The Holy Family Society,Inc., has written a long letter to all the right people- back in 2005. Yet- the programs continue. More parents need to complain, and get together in groups to exclude their own children from these harmful programs.
The Holy Family Society, Inc.
5822 East North Street
Tucson, Arizona 85712
August 4, 2005
Under the Patronage of St. Maria Goretti
Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas
Diocese of Tucson
111 South Church Avenue
P. O. Box 31
Tucson, Arizona 85702-0031
Most Reverend William S. Skylstad, President, and
Members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 Fourth Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20017
Dear Bishop Kicanas, Bishop Skylstad and Members of the USCCB:
Can you see the baby Jesus lying in the manger? Can you see His tiny little body and His innocent little wide eyes looking up at you? Can you see the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph raising Him up in God’s ways, teaching Him, working with Him as He grew from that tiny little baby into a toddler, and through the various stages of His life until He became a young man?
What graphic names do you suppose they taught Him about His body parts? Did they insist He call them by their anatomical names? What safe environment/sex education program was He forced to endure from the time He was a toddler until He was a teenager? How much role-playing, values clarification and “What If’s” (hypotheticals) did they put Him through? Did they tell Him it was His body to do with as He chose? Good touch, bad touch? Welcome touch? Unwelcome touch?
To teach as Jesus taught.
First, thank you to those Bishops who are teaching our children the faith. To those Bishops who have no “safe environment” programs. To those Bishops who are teaching the parents to teach their children when their children need and ask for help. God will bless you. This critique does not apply to you!
To teach as Jesus taught. That is what you promised! But is that what many of the Bishops of the United States, are doing now, including you, Bishop Kicanas? What many of you are doing is requiring that perversion be taught to the children – in the name of “safe environment” education, which is regardless of what you say, SEX EDUCATION. This type of education results in perverting the minds of innocent children.
Is this what Jesus called you to do? How would you feel if He was standing with you looking at these programs, looking at the pictures in the books the teachers are to read to the children and show to them? You have forced parents who know and love their faith to fight against your terrible, secular programs. These programs will result in making children fearful of every touch, by their relatives, by everyone……resulting in NO touching of them at all. With these programs, you have created a fear of touching a child, for both the child and others who care for them and love them – as Christ taught us to do. No hugs for a crying child by his teacher, by a good, Christ-like, loving and caring priest. And everyone knows that touching is imperative for the normal psychological growth of the child.
Can you hear the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph or Jesus teaching the children what you are requiring our children to be taught? Starting in pre-kindergarten (4 year olds), our children are lead to discuss, in a mixed group, their “private parts” using terms such as penis, breasts, vagina, and vulva. You are asking us to trust you once again. Aren’t many of you the same ones who covered up? Who moved Priest offenders around? Have you lost your way? Do you have the faith? Jesus asked us to protect His little ones. Do you not trust Jesus to protect His little ones when they are armed with the One, True Faith taught in its entirety?
What do you think of the attached pictures taken from A Very Touching Book by Jan Hindman? This book is listed as a “Resource” for the teachers to read from and show to our 6 and 7 year old children in 1st and 2nd grade. Exhibit 1. Would you be proud to show this to Jesus? Is this an example of teaching as Jesus taught?
(N.B. Veil of Innocence has made an editorial decision not to show the graphics from A Very Touching Book, as well as any of the other graphics in the Exhibits listed in this letter. Our editors felt that the graphics were so sexually crude that it would be offensive to visitors to our site.)
We wonder which “safe environment” program St. Maria Goretti attended in order to know what to do when her purity was threatened. Wouldn’t using the lives of the Saints as examples for our children be more beneficial in teaching them “to be safe” using modesty, chastity and purity? St. John Bosco and the boys in his school must certainly have had one of the best safe environment programs that existed at the time. How else would they have known and understood what modesty, chastity, purity meant, or what they should and should not do with their bodies or allow others to do to them. St. John Bosco taught them that their bodies were temples of the Holy Ghost, made in the image and likeness of God. They were taught from early childhood what was needed to remain pure, “to be safe” not only from predators but from an eternity in hell.
Why do you think the Lord asked, “Will I find faith when I return?” Are all the bishops in the United States following what Christ commanded of His apostles . . . to go forth and teach as He taught.
RESPONSIBILITY
1. The Bishops:
Where did “safe environment” programs come from? When the clergy sex abuse scandal hit, were you scrambling to implement procedures that would shield you from liability? Wasn’t this truly a plan to divert attention away from the root cause of the clergy sex abuse scandal, which was the catalyst for these programs in the first place?
“In order to solve a problem one must understand its root cause. Knowing the root cause, one can then take corrective action that goes to the root of the problem. The best approach to problem-resolution is usually the most direct approach, the one that aims at the target and hits it.”
Protecting the Lavender Mafia? By Ken Skuba, New Oxford Review.
The answer is plain and simple and one which the John Jay study clearly identified. It was the work of homosexual predators in the priesthood. 81% of the victims were male.
The scandal was the result of the criminal actions of homosexual priests, cardinals, bishops, chancery and seminary officials. They have been referred to as the “Lavender Mafia” because of their homosexual lifestyles, their tight control over vocations, and the power they wield in the American Church. They engaged in these vile criminal acts upon the innocent, and others were involved in: covering-up, were co-conspirators, or were accessories after the fact.
You, and we, know the root cause of the clergy abuse scandal: Homosexuality in the priesthood. You need not spend thousands more dollars to find it. The answer is before your very eyes.
With the release of the 1972 Gay Rights Platform, activists in Chicago (representing the fledgling homosexual movement) demanded the “repeal of all state laws prohibiting private sexual acts involving consenting persons,” and the “repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.”
Comparing ratios of population size to incidences of involvement in pedophilia, according to the National Association on Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in proportion to their numbers, homosexual men are more likely to engage in sex with a minor. Citing a study (Freund & Watson, 1992) reported in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, NARTH found that homosexual males were “three times more likely than straight men to engage in adult-child sexual relations.” Research by Dr. Paul Cameron of Family Research Institute shows even higher rates of homosexual molestation. In the Nebraska Medical Journal, Cameron said that when data from both genders are combined, homosexuals are at least 8-12 times more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.
According to the John Jay study, most of the sexually offending priests are not true pedophiles. They are, instead, “ephebophiles,” who “exhibit these same fantasies, urges or behaviors towards post-pubescent youths.” The National Review Board study defines “ephebophilia” as “homosexual attraction to adolescent males.”
Safe environment programs fit right in with the movement to legitimize pedophiles by sexualizing and sensualizing our Catholic children – “grooming them.”
According to Dr. Judith Reisman: “The American Psychiatric Association (APA) actually publicly debated a proposal for ‘Lifting [the] Pedophilia Taboo.’ On the APA’s Nomenclature Subcommittee on Psychosexual disorders, was Dr. John Money, who when interviewed in 1991 for Paidika, The Journal of Paedophilia, a magazine by and for pedophiles, told his pedophile readers that we must end our ‘age of consent’ laws.
A key disciple of Dr. Money, on the APA nomenclature board, was Dr. Fred Berlin. Dr. Berlin, working under his mentor (Dr. Money) documented in The Journal of Paedophilia as fully supporting all forms of child sexual abuse, including very violent sadistic abuse. They founded the Sexual Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Their clinic promised to protect pedophiles, including clergy, from prosecution. Dr. Money was working with Dr. Berlin to destigmatize pedophilia in each new edition of the APA’s manual of mental disorders. Berlin intoned that pedophiles like ‘alcoholics,’ should be unashamed of their ‘condition’ but simply shouldn’t ‘act on it.’ However, the wholesale sex offender failure rate at the John Hopkins clinic confirms extensive other research that finds ‘treatment’ and ‘therapy’ do not stop pedophiles from abusing. Keeping them behind bars prevents further abuse. Of course, imprisoning sex offenders would put the profitable sex offender clinics out of business.
Amazing as it may seem, the U.S. Catholic bishops have made Berlin one of their trusted advisors on how to deal with the clergy sex abuse and cover-up scandal.” Exhibit 2. Strange Bedfellows, by Judith Reisman and Dennis Jarrard. Also see Diocese of Tucson website, Restoring Trust, Interview with Frederick S. Berlin
What Have You Done to Our Children?
First, you introduced secular sex education programs into our Catholic schools, under the guise of: health education, family life education, more sex education, HIV/AIDS education, so-called chastity education, values (clarification) education. And now you are calling more sex education, child abuse education, which in reality is nothing more than child abuse. Will sexual urges lie dormant after children go through these “safe environment”/sexual education programs, or will they feel a need to act on what they have learned?
Safe environment programs do nothing more than educate our children in the ways of perverted men. And make no bones about it, these programs ARE SEX EDUCATION, albeit education in PERVERTED SEX.
And where is Our God in all of these programs? Pope John Paul II repeated the words of Christ, “Woe to the world because of scandals,” noting “how the sins of clerics have shocked the sensibilities of many and become an occasion of sin for others.”
(Letter to U.S. Bishops, 7/11/93). The sins of clerics have become an occasion of sin for our children because of so-called safe environment programs.
Are we or are we not Catholics? Where is secular society going? Should we be following it? Or were we called to be counter-cultural? Should any Catholic parish or school be using secular programs to teach our children? Or should you be teaching our children the Catholic faith in its fullness, the Ten Commandments, Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, virtue, human and spiritual virtues of honesty, integrity, purity, modesty, chastity, as well as all the tenets, dogmas and doctrines of our faith? Do secular programs teach any of these or are they atheistic, humanistic in origin and content? Should you invite the devil into our innocent children’s classrooms to violate their latency periods? The latency periods that God, Himself, instilled into each and every one of us.
Even the worldly Merriam-Webster Dictionary understands the meaning of the latency period in children and defines it as follows: “a stage of personality development that extends from about the age of five to the beginning of puberty and during which sexual urges often appear to lie dormant.”
Pope John Paul II discussed the “years of innocence” or the latency period, as a “period of tranquility and serenity” from ages five to puberty that “must never be disturbed by unnecessary information about sex” – Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality (TMHS, no. 78). Yet, these are the exact years that your “safe environment” programs are violating. Violations of the “years of innocence” can gravely harm the moral formation of young people:
“In some societies today, there are planned and determined attempts to impose premature sex information on children. But, at this stage of development, children are still not capable of fully understanding the value of the affective dimension of sexuality. They cannot understand and control sexual imagery within the proper context of moral principles and, for this reason, they cannot integrate premature sexual information with moral responsibility. Such information tends to shatter their emotional and educational development and to disturb the natural serenity of this period of life. Parents should politely but firmly exclude any attempts to violate children’s innocence because such attempts compromise the spiritual, moral, and emotional development of growing persons who have a right to their innocence.” (TMHS, no. 83).
The statement made by Dr. Rhoda Lorand, Psychologist & Adjunct Associate Professor at Long Island University’s Graduate School of Education concerning a sex education program in the Rochester Diocese applies equally to the: P.S. It’s My Body, Good Touch/Bad Touch, Talking About Touching, Lures, and other safe environment/sex education programs:
“Basically all these programs are alike in their manifest ignorance of the psycho-sexual stages of development, the emotional needs of the child, and the role of the unconscious in the learning process.”
“This program, [Sex Education and Family Life – Rochester Diocese] like the others, will destroy the peace of the latency period in forcing sexual preoccupations upon the children at a time when they would normally sublimate sexual curiosity and sexual drive into mastery of academic learning.”
“These programs are born of total ignorance of the fact that a little child’s mind is not a small edition of an adult’s mind, and that the degree to which a child appears to be able to think like an adult represents only a fraction of his learning processes.”
“…the usurping of this parental function weakens the parent-child relationship. All efforts should be directed towards helping parents function more adequately, so that they can more readily answer the occasional sexual query the latency child will ask during a temporary breakthrough of sexual curiosity.”
“Religiously educated children suffer incomparably more than others because of the irreverent nature of the thoughts and fantasies aroused in them by this type of instruction. A host of erotic and unseemly fantasies about their teachers, ministers and family members will be evoked no matter how calmly the material is presented. Sexual drives are stimulated in school, and the truly religious youngsters will have to make superhuman efforts to suppress such disturbing fantasies. It is painful to think of the torment to which these children will be so helplessly subjected, and of their ultimate and inevitable need for intensive therapy in order to undo the corroding and distorting effects of guilt, anxiety, loss of self-esteem, and feelings of alienation from the family.”
(The Rochester Sex Instruction Program, (www.veil-of-innocence.org/sexbasic.htm)
Dissenters in the Catholic Church have, over the years, helped to destroy God-given parental rights in education and have imposed upon unsuspecting Catholic parents and children sex education programs in totalitarian fashion.
Classroom sex instruction programs
Classroom sex education programs – with their graphic, explicit and erotic information -were introduced into seminaries and Catholic schools and CCD classes. The Guardian Angels of little children cry out to Heaven on their behalf.
“Awash in a secular sea of moral permissiveness abetted by too many of its own theologians, seminary professors, catechists, journalists, and ‘professional’ sex educators, it is not surprising that the Church in North America should be afflicted with the scandal of homosexuality and pedophilia among priests vulnerable to the misunderstanding of sexuality common to dissenters. Moreover, a dangerous androgynous view of human sexuality has been tragically spread by the promoters of ‘Classroom Sex Instruction’ in Catholic schools.”
“All these human sexuality programs introduced into Catholic schools (and fostering the moral corruption of those exposed to them) received the plaudits of liberal priests, religious, laity (even Bishops) who could not help be influenced by an accompanying “theological view of sexuality” discontinuous with Catholic tradition. Many Catholic educators revealed themselves oblivious to the growing complaint of parents that offensive sex education programs in their schools constituted a specific form of child abuse and child molestation! With the spirit of impurity unleashed in the once-hallowed classrooms of Catholic schools by the followers of dissenting moral theologians and the catechetical devotees of Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and SIECUS’ Mary Calderone and Lester Kirkendall, it was to be expected that millions of Catholics would adopt permissive attitudes regarding masturbation, fornication, contraception, abortion, homosexuality and pornography.”
“Future Church historians will have a field day in documenting the contamination of the Catholic educational system with Classroom Sex instruction (which has proven to be one of the most powerful forces of secularization at work in the Church and society).”
The Sexual Revolution, Sex Education and Priest-Pedophilia by James Likoudis
“If clerical abuse was the problem to be addressed, I don’t understand why children are being made repositories for information that’s beyond their ability to comprehend,” said Virginia State Rep. Bob Marshall, a Catholic representing Loudon and Prince William counties in the 13th District of Virginia.
“Knowing the root cause, one can then take corrective action that goes to the root of the problem. The best approach to problem-resolution is usually the most direct approach, the one that aims at the target and hits it.” Protecting the Lavender Mafia? By Ken Skuba, New Oxford Review.
What would Jesus do? The answer is simple. He would take up His whip and drive all of these evil ones out of His Temple – away from His beloved innocent children. Homosexual Cardinals, Bishops and clergy must resign, be removed, or they will be exposed. There will be new victims and the scandal will continue to grow and worsen. More souls will be lost.
“To stop clerical sexual abuse of the kind documented in the John Jay study, we need to stop ordaining homosexuals to the priesthood. There needs to be a massive overhaul of the seminaries in our country. We should train admissions staff, weed out candidates to the priesthood who are attracted to other men. It’s crazy to put men with same-sex attractions into an all-male environment. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.” Protecting the Lavender Mafia? By Ken Skuba, New Oxford Review, July 6, 2005
Teach the Faith! Teach as Jesus Taught! The Bishops should take the advice of John Henry Cardinal Newman who wrote this concerning the educational task of the Catholic Church:
“It is the boast of the Catholic religion that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus Christ for our food, and Mary for our nursing Mother? Fulfill this boast in yourselves; prove to the world that you are following no false teaching, vindicate the glory of your mother Mary, whom the world blasphemes in the very face of the Word, by the simplicity of your deportment, and the sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her for the royal heart of innocence.”
In the introduction by Msgr. John F. McCarthy, JCD, STD of The Roman Theological Forum to the Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality (TMHS), he writes: “This new document on formation in chastity calls upon Episcopal conferences to assist parents to teach their children at home (n. 147). While bishops have consistently assisted Catholic schools to operate, it seems clear that insufficient attention has been given to helping parents to home-school their children. A massive effort of assistance to parents by bishops is now needed. The document invites the clergy to take sides with the parents in conflicts with schools over the violation of their parental right to safeguard the chastity of their children” (n. 148).
TMHS 143: “As a union between professed faith and concrete life, inculturization means creating a harmonious relationship between faith and culture, where Christ and His Gospel have absolute precedence over culture… Therefore, explicit and premature sex education can never be justified in the name of a prevailing secularized culture.”
Quoting Msgr.McCarthy further: “Documents of the Church both past and present have consistently affirmed that the forming and informing of the sexual attitudes of children belongs by right to their parents, but this truth has been violated with increasing frequency in our time by professional educators and others. Now the Council for the Family has placed a note of finality on the issue and has called directly upon parents everywhere to take in hand the right and responsibility that is theirs.”
2. The Parents
We, parents, grandparents, and guardians, by this document, and by the protests of other parents of other programs throughout the country, are politely but firmly excluding your attempts to violate our children’s innocence. You say that some of us are not responsible enough, that we don’t know how, or that we simply are not teaching our children what we should. You say we are not doing our job, we are not taking our God-given responsibility seriously.
Humanity cannot achieve a high degree of social order unless there is a high degree of personal responsibility. We could not have advanced to our present level of social organization without the family security, made possible by a large body of people accepting Christian morality and ethics. It is no coincidence that the breakdown of the family comes soon after the breakdown of Christian sexual morality. Likewise it is no coincidence that social disintegration follows hard on the heels of family disintegration. Family disintegration follows naturally when sexual license and false social concepts are introduced to education and promoted in the general social environment.
That parents “have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate” their children is a long-standing principle reflected in Vatican Council II.
“37 – Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them. In this regard the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents.
“Familiaris Consortio – The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World” by Pope John Paul II.
The right carries a responsibility according to the document: “If in fact parents do not give adequate formation in chastity, they are failing in their precise duty. Likewise, they would also be guilty were they to tolerate immoral or inadequate formation being given to their children outside the home.”
Parents have a duty and responsibility to review and evaluate programs, in both their schools and their parish CCD programs. Parents are obligated – under pain of sin – to remove their children from programs which do not adhere to the traditional teachings of Christ and His Church.
The great Catholic philosopher, Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand said:
“To develop the right attitude and vision in the human person towards this sphere of sex, there exists only one possibility, namely, information about the mystery of sex must be disclosed in great reverence and in strict due personal dialogue, of the father or the mother with their child. Absolutely excluded is the pseudo-scientific teaching about sex in a classroom – that is, in a neutralizing and publicly-saturated atmosphere…with its accompanying irreverent disclosure to the child of this sphere in its deep mystery.”
Von Hildebrand, Sex Education: The Basic Issues, 1974 [4th printing], pp. 16 & 17.
We The Parents
We, the parents, will support only educational programs of the Catholic Faith that unequivocally express the truth; there are absolute standards of right and wrong, and no one has the “right to choose” morality.
We, the parents, will support only educational programs of the Catholic Faith that teach sexual morality in the context of leading children toward the practice of virtue and that avoid examining the subject of sex, or any part thereof, in any concrete, detailed or descriptive way in the classroom or other public setting.
We, the parents, will support only educational programs of the Catholic Faith that recognize, respect and support the primary role of parents in the moral formation of their children and their prerogative to impart any information beyond the abstract on the subject of sex privately, delicately and at the appropriate stage of development for the individual child.
(American Life League)
? ? ? ? WHY ARE WE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS PROGRAM ? ? ? ?
What part did we, the parents, play when decisions were being made regarding whether or not this program should be undertaken? This is a complete usurpation of parental rights.
What part did we, the parents, play when the curriculum and educational materials were selected and incorporated into this program?
What choice and control have we been given at all? What happened to the law of subsidiarity which the Diocese, parishes and the school are bound to observe?
When was the true nature and explicit content of the materials made known to us and the other parents?
Bishop Kicanas, did you review the materials and content of this program before allowing it to be implemented in our schools and CCD classes?
Would the Vatican agree with you, Bishop Kicanas, that the children should be exposed to these materials and the content of this program? Would the Vatican approve of the books and the content and pictures in those books being used in this program? The videos?
Would the Vatican agree with you, Bishop Kicanas, that the children should be exposed to these materials and the content of this program before you had thoroughly reviewed and approved the materials? Were these prudent actions to take – or inaction?
Would the Vatican agree with the “peer delivered” methodology in this sensitive area? Even in the traditional method, the teachers are NOT qualified to teach this subject matter as set forth in Vatican documents.
How can a program, which could not legally be instituted in Arizona public elementary schools as is being done in Catholic schools and CCD classes, be approved and instituted so quickly and comprehensively in the Catholic elementary schools and CCD classes of our diocese? Current State law guidelines would prohibit this program being implemented in public schools unless it was done within the guidelines for sex education in public schools. See Exhibit 3.
Are secular officials more concerned with invasions of privacy and potential psychological harm than our own Catholic Diocesan officials and administrators?
Since this is not taking place in all public schools, do you, Bishop Kicanas, and other Bishops believe that more Catholic parents and family members in the United States commit the crime of child sexual abuse than secular parents and family members? If so, have you and other Bishops in the United States failed entirely in their God-given duties and responsibilities to teach the faith?
Who exactly were the abusers, the violators of innocent Catholic children? Is this the solution to the clergy abuse crisis? Is this getting to the core of the problem? Were the children themselves at fault?
AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY.
All secular safe environment/sex education programs, and this “safe environment” program in particular, were flawed from their conception and flawed in their implementation.
Did anyone review these “safe environment” programs and this one, in particular, for compliance in all its aspects to the Catholic Church teachings in the presentation of information on this subject? Of course not. There is absolutely NOTHING Catholic about it!
Where Did Safe Environment Programs Came From:
Is this the USCCB’s solution to the clergy sex abuse scandal? Or, better stated, how are you and other bishops getting yourselves out of this?
• By turning to the insurance companies who covered the clergy sex abuse liability.
• By pouring more of the laity’s dollars, our dollars, into the pockets of insurance companies, companies who were gleefully rubbing their hands together to recover some of their losses, a developing new source of revenue for themselves. Exhibit 4.
• By turning to secular organizations whose philosophy is humanistic and godless, putting our innocent children into their hands.
• By focusing child sexual abuse on parents and family members, not on the homosexual clergy and hierarchy where this all came from.
Oh, how sad, all the money that could have helped the poor and downtrodden. Or gone to help with the care of our good elderly religious and clergy.
Who created these “safe environment” programs?
Secular humanistic organizations and insurance companies were their creators. God had no part in this. They are the path to the goal. The goal, it takes a village to raise a child.
Who are these people who the Bishops are turning to?
“Men who begin by boasting that they have cast away all dogmas go on to be incessantly, imprudently, and quite irrationally dogmatic…..It is all the worse because the dogmas are generally concerned with very delicate human relations…..these dogmas always directly attack fathers and wives and children, without offering either credentials or evidence. The general rule is that nothing must be accepted on any ancient or admitted authority, but everything must be accepted on any new or nameless authority or accepted even more eagerly on no authority at all.”
All is Grist, G K Chesterton, New York, 1932
DOES THIS COMPLY WITH CANON LAW and CHURCH TEACHINGS?
No! It does not!
In the Bible the Lord said: [Mat. 18:6] “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
Under Canon Law 1136, “Parents have the most grave obligation and the primary right to do all in their power to ensure their children’s physical, social, cultural, moral and religious upbringing of their children.”
The Church teaches in the Catechism:
“1894. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, neither the state nor any larger society, should substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies…2221: The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.”
The tradition of the Church asserts in Divini Illius Magistri of Pope Pius XI:
“32. The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because it is inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.”
This program violates the norms of the Educational Guidance in Human Love (EGHL) by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education of 1983, which declares that:
“64. The family is, in fact, the best environment to accomplish the obligation of securing a gradual education in sexual life.”
This program further violates the norms of Educational Guidance In Human Love (EGHL), which warns against materials that:
“76. crudely present sexual realities for which the pupil is not prepared, and thus create traumatic impressions or raise an unhealthy curiosity which leads to evil.”
This program violates the uniqueness of each child as stated in the 1995 directives of The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality (TMHS) document:
“66. Each child’s process of maturation as a person is different. Therefore, the most intimate aspects, whether biological or emotional, should be communicated in a personalized dialogue. In their dialogue with each child, with love and trust, parents communicate something about their own self-giving which makes them capable of giving witness to aspects of the emotional dimension of sexuality that could not be transmitted in other ways.”
This program violates the latency period of children as stated in the 1995 directives of the TMHS document:
“78. It can be said that a child is in the stage described in John Paul II’s words as ‘the years of innocence, from about five years of age until puberty….This period of tranquility and serenity must never be disturbed by unnecessary information about sex.”
Parents are obligated to reject this program as stated in the 1995 Pontifical Council directives of the TMHS document:
“83. Nonetheless, in the context of moral and sexual information, various problems can arise in this stage of childhood. In some societies today there are planned and determined attempts to impose premature sex information on children. But, at this state of development, children are still not capable of fully understanding the value of the affective dimension of sexuality. They cannot understand and control sexual imagery within the proper context of moral principles and, for this reason, they cannot integrate premature sexual information with moral responsibility. Such information tends to shatter their emotional and educational development and to disturb the natural serenity of this period of life. Parents should politely but firmly exclude any attempts to violate children’s innocence because such attempts compromise the spiritual, moral and emotional development of growing persons who have right to their innocence.”
This program violates morality as set forth in the TMHS directive:
“64. The Church is firmly opposed to an often widespread form of imparting sex information dissociated from moral principles.”
This program disrespects children against the directives set forth in the TMHS:
“127. The principle of respect for the child excludes all improper forms of involving children and young people. In this regard, among other things, this can include the following methods that abuse sex education: a) every dramatized representation, mime, or ‘role playing’ which depicts genital or erotic matters, b) making drawings, charts, or models, etc., of this nature.”
This program ignores the individuality of children against the TMHS directives:
“129. The normal and fundamental method, already proposed in this guide, is personal dialogue between parents and their children, that is, individual formation within the family circle. In fact there is no substitute for a dialogue of trust and openness between parents and their children, a dialogue, which respects not only their stages of development but also the young persons as individuals….”
This program betrays the trust of parents as warned by the directives of the TMHS:
“141. Parents should also be attentive to ways in which sexual instruction can be inserted in the context of other subjects, which are otherwise useful (for example, health and hygiene, personal development, family life, children’s literature social and cultural studies etc.) In these situations it is more difficult to control the content of sexual instruction…But catechesis would also be distorted if the inseparable links between religion and morality were to be used as a pretext for introducing into religious instruction the biological and affective sexual information, which the parents should give according to their prudent decision in their own home.
The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family (TMHS) was carefully researched and based on work of experts in psychology and theology.
Pope John Paul II in a visit to the United States said that Catholics must “hold fast to traditional teachings….not be afraid to confront the wisdom of this world with the certainty of the teachings of Christ.”
Pope Pius XII has also said:
“In truth, if it is sometimes permissible to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or to promote a greater good, it is not permissible, not even for the gravest reasons to do evil so that good may follow therefrom. One may not, in other words, make into the object of a positive act of the will something that is intrinsically disordered and hence unworthy of the human person, even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social goods.”
(See Pius XII, Allocution to the Fifth National Italian Congress of the Union of Catholic Jurists, December 6, 1953:AAS 45 [1953], pp. 798-99. See also Rom. 3:8 and Humanae Vitae)
What About This and Other Programs Like It?
By implementing this program, instead of strengthening family life, you, Bishop Kicanas, are:
1) creating divisions between our children and us. By implementing this program you, Bishop Kicanas, are polluting the minds of our children and disturbing their period of latency.
2) arrogantly inferring to parents: “We know better than you do.”
We find P.S. It’s My Body, Good Touch/Bad Touch and other programs like them to be anti-family, anti-life and secular humanistic in their teachings. (Exhibit 5). After having carefully reviewed this program and other safe environment programs, it is obvious to us that they are naturalistic in their scope, content and presentation.
We are made in the image and likeness of God. It is NOT My Body! Our bodies are on loan to us from God. They are Temples of the Holy Ghost when consciences are properly formed and God’s Commandments and the teachings of His Church are followed.
“Good touch, Bad Touch.” “Welcome Touch, Unwelcome Touch.”
Since the creation of man, clear distinctions between good and bad behavior, and between right and wrong conduct, have been man’s guidelines for checking, judging and directing his behavior – his compass. For Catholics this compass is the Bible and all the teachings of Christ and His Church. Over the last few decades, however, white and black have become shades of grey. Education has become indoctrination, and is now a science that is turning to “relaxation,” “imagery,” “suggestology,” “teachable moments,” “values clarification,” “role playing” and “meditation” as part of its armory for prying the resistance off the minds of the innocent.
We should heed the warnings of the prophet Isaiah to God’s chosen people in bondage, the consequence of their turning away from Him to pursue pagan idols (Sa. 5:20-21): “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!”
Sex education of under-age children is a rape of the mind, heart and soul of a child. And without doubt, no matter what you, Bishop Kicanas, are saying, this IS sex education.
When children are of an age when they should be gaining real life experience and learning to distinguish right from wrong, they are being sidetracked into sexuality, sex preoccupation, sexual fears and sexual confusion. They are being mentally raped and their natural development deformed. Vile people, Bishop Kicanas, have been with us for a long time as Sir James Elyot expressed it way back in 1531 (in today’s language):
“Truly I do suppose that in the brains and hearts of children, while their spiritual nature is tender, and the little germ of reason beginning in them to bud, there may happen by evil custom some pestilent dew of vice to penetrate the said members and infect and corrupt the soft and tender bodies.”
P. S. It’s My Body, Good Touch/Bad Touch, Talking About Touching, Lures, and so on: Is this the faith Christ was talking about, which was to be passed on? Is this what the Apostles were asked to teach? Are you keeping your promise, Bishop Kicanas, to “Teach as Jesus Taught?”
Has original sin been forgotten? By Adam’s sin man is deprived of the supernatural gifts and wounded in his nature (spoliatus gratuitis, vulneratus in naturalibus)…. The person stained by Original Sin finds himself in the imprisonment and slavery of the devil whom Jesus calls “the prince,” and St. Paul “the god of this world. (2 Cor. 4,4), Cf. Hebr. 2, 14; Peter 2, 19.” With these programs you and other Bishops are placing children and adolescents into the near occasion of sin!
Jesus is again being crowned with thorns. Can you see the sharp thorns piercing His Sacred Head? He is being crowned with thorns because of all the sinful thoughts these programs place in the minds of children…..impure thoughts, followed by impure acts. Did you really think it was not most probable that sinful thoughts, words and/or deeds will be directly caused by what children are being taught in these “safe environment” programs?
Jesus is at the pillar surrounded by His enemies, like furious lions, and by thousands of blows, insults, lacerations and other unheard-of cruelties tormented at will. This was/is the result of sins of the flesh. Think of the pictures and ideas these programs are putting into the minds of our little Catholic children. “It’s My body.” A welcome touch feels good….isn’t it true that sinful touches feel good too? It’s NOT my body. My body belongs to HIM.
All these programs are being introduced into our schools and parishes, disregarding the anguish of Catholic parents who rightly object to their schools’ and CCD programs’ promoting situation ethics, values clarification, fundamental option and other variations of “moral decision-making” malforming the consciences of Catholic youth and deadening the sense of sin.
These programs studiously avoid any reference to moral absolutes or the reality of “the Divine Law” which is eternal, objective, and universal.
Under your Charter’s definition of sexual abuse, it states: “A child is abused whether or not this activity involves explicit force, whether or not it involves genital or physical contact, whether or not it is initiated by the child, and whether or not there is discernible harmful outcome.” This program and the material included in these programs fall within your definition of sexual abuse of our children.
Conclusion
We, the parents, grandparents and guardians respectfully ask you to abandon implementation of any classroom “safe environment” program addressing the sensitive issues of sexual abuse. Instead, this education and all sex education belongs in the home, in the “domestic Church.” Empower the parents. The best approach to this problem is to focus more time and energy on equipping parents to effectively fulfill their role as primary educators. School and parish programs or presentations should be offered to help parents learn to better address these more intimate matters within the home. A home faith-based program for use by parents with their own children should be developed, one that is sensitive to the needs and temperament of the individual child. The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality advocates such an approach:
“Everyone must observe the right order of cooperation and collaboration between parents and those who can help them in their task. It is clear that the assistance of others must be given first and foremost to parents rather than to their children” (no. 145).
The primary focus must be on the formation and education of parents. That way, parents can take a proactive role in their children’s education and are not marginalized or left with the role of “critic” or “censor” of a school program. This empowerment of parents is not only best for their children, but it will frequently lead to a deepening of their own chaste commitment to Jesus Christ and His Church.
Finally, addressing this and other like programs directly, we find that:
1. This program is devious. It calls itself a “safety” program, while all along it intends to impart sexual education to all children, starting at a very tender age (pre-kindergarten and kindergarten) and imparts this education in a moral vacuum.
2. This program attacks the family trust. It uses examples in its curriculum that make close relatives, like fathers, uncles, stepfathers and Godfathers, perpetrators of abuse against their very own sons and daughters, nephews, nieces. There was not a single example in the curriculum where a perpetrator was a priest, a bishop or a cardinal. Wasn’t the reason for this program “clergy” sexual abuse?
3. This program must be eliminated. Parents cannot accept compromises of any sort. This program and other programs like it are NOT redeemable. We reject compromises whereby some of the “bad” elements of “P.S. It’s My Body” could be eliminated. This cannot be accepted since SAFETY programs of this sort such as Talking About Touching, Good Touch/Bad Touch, Lures, etc. violate the individuality of each student by placing boys and girls in mixed company against stated principles from the Vatican.
4. From the P.S. It’s My Body curriculum itself, it is shown that there is/are:
• Repetitive use of anatomical private parts, entirely devoid of moral content
• Crude descriptions of sexually explosive/exploitive situations
• Situational ethics for children
• Relatives are the perpetrators of sexual assault
5. This program offends the family:
By usurping the role of the parents in the sexual education of their children.
By portraying close relatives as potential or usual perpetrators.
By disrespecting children and disrupting their latency period.
By ignoring the individuality of children by teaching them in heterogeneous groups.
6. This program offends the priesthood:
By making the priests collaborators with a program many rightly know to be evil.
By overriding the pastor’s role as father and protector of his parish family.
By taking precious time away from true catechesis.
By forcing priests to implement a program that teaches about sex in a moral vacuum.
7. This program most of all offends God by trampling over an essential gift:
The Gift of Fear of the Lord – the gift that makes us dread, above all things, to offend God. Thus, this and other “safe environment” programs like it MUST BE ELIMINATED!
“When it comes to leading children astray, sex education has to be Satan’s all-time masterpiece. You have only to look at the epidemics of fornication, abortion, divorce, pornography, sex addiction and AIDS to see how right Christ’s Church is when She teaches that sex education is the responsibility of parents. Period.”
Fr. Richard Welsh, President of Human Life International, Front Royal, VA
Tom Allen, Sex Education in Schools — Harmful or Beneficial? Catholic Exchange, 7/18/01, www.catholicexchange.com)
One final observation must be made. The bishops of what other country in the world and what other religion of the world have, under the guise of a safe environment for children, mandated the fingerprinting of every priest and active member of the faithful, resulting in the government having in their files a means to identify and potentially persecute Catholics?
See former Attorney General Janet Reno’s definition of a terrorist.
For all the above reasons, and too many more to set forth herein, we come before you, Bishop Kicanas, and implore you to abandon the implementation of fingerprinting and these programs.
Further, we ask you, our dear Holy Father, the Pontifical Council for the Family and all the Congregations to whom we are sending copies of this letter for help in this matter of vital importance to the Catholic Church in the United States, our families and our children. We humbly ask the Vatican to guide and instruct us, in particular in the Diocese of Tucson. Are we required to subject our children to these vile programs and to go against the teachings of Christ and His Church? Are any parents, grandparents, guardians or caretakers required to do so? Do the Bishop of Tucson and the bishops of the United States have the power and authority to override the constant teachings of our Church in this area?
We thank you for hearing our heartfelt plea, and we beg you to forbid these programs in the Diocese of Tucson and our Catholic schools and parishes throughout the United States.
Sincerely,
The Holy Family Society, Inc.
cc:
His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI
THE VATICAN
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Citta del Vaticano, Europe
Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President
Pontifical Council for the Family
Piazza S. Callisto, 16
00120 Vatican City State, Europe
William Joseph Cardinal Levada, Prefect
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio 11
00193 Vatican City State, Europe
Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, Prefect
Congregation for the Clergy
Palazzo delle Congregazioni
Piazza Pio XII, 300120 Vatican City, Europe
Giovanni Cardinal Battista Re, Prefect
Congregation for Bishops
Palazzo della Congregazioni
Piazza Pio XII, 10
00193 Vatican City State, Europe
Zenon Cardinal Grocholewski, Prefect
Congregation for Education
Palazzo della Congregazioni
3 Piazza Pio XII, 3
00193 Vatican City State, Europe
Most Reverend Gabriel Montalvo
Apostolic Pro-Nuncio for the United States
3339 Massachusetts Avenue N.W
Washington, DC 20008