PRAYERS TO OUR LADY

Pastor's Corner~Can sex education raise the dignity of women?

Can sex education raise
the dignity of women?

3rd Sunday of January:
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany

Virgin Surrounded by Female Saints; by Master of the St. Lucy Legend (c. 1488)

In a country where the integrity of the woman is highly at risk, going from rape to the exploitation of women, the debate has raged about the education of sexuality in schools.[1]

“Sex education is very important,” Fr. Anthony Charanghat, a spokesman for the Bombay (Mumbai) archdiocese, told the Fides news service. He disagreed with the city’s police chief, who said that sex-education programs could aggravate India’s problems, noting that violence against women is higher in countries that have sex-education programs in the school curriculum.

Fr. Charanghat countered that a proper sex-education program would decrease the danger of violence against women. Such a program, he said, “has to be centered on the value of the body and on respect for every individual.” He reported that in the Bombay archdiocese, “we have promoted sex-education programs that teach you how sex is a gift of God, it is a participation in his own creative work.”

Needless to say, India is a whole world in itself and could in no wise be assimilated to our Western post-Christian “culture”. Here in the West we have witnessed the rise of the sexual revolution and as a weak response, the advent of “sex ed” as a means to block the flood of the culture of men liberated from all morals. But instead we have gone from the immorality of contraception to divorce, and from abortion to euthanasia. So as a rule, is it not safe to assert that modern sex education has lamentably failed - and has too often been a “how to do it” kit - a promotional rather than a preventive course?

India has its own inner problems, and that includes even Bombay which is probably the most Westernized Indian city with a sizable, but minority Christian presence. The ruling life philosophy, Hinduism, is the major obstacle to a woman’s dignity. The weak and the poor also receive no sympathy from those of another caste, as layers of society are pretty much hermetic without the Christian sentiment of pity and mercy. Moreover the country laws are so lax as to allow any “transaction” to take place, including the renting of wombs to married couples but also to gays and lesbians as well.[2] 200 years ago we were buying and selling people and calling it slavery. Now they call it parenthood.

We might suggest that Fr. Charanghat teach boldly the fullness of the Catholic catechism, which emphasizes so much the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the most perfect human person God ever made, stressing her miraculous offspring while remaining forever virgin. Only the Catholic Faith preserves the indissolubility of matrimony, which is the woman’s ordinary vocation in life. In no other culture are the wife and mother more valued with equal marital rights, protected and honored. A list replete with such valiant women can be easily found amongst those whom the Church has raised to the dignity of sainthood.

Footnotes

1 As reported in a Catholic World News article of January 16, 2013, "India's Church leaders see sex-education as answer to violence against women".

2 As reported at LifeSiteNews on January 3, 2013: "Author of Britain’s Abortion Act: 'I never envisaged there would be so many abortions'".

Pastor's Corner~Can sex education raise the dignity of women?

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