Challenging Children to Chastity A Parental Guide by H. Vernon Sattler, C.Ss.R. Imprimi potest: Edward J. Gilbert, C.Ss.R. Provincial Superior August 12, 1991 Nihil obstat: David A. Bohr, S.T.D. Censor Librorum August 14, 1991 Imprimatur: +James C. Timlin, D.D. Bishop of Scranton, PA. August 14, 1991 The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed. Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Copyright 1989 Division of Christian Education National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Copyright 1991 by the Central Bureau of the Catholic Central Verein of America 3835 Westminster Place St. Louis, MO 63108-3472 Contents ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preface John Cardinal O'Connor Introduction Chapter I Right, Duty and Privilege of Sex Education by Parents Chapter II Nuptial Meaning of the Body Chapter III Process of Sex Education In the Home Chapter IV Step by Step in Sex Education Chapter V Parents and the Direct Sex Education of the Children Afterword Appendix I Sex Education in Schools in General Appendix II Sex Education in Catholic Schools and in CCD Miscellaneous Topics Which Come Up in the Class Room ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preface Father H. Vernon Sattler, C.Ss.R. is a fine priest who has devoted most of his life to the task of being a theologian and educator. His contributions in the field of moral theology are diverse in subject matter, yet one in their adherence to the teaching of Jesus Christ. In the spirit of his patron, St. Alphonsus Ligouri, he has shown a passion for exploring and presenting the unity of doctrine and life. It is no surprise, then, that he should make this contribution aimed at helping today's parents to covey the virtue of chastity to their children. What does come as a surprise, though, is that Fr. Sattler tells us to read this book and then forget about it. By design this is no ordinary how to manual. It is meant to be a source of leaven, a packet of yeast which is broken open and kneaded into the dough of daily living. The words of the book, the examples, the inferences are meant to remain obscure in themselves, but through their instrumentality the reader is to catch on to a new way of thinking about chastity education. We live in an age when Gods beautiful ennobling gift of human sexuality is so often trivialized and reduced to a mere primal drive for physical gratification having no inherent moral worth. In such an atmosphere, the breadth of what it means to truly love can be lost by a depersonalized or mechanically orientated approach to teaching our children about their role in the creative will of God. Fr. Sattlers rather unique method of unabashed and free flowing reflection and commentary is meant to challenge parents to go beyond the absorption of facts. He encourages them to embrace an entirely Catholic outlook in such a way that their children will catch it from them. Our Holy Father has taught in the Apostolic Exhortation that parents are called to offer their children a clear and delicate sex education rooted in an education to love as self-giving. 1 It is my sincere hope that many parents will draw upon this book as a resource to assist them in their lifelong task of self-giving love and that their children will come to know and do the truth in love. John Cardinal O'Connor Archbishop of New York 1 Familiaris consortio, no. 37. Also cited in Educational Guidance in Human Love Outlines for Sex Education, Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, November 1, 1983. Introduction Please, do not read and study this book so as to pass a test. No examination can certify you as a good sex educator, or, better, an educator in chastity. There are no True-False answers, multiple choice tests, no grades. Education, speech fluency, literacy, inventiveness, have little to do with good sex or chastity education. True conjugal-parental love alone counts. Loving mistakes, fumbled and corrected, might be much more effective than technically perfect efforts. Professional teachers may have the degrees and class-room skills, but not necessarily the ability to instill virtue, or what Christian virtue presupposes, faith in Divine Revelation as certified in Christ through a teaching Church. Do not, repeat, do not, memorize this material, utilize clever phrases, take notes from it, follow it as some sort of blueprint of good sex education. Please do not attempt to follow its logic, order or procedure. Above all, do not attempt to repeat even a single phrase for any one of your children. If you do you will sound phoney, like a puppet without a voice of its own, or a dull, mechanical, unconvincing recording. Only if you have made the thought and attitudes presented here your own with full personal conviction, should you try to repeat phrases. Though there might be a correct way to impart Christian sex education, no one has ever done it correctly without mistakes! Parents confuse the issue. Children misunderstand. Sometimes it seems that they perversely and deliberately refuse to understand! Of course they do! With the awesome responsibility for sexual meaning, who wants to assume it too soon? Though you should try to avoid mistakes, often enough errors in positive or negative attitudes, whether in fact or truth, might be more important to the final result than doing it correctly in the first place, because once corrected, a error in belief or conviction might be all the more strongly compensated for. Often a broken bone is stronger because of the special healing demanded by the break. Yet, no one would deliberately break a bone to make it stronger! Read this work. Start in the beginning, at the end, in the middle. Pick it up and read it where it falls open. Mull over what it says. Taste it. Roll it around on your tongue. Compare it with your general experiences. Add it to or subtract it from your living experiences and accumulated wisdom of success and failure. Then forget it! When your children ask questions, or show a need for information or formation you will not be able to recall the suggestions the book offers anyway. You will not be able to find the book to look them up, and if you can find it and do look up an answer, you will have lost the magic moment and the child or adolescent will have wandered off wondering why you made such a production of answering a simple question or puzzled attitude. Weren't you there when he was conceived? Born? When did you last research the answer to a question on safe driving, honesty, patriotism, loving your parents, helping the poor, respecting your clergyman, telling the truth, honestly filling out your income tax form, being loyal to your team or school or ethnic customs, obeying the traffic cop, brushing their teeth, table manners? This book is deliberately finished without an index to prevent your looking for a particular answer! The attitudes you need for good parental chastity education must be caught not taught. The attitudes your children need towards sexuality must be caught from you not taught by you! Living the truth is not a matter of science or technology, not a matter of physiology, ethics, psychology, sociology, theology, history, etc., etc. It is simply a matter of living your life to the hilt with all the conviction you can bring to it, and allowing others to perceive the witness you are giving of the way you love with conviction or the lack of it. You will not succeed if you merely attempt what is expected of you without personal conviction. A perfunctory repetition of a party line whether religious, moral or patriotic will convince no one. You can only teach, in the area of chastity and modesty particularly, what you are truly convinced of, and which you have experienced and are still experiencing. That experience may include triumph and failure, satisfaction and remorse, virtue and sin, joy and sorrow, ease and struggle, honor and shame, courage and despair, love and hatred, devotion and abuse. A finally good life has often been full of sins or ambivalences, at best resolved, less good, muddled through, at least, repented and reversed. Unfortunately, so much technical information is conveyed to young people today that is simply false or which suggests immoral or indifferently moral activity, that at times it is necessary to correct it with factual and moral truth drawn from science, or official religious teaching. This may suggest to parents that they consult some authority or official text, or even expect correct information from a trained teacher or counselor, priest, religious or lay person. But one must always ascertain the correct virtuous attitude of such a consultant. Keep a sense of humor. Sexuality is too ridiculous to be treated pompously; too solemn, awesome, and frightening to be dismissed with mere matter of factness. It was of frightening import as to whose woman was Helen of Troy, whose beauty resided in the face that launched a thousand ships. The great tragedies and epics, as well as the most delightful of comedies, center around the meaning of sexuality. Hamlet and Othello vie with A Midsummers Night Dream and The Taming of the Shrew for our interest and attention. The contrast of tragedy and comedy is necessary for our sanity. This book is deliberately repetitious. It will describe the same or similar suggestions in several different places or contexts. This is the way things happen with children. No child learns anything once and for all and on a single occasion. For that matter, no adult ever learns anything fully, completely, on a single occasion. An old adage say: Repetition is the mother of learning. A weary father once sighed after blowing his cork unreasonably in the presence of his children: I'll be so happy when they grow up realizing that I'm the one who (also) needs correction! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER I The Right, Duty, And Privilege Of Sex Education By Parents All education, whether formal or informal, is rooted in the primary vocation of married couples to participate in God's creative activity (Familiaris Consortio 36). By begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation for growth and development, parents by that very fact take the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the Second Vatican Council recalled, Since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children. Hence, the family is the first school of those social virtues which every society needs (99). The right and duty of parents to give education is essential, since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; and it is irreplaceable and inalienable and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others. . . . the most basic element, so basic that it sets the parameters of the educational role of parents, is parental love, which finds fulfillment in the task of education as it completes and perfects its service of life. As well as being a source, the parent's love is also the animating principle and therefore the norm inspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity, enriching it with the values of kindness, constancy, goodness, service, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice that are the most precious fruit of love (Familiaris Consortio 36, italics added). Quite clearly the essential meaning of sexual intercourse is total mutual self-gift of husband and wife with deliberate risk or openness to whatever might happen of love and new human life. This is the paradigmatic sign or symbol-model of all other loves! Even God's love for man is a divine romance, a sort of divine-human marriage. Children should have been begotten of such mutual unconditional love, and if, because of human failure or sinfulness, a child happens by accident (or by deliberate pre-programming!) every possible remedial love must be employed to supply the fundamental birthright of every human being, to be sourced and supported in disinterested (risky!) love. Nothing can compensate fully for the lack of love as the initiative, or love as the foundation for the being and every form of education of the child. This is why the despised slave can sing poignantly sometimes I feel like a motherless child. And why the only answer to the failed need is the overcompensating prophecy of Isaias: Can a mother forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, I (God! Y-W-H!) will never forget you. See! I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:15-16). Education of the child is essential to transmission of human life. Begetting is incomplete without education. Parental right, obligation and privilege is the origin of and primary to the role of any other teacher. Parental education cannot be replaced, and parents cannot hand it over entirely to others nor permit it to be forcibly taken over by others, no matter how professionally qualified. Even bishops, priests and religious may not preempt true parental education. Parental love sets the extent of all education, is the source and animating principle of all education. The norm of good teaching by others is the love of the child's parents. Though minimum schooling can be legislated for the common good of society, in education parental love is everything. Education in love as self-giving is also the indispensable premise for parents called to give their children a clear and delicate sex education. Faced with a culture that largely reduces human sexuality to the level of something commonplace, since it interprets and lives it in a reductive and impoverished way by linking it solely with the body and with selfish pleasure, the educational service of parents must aim firmly at a training in the area of sex that is truly and fully personal; for sexuality is an enrichment of the whole person body, emotions, and soul and it manifests its inmost meaning in leading the person to the gift of self in love. Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them. In this regard the church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents. In this contest education for chastity is absolutely essential, for it is a virtue that develops a person's authentic maturity and makes him or her capable of respecting and fostering the nuptial meaning of the body. Indeed Christian parents, discerning the signs of God's call, will devote special attention and care to education in virginity or celibacy as the supreme form of that self-giving that constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality. In view of the close links between the sexual dimension of the person and his or her ethical values, education must bring the children to a knowledge of and respect for the moral norms as the necessary and highly valuable guarantee for responsible personal growth in human sexuality. For this reason the church is firmly opposed to an often widespread form of imparting sex information dissociated from moral principles. That would merely be an introduction to the experience of pleasure and a stimulus leading to the loss of serenity while still in the years of innocence by opening the way to vice (Familiaris Consortio 37, italics added). According to this doctrine, sex education must be carried out by parents, and all others are but mere assistants. Schools, even Catholic schools, must cooperate with parents in this area, not vice versa! Moral Principles We are constantly reminded that sex education for Christians must never be divorced from moral principles. For that matter, it ought not be divorced from such principles for any sensible human being, Christian or not. Nor are the principles complex. They are really simple and indeed, there is only one principle. Chastity is the moral principle which gives the simple meaning of sexual intercourse. Lovemaking is designed as the deepest mutual physical surrender of one man to one woman for a lifetime in mutual total self-giving with openness to whatever happens by way of result, whether deeper love or new-life or emptiness. The action means the same thing no matter what the partners mean! And it means the same thing even when they pervert it, abstain from it, open themselves to fertility with full awareness, or surrender to each other at times of infertility or even menopause. It means the same thing when they await the call of God for such surrender even for a lifetime in dedication to a vowed or situational celibacy or virginity! When applied, this single principle looks complex. On this single principle, multiple sins are described and rejected as perverse rejections of the total nuptial meaning of the Body as a gift back to God in (truly) single blessedness or in marriage through one's husband or wife. Masturbation is, sexually, like solitary drinking, pigging out or compulsive eating, as clearly also is the pursuit of pornography or obscenity. Selfish use of partner as a sexual service station or in some sort of bargain within marriage or outside it is a sort of prostitution, a (perhaps mutual) lust. Marital contraception is a mutual lie in our bodies as openness to new life, just as a verbal lie is speech that is a lie in your teeth! Sodomy (heterosexual) is the repulsive devotion to an opening of the body which is a death opening instead of a life opening. (Heterosexual) sado-masochism is the enactment of surrender, and demand for such surrender, to sheer overwhelming might instead of the loving request and avid surrender to the power of (mutual) authority which is exercised for the mutual good of the partners. Homosexual practice is devotion to the mirror image of the self, which inevitably rejects the life-giving meaning of sex, and which ends in either the utter emptiness of lesbianism or the disgusting devotion to death, defecation, and brutalities of male homosexuality. Why would anyone insist that sodomy is lovemaking, when we have spent so much effort on toilet training, and have reserved defecation to the privacy of the out-house? It cannot be without meaning that this practice of sodomy in marriage or in male homosexuality brings with it the sado-masochistic rectal lesions, repeated hepatitis, and the incurable AIDS (Acquired Immunological Deficiency Syndrome). Obviously, there is no need for parents to describe all these perversions of the nuptial surrender of the body. A clear in place (in marriage) exclusive love-meaning will quite sufficiently indicate out of place (mutual) lust. An apparently crude keep your panties up and your dress down! within a loving family might well indicate the evil of lust and the positive celebration of Christian love-union in marriage! This is the reason St. Paul says that perversions of sex should not so much as be mentioned among Christians, and why he himself speaks of these perversions in circumlocutions, which quite clearly indicate his rejections but which are not vivid descriptions of the practices condemned (Eph 5:3-6). A derived principle of modesty flows from Chastity. One ought not to start the sign activity which symbolizes, initiates and prepares for the mutual surrender of the nuptial meaning of the body, and one ought to willingly mean what these actions mean within the context of mutual and utter surrender in marriage. Mutual viewing, touch, kissing, open-mouth, tonguing, mutual exploration, is body-language reserved to the place where mutual total giving and receiving belong. As reserved to such a place (marital covenant and meaning) it is excluded absolutely elsewhere. Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready (Song of Songs 2:7; 3:5; 8:4). It is true that much physical affection before marriage can be a signal or promise, or mutual desire, for what is to happen after total commitment. Said a young lady to a counselor when her future husband complained that he could not get near her: (Earthily) You want a ride? I'll give you the ride of your life. (Pointing to her ring finger) Put it there first! Parental Privilege It is difficult to understand why parents might want others to give this formation to their children. Quite clearly, the culture in which we live does not believe these truths. It says that orgasm is desirable in itself, that it is a mere health entity to which each individual is entitled to experience as an option, as often as he or she wishes, alone or with any meaning he may desire and with as many partners of either sex (or even with animals) as they might choose. This is what the Pope means when he says that the modern approach is reductionist in that it makes of the meaning of nuptial surrender a nothing but a bodily experience of mere pleasure. Is he not right? Then how can you parents leave the formation of your children up to SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council of the United States), which controls all schooling on the topic and insists that unless the child has discovered sexual experience by himself, if we love the child we ought to make sure that he does. This is one reason why, if at all possible, a mother should stay home as much as possible with her children, to be available for their formation as boys and girls, men or women, virgins and spouses, husbands or wives, fathers or mothers. Children need their spoken and unspoken questions answered when they need the answers, not when parents achieve quality time. This is why I would like to recommend the statement of the mother who quit work in her late pregnancy: Nobody else is going to form my child, answer his needs or questions. I an going to be there when he/she needs me. She recognized that there is pre-natal influence upon the child, and that how she and her husband/father accepted her pregnancy would influence that child, or, at least, how their resolution of their possible first ambivalences (Oh, NO!) will form the ultimate chastity of the child, as well as will the loving meaning given when the mother places her baby to her breast or tosses it on a pillow with a "bottle-caddy!" One wonders about the formation of child warehoused in a day-care center for ten hours a day at a cost roughly equivalent to the expense of kennel-boarding for a pet, or the daily city parking fee for a car. One wonders whether the care of the child is about equivalent to the care of the pet, or the car. If the above paragraph evokes a feeling of guilt in the reader, please do not merely reject it with anger or denial. Resolve it by recognizing whether there is true justification for being away from the children, whether the child-care truly compensates for motherly care, and whether the decision is truly justified in the correct results. When one listens to the anxious questions a mother asks about professional or private child-care and day-care, it becomes more and more clear that the mother is looking for qualifications that only she herself can fill! All substitutional love must recognize that it is but a facsimile and (over) compensation for what should have been there in the first place. Adoptive parents, single parents, baby sitters, social workers, public welfare and agency personnel, day-care employees, etc., must attempt to be whatever parental person is missing in presence or function. This in no way exempts the child from the need of paternal formation. A father is not merely the financial umbilical cord of life-support. His role of responsible concern, and personal attention to each and every child will teach his girls what to seek for in a husband-father and his boys the responsibility for and love for the possible wife-mother they will woo, wed and bed. The interaction of both will form the virility and femininity in their children necessary for either marriage or dedicated celibacy. The harm done to the chastity formation of children by the father who is absent physically or emotionally is incalculable. Inevitability Of Parental Sex Education Parents form their children in chastity or its lack no matter what they do! Whether they attempt to speak out, model correct nuptial body meaning, or fail to do so, whether they speak or remain silent, whether they succumb passively to the culture or the schooling of their children or fight and correct it, they are inevitably the final formers of their children. Though it might be that the culture and original sin will win out over parental Christian formation despite their best efforts, since you can lead the horse to water but you cannot make him drink, parents are absolutely responsible for the lustful pursuits of their children if they abdicate all positive formation of their children. Schooling is often too late and is as scientific as parental formation is unscientific. Often parental example, positive, negative or omitted, speaks so loudly that they cannot hear the intellectual truths taught in school. Preaching tends to be too brief, and indefinite (it is very difficult to be as concrete and earthy in the pulpit as parents can be in a one-on-one encounter. The religious education teachers (priest, sister, or lay man or woman), reach 25-30 pupils for only about 30 hours in a year! The most influential priest, religious, teacher or counselor in the world can, at most, be supportive or slightly corrective of parental example. No, parents must admit that in all the virtue formation of the child, and especially the chastity formation, the (whole) buck stops here. By their presence or absence, by formation or its omission, by speech and action or their failure, parents are largely responsible for the chastity or unchastity, the modesty or immodesty of their children (granting always the final freedom of the child, and the cultural impact upon the fundamental weakness of will due to original sin). This is not to say that the pope, bishops, priests, religious, teachers or counselors have nothing to say to parents by way of forming them to their duties, or to the community in correction of parental failure or even abuse of their authority. But the principle of subsidiarity is imperative here. This principle says that no duty should be performed by a more public authority if it can be and is being done by the private responsibility of individuals and families; that if the greater organization supplies what is lacking, it do so with the awareness that it is supplying only for a deprivation; that it protest that its supplement is essential temporary; and that as soon as possible, the role be returned to the original responsible actors. It is a notorious fact that all social tasks taken over by local or national public authority, tend to destroy individual responsibility, pauperizes, depersonalizes, and renders dependent the recipients of the services, and eventually refuses to return the function to the primary responsible persons! (E.g.; economic welfare, Aid To Dependent Children, Social Security, Juvenile and Family Courts, public schooling, health care insurance, bureaucratic controls of every kind, centralized school districts, even Catholic School Boards, public housing, care for the homeless, Soup Kitchens!) Chapter II Nuptial Meaning Of The Body It is important for parents (and every human person, especially a Catholic Christian) to understand what John Paul II means by the nuptial meaning of the body. He insists that the human being comes into the world as a body- soul person who is a unique gift from God with a unique call to surrender himself totally and completely to God, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all you soul and with all your mind (Mt 22:37; cf. Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27; in the Old Testament, Dt 6:5). Whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple (Lk 14:26). (Cf. the weekly sermons of John Paul II from Sept. 1979 to July 4, 1984: Original Unity of Man and Woman; Blessed Are the Pure of Heart; The Theology of Marriage and Celibacy; St. Paul Editions, Boston MA 02130) A nuptial or spousal gift is one that has been and will be given to no other than the beloved. Each human being (in Christian thought) is uniquely given by the creating hand of God into his own custody. A human person IS God's nuptial gift into the world, which is fresh, original, unique, inviolable, and never ever to be given again, nor will the identical gift be given to another. Any gift demands, as near as possible, an equivalent return of the gift. A nuptial gift can only be totally accepted from and wholly returned to the giver and to no other. In the Holy Trinity the Father Utters Himself totally into the Son, the WORD. The WORD is totally receptive of the Uttering of the Father, and totally Echoes Divine Being back. You are mystified by this verbiage? Then mull over the mysterious wording of the Wedding Song: A woman takes her life from man and gives it back again there is Love. A nuptial gift can only be totally accepted. A nuptial gift must be gathered up and returned. The human being enters into the material world, and his presence is signed, by being a body-person. In Christian thought the human body is not an appendage nor an instrument of a spirit. It is but the external aspect, the visible material sign of the nuptial gift of human person into the world, and to the self. It must be returned, body and soul, unconditionally, holding nothing back, to the Creator. This is called the VOCATION of each and every person. A calling, a sounding into the world by God, which must be gathered up and returned to Him (and the Christian adds: in Christ!). This one gift of body and soul together which comes from the very hand of God with the cooperation of the mutual love-gift of husband and wife (called procreation i.e. an act evoking the creative act of God [cf. the meaning of sexual intercourse below]), must be returned in its entirety as a body-person to God. The Pearl of Great Price, for which the Christian must surrender all, is the acceptance of the total gift of self from God and its total return to Him. This, in turn, means that it is the task of the human person to get himself all together and wait till the expected moment to return this gift. This is the foundation of his duty to care for, develop and fulfill his potential, to grow to the full stature of Jesus Christ (Eph 4:13). His nuptial gift of self is his vocation as a Christian. The call into being of the human person by God is an initial call to celibacy or virginity for all! A celibate (Coelebs in Latin) is one who achieves (or at least pursues) the fullness of what he truly is, singular and alone with a unique set of unshared potentials. Self-fulfillment is a celibate existence, and is given task of every human being as a nuptial given of God. But it is given to him to be totally returned. Self-fulfillment is self-possession in order to be returned utterly. Celibacy or virginity is, therefore, the call of every human being, since celibacy means the ability to have oneself all together ready for a total self-gift. This gift can be given directly to God in a dedicated service for His Kingdom. It can be a situational celibacy when the opportunity for a gift to God through another person (marriage) does not present itself. It can be a temporary gathering together till the moment of gift to another in the name of God is presented. Finally, it is the all together of total self-gift in marital commitment. Sexual Intercourse As A Sign Of Nuptial Gift And Return At this point it is necessary to meditate on the inherent meaning of sexual intercourse. At first sight, as parents read this analysis, they will deny that they have ever heard such a thing. As they mull it over, however, they will agree that it is really a true presentation, but might object that it is an ideal beyond realization. But finally they will begin to admit that though they may never have heard it presented in such a way, this is really what they have always known the interpersonal action of sex is designed to mean, that they have always wanted to have it mean this, and that their own failures and disappointments have even proved the meaning! They will even realize that despite their own possible practice of contraception in marriage, that marital contraception is a lie which they would rather not have their children discover in their parents, and which they really don't fully mean when they state the old mean-spirited adage: and if you can't be good, be careful! I know of no person, married or single, who is utterly unmoved by discovering contraceptives in the wallets of their children, or in the medicine cabinets of their parents. The movie Prudence and the Pill is hilarious precisely because contraceptive use is equally out of place for mother, daughter, or maid. That each becomes pregnant while using pills from the same prescription, substituting placebos for those used, is clearly a poetic justice for all three. Most human activities have whatever meaning the actor gives them. This most often depends entirely upon the intention of the actor. If I cook, I can cook because I am hungry, enjoy the kitchen, am interested in good nutrition, like sweets, want to gain weight, because I am a slave, need the money, am forced to by prison labor, because I want to invent a poison potion, or out of love for the people for whom I am cooking. Cooking does not have much meaning in itself. But some human actions, besides being exerted for all sorts of motives as above, have some meanings built right into the activity so that it is difficult to have any meaning which would exclude the inherent meaning, or to engage in the activity without being lured into meaning what it means. A Smile As Example Of Inherent Meaning A smile is not just a combination of lips, facial muscles and eye movements. The grimace of an animal or even the puckering up of a newborn baby is not recognized as a smile. A smile is different from a frown, a scowl, a stare. A smile is natural and spontaneous. We do not learn to smile as we learn to walk. Usually we do not first think of smiling and then do it. We just smile. A smile means the same thing in every culture, in every place in the world. And what does it mean? It means recognition, welcome, friendliness, love, joy, delight, content, amusement. But whatever it means it is hard to give it meaning outside itself, or at least being understood by everyone as what it is in itself. A person who wants to smile for some ulterior purpose finds it difficult to do so, or if he succeeds, he seems to act perversely. Try to look into a mirror while imagining someone you dislike and say: I'm smiling at you, you big baboon! You will see a terrible grimace as you force the same muscles used in a smile to pretend to smile. Or smile while you are betraying a friend, and you will note a perverse gleam which mocks the benevolence of a smile as you destroy him. Strangely too, if you are suddenly tricked into smiling, your whole mood will change. Notice how often lovers who have become angry with each other will drop the whole dispute, when one can get the other to even begin a smile! A Kiss Another kind of activity which has meaning woven right into it is kissing. It has been said that Eskimos express love by rubbing noses, and that they do not know what a kiss means. I would like to suggest that any Eskimo man or maid would immediately know what a kiss meant if you could get him or her to pucker up and experience a kiss! A kiss says: Taste and see that my beloved is sweet (cf. Ps 33:9)! A kiss shares the very life breath of the lovers. It opens the being of the lover to the beloved and vice versa. It is hard to fake a kiss. The beloved knows immediately if a kiss is perfunctory, or worse, a betrayal. Indeed, to use the externals of a kiss to betray is a most perverse act. Mafia members use the kiss deliberately as a kiss-off before the execution of a member who is considered guilty of betrayal. When Jesus was betrayed by Judas with a kiss, He did not ask whether Judas intended to betray Him. He did not say: Are you betraying me who did so much for you? He said: Judas do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?! Are you delivering me to execution with the sign which means love, concern, devotion? But equally often, a kiss that starts out as merely perfunctory, a mere dutiful response to an advance, a casual contact, allures the one who kisses to mean what it means with more and more intensity, even against his will, and to evoke a similar response from an apparently uninterested partner. Sexual Intercourse Sexual Intercourse is one human activity which has the deepest of inherent meanings. It is possible to engage in this activity with outside intentions of escape from boredom, to scratch the itch of passion, to please an ardent seducer, to boast of a conquest, to win esteem when one feels worthless, even to make money but that is not what the action means in itself. Notice that we avoid the cold scientific terms for this activity. Intercourse is the ebb and flow (coursing) of something (fluid, affection, communication, life) between two persons; coition means a mere coming together; coupling or copulation is mere connection followed by disconnection, uncoupling. Mating is what we use for animals in heat. And, of course, the four-letter words are brutal references to piercing, hurting, rejection, or the in-heat activities of rutting animals (bang, screw, filly, stud, to use only the least repulsive!). When a man and a woman can use only mechanical or animal words for their love-union they have reduced each other to non-persons, to things or mere animals, and have perverted the meaning of sexual intimacy. We prefer words like lovemaking, being intimate with. To make-love means to make love present in the bodily sign of two-in-one. To be intimate with means to mutually explore the innermost depths of the lovers as persons. Lovemaking What is sexual union between human being designed to mean? First, love-union is the only activity the author knows which takes two people, one a man and the other a woman, to mean what it is designed to mean. Conversation is a somewhat similar activity, but in conversation one speaks while the other listens and then reverses the activity. In love-union two people mean, or are invited to mean, one reality: "two-in-one-flesh". This two-in-one-ness is not mere bodily connection. The word flesh here means a human person, body and soul. To become two-in-one means to experience the other's body-person as I feel my own. When Adam sang the first love poem in the Bible: "This now is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh" he was singing the same sort of song we sing today, when we sing "Heart of my Heart, and I've got you under my skin". And when the Bible concludes "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh" (Gn 2:24), it means that this union signs and means that these two are as inseparable as a head is from the rest of a human body. To lose the partner is more than the loss of a limb, it is to lose one's own self! This is why spouses joke about "my better half." "Making love" asks the couple to mean what it means being one person and the activity tends to progressively make them one whether they mean it or not! A deeper look into the activity of love-union reveals that a man and a woman are asked to act out the deepest of love meaning. I do not have a body as a writer has a fountain pen or a typewriter. I am my body. Or better, I body-self exist. Love union does not mean copulation. That is merely the coupling of active and receptive connectors. The man is invited to focus his whole person on the loveliness of his bride and to penetrate into the deepest recesses of her being. He is asked to say: "I in-you me, that is, I place my entire being within you." On her side the wife is asked to accept her husband's entire substance into her very being. She tries to say: "I in-me you, that is, I carry your entire person within mine; I accept your centering into the center of my person!" Baby Making To understand this further make a comparison with a woman who is pregnant. I think there may be many undesired pregnancies (experience of being gravid) but hardly ever a truly unwanted baby. Especially if a mother comes to understand that during pregnancy that she has been entirely surrounding another body-person with her body-person. She has experienced what love is which is to discover another self as central to her own self as she is! And if she is lucky enough to have been able to deliver her baby while conscious of what she is doing, she will have experienced the uttering of a brand new Word, a new Meaning, an original Edition, never before heard, and never to be repeated. This is why she wants a unique name for her baby. But this experience is just an elaboration of her experience of her husband-lover which brought it to be. The baby is "two-in-one-flesh" just as the lovers are. Just as the lovers are two distinct persons but become one person which is distinct from the both of them (they say: "this is bigger than the both of us together!"), so the baby is at once both of them and neither of them! More important than anything in the world. This is why we say that a baby was a gleam in his daddy's eye in their love, and why simple country people used to say that love was getting a baby in the eye of the beloved. Finally, that is what is meant in the Hawaiian love song to a newborn child: Sweet Leilani, heavenly flower Nature fashioned roses wet with dew. And then she laid them in a bower. That was the start of you. Sweet Leilani, heavenly flower. I dreamed of paradise for two. Your are my paradise completed. You are my dream come true. Total Self-Gift But sexual union is designed to mean still more. If the male is expected to center all his being upon the person of the beloved, and she is expected to take all of him into her person, then the action attempts to say: "All that I am, all I have ever been, all I ever will be I give to you" and "All that you are, have been, or ever will be, I accept totally and absolutely from you." An old song says: "All of me, why not take all of me?" But if this is to be true then the act ought to protest that no one else has ever had any part of this gift before! The act asks the actors to say: "No one has ever gone this way with me before, and no one but you will ever go this way again. "This is why lovers are always jealous if they suspect that any other has had access to the body person of the lover or beloved, and why they would rather not know of any past love affairs. A Country and Western song asks: "How many hearts have you broken? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder but I really don't want to know." Faithful If the sexual act surrenders not only the past and the present, but also the future, then it asks the lovers to be faithful to each other. How long? Forever. There are no meaningful love songs which celebrate temporary unions. We sing only: "Forever and ever"; "Till the end of time"; I'll love you till the twelfth of never, and that's a long, long time. Diamonds are not a girl's best friend! This is the poignant song of a courtesan who cannot expect fidelity. "No Strings" Love The mutual surrender of sexual union is called the marital or conjugal act. It is unconditional. It does not say: "I love you so long as you are beautiful. I love you when you have money. I love you only when you are nice to me. I give you only part of myself. I hold my freedom from you. No strings! I don't want you to make me pregnant. I love you so long as you don't get pregnant. I love you till I fall in love with someone else!" It does say: I'll always love you, even when you are less than nice, indeed when you are hateful. More, because you might be unlovely I will make you loving and lovable by my love!" No strings. Unconditional surrender of each to the other. Modesty This unconditional mutual surrender of past, present and future is the real reason for both modesty and nudity between lovers. Modesty guards the secret of one's own private personhood from casual invasion. Just as I do not want anyone to read my personal letters, listen in on my phone calls, read my diary, and want to respect the privacy of others by refusing to pry, eavesdrop, break and enter, or even to demand confidences, so modesty of dress protects one's sexual secret from anyone but the committed lover! Modesty of eyes refuses to invade the secret of anyone but the beloved, and that only upon invitation, mutual and total surrender, with awe and reverence for the holiness and inviolability of sexual personhood which clearly reserves this to marriage. It is incredible that promoters of absolutely liberal choice use a "right to privacy to choose to kill an unborn child while opening their bodies to all viewers and all comers and boast of "letting it all hang out." On the other hand, nudity, however hesitant, fearful, awe inducing, shy, is the uniform of mutual surrender. Between committed spouses, it is a statement: "I give you all of myself, I hold nothing back. I do not hide behind convention, dress, make-up, pretense. I am vulnerable to you in all my failures, helplessnesses, less than attractive features. We are mutually vulnerable to pregnancy, its "labor and responsibilities." At first, nudity may tend to mere sexual stimulus at the physical beauty or virility of the beloved. Later, the revelation of all the body's weariness in service of the lover-beloved and children will be but an ever more impressive sign of total mutual surrender. As life traces its wear and tear on the bodies of lovers, and their good and evil choices make their permanent marks, the mutual acceptance and surrender becomes more and more precious and is clearly manifest in the mutual acceptance of each other's bodily reality. A man who finds his wife's ungainly body, pregnant with his very own child, repulsive to him, does not have the faintest idea of what mutual love means! Nor does the wife find her weary and tiring husband and father less romantic because he no longer looks like a knight in shining armor. Chastity The same concept of total unconditional giving and receiving which is marital love lies at the basis of the beautiful reality of chastity. Chastity is a language of the body-person which says: "No one but my beloved has gone this way before and no one but he will ever go this way again." Every man would prefer his wife to be a virgin, and every woman would prefer to surrender her sexual personhood to her husband untouched, unsullied in having been passed through many exploratory hands or temporary liaisons. Unfortunately, few women seem to demand virginity of experiencing from their future husbands; fewer men see any desirability in being sexually celibate till they consummate their marriages. Indeed, the male so boasts his machismo his sexual prowess in seducing, overcoming and impregnating females, that he even succumbs to a negative hypocrisy, and pretends experiences which he has hardly even read about! Yet often enough, after multiple partners, he demands virginity of a woman he wants as a wife. This is (however unconscious) the mutual recognition of the spousal or nuptial meaning of the body. Failure More unfortunately, human nature is so weak and the sexual drive so mysteriously strong that many of us do not arrive at maturity with an achieved sexual integrity; we do not have our sexual "act together", our "heads on straight" in this area. Mercifully, though once virginity is lost it is lost forever, there is the possibility of sorrow, a reversal of direction, and forgiveness. A kind of secondary virginity. Such forgiveness must be threefold. One who has failed in chastity must first forgive himself when he finds himself a failure and wishes to reverse his field. Then he must seek forgiveness of the one whom he has harmed (his future spouse or present partner). This is why lovers almost always are driven to confess past sexual failures to the beloved a confession that is not always wise! (It might be wiser to presume the forgiveness than to hurt by detailing the infidelity). Finally, he must approach the God who has designed the mysterious meaning of sex. Of these three the only certain forgiveness will come from God (who antecedently is willing to forgive and redeem if only the sinner is willing to repent, confess), who is far more forgiving than a partner or even a remorseful self. "Remorse" means a bitter "biting back"at the thought of shameful failure. Often remorseful (not sorrowful!) sinners make their own "hell" by wallowing in despising themselves. But if God can forgive a person he must learn to forgive himself. The Bible is full examples in which God forgives sexual unchastity upon sorrow. David's adultery with Bethsheba and murder of her husband is a case in point. David's beautiful Song for Forgiveness is full of sorrow but confidence in God's forgiveness which enabled him to move on (Psalm 51). The God of the Hebrews saw the entire nation as His repeatedly adulterous wife, whom He forgave again and again when she returned to Him. Jesus forgave the woman actually taken in the act of adultery while saying to her: "Nor do I condemn you. You may go. But from now on, avoid this sin" (Jn 8:11). He insisted that no reason whatever permitted divorce and remarriage when a partner failed to please. "Therefore, let no man separate what God has joined" (Mt 19:6). Perversity Like using a smile to deceive and a kiss to betray, the enactment of sex while refusing to mean what it means is perverse. Love union is the mutual surrender of one man to one woman with openness to a child for a lifetime. Love is unconditional surrender. Love can never be careful or conditional, can never reject involvement, refuse or reverse consequences. A boy too young to marry who insists on being paid for a date with sexual intimacy is as destructive of himself and the girl as a Mafia member betraying with a kiss! A girl who seduces a date to prove her desirability, to reassure herself that she is feminine and lovable, or to hold on to a relationship she suspects cannot last, misuses her body to snare the boy in an involvement he cannot sustain. He acts and demands a response which says eternal surrender with utter abandon, but he perverts it my making it a monetary uninvolved encounter. She tries to use the sexual act as a mere means to hold him to support her immaturity, her need for affection. Real love is self-surrender not self-service. The "guy" who slips the girl a few hundred dollars for an abortion, and walks away from her without responsibility, has been a liar in his loins. Like the smile and the kiss, sexual intercourse also betrays the partner to mean what they as yet do not mean, and can not yet mean. A boy and a girl might merely want to express affection, or to discover what the sexual experience might be like. They might protest that there are to be "no strings," that there is no thought of permanence or of marriage. All the protests in the world will not prevent them from getting "hung up" on each other! Immediately upon sexual interaction, they both become intensely involved with each other. (The word "involve" means "rolled up into": surely coitus is involvement!). They are immediately jealous of any contact with any third person of the same peer group, or even of the influence or love of parents. They fiercely demand a loyalty as intense as any that might be expected of a husband and wife committed to each other by solemn vows before God. They become even more suspicious of the partner's "infidelity" because they both know that this one is not a commitment and that other contacts are equally non-committal. The agony of insecurity which flows from an act which "says" faithful commitment while not having the certainty of a marriage contract or covenant is full of fear and terror at the inevitability of disaster. The tragedy of heartbreak when it is all over has been the theme of half the love songs in the world which are known as Blues' Songs. "Baby, oh baby, oh baby, you said you'd come again this way again maybe I love you true." Nor can the sexual act mean less than an openness to conception. A couple, in or out of marriage, who insist on donning a contraceptive, or inserting contraceptive armor or chemicals are acting out a lie. Lovemaking and baby making are one and the same identical activity. The baby making act invites the couple to open themselves totally to each other. A man gives himself, and hence his virility, his seed and his fertility to his beloved. He gives her the substance of his body, and he is that substance! A woman surrenders her total femininity to him, and hence her potential as a mother. That is an essential part of her as a woman. She too is totally her body. It is no accident to the procreative meaning of sexual love that a woman is more desirous of bodily affection when she is ovulating! When a couple use contraceptives they are contradicting themselves. He puts his substance in a garbage bag, or she armors herself against him, uses chemical warfare to defend herself against him. Or she makes of herself a spayed human being, or a rejector of his child for a longer or shorter time (pill, IUD), a (excuse!) bag for his effluvia. It is difficult to lie since our whole bodies protest when we try lying. This is why the lie detector works, and why we cry: "You lie in your teeth! (meaning that your very teeth are blocking your words)" when we catch someone. So our bodies protest when we attempt to use contraceptives. The abandon of lovemaking is impatient with the calculated delay needed to don or insert the contraceptive. One is uncomfortable with the premeditated calculation and repeated choices necessary to stay on the pill every day, or to wear or carry a contraceptive. The decision to be "always ready" accepts that the boy or girl is "that kind" of a person. Love cannot be calculating, fearful, rejective, conditioned upon no "unwanted" outcome, or only antecedently chosen results. Love is essentially total risk! Unwanted Pregnancy? Like the smile and kiss that "trick" an angry lover to respond with a smile and to return the kiss with more and more response-ability, so a baby making act draws the couple to open themselves to pregnancy. Contraceptives do not work very well. It is hard to trap, bloc, immobilize or kill 200 million+ sperm in an ejaculation, when the facilitating conditions for their motility are present at ovulation. The search and destroy mission of modern contraception is notably a failure. Note that back-up is advised a diaphragm with a spermicide. (Kill! Kill! Kill!) Wherever sex education is initiated with concentration on how people act sexually and how to avoid conception, unanticipated pregnancies increase in direct proportion to the instruction and the availability of the contraceptives. Discussions of methods of sexual release without discussing the meaning quite naturally stimulate the students to explore sexual release to find "what it's all about." It is not always possible, and it turns out to be"not nice to fool Mother Nature." It is usually argued that since ours is a sex-saturated culture, and young and old people are going to get into sexual activities anyway, the only way to avoid a surprise pregnancy is to increase the knowledge and availability of contraceptives. It is curious that no one ever questions that with every increase of availability, there is an increase of premarital and extramarital pregnancies, and an increase in the demand for more and more easily available abortion. The Gutmacher Institute (of Planned Parenthood) admits that the only reason for abortion is backup for contraceptive failure. If the human person is unique and irrepeatable, every conception and every person must be a surprise! Uniqueness cannot be planned, programmed, anticipated, conditioned. But contraceptives do not fail as much as contraceptors do! Physicians who prescribe medicine speak of "method failures" and "patient failures. "These terms describe medicines which fail, and patients who fail to take the medicine! It would seem that the mechanics and instrumentation of contraception do not always work, but that more often people do not "work" them. Since when is a healthy woman a "patient" for whom a remedy for fertility must be prescribed? This whole idea makes pregnancy a disease, and the sperm of her lover an infectious bacteria to be defended against, a venereal disease not really different from gonorrhea or herpes! Many young people are quite knowledgeable about contraceptives and their availability, yet they do not even think of using them. Why? I often wonder whether they wish to discover the meaning of sex in all its amplitude before they start to prevent meaning. After they have started sexually and (perhaps) panicked at a missed period and have gone for a pregnancy test which turned out negative, they do use contraceptives more often, but then "forget" them from time to time (usually at ovulation?). Why? Even an act of omission has a reason, though perhaps an unconscious one. Pregnancy is a proof of maturity, a declaration of independence from family, a method of luring into marriage, the provision of someone whom I cannot help loving, or who cannot help loving me. Making a baby is a very creative experience when one is prevented from other creativity by immaturity, lack of other skills, artistic ability, complete education. It is a very inexperienced counselor who does not ask himself, when a young or old couple come in with a problem pregnancy or the suspicion of one: "Why did he/she want to make/be pregnant?" The logic of Planned Parenthood Federation of America seems irrefutable: In a sexually stimulative culture, where all citizens are expected to be sexually active in all possible ways, unanticipated pregnancies should be prevented by effective contraceptives, and accidents removed by abortions. "Every child (ought to be permitted to exist only if he is antecedently) a wanted child!" "Children (can be permitted to be only) by Choice not be Chance!" Strangely, this logic does not work the desired results. We now have more premarital and extramarital pregnancies, more children born to unwed women, more teenage marriages, more abortion remedies and more marital breakups than ever in the history of the world. More of the same remedy only seems to make matters worse, so something must be wrong. The logic of the truth of sex is quite different. Sex means that two people, one a man and the other a woman, are invited to mean a total mutual gift of virility and femininity to each other with openness in utter unconditional surrender to whatever happens of life and love. If, for any reason, the two cannot or ought not to mean what sex means (whether because of immaturity, health, finances, psychic or social reasons), they ought not to "say" what sex says at this time. It is not true that sexual drive is insurmountable. A compulsive user of sex is not a giver but a taker. Sex is surely less demanding than the instinct of self-preservation, yet even here we have thousands of records of those who have risked their own lives out of love for others. We call some heroes. But we expect and take for granted this kind of risk in our police, fireman, doctors, lifeguards, and even our mothers and fathers. It would be a strange man who would insist upon "lovin" his wife when she had a heart condition and could die in his arms. It must be a strange young man who with a date will argue: "If you loved me you would, and if you won't, you have a sexual hang-up!" Or even: "What's your problem you are on the pill, aren't you?" Abstinence It should be quite obvious that for all truly human activity which is freely initiated, abstinence is as necessary as use. In communication, silence is as important as speech. The compulsive babbler gets "turned off." In the words of the song: "Don't speak of love, show me! Now!" The compulsive eater is piggish and repulsive. Only one who can fast, can feast! Now that we have rediscovered the probable moments of fertility in the married couple, a fertility awareness celebrated long before we knew anything about biology by pre-Christian Jews and even by David and Bethsheba in their criminal and murderous adultery, it is quite clear that there is A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing . . . A time to keep silence, and a time to speak . . . (Eccl 3:5). (Cf. Rabbi Normal Lamm: A Hedge of Roses.) Scriptural Meaning of Sexual Intercourse Judaeo-Christian tradition has a rich awareness of the meaning of sexual intercourse, which transcends and completes the meaning which is clearly observable by any thoughtful person. It is important to realize that religion does not supplant the perception of common sense, but that it more fully unfolds and fulfills it. The earliest books of the Old Testament clearly analyze the meaning of sexuality. Adam saw that sex was meant to make two persons, a man and a woman, to be as near as possible a single person. This is the reason lovers speak of: "My other self" or even "my better half." Adam said: This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken. Therefore a man leaves father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Notice that there is a special play on words here. In Hebrew the word for man is "ish" and the word for woman is "ishah." This is the same as calling the woman "sweetheart" or "heart of my heart." The word woman (wo=out of, man = earthy) really means that she is as central to him as he is to himself! But there is also a blessing upon this union: So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that move upon the earth (Gn 1:27-28). The original Hebrew has a deeper meaning here. The blessing means: "Make love (or open your love to children) and multiply. . .Extend human beings throughout the earth and bring it under your wise and prudent control." Jesus makes it quite explicit that the description of "two in one flesh" is not merely a metaphor, symbol, sign or ideal but a true existential or ontological reality. In His "argument" that divorce is not possible, He adds: "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" (Mt 19:6). He dismisses all arguments for exceptions in hardship cases. When His disciples argue that it would be better not to marry than to risk an unhappy union He agrees! He says equivalently, if unconditional love is not what you want in marriage, do not marry! St. Paul makes it clear that unchastity is sinful by insisting that lustful action is a sin against one's own body-person and also against the Body of Christ. He clearly states that Christian married couples, in their love union, should "glorify God in your body." (Read the whole section in 1 Cor 6:15-20.) Finally, St. Paul makes clear that total mutual commitment of man and woman in Christian marriage is a reliving and a making present again of the union of Christ and His Church. Christian husband and wife are to love each other and to express this love in the name and place of Jesus Christ as Head and Jesus Christ as His Body the Church which is His Mystical but Real Body. (Cf. Eph 5: 21-33; for an elaboration of the celebration of Christian sexual love, cf. Henry V. Sattler, Sex Is Alive And Well And Flourishing Among Christians, Anastasia Press, Stafford VA 22554, 1979, Chapter 6). Chapter III Process Of Sex Education In The Home If sex is the quality of masculinity or femininity in a person, then sex education should be the provision of formation and information for a boy to reach maturity as a man and a girl to reach maturity as a woman. This is chastity education, since it implies a norm of masculine and feminine roles in, or in view of, marriage and family, whether an individual marries or lives as a celibate or virgin. If this can be called sex education, it seems logical to begin wherever the necessity for information and attitudinal formation begins to be needed in the lifetime of a growing person. In days gone by, very little, if any, formal (universal schooling is a relatively recent phenomenon!) information was given and individuals learned by experimentation and a set of modeled attitudes suggesting very indirectly (but effectively!) that genital sex activity belonged only in marriage with orientation to children, and that fatherhood and motherhood was the paradigm or model of all sexual maturity. There is really very little record of how sexual information or attitudes were taught or formed in days gone by. How people learned about sexual, bodily, character, and role differences, menstruation and seminal emission, the interaction of boy and girl, man and woman, husband and wife, conception and childbirth, mother and father, parent and child, was absorbed within the family and in the community but often not recorded. A largely illiterate population was neither written for nor about! As more frequently used today, particularly in "public school education, sex education" indicates a classroom study of the ways in which men and women achieve orgasm alone or with a partner, the options open to them, the results which might happen in terms of psychic "hang-ups, venereal disease or pregnancy and the possibilities of institutionalizing or at least socializing various orgasmic life-styles. This is sexology, a dubiously "modern" science less than a century old, beginning with Havelock Ellis! Hardly a home-taught discipline! When sex education first became a public or social question, it almost immediately became an education in sexology, and not a matter of role identification. It was first directed to the married who were taught techniques of sexual variation (e.g., Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage) and it was followed by methods of avoiding pregnancy necessary if sexual release is to be achieved as often as one wills without unprogrammed outcome. When someone noted that it might be too late to learn these facts and skills in marriage, it was suggested that this should be involved in preparation for marriage, a new kind of formal education never provided before. Families with a number of children born at home knew quite well about love, pregnancy, childbirth, and the role of parents, children and siblings. When the same kind of pregnancy prevention became generally available, there was no reason why sexual release should be reserved to marriage, and the sexual revolution was initiated. At present, one is looked at with disbelief if he remarks that he holds that sex belongs only in marriage with openness to whatever happens. And, of course, official Catholic teaching on this topic is rejected by most in their belief, and ignored even more in practice. Even Catholics do not markedly differ from their non-believing friends in their practice of pre and extramarital sex, contraception, abortion, divorce or even infanticide. Again, since this knowledge was avidly absorbed by the unmarried as well as the married, the more rapid spread of venereal diseases and the spectre of unwanted premarital as well as marital pregnancy demanded greater information and techniques both to achieve orgasm and to avoid all the outcomes thereof, including the stigmas of social disapproval for any marital disintegration of orgasm alone or among consenting adults ("adult" for sexual purposes meaning the moment of orgasmic potential and desire adolescence: 10 to 13 for a girl; 14-15 for a boy). Logically, genital activity alone and with others began to be accepted and then anticipated on ever lower and lower age levels. It was logically argued that, if individuals were to become sexually active at any particular age, they ought to be instructed on what the outcomes of their sexual activity might be and how to avoid what might be undesired. With the acceptance of sexual activity as soon as the child was capable, since the 1920's it has become miniminally argued that whenever a child could possibly experience orgasm and intromission, he or she ought to be provided with the information about how this is achieved, what it does and very specifically the undesirability of any outcome at such an early age, romantic involvement, commitment (marriage or equivalent), pregnancy or STD's. (Sexually Transmitted Diseases Note that this term has been introduced as a substitute for what were once called venereal diseases, since the latter term implied some sinful cause. The new term implies morally insignificant cause, like sneezing in public as a source of viral infection.) In all this, sex education became more and more focused upon tumescence and orgasm, functional coitus, the pleasurable and psychological meanings of such activity, the outcomes of venereal disease, the probability of pregnancy which was almost always considered undesirable, even in marriage, or desirable only when arbitrarily and antecedently chosen. Sexual activity has now been expected and inculcated in children not only at puberty but at ever earlier years. We therefore have sex education programs from kindergarten to grade 12 and further information on the college level. It has even been indicated by leaders in SIECUS, (Sex Information and Education Council of U.S.) that preschool children should be informed about orgasm and attitudinalized favorable towards it at an even earlier age: "Sex is so good and important a part of life that if children don't happen to discover sexual enjoyment for themselves, if we really like them, we will make sure that they do" ("Parents Wary of Suppressing Sexuality in Children," in New York Times, May 17, 1983)! If an awareness of sexualness and sexuality must be taught, a formal program must be begun, no later than birth. If however, sexualness and sexuality are aspects of becoming a person which are caught, then we must begin with models of mature adults in marriage, virginity and celibacy. We must make children aware of what a happily successful sexual human man and woman might approximately look like in his or her perfection. A child can not really be taught truthfulness when he begins to speak. Nor will it help to study the physiology of speech. Truthfulness must be exemplified before this in those around him. He cannot be instructed in good music, nor learn much about it from studying sound or the physiology of hearing. He must hear it in his environment. He cannot be told about the joys of sexual maturity in marriage or celibacy, he must observe such happy maturity in models. This does not preclude some formal instruction, philosophical and theological research, or biological and psychological information. It merely makes all of these things satisfactory to interiorization by imitation, however vaguely understood. The implication of our present sexual education craze is that no adult could possibly or fully understand either sexualness or sexuality or achieve its satisfactory maturity without a graduate degree in sexology (which is the study of how human beings achieve orgastic release). For all less well schooled people, sexology must be simplified and taught in every grade level of schooling down to preschool picture books. A recent survey of sexual knowledge insists that knowledge about the frequency of premarital coitus and the frequency of homosexual orgasm is necessary for healthy sexual adjustment! What then is the goal of sex-education? What is the picture of its achievement? If the goal of being a man and woman is the achievement of every variety of sexual release with the elimination of every unanticipated and unprogrammed outcome, the modern sex education program in the school system should be implemented and parents and religion should be excluded from the process! They do not have the necessary "science" of sexology. But if the goal is successful and contented celibacy or family life, then our present school system is the worst possible since it triggers, encourages, and facilitates the pursuit of the greatest possible number of orgasms, and the greatest variety and intensities of orgastic experience. It must, since it teaches no control of activity, teach control and reversal of sexual consequences (hygiene for V.D., contraception, abortion, infanticide, separation, divorce, emotional therapy for guilt, insecurity, hatreds, jealousies all the disasters over which we shed vicarious tears as we watch the "soaps" on TV). The Fullness Of Sexualness And Sexuality Christian sexual formation (or chastity education) must begin with the parents. Parents must have a clear idea of what being a man, and being a woman, and what sexual lovemaking might truly mean even if they have not achieved it in practice. Further, no matter how many their failures, they must both have some awareness of the value of virginity and celibacy both in its dedication to God and its dedication to partner by virginal arrival to the marriage union. This is chastity. Six months before her wedding, Marian spoke to Jack, "Look, I want the joy of celebrating our wedding night with a "never before" virginal gift of myself to you and hopefully a receiving from you your virginal gift. But it's getting harder and harder for me to resist your importunity and my own passionate and romantic love for you. I hereby hand myself and my body over to you, surrendering it to you so that you will bring it to the marital bed a virgin body. You are going to be responsible for making love to me, to impregnate me, and to care for me during my pregnancies, and to support me and the children as they grow, as well as to educate them. Your responsibility for me and them starts now!" Jack protested that that was not fair, that she too had the obligation to help him arrive virginally to the marriage bed. Marian agreed that she should not be seductive nor excessively amorous during the remaining time of engagement, but that she would no longer feel obligated to say "No" in emphatic tones, nor to fend off each and every advance. Whether they succeeded or failed in reaching their marriage sexually inviolate, I do not know. I know that I respect their concern and mutual responsibility for action or restraint. In similar fashion, each parent must strive to continually interiorize a total pattern of masculinity or femininity eventuating in fatherhood or motherhood. This does not mean the attempt to approximate some stereotype of virility or femininity. It means that each person, from observation, must try to approximate multiple examples of true virility or femininity because each will have to try to exemplify for the growing boy or girl, the points of identification which will provide the discovery of sexual identity in the child. It is important that a man enjoy being virile. That he accepts the challenge of initiative, positive agressivity, leadership and responsibility for his own actions and for the security, safety, happiness, and indeed, the maturation of each and every member of his family. With President Truman, a husband and father must have as his motto "the buck stops here". This applies equally to the sexual initiative which begins his "matrimony" the state of making a mother. (Matrimony - from the Latin "matri" - towards a mother, "munus" - official function). As well as the responsibility for the welfare of the woman and children he initiates into marriage (the way of a man with a maid) and family life. In days gone by, a father was responsible for the virginity of his daughter and, therefore, presented her veiled to her husband at her wedding. Unfortunately the macho image of muscle flexing and sexual prowess of the past did not seem to provide the model of male celibacy as responsibility for his son, and often a father was hardly a model of spousal integrity for his sons entering marriage. But this has always been a position of Christianity from the day that St. Paul clearly said that a male did not have the ownership of his own body, but his wife did, and the woman did not have the ownership of her own body, but her husband did (1 Cor 7:4). Ownership does not mean possessiveness here, but responsibility for welfare! Care! Answerableness! On her side a wife and mother ought early to have interiorized the song "I enjoy being a girl." This means coming to terms with her bodily differences from the male, her relative lack of strengths and competitive spirit, the ebb and flow of mood-inducing hormones from the moment of puberty, the regular reminder of fertility in bodily changes accompanying ovulation and the sloughing off baby nourishment from the lining of her uterus (cf. Ingrid Trobisch, The Joy of Being a Woman and What a Man Can Do, Harper and Row, 1975). A wife must also adjust to a fundamental helplessness. When the final chips are down and her passion of love fully aroused, she is helpless in her surrender to conjugal union, to a pregnancy which might be less than desirable at any given moment, and the fact that her baby takes over the room in her body with utmost arrogance and makes her more and more gravid weighty and important indeed but weighed down! She too, having attempted with whatever success or failure to reach her marriage bed virginally, must exemplify the modesty and reserve for her girls and boys which will draw the boys to seek and be virginal partners and the girls to look forward to the surrender, whether to God directly in consecrated virginity, or to sacramentally present herself to Christ in husband! This will demand the exemplification of modesty within the home and between husband and wife within reason. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed before original sin because there was no possibility of sexual appetite suddenly stirring before they had chosen to approach each other in loving surrender. Nevertheless, Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that since their beings would have been totally at the service of their free will, not in rebellion against it, their love expression before the fall must have been all the more intensely enjoyable! Only after the fall did they discover sexual concupiscence (which is not appetite, but appetite for itself lust!) and find it necessary to clothe themselves against sudden, meaningless and undesirable sexual appetite. John Paul II in his discussion of the Spousal Meaning of the Body, suggests that Christian husband and wife are attempting, over a long period of living together, to achieve that spousal surrender which does not seek the partner in mere lust or mutual use and service, but in concern totally for the full and complete perfection of the beloved, "So that she may be holy and without blemish" (Eph 5:27). He makes it very clear that a Christian husband and wife are trying to achieve an other- centered love in which they can actually achieve the state of Eden: "They were naked and unashamed." In their love passages spouses must constantly attempt to approximate the meaning designed by God (cf. Chapter 2 above). Quite certainly, parents will not succeed in any kind of formation of their boys and girls to approximate the image of sexualness proportionate to each one's personhood if both have been involved in unrepented sexual sins and failures, and are full of guilts and remorse unresolved by penance, purpose of amendment, absolution and/or effective counseling. A man who is irresponsible, unfaithful to his wife, merely married to power and his place in the world, avaricious, and dishonest in his business, will hardly provide the model of responsible virility for his sons or a model of the kind of husbands his daughters should accept in prospect of marriage. He will be even less a model if his bedside reading is Playboy, Hustler, and The Joy of Sex, and his lecherous leers are a bone of contention for his wife; or worse, if his children have real reason to suspect that he is unfaithful to their mother; worst if his wife is but a mere service station, a receptacle for his lust, even if they are apparently ignorant of this. Chastity formation is impossible by someone who is himself unchaste. "What we are speaks so loudly, that they cannot hear what we say!" The warning bell or the bugle call to service will sound cracked from a damaged source. On the other hand, a mother will hardly teach virginity to her girls and its desirability in a wife for her boys if she is carelessly seductive in her own home, openly flirts with other men, brings a boyfriend home, and her daughters can find her contraceptives in the medicine chest of the master bedroom, and observe her avidity for the "soaps" that celebrate all sorts of infidelity. The ideal masculinity-femininity in spouses and parents here outlined is not to be considered merely an impossible dream. This ideal is the norm against which all activities should be measured with whatever failure to measure up. However, the ideal must be realistically and sympathetically presented to the children both in action and in word. A human male and female must be able to say to themselves, each one looking into the mirror of self, "You ain't much, baby, but you're the only me I've got!" and turn to the other to say, perhaps: "You may have failed, baby, but you're my only love." Indeed this last is what Jesus says to us in his mystical body! God is so "crazy" about us that He incredibly sent His Only Son to die on the cross for us, not despite our worthlessness, but because of it! Francis Thompson tells us exactly in the poem "The Hound of Heaven" as Jesus speaks to him: Strange, piteous, futile thing! "Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said) "And human love needs human meriting: How hast thou merited Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? "Alack, thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art! Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save me, save only me? Realistic recognition of one's own failures to achieve or maintain chastity and modesty is of great value in one's sympathy with the struggles of one's own children. That father is to be praised who said, "Boy! Will I be glad when my children grow up old enough to know that I'm the one that needs correction!" All this needs a tremendous sense of humor. The Good News, that is, the news that is too good to be true, is that God has given the grace to overcome temptation and sin and that He has already won for us through his death and resurrection the re-evaluation, "redemption," of all our sinful failures. Only a real Christian can truly laugh at himself. This awareness is the foundation of the truly Christian bawdy of Shakespeare and Chaucer (cf. the analysis in Thomas Howard's An Antique Drum [Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1969] 120-124 and in Sex Is Alive & Well, H.V. Sattler, Ph.D. [Montrose, PA: Ridge Row Press, 10-20 S. Main Street, 1980] 111-112). The father is quite right who says to his son, "Never mind how I met your mother, just don't go around whistling, that's all!" It is quite correct for a close friend to tell the little girl that he knew her parents "before she was even a gleam in her father's eye." The humor evinced at weddings, which are suggestive of the pleasures of the marital bed is antidote for either too great a solemnity in approaching lovemaking or too obviously a leering lust. A child at such occasions should become aware, however vaguely, that there is some kind of special fun, celebration, and meaning that demands the warrant of marital commitment. The little girl is correctly approaching the meaning of Christian lovemaking when she asks, observing bride and groom kissing, "Is he sprinkling her with pollen now?" It is, however confusing to her, quite revealing that she know that there is a similarity but mysterious difference here between plants and humans, and that love and offspring go together. Paging through her parents' wedding album is her first "sex" or better, chastity education. It should be apparent that no married couple or virginal and celibate man or woman has fully explained or explored the meaning of sexualness and sexuality in the spousal commitment of the body. Just as no one is ever a perfect knower, so no one is ever a perfect lover. Since the lovers are still growing and in self- appropriation of their body-love, they cannot give a perfect image to the observers or explain their progress to the neophyte in words. Parents, then, cannot wait until they have achieved sexual perfection before educating their children. They merely have to learn along with their children, because "our actions speak so loudly they cannot often hear what we say." This of course demands much apparently "wasted time" with children from the moment of conception. How a woman comes to terms with her pregnancy, and how her husband makes her feel lovable and loved during a time in which he finds her bodily ungainliness fearfully obscene to him, will form the child. I suspect how a woman resolves her multiple ambivalences towards being pregnant and the cause of her pregnancy and the cause of her problems in pregnancy (the child) will already have somewhat formed the child before its birth. How eagerly a mother puts the child to her breast and how approving her husband is of her devotion to this child, have a tremendous impact upon that child. If she is secure in his love for her, and is not suddenly expected to treat him as her oldest baby because of his jealously of the time she gives to his child, she will avoid passing on this psychic ambivalence to the baby. Nor is there any such thing, especially for a mother, as "quality time." One cannot choose a premeditated moment in which to give love formation to a baby. We have found that a child must be fed on demand and so must his or her emotional needs be met at the moment they appear. Nor need the meeting of the child's emotional needs and questions be perfectly achieved. The will of the mother to form the child as best she can is more formative than the skill with which she does it. Often enough, technique or preplanned answers appear self-conscious and possibly phoney, whereas fumbling efforts repeatedly corrected in order to get it clear show total orientation and openness to the child. It might be more difficult for a father to spend planned time with his child, but he must discover ways of doing so, and when he does deal with the child, it ought not to be from behind a newspaper or with one eye and ear on the TV set. Mothers learn to look their children directly in the eyes, and so should fathers! Responsibility Pope John Paul II suggests that it is a duty of the modern couple in marriage to become aware of what is called Natural Family Planning and which I prefer to call the freedom of Aware Parenting. If a woman becomes aware of her fertility cycle and her husband becomes aware of it with her, and she equivalently becomes aware of the meaning of his stronger sexual appetite, they can mutually take responsibility for each other: she to respond avidly to him, when they have decided to express their love sexually, and he to have the responsibility to seek their union only when they are aware of the relative probability of fertility and their willingness to open themselves, their beings, to this tremendous involvement! Natural family planning with mutual responsibility is the culmination of the celebration of love on the conjugal couch (cf. Sattler, op. cit., "Celebrating Natural Family Planning," 114-117). Only logically does the foregoing analysis come first. When our Lord responded to the question about divorce in the Old Testament, He said, "In the beginning, it [divorce] was not so." He did not mean that historically, in the order of time! He meant in principle, the way it is designed, it is not so. That persons do not achieve the fullness of two-in-one-flesh, or have never fully achieved it, does not destroy that basic reality, so one must pursue the value as an objective even though one never achieves it. Therefore, even while parents are attempting to achieve the model of marital and spousal love, they must carry on the education of their children. The failure to realize this is why so many people fail to achieve any kind of sexual maturation in their children. They are afraid to humbly admit their own failures or humorously (and humor and humility come from the same word root), approach the struggles of their own egos, and those of the children. A good priest who preaches a homily is quite aware that no one in his audience is more in need of conversion than he is and that he is but preaching to himself and allowing his audience to listen in! His audience is quite aware that he does not preach from the eminence of finished perfection. They heard him explode at the altar boys! Once it is clear that the method of educating of parents to achieve the fullness of parenthood is the same as the method of educating the children and goes on at the same time, one can discuss a progressive method of educating the children, with the proviso that it be immediately understood that there is no time table in which a lesson is started and completed, no lesson plan, no examination that will prove that one has achieved the desired result, no lesson ever fully learned, no hope that the educative job will ever be completed, no step by step progress. It is not possible to say, "The stork brought you, now stop asking me questions. "When the children stop posing verbal or implicit questions, they have stopped learning. Once a person has stopped learning and appropriating sexuality, he is equivalently dead and needs only to be buried. Chapter IV Step By Step In Sex Education Once it is understood that there can be no chronological process, we can follow the growth of a child and suggest some areas for consideration, but leave them all open-ended to the ingenuity of the parents. A college degree in biology or a graduate degree in education or psychology is not required, and indeed scientific knowledge may get in the way of sexual formation! All that is needed is an attempt to continually respect the meaning of being-of-a-sex and to love the sex of oneself and the child in his or her development. Shame Shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt is the awful emotional experience of judging that one has deliberately and answerably done a despicable deed. It can be true guilt from a real sin or crime, or false guilt, a feeling without foundation in a truly evil deed! Dealing with true guilt is a matter of penitence. Dealing with false guilt is a matter of psychological therapy! But shame or embarrassment is hesitance, or fear to reveal the self or what is private or personal, and of invading such privacy in another. It is akin to modesty, reverence, or awe at what is sacred, inviolable or reserved to God. In our state of fallen nature, called original sin, shame is the emotional attitude that recognizes that one could easily use one's own body or the body of another as a mere thing, a mere object of pleasure. Shame or embarrassment belongs properly to every human being, man or woman, boy or girl, within marriage itself or before marriage. It is natural in the human person. It is shed only hesitantly, and perhaps with repeated reluctance, to the end of life. To a faithful, beloved and committed spouse, sacred scripture says: "You are an enclosed garden, my sister, my bride, an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed" (Song of Songs 4:12), and recognizes that either spouse may enter such an enclosure only with the warrant and reverential respect of the marriage covenant. It is this awareness which is celebrated by the wedding gown, the bridal veil, the marriage tent, the crushing of the mutually used glass beneath the heel. It is also celebrated by the humorously bawdy, at the wedding celebration, with the throwing of the bride's bouquet to the unmarried girls, and the groom's right to take the garter from the wife and toss it to the bachelors present. It is this hesitance and embarrassment which makes it very difficult for a man to talk out with his son and his son with his father, as well as for the pubescent girl to talk out with her mother, and her mother with her, the new bodily experiences of growing up. The young man and young woman are experiencing their unique personhood as growing into sexual maturity. Despite the fact that this happens to every young man and young woman whose hormone levels have been elevated and triggered by the pituitary gland, the experience is absolutely unique and personal for each individual! It is too intimate innermost to be easily shared with another. Our present public discussion of all these matters insults and traumatizes the experience which, however universal among boys and girls, remains absolutely unique for each person. A young lady experiencing her first romantic day dreams and perhaps mooning over some gangly adolescent who doesn't even recognize her existence, neither easily sorts our her feelings nor communicates them to her mother, and not at all to her dad or brothers. A boyish adolescent struggling with sexual self-control in terms of spontaneous erections or nocturnal loss of seed, might even be tempted to take heroic measures to keep pajama and bed linen stains from the eyes of his mother. Though he can be reassured that she knows and understands, he does not want her to know! Ordinarily neither he nor she will refer to the mutually known fact, not out of fearful guilt or judgmental anxiety, but out of respect for the shame and embarrassment of personal awareness and intimacy. Fathers and mothers are legitimately hesitant to bring up these things to their boys and girls individually, first of all, because they fear their own possible prurience in invading the child's privacy, which would be a kind of incest! Nor do they want to invite the child to enter into parental struggles for chastity before or within their own marriage, or bedroom! They legitimately do not wish their children to fantasize about their conjugal lovemaking both because it is an invasion of their own privacy and a possible stimulus to the turbulent passions of youth. The mutual embarrassment is to be respected and listened to, yet, though the topic must be broached delicately and with the hesitation that flows from respect, it ought to be initiated. But privately, on a one-to-one basis. No later than at the beginning of 6th grade for girls, a mother ought to discuss potential motherhood with her daughter. This is first done by suggesting to the little girl to become aware that her bodily discharges will begin to vary; that in the not-to-distant future, some slippery mucus discharge will appear at her vaginal opening. This is not some infection or worrisome anomaly, it is the sign that she is about to ovulate for the first time. Ovulation, though it will perhaps happen irregularly, is the first signal of her budding maturity, her potential to be a unique beloved, her potential to marry and give God children. Along with this new change in her body will come her moodiness, her romantic daydreams, anxiety about being lovable, fear that no one will ever notice her, and that if he does, she will die of embarrassment. She will be interested in the development of an attractive and youthful figure, the development of her breasts, a kind of strange discomfort as she tries to appropriate what seems almost a new body yet she will be disturbed if her feminine figure appears much earlier than that of her friends or much later! The pubescent girl should also be told about conception which, of course, she already knows, but now in terms of its orientation towards implantation in the wall of the uterus and the menstrual experience the weeping of a disappointed womb when there is no conception which happens irregularly at first, but with ever increasing regularity, approximating 28 days, as she matures. Some warning must indicate that though mucous discharge and menstruation may seem messy and menstruation frighteningly bloody, neither is any kind of hemorrhage or loss of essential bodily fluids. A mother should consider the wisdom of menstrual pads versus tampons and particularly the loss of the hymen or virginal membrane and its possible meaning to the young woman. It is really impossible to tell a mother what to say. Even the listing of the above suggestions somehow or other seems an invasion of privacy, but only because it is written. The experience is unique to the experiencer and the instruction is unique to the love between a mother and child. Nor need a father be brought into the discussion though it may be hinted that he is generally aware of what's going on. The pubescent girl is not without passion but her passions tend to be erotic in the best sense (romance!), rather than libidinous. Libido is sexual drive more apparent in male than female. She is thrilled by the possibility that another human being could be as central to herself as she is to herself and as important to her as she is important. This is why she wants to be attractive for she wishes to be Beloved (Adam's name for Eve!). Her basic temptation will be to draw attention from males by her dress and developing body. She must understand, gradually at least, that not every attractiveness is legitimate, that young men will not necessarily offer her the satisfaction of her dream to be beloved, but might merely wish to possess and use her as a body to satisfy their appetite of the moment (lust) without any wish to love or be in any way committed. It is at the same time that the young lady might well be drawn to a romantic love affair with Jesus. She may well consider whether she is called to the religious life of virginity. Every religious novice experiences "falling in love." It is at this point that it should be explained that there is a fundamental spousal meaning of the body. An individual comes from the hand of God with absolute uniqueness. God's love for him or her is a spousal love. That is, in creating this human person, God has said, "No one like you has ever come into the world for me, and no one but you will come into this unique relationship ever again. As a result, I expect you to love me above all things, with your whole mind and soul and strength, to the level of precluding every other love. I demand this from you, not for my sake but for yours, since you cannot be fully what I have created you to be unless you surrender yourself totally to my creative power. I wish you to return to me this total dedication, which I have given to you, either directly in a virginal state, surrendering yourself to me in love, both body and soul, or through such a person as I will call to accept your gift of total femininity in my name and in my place." This second in Christian matrimony. It is imperative that every child develop a fundamental self-worth built, not upon self-fulfillment, but upon a sense of being called to empty the self in a special love. Nobody can give the gift of love to God that each human being has been called into the world to give. At this point it is very important to present the child with adequate role models for identification. Surely a mother should hope to be a good point of identification for her daughter and a father should be a point of contrast between masculinity and femininity so that she can discover who she is and what kind of a man she ought to contrast herself with as her knight in shining armor, whether he be the heroic Christ, or the virile Christian husband. Unfortunately, though we need saint models for young women, we tend to canonize only spousal virgins and not spousal wives and mothers, i.e. those who enter marriage and are experienced in true conjugal love and who have achieved a fulfilling motherhood. Rock stars, soap operas and Judy Bloom's novels are hardly effective for the sexual self-identification of young women as Christian women, wives and mothers. The Adolescent Boy With whatever embarrassment and hesitation, a father ought to prepare his son about the early problems of adolescence, the first of which is the spontaneous erection and nocturnal ejaculation along with the temptation to produce this intense pleasure deliberately by masturbatory actions. He ought to challenge his son to recognize that all the power of burgeoning youth, muscular, intellectual, emotional, and sexual, tends to be chaotic unless it is disciplined. A boy's new-felt desire to be his own self- starter, to be responsible for his own initiatives and carrying them out, tends to make him rebellious and critical of all kinds of authority. This is a good orientation in the sense that it leads to independence and responsible initiative! Eventually, the buck stops here! But like his ability to throw a baseball very hard, control is more important than power. He must be told that he will naturally be attracted to feminine bodies because that is the orientation of a man towards a woman, which enables him to become two-in-one flesh with her, so that his union will be matrimony, the state of making a woman his wife and a mother. Incidentally, "marriage" is a masculine description, since it means "the way of a man with a maiden" (Prov 30:19). Like the power to lift heavy weights, the freedom to make up his own mind, the use of sexual power is a responsibility. He must never use this power merely to satisfy himself, or to depersonalize a woman whether in imagination, by looking through books which present depersonalized female nudity, or by abusing any girl he is with as a mere means to his own satisfaction, no matter how willing she might be to be so used! He is responsible for the control and positive use of freedom and power. He must answer for her welfare if he wants to be virile. He is responsible for the control and direction of his sexual power towards the complete total gift of self to his wife and the acceptance of her total gift to him. It is his potential fatherhood which will make him to be truly a man. This same answerableness will be expected of him later in his possible marriage, when long abstinence might be expected of him because of his wife's illness, the complications of pregnancy, or even because they truly agree to practice Aware Parenting (or Natural Family Planning). Just as all control of power demands long practice and self-discipline, so does the control of sexual appetite. A father should sympathize with his adolescent's struggles and explain to his youngster, as well as to himself, that long years of sexual self-discipline are necessary beforehand, in order to test his ability for total dedication to another person, whom he will make central to his own being in love. Every boy knows that there is a test of virility to be passed during adolescence, whether it is the test of weight lifting, football, baseball, or emotional or moral heroism. Just as for the girl, now is the time to talk to the young man about his sense of vocation. God calls him into the world as a result of a love for the kind of virile service he wishes the new person to contribute directly to God or to a wife and children in the founding, leadership, protection, support, and direction of his family. To be called to follow Jesus as his leader demands the possibility of celibacy. Celibacy does not merely mean the absence of sexual release. It means the integration of one's person in all its power in pursuit of clear goals. Matt Dillon and the stars of all the old "horse operas" model celibacy in the pursuit and defense of frontier justice. Jesus is the example par excellence of complete self-control of almighty power in the service and leadership of love. He clearly indicates that He could easily have led a legion of angels to defend Himself against Romans and Jewish Sanhedrin, but He chose not to do so. He teaches with authority, but not defensively, as do the scribes and pharisees with all their rationalizations and arguments. He drives the money changers from the temple of His Father. They are frightened of His strength. He founds the church upon a weak and vacillating Peter, whom He nevertheless calls and makes to be the rock of authoritative teaching, He sends an infant Church into a hostile world to tell that world "the way it is" and the way it's got to be, despite the martyrdom which faced all of them, and the disbelief that will always dog His faithful ones. He established a Church in which the weak were always to be protected and served by the strong. This sense of being called to virile fulfillment is exerted whether in the priestly or religious life, as a single person in the world because no suitable partner to whom one feels called to respond crosses his paths, or as the leader and head of a new Christian family. A father must teach his son that he has a great desire of endless sexual curiosity as a result of original sin and that this desire to see and touch and experience will never die. But, that Our Lord tells him what he must do. "If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out" (Mk 9:47)! Again, every human male is desirous of touching and exploring a female body. This touch is designed to enable him to express love for his wife and to discover her fullness as he would his own body, but this exploration is more for her fulfillment as wife and mother and not just for his own satisfaction. Though touch may say "mine" this possessiveness implies total responsibility for the other, not selfish use. So "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off" (Mk 9:43)! Of course, Jesus does not expect a person to maim himself. What He is saying is: "If looking leads you to lust, don't look! If touching leads you to use another for your own sexual satisfaction, don't touch!" If he cannot say what lovemaking says absolute, total self-gift of one man to one woman for a lifetime with the willingness to accept the risk of a child he may not initiate what he is not permitted to complete. As role models we should propose to adolescents not only the great martyrs and great missionaries who were freed from family life in order to conquer new worlds at a distance, but also those married saints or even those struggling men of his acquaintance who exemplify true virility. Every young men should see and ponder the "Man For All Seasons," and later, "Man of LaMancha." A son should be challenged to be able to express affection and eventually give a girl a hug and a kiss in warm tenderness, and still be responsible for delivering her to her home after a date or an outing, intact and not feeling mauled, manipulated, seduced or blackmailed into giving herself or permitting herself to be used for his own satisfaction. The boy should be further reminded that a girl's desire for love and affection, for hugging, cuddling and to be held, is in no way an invitation for the sexual touching which is the ordinary preliminary for that two-in-one-ness which belongs only to the absolute and irrevocable commitment of husband to wife and wife to husband. Then, he will not be surprised later in marriage to find that a wife who wants to be held does not necessarily desire intercourse. Finally the young boy should be reminded that the struggle is long and never fully achieved even in marriage. There are sinful failures. It takes prayer and frequent approach to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, meditation upon the weakness of human nature and the glory of matrimony and celibacy poured out in love-service to God, and approach to the Body of Christ in the Eucharist, which will recognize that sinful failures are not failures of the self alone but a failure which also sullies the Body of Christ, since we are members of His Body (cf. St. Paul especially in 1 Cor 6 and 12; Eph 4, and Jesus Himself, when He tells us that what we have done to others we have done to Him, in Mt 25: 40 and ff.). Since the use of virility is a matter of divine vocation of being called by God, either to celibacy or to marriage, the young man should early be taught by his father to pray for clear vision of the direction to which he is being called, and equally to pray that should he be called to marriage that he will find a young woman who will share his vision of love service and help him to achieve his as he will help her to achieve hers. Please God, he should be able to sing, "I want a girl, just like the girl that married dear old dad" not with mawkish sentimentality, but with the deepest love and respect. A boy should not generally be pushed into becoming interested in girls. For him, the meeting is one of intense and serious responsibility, and he should not be encouraged to enter into it, until he is ready to assume the responsibilities it entails. Someone has suggested that the temptation to self-abuse or masturbation, which afflicts every average growing boy is so terribly strong precisely to teach the real value of sex! If sexual union is the total unconditional gift of self to one who responds equally, it demands a gift without focus on the giver but upon the receiver. One only learns gift-love when he sacrifices his own desires. A boy gives his very first gift to his mother, when he uses his carefully hoarded money, saved for a desired toy, to purchase it. Without doing without, he cannot really possess what he wishes to give. Without the struggle for self-control one cannot be self-possessed enough to give the self to one's spouse. Boy Meets Girl- Girl Meets Boy By the time the girl has finished the sixth grade, she is generally very, very interested in boys, but the boys do not even know that she is alive until they are some two years older. It is a good thing that boys and girls are critical of each other within their own homes. A girl with an older brother is very rapidly corrected if her dress is seductive, or her actions "sexy." The same thing that attracts him to get out of line with someone else is the very thing that he wishes to protect his sister against! On the other hand, an older sister will be very critical of the girls her younger brother brings home, if only to prevent him from making a fool of himself. Again, older brothers will be protective of their sisters against the Don Juans they might be aware of or suspect among those who meet their sister. As girl meets boy and boy meets girl, the girl should become aware of her tremendous seductive power over the boy. The word seductive will probably not be found in the dictionary. It means the ability to draw out a potential. A girl's ability to draw out the potential of a boy is either superductive, ability to draw him to supreme achievement, or seductive, ability to draw him down to utter destruction! It is a tradition for a young woman to boast of her ability to twist a man around her little finger. Sometimes mothers are actually jealous of their little girl's ability to do that with dad, just what they themselves are most effective at in winning the love of their husbands! A boy's power is more muscular strength, force, and external initiative and accomplishment. Both sorts of power must be put to the service of others. In this connection, a young lady must learn that her natural desire to attract may destroy the self-control of a boy and actually lead him to do what she will most resent when he does it. Modesty of dress need not conceal feminine charms, but should not display them for every passerby's lust. A girl wishes all sorts of signs of affection and is willing to permit ever advancing liberties if they seem affectionate. On his side, a boy will perceive her willingness to follow his lead as inviting him to the kind of familiarity which belongs only in marriage. Again, a boy can easily be tempted to offer a companion all signs of affection, kissing, cuddling, and hugging, in order to achieve his goal of sexual conquest. This is a cynical manipulation of her for his own lust. Note that the word "familiarity" means "being at home with." Bodily familiarity with another demands the privacy of a conjugal home. The boy must learn that not every response is an invitation to violate her personhood by sexual intimacy, and that she must understand that not every apparent romantic sign of affection from him need be what it appears to be. Both sides are frequently guilty of bartering the one for the other: the, apparent affection for sexual release; she, apparent sexual avidity for romantic affection. This is particularly necessary information for both adolescent boys and girls: that at the moment of affection's most intense moments, the male tends to wish direct skin contact (called petting). The question both sides must ask, is "May I wish to express the kind of love which the action I am drawn to do really says?" If the signs of affection are truly such with only incidental and unintentional sexual stirrings as side effects, the action may possibly be justified. If the action says "Mine", "Yours," or is the stirring preliminary to the meaning of sexual intercourse, the activity is always sinful and seductive of them to act out the total mutual sexual gift which is the spousal gift of matrimony, when they are in no condition to carry out and measure up to the responsibilities of its meanings. Finally it is imperative for father to explain to his son and mother to her daughter the meaning of sexual intercourse itself. (Cf. above pp. 16 ff.) Conclusion In all the above, it should be apparent that there is little or no need for parents to teach the biology of cells, the physiology of erection, penetration and ejaculation, the mechanics of tumescence and detumescence, the physiological process of implantation, pregnancy, breast feeding, and nurturing. Nor is there generally any need to initiate discussion of sexual life-styles, sexual promiscuity, sexual perversions, homosexuality, the sexual wilderness in which we live, pornography, incest, rape, contraception, or even venereal diseases. The whole concern of proper sex education of parents for children, must be towards a reverence for the earthy reality of the human body as masculine or feminine and the meaningfulness of that body as a sign of the spousal gift of the human person from God and back to Him whether directly or through the vocational presence of a spouse. When the other things come up, as they inevitably will, the response will already be prepared for. The reason parents and the Church are losing the battle for Christian sexual morality is that they are always defensive against a question such as: "Why can't I do what I am attracted to? What's wrong with it?" Only if there is a right or correct way to live can the incorrect, erroneous or evil way be clarified. We are losing the battle against drug abuse and addiction because we have no ideal of sobriety, alertness. We will never achieve "no!" to drugs if we allow a feeling of euphoria be our goal (instant "feel good") instead of the happiness of achievement, or better, of lending our efforts to indefinitely pursuable goals such as life, truth, human service, artistic and practical creativity, friendship, peace, justice, marital love, procreativity, mothering and fathering. This does not mean that educated parents might not impart some of the biological, physiological, medical, and genetic information which might be of help to their children, but these kinds of knowledge are not essential to adequate formation of a child to face life, or else one would have to conclude that sex education has never ever adequately been performed, that there have never been happy men, women, marriages or family life since it takes a minimum of a bachelor's degree in sexology to have sufficient information! Studies which use questionnaires about the adequacy of sex education always tout the apparent ignorance of respondents. No one has ever been found who admitted he had an adequate knowledge about the mysteries of sexualness and sexuality! But how has the knowledge of graafian follicles or the epididymis ever affected the ordinary day to day living of two people who enter into a loving marriage? How has statistical knowledge of the frequency of illicit orgasm helped devoted couples? The above material itself, in it's attempt to abstract a sexual education from the general education of children by parents, fails by spending all its time and space on sexual reality which is but one, however all-penetrating, fiber in masculine or feminine personhood. If any reader attempted to follow the above suggestions consciously, or from a formal memorization, he or she would fail miserably and deservedly, in the very kind of sex education which this book attempts to inculcate! Chastity and modesty as well as celibate and married nuptial love cannot be taught from formal disciplines. They must be caught from word, tonality, attitude, emotional expression, self-respect, respect for the bodies of others, love of friends, love of others, marital expressions of affection, joy in the birth of a new child, and even from the wise shame, embarrassment and modesty, or even guilts, that are experienced in one's own fumbling attempts to achieve ever more meaningful sexual identity, activity, control, commitment, dedication. Chapter V Parents And The Direct Sex Education Of The Children The child has already begun to be directly formed by the conjugal love of the parents from the moment of their falling in love, because their love is essentially a mutual surrender to each other and to whatever comes. Mutual unconditional surrender is the meaning of marriage, for better or for worse. Procreating, then, is the action in which there is unconditional surrender to whatever might arrive by way of a conception, of whatever quality of life, or factual life history a child might achieve. Education is merely procreation extended. It is surrender to whatever might be discovered of potential to be drawn forth from the child. How the parents accept their pregnancy (and the pregnancy is mutual) is apparent to the child. A woman who is uneasy with her pregnancy, rejective, angry, discontented, without resolving the negative in favor of the positive attitudes, without resolving her quite natural human ambivalence, will have an effect on the child. How her husband treats her during this time will have similar impact. I cannot prove that this begins while the child is in the uterus, but I know that the child is a human person from conception. I know that some morning sickness is due to unconscious rejection of pregnancy by a mother and since I know that the child's nervous system gets a very early start, I would not be surprised if the child is already a little bit aware at least of his acceptance in the womb. It has been reported by several very introspective psychoanalysts, undergoing their own analysis, that they have been able to recall incidents in utero. I myself have a recurrent nightmare which could well be interpreted as a memory of the rending of the amniotic sac (the so-called bag of 'waters') and the trauma of birth. Granting that the ideal situation is seldom perfectly achieved, the deliberate sex education of the child begins at the moment of birth. If the mother goes through a labor which she sees clearly as exhausting but worthwhile hard work (labor), if her husband can honestly be present to second her efforts and coach them, if the child can be put immediately to breast upon delivery, its fundamental self-acceptance and its so called "imprinting" or "bonding" (which is true even for animals) is begun. We do not know but suspect that there is much more deeply psychological meaning for human beings than the sensitive meaning for animals. The separation from the mother who is unconscious due to anesthesia, and who will meet the child only a day or so later must certainly be traumatic for the child and thoroughly overcompensated for, if it is not to have its impact upon the child. All the hugging and kissing and fondling as well as the skin contact with the baby, especially in the process of nursing at the breast, is an early contributor to self-acceptance -of the body and of sex! Before Questioning Before an infant can ask his or her first questions, there are many avenues of adequate sex education. If the mother and father dress the child in characteristic masculine or feminine fashion and praise the child for being attractively manly or womanly, long before the child understands the words that are uttered, he grasps something of the "music." The mother who in despair scotch-taped a ribbon to her baldpated little girl was giving very effective sex education. When dealing with the bodily needs of the child, parents communicate how they feel about masculinity and femininity. The bodies of little boys are made differently than the bodies of little girls. Older children may observe these differences as the child is bathed and changed, or as they carry out this care themselves, with the simple explanation that this is the way it is. Boys and girls differ in these anatomical ways as a fact to be noted and accepted. Early on the child will begin to explore his body and find out how far he goes and what is "I" and what is "not I." (At first he objectifies himself as "me!") This exploration is innocent in itself, but needs early direction. A mother finds it in no way difficult to correct a child for putting things in his nose, ears, or mouth that ought not to be there. She should have no more concern, but no less, when the child wishes to put something in her vagina. A parent early observes the little boy in erection. It has been reported that by ultrasound photography, the erection can be observed even in utero. How strange that the sexologists use this fact to suggest the child's "birthright" to sexual experience, while refusing to accept the film called the "Silent Scream" as evidence of the evil of abortion! Far from being disturbed at this early stirring, parents must realize that the equipment for sexual stimulus is present, that resultant excitation can happen by accident, but should not be deliberately triggered by the parents, baby sitter, or external stimulus, lest the child become already accustomed to the kind of pleasure seeking that will eventually become uncontrollable. Surely a little boy should not be propped up in front of a TV screen presenting scantily clad majorettes. His reaction will be stronger than any adult male's who should have learned a bit of inhibition! The little girls can be kept very attractive and feminine without being praised for being sexy. Sexy means stimulative of sexual arousal and desire for lustful experience. It is interesting that our modern sexologists are becoming quite schizoid. They insist that sexual release is always good even in the womb, but they are quite concerned (illogically) about child abuse and incest. Why! If orgasm is a good in itself what can be wrong about teaching and encouraging children to achieve it? Only if sexual release is meaningful in certain ways, and perverse in others, can there be a reason to call sexual inculcation "abuse." Nutritious food is to be made tasty. It is wrong to encourage the pursuit of every "taste treat." Where Did I Come From? The earliest questions of the child are focused upon suspicion that he could fall out of being (which is the basis o