A book to help parents fulfil their role as the primary educators of their children in sexual matters

Edmund Adamus, the director of pastoral affairs in the Catholic archdiocese of Westminster, has written an inspiring article on sex education which has just been published in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. Edmund's article promotes a new book entitled "As I Have Loved You" by Dr Gerard O'Shea of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, Australia. The book provides a programme and materials which help parents fulfil their role as the primary educators of their children in sexual matters. It would be wrong, however, to think that the book pits parents against schools: in fact, the work was produced after a long period of "careful consultation with teachers, parents and experts in the field". Edmund writes:

"Conscientious Catholic teachers and educators [all too often unduly burdened with the increasingly aggressive civil demands for explicit sex education, even at primary age-levels] know just how the more intimate aspects of the topic are best handled through a personalised one-to-one dialogue.

They also know [as they are often parents themselves] that those best placed to deliver this kind of one-to-one formation, are in fact parents. For countless decades, Catholic parents have appropriated the habit of delegating their unrenounceable and irreplaceable educative role in this arena to the Catholic school, and then largely forgetting about it. Now they need to be formed as moral educators of their children."

An aim of SPUC's Safe at School campaign is also to remove a source of conflict between schools and parents, by stopping the intrusion of pornographic sex education programmes into schools.

"As I Have Loved You" is published by Gracewing Publishing in Great Britain and Connor Court in Australia.

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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