I felt betrayed by Monsignor Murphy…who represented the Cardinal

September 11, 1991

I was never asked to participate in the draft, nor did I even know of the existence of the “Guidelines” which were being written by a paid staff at the very same time I was in dialogue with Cardinal Law. What follows is my reply to Monsignor Murphy, including a scathing critique of the “Guidelines.”

September 11, 1991

Rev. Msgr. William Murphy
Secretary for Community Relations
2101 Commonwealth Avenue
Brighton, MA 02135

Dear Bill:

This letter attempts to respond to your letter of August 12, together with its enclosed “Suggested Guidelines for Sexuality Education in Catholic Schools” from the office of Superintendent of the Archdiocese of Boston. A formal critique of those guidelines is also enclosed with this letter.

Paragraph #2 of your letter indicates the Archdiocese’s decision, through the school office, to provide sexuality education “in accordance with the directives of the Holy See and the U.S. Bishop’s Conference.” My critique specifically, concretely shows that what the Archdiocese intends to provide is totally and undeniably at odds with the Holy See — beginning with a misunderstanding of the concept of subsidiarity and proceeding on to explain how misguided and incorrect it is in its proper understanding of human sexuality.

Paragraph #4 discusses teacher qualifications. While I don’t doubt for a moment that there aren’t superb teachers in the Archdiocese system, those guidelines, together with your letter, causes me to discredit the judges and the judgment process. For instance, if such teachers agree to the Archdiocesan guidelines, I fear for their very souls, as well, of course, for their students. Your letter did not respond to my request, repeatedly made, that all teachers of faith and morals in the Archdiocese of Boston take publicly the Oath of Fidelity. If parents can’t judge by an objective standard, the students are at the mercy of a system in which we all know there are numerous dissenting Catholics. Beyond that, as a parent, I personally begrudge the countless hours of time I have invested in the research process of my children’s teachers, all of which could be eliminated by a universal directive that philosophy and theology teachers (from kindergarten to graduate school) take the oath. And so, with this letter, I again request that Cardinal Law requires this oath of teachers. (Wouldn’t it make Tom Flately rest easy with David Hallenbach occupying a chair in his beloved parents’ names?)

Paragraph #5 pertains to Resources. You generally indicate that Diocesan review boards review teaching materials and curricula, and that you, and I presume Cardinal Law, are satisfied with both the competence of those who review the process, and the results. How can you possibly be satisfied with these reviews when the superintendent’s office has allowed, as useful rather than fatally harmful, the trashy sex-ed programs currently operating in our schools on our students? What do you conceivably mean by seemingly endorsing a publisher who prints a sex-ed program for public schools? Some discussion of classic Judeo-Christian morality of course can properly occur in public schools — abstractly — as in English and American literature — but not sex-saturated sex-ed courses! Does it occur to the Archdiocese that the condom dispensers currently being directed into our schools is a direct result of the silence of the Archdiocese on sexology programs operating in almost every public and private school in our state?

Your letter did not respond to the critiques of sex-education programs which the Archdiocese is promoting. As both my critiques warn, the programs are spiritually damaging, in that they aim to liberate the child from the authority of the home and the church. They should be immediately removed!

Paragraph #6, dealing with a redefinition of values-clarification, is indeed incredible. There is no possible way to redefine this “process.” Values-clarification’s most devilish part is not the relative-values. (Heck, a misinformed good conscience can get somebody to heaven!) On the contrary, the insidious nature of values-clarification is that it replaces the primacy of conscience with the supremacy of conscience — or — the primacy of reason with the supremacy of reason. Vested authority, in particular that authority Christ invested in you as priest, and Cardinal Law as bishop teaching Christ’s Truth in communion with Pope John Paul II and the teaching tradition of the Magisterium, and the authority of parents in the home, as well, have no place in values-clarification. Obedience to authority outside the individual person is excluded in values-clarification. Even when (because truth is always reasonable) a modern sex-ed student chooses, in the light of the arguments given to do the “right thing,” the choice emanates from pride, not humility based on a recognition of fallible human nature and a properly formed “informed” conscience. Why do you think people contracept? It’s not that they disobey, it’s that they think the only one they have to obey is themselves — perfect in reason, perfect in intention, but blindly proud. We are back to the Garden of Paradise here — and Christ leads us from there to Gethsemane — where it was only His Father’s Will that mattered to Jesus.

Your letter, together with your enclosed sex-ed guidelines, indicates to me blindness, or an unwillingness to look at the real issues and do what is required. I hope my letter, my critique, and my prayers serve to open your eyes, as well as Father Steel’s and Cardinal Law’s. Please believe me when I confess how hard it is to be patient with this serious, serious problem. If further critiques are what you need for clout then now you have them — at the cost of a couple more days labor!

I close by suggesting that you ask yourself and Cardinal Law, who is it who is pushing this trash on our children — which members of which organizations and committees and conferences? What kind of people are they? Humble? Holy? A sense of reverence? Devoted to Our Lady and the Eucharist? Penitent? What organizations do they support? If religious sisters or of religious orders, do they live their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience? Are they “covering up” something? Are they in “power” positions? Who are they, and why are they messing with my kids? What are they getting out of it? And, who are the nice people who have been duped by clever rhetoric?

I hope you decide to pay attention to the suggestions and critiques I wrote to Cardinal Law. Let the children study authentic church documents on sacraments and virtue. I hope too, Cardinal Law will decide to write a pastoral on this important subject. He is welcome to use any of my materials which I have submitted. It should be a “what’s wrong” and “what to do about it.”

Lastly, with urgency, I hope the Archdiocese immediately places a ban on teaching or attending sex-ed in all schools, public and private (removing, of course, the offensive programs I critiqued), and substitutes even “study” periods until a new policy can be issued.

In fact, please consider all my hopes formal requests.

I’m home from the Cape now and so it will be easy to meet if you wish. You know, of course, I can arrange for Cardinal Law to meet with my beloved distinguished, articulate experts, such as Jim Likoudis, Randy Engle, and Alice Von Hildebrand. They can supply the theological depth and practical wisdom which Cardinal Law will need, and it would be such a treat to meet such brilliant minds and holy people. Just thinking about them makes me fill with gratitude and affection.

To you also, I send my love. I hope you’ve had a good summer, and found your way to New Silver. Our summer home weathered “Hurricane Bob” rather well, and it was very exciting! Too bad “Hurricane Bob didn’t blow out the sex-ed programs in our Archdiocese! I guess we need more than a hurricane for that — a rosary perhaps?

Love,

Alice Ann

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My critique of the Archdiocesan draft Guidelines.

September 11, 1991

The Archdiocesan guidelines are at once dangerously directive, as well as confusing in the meaning of the gift of sexuality.

First, with regard to “dangerously directive,” it is necessary to examine the title in its relationship to the body of content: The title implicitly endorses sex education in the Catholic classroom. The subject is education in sex — not the decalogue. This “sex education” discussed with a directive to involve parents in a “partnership,” (together as described) robs the parents of their right to be the “first and primary educators of their children.” The family is “put down” as basically stupid, and the school then takes charge of the situation. Classic Catholic tradition holds that the school operates at the parents’ bidding, and it is the parents who decide what is appropriate assistance in educating, uniquely, their individual children with individual needs. The guidelines, while paying nominal tribute to collaboration, allow control to be retained by the school, rather than the school’s proper role as assistant. The concept of subsidiarity is especially important in sexuality, where the subject is formation of the will, gradually, not information for the mind.

In these guidelines, paragraphs explain several matters relating to sex. They include sexual intercourse, in faithful sacramental marriage, as well as sexual disorders such as masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, abortion and AIDS. The expectation is that teachers are supposed to teach these subjects, and yet not one word in these guidelines recognize that these subjects are delicate, and that respect of privacy demands only the most abstract discussion of morality along the lines of the context of the papal documents. Otherwise, these subjects become the cause of sex initiation — a direct temptation of sin. Concrete teaching and class discussion of these explicit subjects desensitizes the student in an environment which is captive and manipulative. According to the guidelines, that which is private and sacred can be made open and public — which is a complete distortion of the truth about human sexuality.

Nor is there any recognition of the individual student’s pace of psychosexual development and maturity. Latency periods are almost always violated in classroom settings — as some students, even as seniors, are not prepared, nor do they desire to discuss certain subjects. Exceptional care must be given.

Taken as a whole, the guidelines seem incognizant of the meaning of chastity — as that virtue which keeps the sexual secret hidden, as a dominion whose disposition lies in the hand of God. (Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s definition) Instead it suggests a de-sacralized meaning of sex — open, public and everyday. It uses Planned Parenthood/SEICUS’s terms as describing people as “sexual human beings in dealing with interpersonal relationships.” A person of common sense asks the reader to just imagine thinking of a consecrated celibate priest relating to a fellow consecrated celibate priest as a “sexual human being!” Does a young mother doing grocery shopping think of the butcher as a “sexual human being”? Of course not! This is just Planned Parenthood/SEICUS’s strategy to capitalize on obvious male/female differences to magnify and distort the role sex plays in our lives. We need to relate to each other as lady/gentleman, wife/husband, and most importantly human persons made to the image and likeness of God!

Another example of the over-saturation of sexual images which de-sacralizes and makes sex everyday, is the guidelines’ directive to understand sexuality in a threefold manner — gender identity (obviously male/female), genital sexuality (again, a given) and thirdly, affective sexuality, which is defined as the ability to express intimacy, affection and warmth in our interpersonal relationships. This is a secular/humanist attempt to blur and confuse the rather clear meanings and distinctions of sex. Does this directive mean that intimacy, affection, and warmth necessarily involves sexual meaning? If so, then this author has an affective sexual relationship with her mother and her spiritual director! Is that what our children are learning? Don’t we parents, simply by role modeling, teach that affection, warmth and intimacy grows between people in any number of ways — with words, acts of sacrifice, prayer, shared experiences, gestures, smiles, and hugs? Don’t we wish to teach that there is nothing remotely sexual in these relationships. Don’t we also wish to clearly point out and examine the dating relationships — which properly lead to marriage — which are distinct and unique interpersonal relationships with their own unique proper standards of physical intimacy, which, if observed, allows true intimacy to occur? If Father Elwood Keiser, author of Hollywood Priests, had truly expressed the teachings of the church, on his publicity tour, he never would have publicly justified hand-holding, kissing, and “falling in love” with a nun. (People Are Talking, July 1991, Archdiocese of Boston) He was dating and he shouldn’t have been! People of common sense know these distinctions, and the church shouldn’t blur their understanding!

Also missing in these guidelines is even the mention of the word “sin,” reflecting a total neglect of the fact that sex is wounded and deprived in fallen human nature and remains so despite Baptism. Human vulnerability and our need of the sacraments and prayer is overlooked.

Lastly, the guidelines cite the Surgeon General’s report as an authority in its discussion of AIDS. Did the author of these guidelines forget that the Surgeon General’s report on the subject of AIDS sanctioned condom use, and talked about sex between “partners” instead of using the term husband and wife?

In summary, these guidelines reflect a complete lack of understanding of human sexuality as handed down in scripture and tradition of the Catholic church. Furthermore, taken as a whole, they are an explicit directive to subvert the traditional cautions and reservations requested by the Church regarding “proper and prudent sexual education of youth” (found in Catholic Teaching from Pius XI to John Paul II). They explicitly provide the rational for the Archdiocese’s foolish use of the sex-ed programs currently being used, such as “New Creation,” “In God’s Image,” “Saddler Program,” “Benziger Program,” and portions of “St. Mary’s Program.” The Archdiocese cannot hide behind the veil of ignorance when so many valuable critiques are presented to point out the dangerous path which the Archdiocese has taken. It cannot be repeated too many times that the subject we are discussing is a strategy to completely liberate the child from parental authority and the church. Their immortal souls are the stakes.

It is this author’s opinion that all discussion of human sexuality (with the exception of the commandments) be suspended in Catholic schools until the current programs are removed, a pastoral letter on this subject is drafted by Cardinal Law, and totally new directives are implemented based on the traditional teaching of morality — content and process — in conjunction with Cardinal Law’s pastoral and authentic church documents — the earliest of which is Pope Pius XI’s Christian Education of Youth 1929 and Council of Trent.

Having now stated the problem with current guidelines and having suggested to readers that an immediate freeze on sex-education be put in place by Cardinal Law, this author closes the critique, by formally requesting Cardinal Law to implement the freeze on sex-education while a new direction is formulated in true conformity of what is proper and what is prudent, and what truly leads to real purity as defined by Dietrich Von Hildebrand.