evaluation and monitoring that applies to both school and parish set tings. It is clear that sexuality education must always be presented by the Church within the context of moral cathechisis.
Areas of Disagreement with Mrs. Grayson:
* In the judgment of the people at the meeting, Mrs. Grayson does not prove her case that education and sexuality in the catholic academic setting is contrary to magisterial teaching. The church in its educational mission has the right and the responsibility to offer responsible education and formation in every dimension of human personhood and therefore in the area of human sexuality. Such teaching must always be done in the context of catholic doctrine.
* It would truly be wonderful if we could count on all Catholic parents always and everywhere to offer Sound Catholic teaching on sexuality to their own children within their own homes. It is not parental put down however but factualknowledge to assert that many Catholic parents are unable and/or unwilling to offer such a Catholic vision of human sexuality in this way. While this fact calls for improved adult education in the Church, the Church as teacher of children and youth cannot leave a gap in this critically important area.
* While it is true that sex education can be taught in a way that is harmful to children and youth, it is not true that sex education must necessarily by its nature be harmful. Not every approach to sex education need be, in the author's word, sleazy or filthy or a matter of erotic stimuli or an occasion of sin. (This is a paraphrase of her words).
* It is not contrary to magisterial teaching to offer classroom education/formation in human sexuality within a Catholic moral vision. It is, we would affirm, the church's responsibility to do so as one significant dimension of our educational mission.
* We have to keep in mind that today we do not have the regular family structures in place. There are a great many single parent families for instance and so for that reason the vision of having sexuality dealt with only within the family circle is a vision that cannot be sustained these days.
* Her observation is that Cardinal Baum endorses the open door policy to CSE(Classroom Sexual Education).
* The reason for objection to CSE is that it places children in the occasion of sin. That may be true, if it is treated in an improper fashion but that does not necessarily follow.
* She pushes bi-weekly confession. But she says confession is opposed to the concept of self-esteem. This statement can be questioned.
* She might view this whole business of CSE as an effort to overwhelm the private person.
* Sexual education as described in Familiaris Consortio goes beyond the parents. It does indicate that there is a role for the Church. There is a great deal of difference in the attitude espoused in 1945 and 1995. Perhaps one could speak of a closer and a secure family unit in 1945 whereas at the present time the situation is remarkably different.
* Familiaris Consortio demonstrates linkage. In section 37 there is a linking between what goes on in the public domain along with supporting parental efforts.
Background on programs now in place:
* There is a long and elaborate procedure on how the Department of Education in the Archdiocese of Boston deals with the content offered in human sexuality educations programs. A committee was formed in the fall of 1989 to give assistance in renewing the sexuality education materials used in the schools. The agencies involved were Family Life Office, The office of Religious Education, The Aids Ministries Office, Catholic charities, Pro-Life Office, St. Margarets Hospital Family Life Education, and also The Catholic Schools Office.
* over the course of a year and a half there has been an extensive review of many text books.
* The Benziger series of text books was particularly affirmed because of its emphasis on family life values and the sacrament of holy matrimony. The Franciscan Video series was brought to our attention by St. Richards in Danvers where the program was successful with parents and students. The Karen Sawyer video was also an excellent resource but would be supplementary material for addressing human sexuality. Sr. Zita Fleming stated that the section on gender sexuality was the finest she had seen and would recommend it to others. The St. Margaret family life series offered many pertinent resources but an update was suggested according to grade levels.
* Programs on professional days for teachers over the last several years have stressed the importance of our suggested sexuality guidelines, the important role of parents and the virtues should be taught before issues . Very few complaints have been received from parents concerning sexuality programs. I mention also that parents sometimes feel uneasy and at times incapable of serving as sexuality educators for their own children, particularly in content areas that require a more sophisticated understanding of biology and the human sciences. Other parents, because of their own insecurities or personal problems, feel unable to instruct their children in certain educational fields such as sexuality. As stated in the USCC guidelines, if parents do not feel able to perform this duty they may have recourse to others who enjoy their confidence.
* In a Catholic context, the purpose of education and human sexuality, whether formal or informal is threefold:
1. to give each learner an understanding of the nature and importance of sexuality as a divine gift, a fundamental component of personality, and an enrichment of the whole person body, emotions, soul whose deepest meaning is to lead the person to the gift of self in love.
(Educational Guidance and Human Love #4,16; Familiaris Consortio #37, 11, 32.)
2. The purpose of education in human sexuality is also to give each learner an appreciation of chastity as a virtue that develops a person's authentic maturity and makes him or her capable of guiding their sexual instinct in the service of love and integrating it into his or her psychological and spiritual development.
(Educational Guidance #4, 18, 34; Familiaris Consortio #37)
3. The purpose of education in human sexuality is to give each learner an appreciation of the human and Christian values that sexuality is intended to express and to lead each learner to a knowledge of, respect for, and sincere personal adherence to the moral norms regrading sexuality that are taught by the church. (Educational Guidance #19, 40;Farniliaris Consortio #33, 37)
* The new guidelines which are being issued are calling for the integration of education in sexuality with moral teachings.
* The School Office is forever addressing the matter of education in sexuality and the Church is constantly reexamining its position. Witness the many documents.
Reflections on Mrs. Grayson's views:
* Mrs. Grayscn claims that classroom sex education is forbidden by the magisterium. There may be confusion on her part between an understanding of moral formation and classroom sexual conditioning. Certainly the former should be supported and everyone would agree that any conditioning process in a classroom situation poses many difficulties.
* She thinks that sex education manifests a crisis within the Catholic Church in America. An interesting idea that might be further developed.
The problem I think for her is the fact that sexuality is more in the public domain today whereas formerly it was dealt with much more privately.
* In certain sections the manuscript is quite repetitive.
* One should note a difference between classroom sex education and Catholic sexual morality. Perhaps that distinction has not been maintained thrcughout the essay.
* Her view may be considered some what Augustinian. Her's is a more sin oriented theology with redemption and grace apparently not being the more prominent themes.
* Maybe the author raises too many issues and this only confuses the main issue. At times she seems to drag in a whole ideology and it is quite clear that she is coming from a very conservative view point in making judgments on this matter of education for sexuality.
* If to classroom instruction there was added education for chastity would that help or if sexual education was put in the context of chastity would that be acceptable to her?
* She has some extreme views on self-love being pernicious and what not.
* She says that people are redefining the family today to promote the homosexual agenda. She also feels that there is a debate going on among Catholics about sexual matters. She is quite accurate here.
* She makes use of Fr. Mankowski and his attitude although he has little to say for her issue here, namely the matter of sexual education.
* She also sees a new scenario where the aim of many today seems to be to liberate the child from the family. She is not wrong here.
* A great deal of the difficulty lies in the fact that she follows more along the line of the classical approach as opposed to the romantic approach in life. By classic I mean that things are far more private far more discreet. Whereas, in the romantic approach things are publicized in many ways the famous debate between the classists and the romantics that took place many centuries ago is still under way in the thinking here. She would espouse obviously the classic approach.
* Is the whole matter basically an attitudinal issue? Mrs. Grayson brings to the subject of education and sexuality an attitude stemming from the past: extremely classical in her approach whereas today society feels differently with matters. Today society is far more frank and open and that might be deplored. On the other hand though her's seems to be a black and white world whereas it is also possible to say that can be some type of formal instruction where sexual education is given in the line of Christian living in schools and in a situation that is very supportive of the parents. The boundaries for privacy have fallen away.
* It was after World War I that there developed a substantial development of connecting intercourse with marital love. This advance in speculation occurred principally in Germany under the influence of the phenomenology of Edmund flusserl and Max Scheler. The most prominent of the writers on the relationship was Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich, the first married layman to make a substantial contribution to Catholic doctrine on marriage. In lectures delivered in 1925 Von Hildebrand spoke in lyrical terms of coitus. He rejected the purely biological approach. The intention to propagate would not by itself organically unite physical sex with the heart and spirit. The marital act, he declared, has not merely one function namely the generation of children. It also possess a significance for man as a human being namely that it can be the expression and fulfillment of wedded love in community of life. Moreover, it participates after a certain fashion in the sacramental meaning of matrimony.
* For the first time a Catholic writer taught that love was a requirement of and also the result of lawful marital coition. He tied this novel demand to an ancient term fides namely fidelity. Fidelity required that person meet person in a giving of the self. The old and long used Augustinian comparison of intercourse to eating was rejected. The significance of eating was exhausted by its objective end. In eating it made no difference if one paid attention to the process of eating but in the marital act “ a fully deliberate conscious attention is demanded.” The act of wedded communion has indeed the end of propagation but in addition it is a unique union of love.”
* The ideas of Von Hildebrand were restated and enlarged by Herbert Doms in The Meaning and the End of Marriage In his book Doms says eloquently what serious Catholic laymen were waiting to hear not that only marriage but marital intercourse was a mean of achieving holiness. This theory, sketched by Von Hildebrand, was given solidity and buttressed by this scholarship. Doms provided biological data; a critique of St. Thomas's analogy of marriage; an explicit evocation of the passages from St. Albert on the sacramental significance of intercourse; and a discussion of the related ideas of Max Scheller. The Meaning and the End of Marriage was the most comprehensive attempt yet made to develop a theory of Catholic marriage different from that of Augustine.
It succeeded in winning only the professional moral theologians but its influence on later catholic writing on marriage was inescapable.
* According to Von Hildebrand the character of mystery in sexuality is overlooked. The antithesis to the puritan attitude is that of mystery and not the open and neutral manner.
* Mrs. Grayson is using the mystery argument not for the reality of sexuality, but rather for the teaching of sexuality. In the teaching one is not necessarily pushing the neutrality argument. Mystery does not necessarily mean reticence on the part of the teacher. Mystery does not mean an inability or an unwillingness to talk about the reality of sex.
* Care should be taken lest too much credibility is given to one authority to the exclusion of others. In matters of theological concerns a more balanced portrait emerges when a number of authorities is consulted.
* We are not pushing open ended neutrality as an answer, rather the opposite. The fact that a Catholic educational system would have little to say on matters of sexual ethic, could easily be read the wrong way.
Send to a friend
