Why Catholic parents must mobilise in defence of primary educators

by JOHN SMEATON

Welcome address to the inaugural pilgrimage of the Coalition in Defence of Primary Educators in Walsingham on 7 December 2019.

The purpose of our pilgrimage to Walsingham is to ask Our Lady to pray that God will transform the Catholic bishops of England and Wales so that they lead the Catholic faithful in resistance to the British Government’s wicked legislation which makes Relationships Education compulsory at primary school and Relationships and Sex Education compulsory at secondary school, including compulsory LGBT relationships at secondary level.

This is the purpose of our initiative - but I think it’s important to put this purpose into global ecclesiastical context.

Sadly, the bishops of England and Wales have repeatedly welcomed this legislation as Dr. Tom Rogers outlined in his analysis “How Catholic church officials have betrayed parents and children” (published in Calx Mariae, Spring 2019). However, the scandalous reality is that the bishops’ policy is very much in line with papal and Vatican policy, and it’s partly in line with the policy of bishops worldwide as reflected by the 2015 Family Synod.

In the interim report (relatio post discepatationem) of the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 and the preparatory document (instrumentum laboris) of the Ordinary Synod in 2015 there were passages that suggested that homosexual unions, while not equal to marriage, nonetheless have some degree of legitimacy. The synod fathers, bishops from around the world, rejected this approach: no such passages are found in the final reports of either synod.

The rejected approach however was reintroduced in Amoris laetitia, “The Joy of Love”, Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation, which states, in paragraph 52, that:

“We need to acknowledge the great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability, but de facto or same-sex unions, may not simply be equated with marriage.”

This implies: • that “same-sex unions” are one of the “great variety of family situations”, • that “same-sex unions” offer a “certain stability”, • that “same-sex unions” can be “equated” with marriage on some level, if not “simply”.

Furthermore the paragraph states that “only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life”. To state that only marriage has a “plenary role” necessarily means that other forms of union do have some role to play in society.

In a lecture entitled “1517, 1717, 1917: Three Revolutions and Fatima”, delivered in Washington in

2017, Professor Roberto de Mattei, the distinguished historian, said:

“At Fatima, Our Lady showed the three little shepherds the terrifying vision of hell where the souls of poor sinners go, and it was revealed to Jacinta that it was sins against purity that lead most souls to hell. Who could possibly have imagined one hundred years later that the public profession of impurity would have been added to the immense number of impure sins that are committed, under the form of sexual liberation and the introduction of extramatiral unions, even homosexual, into the laws of the most important nations of the West?

“And who could have ever imagined that a pontifical document – Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, issued on 8 April, 2016 – would endorse adultery? The divine and natural law does not admit exceptions. Those who allow the exception destroy the rule. In one of the dubia addressed by the cardinals to the pope we read: “After Amoris laetitia n. 301, is it still possible to affirm that a person who habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of God’s law, as for instance the one that prohibits adultery (cf. Mt. 19:3-9), finds him or herself in an objective situation of grave habitual sin?” The fact that today a doubt of this sort can be presented to the pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith indicates how very grave and deep is the crisis in which the Church is immersed.” On 24 October 2015, 94% of the bishops and cardinals attending the Ordinary Synod of the Family in Rome voted to approve a paragraph in the final report which rejects the right of parents to choose to be the sole educators of their children in sexual matters.

The sentence, in paragraph 58 of the document, reads:

“The family, while maintaining its primary space in education (cf. Gravissimum Educationis, 3), cannot be the only place for teaching sexuality.”

This paragraph is directly contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

In his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (10 January 1890), on the chief duties of Christians as citizens, Pope Leo XIII teaches:

“By nature parents have a right to the training of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which by God’s blessing it was begotten. Therefore it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety.”

Pope Leo XIII’s words are given greater weight by virtue of their being cited by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Divini illius magistri on Christian education (31 December 1929). In this encyclical, Pope Pius XI goes on to say:

“Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. (no.65)

“Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.” (no. 66)

“In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by Antoniano [On the Christian Education of Youth, which St. Charles Borromeo ordered to be read in public to parents assembled in their churches] when he says: ‘Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.’” (no. 67)

The teaching of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI was also upheld by Pope Pius XII in an address to French fathers on 18 September 1951. The words of these popes are steeped in Divine Law, in apostolic teaching and the tradition of the Church, and steeped in a sensitive and holy knowledge of the reality of the constant battle between good and evil in the soul of every human being.

Compare this teaching to the position now adopted by the Vatican and Pope Francis: a few months after the promulgation of Amoris laetitia, an apostolic exhortation in which Pope Francis called for sex education in educational institutions, the Pontifical Council for the Family published a sex education programme called The Meeting Point at the World Youth Day in Poland in July 2016.

This programme, which is intended to be taught in schools, in mixed classrooms, adopts a secularised and secularising approach, and exposes children to obscene and pornographic images.

Compare the teaching of these three popes to the teaching of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales who in a training document for teachers say that an “exalted form of love exists just as powerfully in relationships between people of the same sex as it does in heterosexual relationships”.

POPE PIUS XI

We must also compare these three popes to the following words from Pope John Paul II in Familiaris consortio, his apostolic exhortation on the family in 1981, which very much fail to convey the full teaching of the Church on the sacred obligations of parents to guard their children from temptation:

“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 centres 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.” (no. 37)

What do Catholic parents do when popes disagree on sexuality education?

The answer must surely be that parents must reflect on Catholic doctrine on faith and morals, as revealed in the scriptures, particularly in the Gospel, and as revealed by sacred tradition, that is the teachings of the Apostles, as transmitted faithfully from one generation to the next, at times infallibly, from the time of Christ.

What a blessing it is for parents, then, to hear the words of Christ in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father: for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.” (Mt. 11:25-26)

Parents today are not for the most part theological scholars – and they never have been since the time of Christ. However, countless unlearned, but faithful Catholic parents both know and can confidently affirm, without fear of being contradicted by any authority in this world or the next, that God’s commandment “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”, reaffirmed by God the Son during his life on earth, establishes for all time that parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children.

Faithful, unlearned, Catholic parents are also fully capable of understanding Christ’s words concerning giving scandal to children: “ … he that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea”. Catholic parents know, but must be reminded, that these words provide a terrible warning to those, including Catholic bishops, who promote the showing of pornographic images in the classroom to children young and old and who allow false ideas about human sexuality, including homosexuality, to be taught in the classroom.

In praying for our bishops, let me conclude by recalling once more the teaching of Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri:

“For the love of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, therefore, we implore pastors of souls, by every means in their power, by instructions and catechisms, by word of mouth and written articles widely distributed, to warn Christian parents of their grave obligations. And this should be done not in a merely theoretical and general way, but with practical and specific application to the various responsibilities of parents touching the religious, moral and civil training of their children, and with indication of the methods best adapted to make their training effective, supposing always the influence of their own exemplary lives.” (no. 74)

John Smeaton is the Chief Executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). He studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and taught English at a secondary school. He became involved with SPUC, the first pro-life group to be established anywhere in the world, after graduating from Oxford. He became the national director of SPUC in 1996. SPUC has been at the forefront of campaigns not only against abortion but also euthanasia and same-sex “marriage”. John Smeaton is the vice-president of International Right to Life Federation and a co-founder of Voice of the Family. John Smeaton won the John Cardinal O’Connor Pro-Life Award in 2014, awarded by Legatus and the Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award from Human Life International. He and his wife Josephine have four children and six grandchildren and a great grandchild.