The right sex education

I am surprised that the Committee for Social Policy, writing on a new sexual policy through which they would like to make contraceptives available to teenagers, are not thinking on Christian lines any more.

They say the national health sexual policy "should promote education on the use of condoms and contraceptives and how a couple should mature in a relationship."

Sadly, they are bitten by the bug of listening more to the EU and its free thinking than to their own conscience. Have they forgotten Catholic moral values?

I believe that in life self-control and respect of one's person should be first and foremost in the education of our young, not giving them total sexual freedom supposedly to restrict teenage pregnancy. The opposite could well be the result as teenagers will use the contraceptives badly and more babies will result.

There is a great need of sex education of the right kind to take place in our schools. But if the Committee for Social Policy organises this we can look forward to contraceptives being advocated and not self-control.

What is sadly missing among our young is their faith, as so many have left the Church recently. In a recent survey only 52 per cent of Maltese were known to attend Sunday Mass.

Gozo Bishop Mario Grech could not be more clear when he said recently that he "had reservations on the vision of sexuality and the concept of sexual health being proposed in the recently published Social Policy report on the national strategy".

On July 25, he was reported to have said that although the EU had the euro and common laws, there was no commitment to having ethical unity. He quoted Pope John Paul II, who greatly believed in Europe, and used to say: "Europeans faced a major challenge to build a culture and unity ethic and if these were lacking the policy aimed at bringing about unity was destined to fail".

Bishop Grech also said that Arie Hockman, a UN Population Fund representative from the Netherlands, said the breakdown of the traditional family was "a triumph for those who had human rights at heart". Could there be a more blurred vision than this, Bishop Grech asked.

One of the reasons why families were going through tough times was because society was bent on pleasure and did not want to know about sacrifice, he said.

He appealed to families to educate children in human and Christian values in order to prepare for a new political generation.

It has been suggested that parents talk to their teenagers about sex as that is really who they want to hear the message from. Parents should sit down with their children and tell them that it is wiser to leave sex till later on, when they are in a position to get married and use sex at the right time, than all the experimentation they are being encouraged to try out when they are barely out of their short socks by 'progressive' know-alls.

I appeal to parents not to neglect this area of their children's education. Everyone lays such emphasis on getting good school results and going to university, but parents should equip them first with sound moral values that will take them safely through their studies and on to a healthy maturity.

We must think of their future, the world that they are going to bring up children in and stop the rot that is setting in, even in our own country.