Letter to Cardinal Law along with my “Parents’ Petition”

January 1992

Cardinal Bernard Law
2121 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02135

Dear Cardinal Law:

The matter of pastoral responsibility to ban classroom sex education in the Archdiocese of Boston and to warn parents of public school children of its dangers is now back in your hands. You asked Msgr. Bill Murphy to act on your behalf. Already you have read last summer’s correspondence between Bill and me. (I critiqued his endorsement of classroom sex-ed and also, yet another set of Archdiocesan guidelines.) Enclosed is a copy of Bill’s most recent letter.

Classroom sex-ed programs, with its emphasis on explicit and graphic sex and clear violation of subsidiarity, totally disregard the Magisterium. Values clarification methodology has spread the serious error of the supremacy of conscience over the law of God in moral matters. You most certainly know this from the documentation I have already provided. Indeed, do you remember last May at Joe Stanton’s dinner, you said to me, “I speak the truth”? Of course I do. It’s not my truth. It’s God’s truth.

I have drafted the enclosed petition for five reasons:

1. To educate parents on the spiritual dangers of sex-ed.

2. To make parents aware of the teaching of the Magisterium on this subject.

3. To solicit support from faithful Catholics who recognize that the Archdiocese of Boston, in the area of sex-education, is abnegating its apostolic responsibility to faithfully transmit the truth of Christ, and in fact, is actively placing its children in the occasion of sin.

4. To remind these faithful Catholics that “unless the laity become aware of their obligation to protect the Faith, and not allow errors to go unchallenged, such bishops (ed. note — these teaching error) will go easily on their way, giving to the world a picture of Catholic teaching which completely distorts it.” (John J. Mulloy, Christian Order, November 1991).

5. To make you, as bishop, fully comprehend that we parents have done everything possible within the Catholic family of our own Archdiocese to stop this plague. It is now time to ask your public leadership in reversing this scandal. People always ask me, “What is Cardinal Law’s position?” and I need to know what to say. You alone — not Msgr. Murphy, not Fr. Steele, not Fr. Hawker, can answer me.

Are you willing to stop these programs in our Catholic schools and parishes, retract and invalidate the several guidelines you have allowed to be promoted within the Archdiocese, openly and aggressively warn parents of your concern for the serious damage these programs are effecting on innocent children (including so many Catholic children in the public schools)? Do you believe you should correct the errors of those administrators of the Archdiocese who at this very moment promote and endorse as Catholic that which you and I both know is not? In addition, do you realize that even proper teaching of religion must be carefully guarded by parents, and that the Oath of Fidelity should be used because the reality is that three-fourths of the Catholic married couples (inclusive of teachers) contracept, growing numbers of priests are homosexuals, and the religious orders and bureaucratic offices of the Church are entrenched with feminists?

Childhood has never been so dangerous, given the programs and the people in charge of them. The sad truth is that sex-education and the institutional Church’s inaccurate understanding of the virtue of chastity is killing Catholic education. Parents have simply lost confidence and therefore choose not to pay the price.

Just for your own peace of soul, read the New Creation Series, next door, at the Religious Education Office, and see if you don’t need to take a shower! You cannot really be pro-life and endorse the wishy-washy treatment on abortion in that series. You cannot really be pure and envision that it’s okay for children to discuss that vocabulary list in a group setting with the background of the children’s own sexual experiences and the teachers’ questionable theology in total absence of even their own parents.

Enclosed please find a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Write soon. In fact, please respond by February 1st (my son Tim’s birthday).

Thank you in advance for attending to this serious matter.

As always, I pray for you everyday.

Love,

Alice Ann

cc: Msg. Bill Murphy

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This Petition was enclosed with my January 1992 letter.

Your Eminence:

We the undersigned respectfully request that you impose immediately a ban on all sex-education courses currently being promoted by the Archdiocese of Boston, inclusive of the programs of Sadlier, Benzinger, and St. Mary’s Family Life, as well as “In God’s Image” (Franciscan Press), New Creation (William C. Brown & Co.), and Colleen Mast’s Sex, Respect and Love & Life (Ignatius Press). The Family Life Office of the Archdiocese of Boston’s booklet Sex Education in the School — What Parents Should Ask: What Parent Should Know, Suggested Guidelines for Sexuality Education in Catholic Schools, printed by the Department of Education of the Archdiocese of Boston, Sex education: Information or Formation? (Mass. Catholic Conference 1987), and November 1991 NCCB/USCC’s Human Sexuality are four examples of irretrievably flawed theology and philosophy. They provide the rationale for the humanistic sex initiation programs mentioned above. Therefore, we respectfully request that all of these guidelines be trashed. In addition, we also ask you to urge Catholic parents of public school children to withdraw their children from the classroom sex-education which is occurring in public schools. (This includes AIDS education in the public schools.)

Classroom sex education has not been proven to be effective. It is invasive of privacy, illegal, and spiritually damaging. The teacher is the curriculum.

The intrinsic evil of so-called “sexuality education” is that it seeks to make open and public that which is by nature intimate and personal, thereby killing bashfulness, decency, and modesty. This violates the basic parental imperative to protect children from unnecessary sexual information — and older youth from provocative or erotic stimuli. In fact, a child must learn that many aspects of human life comprise an intimate secret realm which should not be shared with or exhibited to all. We parents believe it is a form of professional elitism to assume that academia can replace the home in imparting sacred sexuality education to our children which must be done individually and personally, with discernment and reverence for the sacred and divine.

Sex education is therefore a perversion and a crime against the soul of any youth. We further request that you write a pastoral statement on the true meaning of the virtue of purity based on the truth that purity is that virtue which keeps the sexual secret hidden as a dominion whose disposition lies in the hand of God. (Dietrich von Hildebrand)

We recognize that both the church and the school have a proper interest and role in the formation of youth, but that role exercises itself at the bidding of and under the guidance of parents — to whom God has entrusted the child. As parents we rely on the constant teaching tradition of the church, and in particular with regard to the education of children we respect the encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Illius Divini Magistri. This constant teaching tradition which dates from the Council of Trent condemns classroom education of explicit sexual matters, and roots formation in the virtue of purity in the religious context of the virtues.

Sincerely and with respect,

For the sake of the children,

Please sign and return to: Committee to Ban Sex-Education.*

*The Committee is now The Veil of Innocence.