Pope Francis: withdraw the Vatican's flawed new sex-ed curriculum (Sign the petition)

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Note: This petition is sponsored by the American Life League

Background

International life-and-family leaders who have defended Catholic teaching on marriage, sexuality, and life for decades have called the Vatican’s newly released sex-ed program for teens “thoroughly immoral,” “entirely inappropriate,” and “quite tragic.”

“I find it monstrous that an official arm of the Church would not only create a sexual education program for teens but one that bypasses parents as the primary educator of their children,” said Dr. Thomas Ward, Founder and President of the National Association of Catholic Families as well as a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

The program, titled “The Meeting Point: Course of Affective Sexual Education for Young People,” was released in July by the Pontifical Council for the Family to be presented to young people at World Youth Day in Poland. 

While the new Vatican program has many positive qualities, its defects cannot be underestimated. These include: 

  • Handing the sexual formation of children over to educators while leaving parents out of the equation. 
  • Failing to name and condemn sexual behaviors, such as fornication, prostitution, adultery, contracepted-sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation, as objectively sinful actions that destroy charity in the heart and turn one away from God. 
  • Failing to warn youths about the possibility of eternal separation from God (damnation) for committing grave sexual sins. Hell is not mentioned once. 
  • Failing to distinguish between mortal and venial sin. 
  • Failing to speak about the 6th and 9th commandment, or any other commandment. 
  • Failing to teach about the sacrament of confession as a way of restoring relationship with God after committing grave sin. 
  • Not mentioning a healthy sense of shame when it comes to the body and sexuality. 
  • Teaching boys and girls together in the same class.
  • Having boys and girls share together in class their understanding of phrasessuch as: “What does the word sex suggest to you?”
  • Asking a mixed class to “point out where sexuality is located in boys and girls.”
  • Speaking about the “process of arousal.”
  • Using sexually explicit and suggestive images in activity workbooks (herehere, and here). 
  • Recommending various sexually explicit movies as springboards for discussion (see below for links).
  • Failing to speak about abortion as gravely wrong, but only that it causes “strong psychological damage.”
  • Confusing youths by using phrases such as “sexual relationship” to indicate not the sexual act, but a relationship focused on the whole person. 
  • Speaking of “heterosexuality” as something to be “discover[ed].” 
  • Using gay icon Elton John (while not mentioning his activism) as an example of a gifted and famous person. 
  • Endorsing the “dating” paradigm as a step towards marriage. 
  • Not stressing celibacy as the supreme form of self-giving that constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality. 
  • Failing to mention Christ’s teaching on marriage. 
  • Treating sexuality as a separate subject instead of as something integrated into the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church.

Tell the Vatican to retract this deeply flawed new sex-ed curriculum. Sign the petition.