“Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.”

Saint Thomas More

William A. Marra, Ph.D.

A thorough and devastating case against classroom sex education can be made and, I submit, has been made often enough, in writings and in lectures, by many concerned persons. In 1969 I co-authored with Dietrich von Hildebrand just such a case. Our booklet is entitled Sex Education: The Basic Issues. In it we analyzed critically the kind of sex city education programs then current or proposed. Since the booklet first appeared, I have been to thirty-nine states and four Canadian provinces promulgating its message in lectures, interviews and debates.

Six years have now passed. The sex education programs today are at least as bad as we had imagined in 1969 and often far worse. Bitter disputes have followed upon the introduction of many of these programs. But they have been relentlessly pushed into the school systems, public and parochial, thanks to a massively funded and highly organized effort by the so-called sex experts.

The times now call, I believe, for a different emphasis in countering the programs. No matter how convincingly argued is the case against sex education in the schools, there is always the lingering doubt in the minds of many, even those who listen sympathetically, that the approach is too negative. Why do I not propose alternatives? Am I simply insisting that the schools treat sex in the hush-hush manner of a long-forgotten Victorian era? Of course not. If I say that the schools should not, and if one posits for the sake of argument that most parents do not, formally teach the children about sex, then is not the only alternative that the youngsters learn about sex in the streets? Not at all. To the extent that the government schools are constitutionally able, let them affirm the Judeo-Christian morality as simply enunciated in the classical Ten Commandments. At the very least, let them not attack or ridicule or trivialize this morality. As for Catholic Schools, their historic mission has been to teach the Faith. Let them re-dedicate themselves to this noble mission. And may all schools come to understand that sexology has no place in any serious curriculum.

I propose here, therefore, to outline a positive case, a case for Education in Chastity. I will briefly note its essential contents. I will then show how this education in chastity differs completely from all the programs now in the schools. These current programs, by whatever name they are called, are really concerned with Education in Sexuality. There are thus two possible directions for sex education to take. Unfortunately for our youth, for their innocence and moral integrity, education in sexuality gets all the emphasis. Education in chastity is either simply neglected or, worse, it is even ridiculed and sneeringly dismissed as incompatible with modern youth.

The youth may even applaud this new celebration of sexuality, this relaxed amoral atmosphere which now envelops a very important part of their social and personal development. The sex experts have been busy displaying groups of teenagers who testify to their great interest in sex education programs. They wail plaintively, “Teach us what we want to know.” And the experts obligingly set up or expand K through 12 programs which teach what science has so far discovered about human sexuality.

The youth, however, are not forever elated over this largesse of scientific knowledge. For all the details, for all the documented research, for all the sophisticated discussion of contraception and abortion, the youth have not so much as heard whispered the God-given meaning of human sex, its profound relation to chaste love, its mystery as both unitive and procreative. They are perhaps more knowledgeable about the facts of sex than were their parents; we may doubt whether they are more wise.

Once the clear distinction has been sketched between education in chastity and education in sexuality, parents will be in a good position to evaluate their children’s schools. If the schools affirm chastity as a virtue in the traditional ways, the schools deserve their watchful support. If, however, it is education in sexuality, we should at least understand that it is a totally novel, totally untried approach having absolutely nothing to do with moral goodness in general, still less with Christian virtues.

CHASTITY

I take the term chastity to signify a virtue which regulates human sexuality so that it always conforms to what is morally good – to what God wills in this important sphere. In this sense of the word, chastity makes different demands on us according to our state in life.

Let us consider first the married state. What does chastity imply here for each of the partners? In its ideal form, marriage involves a union of intimacy and tenderness between two persons who have pledged themselves to a common life because they love each other. As Dietrich von Hildebrand has shown so often, there is a God-willed connection between love and sex and marriage. Human sex is unique among all other bodily functions because of its essential depth; it is thus fit to be the vehicle of self-revelation and self-donation to the beloved spouse. Within marriage it is permissible and a positively good thing that there be chaste kisses, chaste embraces, chaste sexual union. Chastity in no way excludes the deep bliss, the enjoyment, and the pleasure which sexual union with the beloved affords. But chastity here does exclude, as hostile to itself and to love also, all lustful attitudes, all perversions, all positive frustrations of the procreative power of the marital act, and every form of sadism.

The single state obviously makes other demands in the name of chastity. Whether a person be single but still eligible for marriage, or else consecrated to virginity and the celibate life as a priest or religious, chastity here means precisely not being involved in all those intimate and revealing experiences which belong to the married state alone. This is probably the most important moral fact to be grasped concerning human sexuality, namely, that sex as such is in no way dirty or evil or sinful; but that impurity is all these things, and that impurity consists in isolating sex from wedded love. Hence what is permitted and what even essentially belongs to the married state is exactly what is not permitted to the single state. It is an empty sophism, therefore, to say that fornication must be good since God is the Creator of sex. The point is that He destined sex for the inner garden of the married state and not for the external forum of the single state.

We may catalog some of the demands of chastity here. Of course they also apply in their own way to married persons when someone else besides the spouse is in question; but they apply in a special way to single persons. Chastity always means at least possessing one’s body in reverence. It implies that we guard the inner sanctum of our body, the intimate sphere of our sexuality, with modesty in dress, speech, and action. That self-revelation and intimate union, destined for a beloved spouse, must be sealed off from those who are not the spouse. Moreover, we must look upon others with a clean heart. Chastity forbids that we mentally undress them, or mentally have sexual relations with them; still more that we actually do these things.

From even this brief summary of the claims and demands of chastity, we may evoke the typical complaint that this is a hard virtue, which asks for the impossible. But the experienced difficulty of acquiring any virtue is not limited to chastity alone. Already in the time of Plato, some twenty-five hundred years ago, there was a truth about moral goodness so commonly accepted that it was an aphorism, It is hard to be good. Indeed, it is hard to be chaste, to be pure, to conduct ourselves and possess ourselves so that we can stand in the sight of God. But it is also hard to be honest, to be truthful, to be just. It is also hard, to the point of demanding heroism, to have moral courage in the face of unjust assaults on good things. It is hard to be pious, to be generous, to be meek. Above all, no matter that the rhetoric suggests otherwise, it is really hard to love some other persons; impossible, in fact, unless Christ aids us to love them with His love.

Admittedly, however, chastity still seems more difficult than many of the other virtues, at least for a great number of persons. For temptations against chastity have a powerful ally in the very make-up of the body, with its strong drives and urges. Similar bodily drives are almost non-existent in respect to the other virtues and the temptations against them. Then, too, our milieu can greatly incite us to sins against chastity, especially if we are single and perhaps lonely. As the proponents of classroom sex education keep telling us, moreover, we are literally engulfed in erotically stimulating images, words and fashions. Of course, the thought seldom occurs to these persons that we might better agitate to clean up these stimulants rather than seek to neutralize their effects by inoculating children with the erotic materials themselves.

There is a further consideration about the difficulty of chastity especially today. I refer to the general softness and luxury of modern life for most persons in most Western countries. This softness makes a double contribution to the reign of unchastity. First, it goes hand in hand with a lack of ascetic practices and lessons in self-control. Moreover, it is most often accompanied by excessive leisure which itself is often enough stamped with an atmosphere of boredom. In other circumstances, when life has economic and political urgencies, sex is defused. Other things preoccupy us, such as war, famine, persecution. To appreciate this, let us consider how empty pornography must appear to those millions who now face starvation because of crop failure. Mere survival is their exclusive concern. Unchastity must await the return of leisure and luxury.

EDUCATION IN CHASTITY

Education always involves teachers and learners. Those who teach about chastity should have as their goal the effective communication to the learners of the right use of sex: as something intimate and sacred, and destined for the expression of wedded love. When the learners are children, they should first of all be informed, in delicate, prayerful and sober language, of God’s holy will regarding sex as given in His commandments. The educator should, moreover, strive to form them, to sow and nurture in them good attitudes, good character traits. Such is specifically moral education; it must be supplemented and brought to fruition by religious education.

Even effective lessons in self-control are part of this moral education. The general exhortation and insistence that children not always satisfy their every wish, but rather make an effort to control their desires, are part of moral education. Much more, the children should be invited and aided to meditate upon the virtues – upon all of them, but especially upon angelic purity and chastity. They should be guided to read good books and shun bad ones. They should have exposed to them in a sympathetic and appreciative way the true heroes of humanity, the saints, so that the great virtue of the saints may be the source of imitation and inspiration. Finally, the children should be taught and encouraged to pray. They should be made to understand that supernatural help alone can give them the victory in this warfare with evil.

The methods used are the familiar ones of teaching and preaching, always according to the ages and abilities of the hearer. Thus, even a six-year old may be required to memorize the commandment which says, Thou shalt not commit adultery. A simple explanation suffices to indicate the general sense of the commandment. Then, as the children advance in years, to use the words of Vatican II, the positive and prudent education in chastity can be given in greater detail. Whatever the age, however, the language used must always be hushed and delicate so that its very style expresses the deep and noble mystery belonging to this sphere. Vivid details must be avoided. Otherwise their imprudent use may have a two-fold bad effect. In the first place, a too vivid and graphic presentation of the intimate matters of sex will offend the modesty of the child. His upbringing should have the aim of helping him to cloak the inner mystery of sex with the veil of modesty. Indelicate speech and, worse, graphic details in films and illustrations will tear at this fragile veil.

The second consideration is that no unnecessary temptations be placed in front of the children as stumbling blocks to their purity. Even in an age less soft and luxurious, and one which does not flaunt intimate matters but is intelligently reserved about them, temptations to impurity will arise often enough for both sexes. The very polarity of the sexes, the natural attractiveness each has for the other, the stimulating effect a certain beautiful or handsome individual has on members of the opposite sex: these always leave open the possibility of a fall. Our natures are weak and what begins as a healthy and good contact may end in sin, if not of action, then of words and thoughts.

But how much worse are these temptations at the present time. There is now almost no place, not even the churches, where chastity is not sorely tempted by the reality of near nakedness and by the hundred images which multiply each reality. Today, therefore, it is especially a demand of charity that we do not add to the temptations which burden our fellow humans, especially the youths in school. When I read certain passages in books intended for young persons from grades seven through twelve, I cannot escape the thought that the authors in question, and above all those school officials who mandate the use of the books, are guilty of a grave and cruel sin, the sin of scandal. They render far more difficult, perhaps impossible, the overriding moral task of the young people to be pure and chaste. They lead others to sin, they entice to sin. And all of this is done under the pretext of helping the youths and affording them positive attitudes towards sex.

MARRIAGE

Needless to say, a genuinely Catholic education in chastity must be absolutely and univocally clear about Church teachings on the moral aspects of sex. This teaching in a certain way centers on the true and profound meaning of marriage. The correct understanding of marriage is crucial in every way. For it is marriage which makes the difference between the sin of fornication and the morally good act of sexual relations between husband and wife. Nakedness has a completely different moral sign depending on whether it occurs in the intimacy of marriage or in the publicity of the beaches and theater.

Marriage itself is linked to several profound moral questions, namely, its permanence and the integrity of the marital act. These questions are everywhere disputed today. Papal teaching on the moral sinfulness of artificial contraception has been the occasion of several notorious confrontations between clergy and hierarchy; it is also one of the chief issues in the much discussed polarization of the Church. And the constant Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage has come under increasingly heavy attack from certain members of the Church.

Regarding this point, Christ Himself has declared that marriage is indissoluble, What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. Catholic education must stress this teaching. It is not enough to say that Christ’s words are to be understood as stating the often unreachable ideal. As if, in the real world Catholics were sometimes free to put away a lawful spouse and take another! As difficult as the teaching may seem to today’s youth, let it be remembered that Christ’s demands upon us are never easy. Christian morality always appears as a goal too lofty, too difficult, almost impossible. Christ’s yoke is sweet and His burden light only to those who have learned of Him.

The permanence of Christian sacramental marriage is today attacked by a double weapon. On the one hand a theoretical assault is made, through all the media of education and information, generating great confusion about the meaning of solemn vows. One grants that a real Christian sacramental marriage which has been consummated is indeed indissoluble, but one then so defines this real marriage that it almost never takes place. All sorts of psychological impotencies are dragged out, all kinds of studies about immaturity are advanced to show that when this particular man exchanged vows with that particular woman, no real commitment was made because none was possible. And on the other hand, certain Diocesan tribunals vie with each other to become the Reno of the Church in granting annulments. An ominous trend is now apparent. The more the theoretical organs convince engaged couples that genuine commitment, and thus real marriage, almost never happens, the more likely it is that the couple will remember this a few years later, when the marriage runs into the inevitable difficulties which life always provides. And when this happens often enough, the tribunals will then be right – in a perverse sort of way. For then it will indeed be the fact that the couple, thanks to the theoretical enlightenment about the rarity of psychological maturity and the even greater rarity of real commitment, was not serious when it repeated the formula pledging unity until death.

Catholic education in chastity must not accept this double assault on the great sacrament of Matrimony. Even as true Catholic teaching must insist that marriage is indispensable for the pure use of sex, so must it also insist that Christian marriage is permanent – for better and for worse.

The other crucial Catholic teaching about marriage relates to the sinfulness of artificial contraception. There is no doubt whatever about the official Church teaching here. It belongs to chaste Christian marriage that no positive means be placed between sexual intercourse and its possible fruitfulness. Education of youth in chastity, therefore, ought to insist on this teaching as integral to the understanding of Christian marriage. Has this happened? Do the sex education courses in Catholic schools include this teaching? When we see how this teaching has fared with the adult community, whether in parish lectures, or articles in the diocesan papers, or even perhaps in some confessionals, we may be forgiven if we are skeptical about its promulgation in the schools. Many of the clergy seem to have a tacit understanding with many of the Catholic adults that Rome just hasn’t caught up with us yet, but that meanwhile it’s perfectly safe to follow one’s conscience and practice responsible contraception.

Obviously the message spread so joyously among the adults (and received so gratefully) about the situational licitness of contraception is too good to be kept from the youngsters. At the very minimum, the youngsters are kept in the dark about the official Church teaching about contraception. More than that, they are usually treated to objective studies of the various methods of contraception, no doubt so that they can make a responsible judgment when the need arises. They are far more likely to hear a talk from someone who espouses the views of Planned Parenthood than from someone who defends and explains papal teaching. In fact, they will almost never hear the latter kind of talk today.

It is a shameful abuse of words, a degrading lie in fact, to call such contents a part of Catholic education in chastity. The world, led by its atheistic humanists, no doubt wants contraception – and pornography and abortion. But Christ’s people? Do we not stress today St. Peter’s words that we are a royal priesthood, a holy people? How incompatible are the world’s sexual practices with this high calling! Let our educators, then, teach Christ above the noise and obscenities of the world of darkness. At least if we cannot do this, if we teach in fact the ethic of darkness, let us not sin twice by calling it light.

Another aspect of education in chastity concerns the moral evil of homosexual acts. There is much writing, some of it sheer sentimentality about being charitable to homosexuals – not sneering at them and not calling them degrading names. So be it. But the fact remains that the homosexuals’ acts, above all sodomy, have been explicitly declared sinful by the Bible itself, in both Testaments. Thus, while charity to all persons, including homosexuals, should indeed be stressed, it is specifically an act of charity to young persons to teach them God’s truth about unnatural intercourse – always with the greatest delicacy and modest reserve. To speak of gay dignity is too ambiguous. Every man, because he is a child of God, has dignity. But if he is afflicted with a tendency, even through no fault of his own, to engage in immoral acts, then his dignity can be preserved only if he resists the temptation. To say, as did a famous theologian, that for some persons chastity may mean homosexual relations, is not to safeguard the dignity of the unfortunate persons. It is rather to betray and assault human dignity by encouraging deeds incompatible with it.

We must mention now a very important part of all serious education in chastity, namely, the doctrine that we are obliged to avoid all near occasions of sin. Before our catechisms were mutilated, under the guise of being updated, Catholic religious education included the basic doctrine that mankind groans under the burden of Original Sin.

Each child born into the world is afflicted with the consequences of Original Sin even when the guilt itself is removed by the regenerating waters of Baptism. These consequences include the darkening of the intellect and the weakening of the will. This teaching, so central to the Bible and so indispensable for understanding the mission of Jesus Christ, forms the background for the practical teaching that we are morally obliged to avoid the near occasions of sin. What a salutary piece of advice this is!

Based on the simple truth of the weakness of our nature, it warns us that we ought not to trust ourselves too much about this matter of being surrounded by temptations. Rather should we in earnest humility grasp that we are an easy prey for certain inviting and attractive temptations. We should make it a firm rule, therefore, to keep as far from us as possible the near occasions of sin, those persons, places, activities, and thoughts, which we have good reason to believe will conjure up such powerful temptations that we are unlikely to be able to resist them.

This teaching has an important bearing on education in chastity. The really mature Christian knows his own moral weakness and understands that such is the lot of all humans. He is therefore most careful about occasions of sin. Because he seriously desires to commit no sins, and because he has a healthy mistrust of his ability to say no to a tempting but immoral thing, he avoids all contacts with that pitch by which he may be defiled. He does not fear the mockery of those who chide him for his scruples because, for example, he refuses to see a certain film or read a certain book.

And when such a person is an educator, he tries to arouse in his pupils a similar mistrust of self. Basing his attitude on the sure truths of Scripture and Church teaching, he tries to arm his pupils with knowledge about their weaknesses, and with a practical resolve to avoid putting such weaknesses to excessively severe tests. The good teacher tries to communicate to them his clear grasp of the different, often subtle forms of sinning. The very tone of his speech testifies to his own great fear of sinning. And so he is able to initiate others, younger and less mature than himself, into that carefulness and delicacy which conspire to set a watch around his eyes and lips.

Unfortunately, however, our age seems to abound with persons who are adults according to the calendar but who are childishly immature in their attitude towards sin and temptation. For some of them, the problem is simply that they no longer believe many things to be sinful. For others, however, a certain action may indeed be admitted to be sinful, but they persist in edging up closer and closer to it on the pretext that they are mature adults who no longer require paternalistic direction. Persons of either persuasion, if they are teachers of youth, fail miserably to stress either the evil of sin or the danger of proximate occasions. Nay more, their sex education courses, with their tasteless books and too graphic and explicit images, are already occasions of sin. And these occasions are multiplied and rendered well nigh irresistible when certain books and entertainment are praised, or even assigned, because they are realistic.

SEXUAL EDUCATION

From the sketch given above, we can clearly ascertain that what is being offered as sex education today can in no sense be understood as education in chastity. Teaching youth to know and to embrace the virtue of chastity is perhaps the farthest thing from the minds of those who have so successfully mandated sex education courses in so many schools, public and parochial. A clear pattern has emerged in recent years of the mentality behind these courses. Part of the pattern involves the intentional wearing down of modesty and bashfulness in the pupils. Anatomical and biological facts, repeated and stressed, and given to quite young pupils are frankly intended to take the hush-hush mystery out of sexuality, as well as to rid the children of false ideas, old wives’ tales, and so on. Those directing these programs cannot for the life of them see anything special about sexuality and they seem genuinely perplexed that parents, who welcome their teaching mathematics and history, suddenly become so hostile when they teach one more subject – sexuality. The directors, realizing that a certain latent prudishness and Victorianism is to be found still in many parents, are determined that such attitudes will not be inflicted on the children. Thus, often without parental consent, and often even without parental knowledge, the educators are giving a thorough course to young children about the biological and physiological aspects of sex.

But as objectionable as this is because of its assault on intimacy and modesty, it is not the most outstanding feature of the courses. It is rather the preliminary means to the end really intended: the inculcation of a radically different view of sex and human life. The entire meaning of human sex has become radically modified in the minds of the educators and they intend now to change the minds of the children entrusted to them by parents who may still naively believe that sex education means education in chastity. The philosophy of secular humanism, with its this-worldly emphasis, its naturalism, and its moral relativism, has replaced the magnificent Catholic teaching about sex and love as operative within marriage and as inseparable from the family. Moral absolutes, especially in all sexual matters, are now being denied by many Catholic educators. Situation Ethics, the theory that any action is morally acceptable, and perhaps even mandatory, so long as it can be shown to be in the service of love, is the theoretical tool whereby every kind of sexual sin is now taught to be innocent and healthy so long as there is no exploitation. Thus, masturbation, fornication, adultery, divorce and remarriage, sodomy, contraception and even abortion: all of these, having been found innocent by certain prominent moral theologians, are now treated from a morally neutral and even from a morally favorable point of view when they are presented to the children for discussion.

Education in chastity, meanwhile, is hardly ever thought about. From a Catholic standpoint, this situation is intolerable. The supposed cure for the sexual permissiveness of our age is said to be not chastity and Christian purity, but simply classroom doses of the very hedonistic and naturalistic diseases which have alarmed us in the first place. Let us get back to education in chastity as the Catholic Church has always understood it.

(Originally Published by Catholics United for the Faith Newsletter, 1975)

Dr. William A. Marra

Dr. William A. Marra was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 20, 1928 of Italian immigrant parents. He grew up in Jersey City, but attended the Jesuit-run Regis High School in New York City. He went to college at the University of Detroit School of Engineering also run by the Jesuits. After college he attended graduate school at Fordham University. After his release from the military, in 1952, he began a teaching career at Fordham University that spanned nearly four decades. At Fordham he met the man he would later call the greatest influence on my life – Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Prompted by concerns over the emerging practice of sex-education in both public and parochial schools, in 1968-69, he began a second career as a lecturer. He initially spoke to groups dedicated to fighting abuses in local schools. He also founded alternative private schools, the most notable being the Holy Innocents schools, a small chain of parent-managed primary schools. Dr. Marra served as vice-president of Catholics United for the Faith. He founded the Roman Forum Lecture Series which often featured his friend von Hildebrand as its speaker. In addition, Dr. Marra often lectured on such varied topics as evolution, liturgy, philosophy, and seminary education.

In later years Dr. Marra expanded his lectures to include various topics related to the condition of the Catholic Church with a special emphasis on home schooling and parental rights. He authored and co-authored numerous articles, as well as published a work in philosophy, Happiness and Christian Hope.

Dr. Marra appeared on Mother Angelica’s EWTN Network, and spoke to numerous groups of religious and clergy, including Mother Angelica’s own order. He was returning from a series of seminars given in Alabama when he became ill and died from a stroke on December 12, 1998.