(Greg Clovis is the Director of HLI-United Kingdom. This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International.)
Where Students Stand
Many Catholic parents go to the effort and expense of sending their children to good Catholic schools in the hope that, along with good parental example, the schools will promote the Catholic tradition and culture as part of the learning process.
But are Catholic school students any more pro-life or committed to the Catholic Faith than their non-Catholic peers? Are Catholic teenagers any less likely to be promiscuous, use contraception, cohabitate or abort than teenagers from nonreligious backgrounds? According to the research that Human Life International/United Kingdom has done in a number of Catholic schools, it would seem that the attitudes, values, perceptions and behavior of teenagers in Catholic schools do not differ significantly from those found in the general population.
The HLI-United Kingdom chastity team has gone into a number of schools in that region in the past year. Before delivering their program, a questionnaire was distributed in an attempt to identify where students stand on key moral subjects. The following analysis highlights three of the most important issues — cohabitation, contraception and abortion — and gives some idea of the impact these schools are having on the next generation.
Holding Fast to Church Teachings
We asked the question, “Is it all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married?” Some 72 percent of the students we polled agree or strongly agree that it is acceptable for a couple to live together without the intent of marrying. And when we asked, “Is it a good idea for a couple who intend to marry to first live together?,” we found 76 percent agreed that they thought cohabitation was, in fact, a good idea. Those who neither agreed nor disagreed with the two statements above were 17 percent and 12 percent, respectively. Those children who rejected these statements accounted for 11 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
We then asked the students to respond to the following statement: “Contraception is a necessity today”. The answers given by the students were: 85 percent agreed/strongly agreed with the statement and 5 percent neither agreed nor disagreed. Ten percent opposed contraception as a necessity.
Finally, we posed the statement, “Abortion is never justified”. The results were as follows: Twenty-four percent disagreed with the statement; 34 percent neither agreed nor disagreed, while 39 percent agreed with the statement. What is encouraging is that the majority have not as yet committed themselves to the killing of the unborn.
Looking at the way these students answered the questions, it becomes apparent how successful the media and sex educators in the UK have been in influencing our children. Countless television shows promote an immoral, “progressive” lifestyle. Is it any wonder that the views and opinions of our young people run parallel with these dramas?
The overt messages our children are continuously bombarded with, plus the lack of moral formation given in their parish communities, inevitably leave young people in a moral desert. Many never really hear the message that is consistently taught by our Holy Father. Thus it’s no surprise that a majority of young Catholics do not hold fast to the teachings of the Church.
If young people accept co-habitation, then they inevitably accept contraception; and if they accept contraception, the acceptance of abortion follows closely behind, as the “contraception of last resort.” The agents of death have long recognized this and for this reason push a version of sex education that is based on the promotion of contraception. They know that if they can change the behavior of the young, they can dictate their value system.
Sound Moral Formation
Most children in the United Kingdom spend 15 years in full-time education. One might think this serves as an opportune time for those in the Catholic education system to provide Catholic formation, thereby reinforcing the many virtues parents so earnestly want their children to acquire. Yet even within Catholic education our children are often taught that Catholicism as a faith is one among equals. In many primary schools, children are introduced to Hinduism, Islam and other religions while First Communion and Confirmation classes are done outside school hours.
But it is the introduction of sex and relationship education that has been so damaging. Sex instruction in schools is a misappropriation of parental authority. The introduction of such material into schools has not led to happy, lifelong marriages nor has it helped our children to live more moral or chaste lives. Rather, it has reinforced the false expectations of a once moral society numbed into moral indifference to the extent that chastity will increasingly be equated with malnutrition. The staple diet of young people will continue to be one of alienation from their parents and from the teachings of the Catholic Church.
It must be honestly admitted that Catholic schools have not fulfilled their responsibilities of giving young people an adequate understanding of their faith, which will equip them to counter and challenge the secularist belief systems that confront them. The beauty and mystery of the Church’s teaching on the holiness of sex within marriage is being withheld from them. The only mystery, which as yet remains unfathomable, is why, in this sex-saturated society, children are deemed to be ignorant in sexual matters.
Thus, the lack of Catholic formation and the constant push toward morally bankrupt behavior explains why Catholic parents are finding it more and more difficult not only to pass on the Faith to their children, but also to instill the practice of the Faith; that is, the living of the moral life. We now live in a pagan culture where the tentacles of hedonism and materialism have invaded most areas in our children’s lives. Only the strongest of young people can survive with their faith intact once they have gone through the education system.
As parents we need to be proactive in saying no to the sex instructors, even if it means upsetting the school and possibly withdrawing the child from certain classes. Failure to do so will leave our children psychologically and morally impoverished. Catholic parents must remain the primary educators of their children. The most effective school in the world is the family and for this reason parents must not opt out of their children’s education or allow those of dubious faith to instruct them in moral matters.
