Thursday, February 25, 2010

MUCH...

...discussion today, at a pro-life working group which tackles such matters, about latest developments on the Govt's sex education scheme.

The Catholic Education Service has completely messed up on this one, and heads will have to roll.Not much can be salvaged, and it's time for an admission of mistakes and a chance for a fresh start at the CES.

They were given an excellent opportunity - invited in right at the start of the Govt's discussions, given a place on the planning committee etc. They should have made the Catholic position clear, offered statistics and information showing - which is now readily acknowledged - that current fashionable forms of sex-ed, used for the past two decades, have resulted in steadily rising rates of teenage pregnancy, abortion, and STDs, discussed some radically alternative ideas complete with plenty of back-up material (lots available both here and in the USA, Australia),etc. If then they were outnumbered and the same old ghastly rubbish-ideas were adopted, they should have produced a minority report and resigned - killing two birds with one stone by producing some sound ideas for the future while possibly helping to squelch the Govt scheme. But no. They just sat and nodded the whole project through on the Govt's terms and are now revealed as essentially part of the Govt bureaucracy and unconnected with the reality of the Church and the Christian vision of life and love.

A clause for "faith schools" has been added to the legislation which seems to allow such schools to put some statement of beliefs on sexual ethics to the pupils, but that's all: it seems that Catholic schools will still be mandated to have abortion-providers and promoters of various sexual lifestyles pushing their message to pupils on school territory, with a head-teacher given no right to block them.

Verdict from Catholic laity and clergy: NO CONFIDENCE in the CES in its present form. Time for a complete overhaul. Over to you, dear Bishops - and with the words of the Holy Father ringing in your ears, please take courage and take the action needed.

6 comments:

Dominic Mary said...

With respect, Joanna, the word 'overhaul' seems to imply that something can be saved.

I personally think that this may be one of the rare justifications for euthanasia - kill the CES NOW, and then create from scratch some new body which deserves the adjective 'Catholic' !

Stuart said...

It's so depressing and disheartening.

I've linked to this post.

Malcolm McLean said...

We need to get Catholic staff to refuse to peddle this filth.

Which leads to the question, how strong is our support in the schools? Do we have nominal Catholics or committed Catholics? It's not to do with trads vs trendies. Trendy sex-ed may look very different to the trad sort, but it is not the same as secular sex-ed, by any means.

SPQRatae said...

Arise, Baroness Stannard!
I feel sick...

Elizabeth said...

On the one hand they are forcing Sex Education on our five year olds and next we read this in todays news.

Children 'over-exposed to sexual imagery'
By Dominic Casciani
BBC News

Children are being increasingly exposed to sexual imagery and their parents have limited opportunities to stop it, a report for the Home Office warns.

The report calls for tougher regulation of sexual imagery in adverts and a ban on selling "lads' mags" to under-16s.

It also recommends selling mobile phones and games consoles with parental controls automatically switched on.

Author Dr Linda Papadopoulos said there was a clear link between sexualised imagery and violence towards females.

Her report said the material children were being exposed to included the growth of lads' mags and pornography on mobile phones, through to big-name fashion brands using sexual imagery to advertise clothes targeted at young teenagers......

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, said society as a whole and adults were to blame.

He said: "The whole of society is hypersexualised - sex becomes the common currency through which adults make their way in the world and continually send a signal to children that sex is all that matters.
"One of the big problems that we are faced with is that increasingly adults have lost the capacity to draw a line between their own attitudes and those of children and increasingly we're recycling adult attitudes about sex through the prism of children."

Please read the whole article and realise that the government is totally demented. One moment they are forcing our children to be sexually active and the abort the consequences next minute they are writing reports about the harm sexually explicit material can do

Tory leader David Cameron said earlier this month that he would clamp down on irresponsible advertising targeted at children.
He also mooted the idea that parents should be able to complain about offensive marketing tactics used by companies, via a specially set-up website.
Such moves were needed to stop children being "bombarded" with inappropriate material, he said.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson said: "We know that parents are concerned about the pressures their children are under at a much younger age, which is why we have already committed to a number of the recommendations in this report.
So they will limit sexual material being displayed via the media and just hand it out in schools??????
This is beyond me!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8537734.stm

Fr John Abberton said...

I am also linking to this post. I was hoping for this once the election was announced. Only yesterday I thought it might be happening. Thank God!