Sex Respect

– The Option of True Sexual Freedom & Love and Life
written by sex-ed author, Coleen Kelly Mast
A Christian Sexual Morality Guide for Teens

Alice Grayson’s Review of the Sex Education Program

In this paper I have already discussed and criticized Coleen Mast’s Sex Respect and Love and Life through samplings of her treatment of values clarification, explicit sexology instructions, her shallow understanding of the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood, and her crude reduction of supposedly teaching virtue by making it entertaining with cartoons and slogans.

Her programs are preoccupied with the goal of “teaching” children self-esteem, which Mast defines as “favorable opinion’ of oneself; confidence (T. 26), and is the first foundation of mature human sexuality, followed by Love of God”
(Human Life International, A Catholic Critique of Coleen Mast’s Sex Respect Program on Sex Ed, 1991, p. 7).

“Mast makes more than a dozen references to self-esteem, including an entire chapter in the student’s guide…” (Engel, Sex Education — The Final Plague, 1989, p. 147).

It is this emphasis on self-love which Mast sees essential for self-control, and which Mast then believes will lead to “chastity.” What Mast has overlooked is the virtue of humility, and never even mentions it in the student text (Engel, Sex Education — The Final Plague, 1989, p. 148). How different Mast views formation in chastity in comparison to Cardinal Newman who has written that “humility is the guard of chastity” and reflects the sentiment of St. Philip. (Cardinal John Henry Newman, Prayers, Versus, and Devotions, Roman Catholic Books, NY.

Randy Engel quotes Fr. John G. Arintero, O.P., S.T.M.:

In order to construct the edifice of virtue and solid sanctity, we must lay the foundation of a profound and sincere humility. This is effected primarily by the destruction of pernicious self-love, which corrodes and vitiates everything and deceives and blinds us in all things, “making us think we are something whereas we are actually nothing.” (Ga. 6:3)

From The Mystical Evolution
by Fr. John G. Arintero, O.P., S.T.M.

All masters of the spiritual life down through the ages, including Fr. Arintero have taught that humility is the fountainhead of sanctity.

Christ Himself did not only preach humility: “Learn from Me for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29), but He lived it. In the words of St. Paul, “He emptied Himself, taking the nature of a slave… humbling Himself, becoming obedient to death, even to death on the cross.” (Phil. 2:7-8)

It should be remembered that humility is a virtue which is “uniquely Christian,” something quite unknown among the pagans, for whom the term connotes something weak, vile and abject.” For Christians, however, it is “indispensable for advancement in the spiritual life, particularly with regard to the mortification of the senses and passions…” (Engel, Sex Education — The Final Plague, 1989, p. 147)

It is my personal opinion that the simple mandated practice of reinstitution biweekly sacramental confession is indispensable and irreplaceable as it relates to formation of a balanced, proper self-concept needed to become “holy.” The advantages of biweekly confession are:

(1) Sacramental confession establishes the importance and reality of authority, sin, and forgiveness. (Children easily observe that what we adults believe is really important is that which we absolutely insist on.)

(2) This sacrament is a source of needed grace to grow in the virtue of purity.

(3) Sacramental confession is integral to the Church’s guidelines for indulgences, including plenary indulgences in reparation for sin.

(4) The repeated process of confessing and receiving God’s pardon, and reparation for sin, simply, by God’s love and grace, makes the penitent develop an awareness of sin, hatred of sin, including its humiliating effects, a love of goodness, and a profound gratitude for God’s mercy. Being the recipient of God’s mercy never makes one doubt one’s worth because God loves us enough to forgive and dwell within us. However, the penitent’s increasing awareness of his sinfulness (again, a gift from God) never allows the penitent to either rely on himself alone nor believe for one minute that this person’s life is “his life” to be done “his way.”

Sacramental confession forms the person delicately to appreciate his own self worth due to Christ’s suffering and redemption while it simultaneously forms the person in the virtue of humility due to his awareness of sin and sorrow for that. Confession is just too humbling for the sex-education concept of self-esteem which, of course, translates to mean self-preoccupation and making choices leading to self-fulfillment. Why is it that not one chastity program makes sacramental confession, as well as Holy Mass, absolutely mandatory in any serious pursuit of the true virtue of purity?

Supremacy of self-controlled freedom

Mast, as do all the “chastity” educators, closely links self-esteem with the process of internalizing values, but with a twist that conditions the child to believe that freedom’s only control is that which is self-imposed. Supremacy of conscience cancels the Christian concept of primacy of conscience. Thereby, morality becomes subjective. The goal here is not self-control for self-surrender, as Pope John Paul II teaches (Familiaris Consortio No.’s 36 & 37), but self-control for self-fulfillment: “It’s my life and my body . . .”

Consider Mast’s comments about adolescence in the Goals and Objectives of Sex Respect:

Adolescence often is characterized by a young person’s rejection of the controls of authority figures. This rejection is necessary in order for the adolescent’s developing reasoning process to assimilate his own chosen set of values…

As teens attempt to verify their sexual values and reevaluate what they learned as children, they will check these values against those represented by the many authority figures around them [TM, p. 8].

Similarly, Planned Parenthood’s sex education objectives state:

The program should present activities designed to help the individual come to terms… with his own values in sexuality, and with the wide range of opinions and options that exist within our society [PPTG, p. 7].

Planned Parenthood’s objectives for a sex education program are based on knowledge, self and choice. The Planned Parenthood guide states, “It is imperative that students be presented with accurate information so that they can make choices based on knowledge rather than ignorance and misconception” (PPTG, p. 7). Mast’s Student Workbook states, “With sex as with many other things, what you don’t know can hurt you! [emphasis on original].” (SW, p. 29) (H.L.I., A Catholic Critique of Coleen Mast’s Sex Respect Program on Sex Ed, p. 4 & 5)

What is so upsetting about these concepts of self-control, self-esteem, and critical reevaluation is that in a limited set of circumstances they do have value. We all need to think, to question, to make free choices, to discipline ourselves, and to appreciate ourselves as precious images of God. However, it’s the combination of these activities, unbalanced by humility, obedience, and dependence on grace, which makes Mast’s program so harmful. Perhaps, Mast is just plain ignorant of sin and redemption, of Adam and Eve, before and after the fall.

Even more subtly, these three objectives (self-esteem, knowledge, and choice) replay for the student the events of Adam and Eve during their temptation. The sex education courses invite the student to “sample the forbidden fruit.”

Joyce Little, in a recent article, has written about this same subject ( Naming Good and Evil), commenting that God created man to be His own image. She explains that God forbade man to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because only God knows how man can and should image God. Ms. Little writes that God’s message to man was:

Do not claim the ability to name or to define what is good and evil for yourselves, because you do not know enough about me to know what you are supposed to do to be my image in the world. Only I know how I can properly be imaged, and therefore only I can tell you what is good and evil for you.

Little continues:

… it also comes about because Eve does exactly what God forbids, not just in the literal, but also in the symbolic, sense. In the literal sense, she eats the fruit she has been commanded not to eat. In the symbolic sense, she names good and evil for herself, the very thing the eating of the fruit symbolizes as the forbidden act. `So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate’ (Gen. 3:6). God had named the eating of this fruit evil for Adam and Eve. Eve, on the other hand, looked at the fruit and came to the conclusion it would be good for her, a source of wisdom in fact. And so what God had named evil she renamed good.

God acknowledges this usurpation of his authority by saying, “See, the man has become like us, knowing good and evil.” Adam and Eve claimed for themselves the right to moral autonomy, the right to decide for themselves what they would regard as good and evil and not to accept good and evil as God defined it for them. In so doing, they rejected the sacramentality of the good creation, because they rejected the vocation God has written into their very being, the call to image Him rather than to assert themselves.

Pope John Paul II speaks the same:

Creating man and woman in his own image and likeness, God wills for them the fullness of good, or supernatural happiness, which flows from sharing in his own life. By committing sin man rejects this gift and at the same time wills to become “as God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5), that is to say, deciding what is good and what is evil independently of God, his Creator. The sin of the first parents has its own human “measure”: an interior standard of its own in man’s free will, and it also has within itself a certain “diabolic” characteristic, which is clearly shown in the Book of Genesis (3:15).
(Little, First Things, May/June 1992, pp. 26, 27)

It is absolutely clear that Mast encourages children to repeat the primordial sin — renaming good and evil according to one’s own desires. Moreover, she accomplishes this renaming by centering the educational process, of supposed learning, on the self — by group “discussion,” “incomplete sentences,” “brainstorming,” “role-playing,” “anonymous questions,” and use of “popular music” Every imaginable means is employed to break open the private person who rightfully belongs to God both spousally and by name. (H.L.I., A Catholic Critique of Coleen Mast’s Sex Respect Program on Sex Ed, p. 30).

Title XX and the Funding of Sex Education Programs by the Federal Government
Department of Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs

Your Tax Dollars at Work . . .
Sex-Ed Author, Molly Kelly, Helps Decide Which Program Gets Funded

Molly Kelly’s book, Let’s Talk to Teens About Chastity, reveals that she holds an important position as a member of the Grant Review Board of the Office of Population Affairs that judges sex education programs. Your tax dollars also go to Planned Parenthood programs that teach “abstinence” by showing boys and girls how to enjoy sex acts other than vaginal intercourse.

There is another reason why these “abstinence” and “chastity” programs so closely resemble the Planned Parenthood format. They have been appearing everywhere since Title XX monies became available from the United States government’ s Office of Population Affairs, Office of Adolescent Pregnancy. The projects emphasize abstinence as a means of avoiding pregnancy. Among the many programs using our tax dollars are Sex Respect and Teen Aid.

There is a serious moral and ethical dilemma surrounding sex education in general: when one accepts “chastity” programs, one accepts and lends legitimacy to all sex education programs. “Chastity” becomes just one component of a comprehensive, K-through-12 “sex-ed” program.

Title XX funding presents a similar dilemma, because when one accepts money from the Office of Population Affairs, this gives legitimacy to all of the programs funded by this Office. It also helps to legitimize its existence.

Bureaucrats are not really giving your tax dollars for a program that is compatible with Christian teaching. Instead, the picture is one of “Christian morality” left groveling for a few crumbs, while wealthy Planned Parenthood feasts and Mast’s Sex Respect Program on Sex Ed, 1991, p. 32) flourish.

When considering a sex education program such as Mast’s, it is necessary to examine it in terms of the harm it produces, and its erroneous understanding of human sexuality and the Catholic Church.