by Rev. Ignacio Barreiro, STD, JD, and Kristin Sparks
Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, Catholic schoolchildren are currently facing the danger of yet another immoral sex education curriculum. Many individuals have been alerted to the new Growing in Love program, which some critics rightly call, “a sugar-coated sex education program, gift wrapped with religious content.”
The Growing in Love (GIL) series, published by Harcourt Religion Publishers, is deceptively presented as a “family life” program and companion piece for religious education classes. The authors include James J. DeBoy Jr., Toinette M. Eugene, and Fr. Richard C. Sparks, CSP — all of whose “credentials” are sketchy, to say the least. These authors provide a curriculum that spans kindergarten through grade eight. Each grade level contains a student text, a Teaching Guide, a Family Resource book and a Program Resource book. (The supplemental guides — the Family Resource and Program Resource books — contain the most offensive material.)
An Overview
Growing in Love is overflowing with inaccurate generalities and is sorely lacking serious objective content. After examining all the components of this series, we find that it is, at best, a massive waste of time and resources. At worst, GIL is a dangerous curriculum that can damage the faith of children and erode their moral sense. The sole beneficiaries of this series are Harcourt, Inc., and groups like Planned Parenthood, which benefit from the largesse of this corporation. It is sad to note, in fact, that Harcourt subsidiaries have published a number of anti-life books including: A Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion, and Contraception: Your Questions Answered (both published by Churchhill Livingston); Handbook of Contraception and Family Planning (published by Bailliere Tindall); and The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals (published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), among others.
The GIL series poses many problems, the most obvious being the fact that it is an offensively explicit classroom sex-ed program. In the 1995 pontifical document The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality—Guidelines for Education Within the Family, section 83 states: “Nonetheless, in the context of moral and sexual information, various problems can arise in this stage of childhood. In some societies today, there are planned and determined attempts to impose premature sex information on children. But, at this stage of development, children are still not capable of fully understanding the value of the affective dimension of sexuality. They cannot understand and control sexual imagery within the proper context of moral principles and, for this reason, they cannot integrate premature sexual information with moral responsibility. Such information tends to shatter their emotional and educational development and to disturb the natural serenity of this period of life. Parents should politely but firmly exclude any attempts to violate children’s innocence because such attempts compromise the spiritual, moral and emotional development of growing persons who have a right to their innocence.”
Unfortunately, the GIL authors pressure parents to accept classroom sex education. While the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children is recognized, the authors attempt to discourage parents from taking this route, stating that, “By limiting your child’s exposure to Growing in Love material in the home, however, you lose the benefits of the give-and-take discussions with peers or other families, as well as the immediate support of a teacher, catechist, or other facilitator.” But it is precisely because parents do not want to delegate sex education to outsiders that they teach sex education at home. Common-sense readers will immediately question the need for a sex-ed program that starts in kindergarten and continues — with scores of repetitions — throughout elementary school. Also, many of the faith-related issues addressed in this series could be better taught within a traditional catechesis program.
While space limits this article from addressing each specific offense, some examples of the problems in the GIL series are listed below:
• Graphic sexual information: One of the most glaring problems with the Growing in Love series involves teaching young children detailed aspects of sexuality using offensively graphic language. The series’ supplementary lessons in particular use a level of explicitness that is highly offensive to the Christian sense of modesty. Obviously, due to the offensive and oftentimes repulsive nature of these descriptions, they cannot be reproduced here in full. Suffice to say that there are numerous sections describing private and intimate behavior reserved for married couples. Even more disturbing are the sections detailing the abuses of sexuality by disordered individuals … this to children ages 5-12!
• Masturbation: The Family Resources manual (Page 10) advises that self-touch of sexual organs by young children is permissible, if it is not overdone, saying that a child may do this “…almost automatically, for comfort or pleasurable sensation. Be sure to tell your child that this kind of touch is not appropriate in public.” On the contrary, children should be taught that sexual organs must be treated with particular respect.
Supplementary Lesson 3 in the Program Resources manual for grade four (Page 41), as well as the manual for grade five, states: “Deliberate masturbation is sinful to a greater or lesser degree.” The authors should have noted instead that masturbation is always a serious or mortal sin due to the intrinsically evil nature of the action, so the materiality is always a grave matter. Only God can determine the formal responsibility of a person who indulges in this type of action.
• Pornography: In the Program Resources manual for grade five (Page 40) the authors make a distinction between “erotic” and “pornographic” materials. The author’s state: “The erotic is designed to cause sexual excitement or arousal, which is not in itself always immoral.” This observation is seriously flawed. The proper place for sexual excitement or arousal is within marriage. Thus a Christian should not indulge in “erotic” materials of any type that produce what belongs only to a married couple. This section also states: “Even erotic material that may be considered legitimate for mature adults may be inappropriate for children and adolescents or may be misinterpreted by them.” One wonders what type of erotic material the authors have in mind. The Church’s traditional moral teaching says that all erotic materials should be avoided because they are either sinful in themselves or an occasion of sin.
Obviously a distinction should be made between certain forms of romantic art and erotic materials; but there is no clear evidence that the GIL authors have this distinction in mind. It leads one to wonder if the authors are trying to legitimize some forms of soft-core pornography.
• Gender issues: This program does not consider the fact that the natural differences between men and women run deeper than their external sexual differentiation. The differences are grounded at the chromosomal level. The modern gender agenda tends to see the differences between men and women as culturally conditioned. This view is erroneous. The differences between the sexes respond to nature and to the Creator of nature. It appears that the authors of GIL have fallen under the influence of a secular humanist culture that seeks to erode the true sexual differentiation between men and women.
• References to “gender anomalies”: When discussing this subject, the Family Resources manual for grade seven (Page 8) implies that sex-change operations are acceptable. The manual cites that persons who “have strong discomfort with their anatomical gender … sometimes known as transsexual or transgendered persons … may dress, act, and live as the other gender. They may also undergo gender reassignment, a combination of counseling, surgery, and hormone therapy….”
• Homosexuality: The Growing in Love series contains a constant theme toward legitimizing homosexual tendencies. This could have devastating effects on youth who might be experiencing sexual identity confusion. The series contains many vague and questionable statements such as, “Introduce the topic [of “sexual orientation”] by telling the group that sexual orientation involves the discovery of one’s sexual identity” (Program Resouces manual for grade five, Page 47). This same section instructs teachers to explain four possible sexual orientations — heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual and asexual — which is another subtle way of lending legitimacy to homosexuality.
The program’s fifth-grade level material states: “Some people continue to be attracted primarily to those of the same gender. This tendency is called homosexuality. The Church teaches that two people of the same gender may not express affection in ways that are appropriate for married love only. One of the reasons for this is that their physical relationship cannot be open to new life.” While the GIL series briefly recognizes that homosexual inclinations are disordered, it does not state, as the Church teaches, that these inclinations are disordered because they are a “strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1 October 1986, n. 3.)
Also, in no way do the authors point out that bisexuality is many times a consequence of immoral actions and is an obvious vehicle for transmitting AIDS to the heterosexual population. In addition, the authors never say that many researchers and medical doctors believe that homosexual tendencies can often be cured.
A number of the teaching guides equate racism and sexism with “homophobia.” One must remember that today’s society unjustly labels as “homophobic” those who dare to question the moral, physical, psychological or spiritual aspects of homosexual activity.
• Divorce: The proposed answer (in the Family Resources manual for kindergarteners) relating to the question “What does ‘getting a divorce’ mean?” is completely devoid of moral guidelines: “Sometimes a husband and wife have problems getting along with each other. They may work on solving their problems, but if they can’t solve them, they may … decide to legally end their marriage … called a divorce.” There is no mention of the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of marriage.
• Explanation of family structures: The Family Resources manual for the kindergarten level (Page 9) includes a section describing so-called “nontraditional living situations,” which says that “… there is no one all-encompassing way to define a family. It’s important to remember that this has always been true, although today the media, changing lifestyles, and reproductive technologies present the widest variety of family models in human history.” One does not need much time to recognize the “politically correct” slant of this statement. In describing “nontraditional” living situations — such as single parents who have “live-in relationships” and children who “live with two women or two men” — the text neglects to fully incorporate the Church’s teaching.
This same section states: “In particular, you need to help your child understand varying family structures without exaggerating negative comparisons. No child should be made to feel that he or she is responsible for the structure of his or her family.” It is self-evident that a child is not responsible for immoral family structures, and that should be made clear to children; but the immorality of those situations should be stated. If not, the program fails to provide a true Catholic education.
• Theological misrepresentations and inaccuracies: In one of many examples of catechetical insufficiencies, the Teaching Guide for grade six (Page 9) states that “the Eucharist is a source of spiritual strength and health for you now and through your life.” While this statement is not incorrect in itself, it omits what is essential in the Eucharist, which is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.
Also, the Teaching Guide for grade four (Page 25) gives an inaccurate presentation of missionary Jean Donovan as “saint.” Donovan, a laywoman who traveled to El Salvador as a missionary, was killed in that country in 1980. The guide fails to point out that she was not murdered out of hatred for the Faith, but due to her political involvement. Obviously Donovan’s murder, like any other murder, should be deplored. But it is necessary to explain that her murder was politically motivated and not connected to her religion. Presenting Donovan with two recognized saints of the Church — St. Margaret of Scotland and St. Martin de Porres — and describing her as “someone we can relate to” encourages a watering down of the Church’s teaching on sainthood.
The Teaching Guide for grade four (Page 36) states: “They [priests] do not get married, although some have adopted children.” As a general rule, priests do not adopt children: First, because a child should typically be adopted by a couple and not by a single adult. Second, this commitment could impair his ability to perform his priestly duties. While extreme cases may occur in which ecclesiastical superiors permit a priest to adopt a child, these cases are not the norm.
In grade seven’s Teaching Guide (Page 56), it is stated that “Though Holy Orders was not officially named as one of the seven sacraments until the twelfth century, the idea of a minister who helps to guide the Church in Christ’s name can be traced back to the collective leadership of the twelve apostles.” One does not define the priesthood as “ministers who help to guide the Church.” Catholic tradition emphasizes the sacramental powers and teaching duties linked to the priesthood. The GIL description of the priesthood has a distinct Protestant flavor.
Conclusions
As one can see, Catholic schools are being presented with an extremely problematic curriculum. The first and foremost concern is that of the program’s main purpose: sex education in the classroom. This type of “education” lends itself to the idea that everything about sexuality can be explicitly described in the classroom. This program also promotes the “gender agenda” and the legitimizing of homosexuality. These two objectives are clearly part and parcel of the secular humanist revolution and should not be part of Catholic education.
In light of this brief evaluation of the lamentable Growing in Love sex education curriculum, it is advisable that parents remove their children from any program that uses these materials. Second, parents themselves should assume the responsibility of forming their children in these very delicate matters. In so doing, parents should be fully confident that God will grant them superabundant graces to fulfill their roles as educators.
(Fr. Barreiro is the Executive Director of HLI’s Rome Office. Kristin Sparks is the Editor of HLI Reports. This article courtesy of Human Life International.).
