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| They're going to teach me what? |
Pope Francis’ pronouncement in Amoris Laetitia on “The Need for Sex Education,” appears in Chapter Seven, titled “Towards a Better Education of Children,” § 280-286.
The main heading, “The Need for Sex Education,” is instructive in light of the fact that prior to the post-conciliar era, no such “instruction” was deemed “necessary” by Holy Mother Church apart from the natural instruction given by parents to their children on sexual matters as they enter womanhood and manhood.
More than that, classroom “sex education” for children and youth was expressly prohibited by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on Christian education Divini Illius Magistri issued on December 31, 1929, where we find the Catholic Church’s first official prohibition of formal sex instruction in an open classroom setting, an academic novelty which was introduced into certain liberal Catholic educational circles in the early part of the 20th century. As Pius XI states:
Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. (more...)
