PUBERTY IS A DANGEROUS PERIOD

Puberty has never been a time in the growth of individual boys and girls that has been easy for them to negotiate.  The onset of menstruation and breast devlopment in girls and the onset of the flow of testosterone in boys has begun to occur earlier and earlier with each passing generation during the past fifty years according to the anecdotal evidence I have been exposed to in my pastoral ministry as priest and bishop.  Teen pregnancy was a problem in high school fifty years ago and then twenty-five years ago it began to be a problem in junior high school.  The notorious cases of female teachers becoming pregnant after having sex with fourteen year-old boys does not shock us as much anymore because of the increased frequency of such tragic cases.

What has not been investigated enough in my opinion is the relationship between the onset of puberty with its problems of sex and the increased rate of teen suicide.  I am confident that when such an investigation is conducted by responsible social scientists we will learn that for many teens who have committed suicide their inability to cope with the pressures of an active sex drive was a large factor in their choosing death as a way of escaping from a problem they could not solve.

Romantic love has always been an important part of growing through the teen years.  In the past in individual cases I am sure that a prematurely heightened sex drive really complicated what would have been an ordinary teen romance.  The problem now is that under the influence of MTV, UTube and internet pornography most teen romances these days are under tremendous pressure to express love physically through sex rather than through kissing and caressing.

Part of the problem for the Church has been the insistence of educators that sex education had to be part of the curriculum in our Catholic parochial schools.  The question was always, what sex education program.  Since the Church has always believed and taught that parents are the primary educators of their children it would seem logical that in an area as important as sex education parents were always doing their duty and were providing their children with education about sex that was in conformity with Christian morality.  The empirical evidence would seem to show that such an assumption was/is naive.  Again, anecdotal evidence indicates that it is a rare set of parents who talk about sex with their children.

Failing in that, parents have the responsibility to monitor the kind of sex education their parochial school is offering to fill the gap left by the parents’ timidity or ignorance.  In some dioceses programs such as the “Safe Touch” program were introduced in the school.  The way the program was presented probably varied from school to school and from diocese to diocese.

Evidently in the Archdiocese of Portland a significant number of parents, some of whom were responsibly discharging their responsibility of educating their children in the matters of sex, objected to having their children exposed to the Safe Touch progam, but when they sought to have their children exempted their requests were refused by the principal, the superintendent and the Archbishop.  An appeal was made to the Holy See and on February 24 of this year the Secretary of the Congregation for Clergy wrote to one of the parents as follows:

“This Congregation has received a letter from the Most Reverend John Vlazny, Archbishop of Portland, regarding the Safe Touch programs of the Archdiocese of Portland.  According to His Excellency, you and other parents are ‘free to approach the Principal of the school and/or the Superintendent requesting exceptions to school policy,’ and that, should an exemption be given, His Excellency would not object.  It would appear that parents are able to seek an exemption from the Safe Touch programs offered in Catholic Schools within the Archdiocese of Portland on their own behalf and on behalf of their children, and that this is the policy of the Archdiocese.    With this information, it appears that the object of your recourse [to the Holy See], namely that an ‘opt out’ clause be respected by the Archdiocese has been achieved.  Therefore, with the assurances of His Excellency, the Dicastery [the Congregation for Clergy] states that the hierarchical recourse presented by you [to this Congregation] is hereby inactive by reason of the removal of its object.”

So, it should be comforting to parents to know that when they run into a stone wall erected by educators or clerics who insist that their children MUST participate in this or that sex ed program in school, they can object and appeal to the Holy See confident that, just as in the Portland case, their rights a parents responsible for the education of their children they will be heard.  Parents must fight to preserve that right.  It is most distressing to read that in Germany the state has denied the primacy of parents with regard to the education of their children and has outlaws home schooling.

But now, parents must focus on the problem of the the exposure of their children to the pernicious influence of programs such as MTV and other cable channels, UTube videos and internet pornagraphy channels. Here is an insightful article by Rebecca Hagelin:

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“Our teenagers are more sexually active than any generation of youth before them. They also are consuming more pornography and compromising basic moral standards more often. It seems that many of them have lost not only their innocence, but their conscience, too. The plethora of negative and immoral behaviors glorified by a media world that’s gone stark raving mad — combined with graphic, non-judgmental sex education and a highly sexualized culture in general — causes many of them to lose understanding of what is wrong and what is right. When a young child’s sensibilities are constantly violated, and he begins to ignore the natural pangs of guilt after yielding to cultural pressures, he can end up being miserable, and begins to develop a hard heart and weak spirit. If we as parents blindly turn our own hearts away from them because we’re scared of confrontation, or because we’re too lazy to do ‘the hard stuff’ like fight for their integrity, we have a hand in dooming their young spirits to inner torment. And, ultimately, if the pattern continues, to the loss of basic decency and sensitivity to evil. … It’s critical as a parent to take control and do everything in your power to make certain that the culture does not molest your child’s young mind. Setting standards for media consumption can help avoid a lot of regrets, especially when it comes to the evil of pornography. But since we are all sinners, we also need to learn to recognize when our children might be feeling uncomfortable and guilty — and offer them hope and a way out of their despair.” –columnist Rebecca Hagelin

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