A Fertile Heart - Year 9 (S)

Key Stage 3 Year 9

A Fertile Heart Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Love is creative.

To have a fertile heart is to love, grow and make a positive difference.

A Fertile Heart Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Children have a natural desire to love.

They have a longing to make a difference.

They love growing.

A Fertile Heart helps them understand that these desires are all connected.

God’s first words to us were, “Be fertile!”

And the whole of the Bible teaches us that we are fertile through healthy, loving relationships – with God and each other.

Learning to authentically and appropriately receive and give love leads to us having fertile hearts.

Using the concept ‘fertile’ helps the children see the similarity between plants growing through fertile soil, sun and water, and us growing through a caring environment, love and truth.

Key Stage 3: Year 9

A Fertile Heart | Receiving & Giving Creative Love Panda Press Publishing would like to thank the following contributors to A Fertile Heart: Kathryn Lycett, John Cook, Mary Dickenson, Maryanne Dowle, Bernadette Eakin, Christopher Hancox, Louise Kirk, Gavin McAleer and Rebecca Surman Thanks also to Dr Charlie O’Donnell, Joe Smiles, Michael H. Barton, Mary Flynn, Rev Dr Stephen Morgan and Fr Wayne Coughlin for their kind support.

ISBN: 978-1-9164575-2-2 A Fertile Heart KS3 Scripture quotations taken from various authorised translations.

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Design © 2021 Panda Press Publishing Limited Illustrations and Images: Shutterstock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher who can be contacted at hello@fertileheart.org.uk British Library Catalogue Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the UK and published under licence by Panda Press Publishing Ltd, 1 Newcastle Street, Stone, Staffordshire, ST15 8JU Company Number 11786188 Printed, bound and distributed in Australia by Createl Publishing, 98 Logistics Street, Keilor Park, Victoria 3042, t: 03 9336 0800, f: 03 9336 0900, www.createl.com.au Keep in touch Facebook @afertileheart Linkedin.com/company/a-fertile-heart Twitter @afertileheart visit A Fertile Heart at www.fertileheart.org.uk Version 7, September 2021

Imprimatur:

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Nihil Obstat for KS2, 3 & 4: Reverend Jonathan Veasey.

Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham, 30th November 2020.

A Fertile Heart | Receiving & Giving Creative Love

04/07/2018

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Coat_of_arms_of_George_Stack.svg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Coat_of_arms_of_George_Stack.svg

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Foreword His Grace George Stack, Archbishop of Cardiff Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel “The Glory of God is humanity fully alive”. Thus wrote St. Irenaeus in the 3rd century. His words remain true to this day. They mean that God is the creator of the gift of life. In that gift, each human person receives a share in His own creative love. His revelation in life and love, as well as through creation, is pure gift. This is the ‘grace’ of which we speak, in order that “we may have life and have it to the full” (Gospel of St. John 10:10).

This truth lies at the heart of the Gospel. It is what it means to be truly human. The gift of life is bestowed

by God in order that we may flourish and thrive. We do this in the first place simply by living with gratitude.

We do it by responding to His love in a life of joyful communion with Him. We express it by actively engaging in the good of others so that mutual ‘flourishing’ may take place. The more we give, the more we receive.

The ‘Gospel of Life’ outlined above is, indeed, ‘Good News’. It is revealed in every aspect of human nature and creation itself. This is the life-giving teaching we seek to hand on to our children who are “the messages we send to tomorrow”. The Rite of Baptism reminds us that parents are the first and best teachers of their children. The Catholic school exists primarily to educate children to receive and respond to God’s love for each one of them and for all. Our schools are designed to help parents fulfil their God given task of caring for their children in the school of love. The Catholic school is not just a place for professional education – existing for improvement in learning - important though that is. It is a place of formation, a place in which ‘lessons for life’ are imparted, received and shared. The whole school community teaches and learns these lessons in a truly Catholic environment.

Human relationships are obviously at the heart of life and flourishing. We are made to relate to each other, body, mind and spirit. The physical, emotional and spiritual reality of our being are part and parcel of the ‘holy trinity’ of each one of us. Thus affective sexuality education is a crucial part of human formation.

A Fertile Heart is the culmination of several years work of dedicated individuals [teachers, theologians, education advisers and parents] from within the dioceses of Birmingham, Cardiff, Clifton, Arundel and Brighton and Shrewsbury. They have worked tirelessly to create a resource which puts the human person and the flourishing of our pupils at the heart of the Catholic school. It is offered as an important aid to pupils, parents, teachers, governors and clergy to remind us all that “We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning God had meant us to live it” (Ephesians 2:10).

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Introduction If you don’t know how a car works, you’re not likely to be able to fix it. If you don’t know something about how crops grow, you’re not likely to be a great farmer. If you don’t understand a mobile phone, you’re not likely to get the most out of it. Understanding what it is to be a human person will help us know how to think and act, and so be happy and fulfilled.

This booklet is part of a curriculum that goes from Reception to Y11, comprising eleven modules for every KS3 year. A Fertile Heart offers you a vision of what it is to be human, helping you to understand yourself more deeply, and therefore make better, more informed choices.

An important dimension to being human is the need for love and relationship. Another is the desire to grow and make a meaningful difference. It is important to see the connection between growing and love: love helps us grow, true growth helps us love more. We can only truly grow and make a meaningful difference if we understand our meaning and purpose, which itself comes from understanding who I already am.

So, we first need to understand ourselves in our given-ness - including what it is to be human - and in our uniqueness - our personhood, thinking and choices.

That is quite hard to understand at first, but basically I didn’t decide to be human, or the make-up of who I start out as - so I have to understand my ‘starting point’. Then I need to understand the end to which I am called - what full human maturity is - to be as loving as God. Once I know where I’m coming from, and where I am going, I can also understand my amazing ability to cooperate in growing, in becoming that person - and in helping others to do the same!

Key to gaining correct self-understanding is the ability to think correctly. If we don’t get that process right we won’t understand ourselves correctly: we’ll be fooled by pressures that tempt us to sell ourselves short. It is truth, and our ability to reason, that protect us from this. Reason and faith are friends. We are often told that they are not, but if any faith belief is irrational, it is clearly wrong. Instead, authentic faith strengthens reason and opens it up to deeper realities. Please don’t be fooled into a false choice between faith and reason - we need them both to grow. This curriculum is completely set against the polarisation of faith and reason. The modules agree with the Catholic faith, but are founded on reason - and are therefore able to be received by all pupils of all faiths and none. They reflect logically on human experience, and encourage you to gradually learn to do the same.

Central to the understanding of being human is that we are called to be ‘fertile’ - to grow and make a difference. We love doing both. What is important to understand is that, at its deepest reality, all creativity, all ‘fertility’, comes, not simply from the things we do, but rather, from the communion of loving persons. This love is revealed in what we call ‘reciprocal complementarity’. Reciprocal complementarity is when, as well as the equality of each person, the God-given differences between persons shape the relationship between them in a bond of mutual love. If you think of a doubles tennis partnership - it develops from both persons developing their own ability, and deepening the understanding and team work of the partnership. All reciprocal complementarity works like this. Reciprocal complementarity is true within God himself, of the relationship of each of us with God, and our relationships with each other. Within this creativity is the fertility of procreation, but so are all dimensions of creativity and growth. This course seeks to help you understand your deeper fertility at the heart of your personhood, and your ability to cooperate with others for the good of all. This will allow you to gradually understand your emerging biological fertility within this deeper, richer understanding of the communion of persons. From this we can understand marriage and therefore, sexuality, sex and parenthood in a richer, more beautiful way.

This curriculum is not dumbed down. Some of the concepts dealt with might challenge and stretch you, but the modules have been tried and tested and found to really engage and lead on young persons. Please persevere in them. And if you do, you will find the self-knowledge gained helps you in all your other subjects, too.

Whatever family you come from, we are confident you will understand the examples we use to reflect on the importance of love. And with love there always comes joy, so we do ask you to enjoy these modules too, by entering into them and engaging with your teacher and class.

It would also really help if parents or others at home could join in, too. Every week your teacher may give you one of the activities to go back home with for discussion. That way, we all join in the journey, and hopefully all grow and enjoy it.

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A Fertile Heart | Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Some of you will have started this course in primary school; some of you won’t: don’t worry. The first five modules of Y7 are mainly a summary of the key points of Y4-6 - as revision or to help you catch up. They start off with the three important pillars of this curriculum. Firstly, that we are made in the image of God. Secondly, that we need to think correctly in order to gradually understand what it is to be human, and what it is to be me (7a). Thirdly, that freedom cannot mean simply choosing what I want, but is about freely acting in accord with my nature, with who I am, guided by truth and love. (7b). Then we look at tolerance (7c), at what we mean by person and nature (7d), and at what we can rationally say about where we come from (7e). Module 7f is important in helping you see the transition that lies ahead of you - as your own choices gradually become the second most important factor in your life, after God’s love for you.

Understanding this will steer you away from dismissing God as irrelevant, or dismissing other influences on you as no longer needed. This leads to the crucial concept of appropriate vulnerability in your relationships - learning how to gradually trust and share in a healthy way (7g). We then apply this appropriate vulnerability to your relationship with God (7h), parents and other authority figures (7i), with yourself (7j), and with friends (7k).

During Y8 we will specifically look at being called to be a fertile person. Ultimately, this is not dependent on biological fertility: even if someone was unable to have children, they are what we call ‘spiritual fertility’ as much as anyone else. All fertility is primarily found in the communion of persons in love. In our experience we see that when people relate and work together in love, they are always more creative - this isn’t a coincidence! So, at the heart of growth as a fertile person, is the ability to truly be a person and relate well. Modules 8b-e reflect on the three most important dimensions of becoming a fertile person: choosing the spiritual above the physical; thinking in the right way - choosing truth above what I want to be true; and choosing love above my ego-life. The summary of 8e is crucially important for the whole curriculum. It leads us to explore God’s unique calling of you - how he is inviting you to grow and live as a fertile person (8f ). After this, we deal with some more practical issues, in the light of the deeper understanding we have gained: texting (8g), sexting (8i) and bullying (8k). Within this we also look at how appropriate fascination, respect and sensitivity for those of the other sex helps us, as we grow, to understand the complementarity of the sexes. Module 8j also introduces the importance of overcoming a desire to control, and fear, in fully maturing - things which can particularly damage relationships between the sexes.

We now understand that our deepest fertility is what we have called ‘spiritual fertility’ - which is specifically connected to our personhood. Y9 is primarily about helping you to understand what we really mean by personhood, and so appreciate what true growth is. Central to this growth is learning and directing how our thinking, choosing and emotions best interact. This helps you understand adolescence more, and cooperate with your development - rather than just getting confused and frustrated by it all. As we develop, our relationships develop too.

Fulfilment, ultimately, is found in self-gift (9a). This becomes clearer the more I get in touch with my deepest desires (9b). I do this through appropriately reflecting on my life experiences in the light of truth, which helps me be sensitive to the nuance of my experience (9c). A difficult part of this self-reflection is facing that not all impulses in me are good, though I am still lovable as I am (9d). All this is true of me as a person, but that includes my sexuality, too. Understanding my sexuality in the light of my personhood helps me grow patiently and healthily (9e - NB that throughout these modules sexuality refers to one’s masculinity or femininity, within which we can understand sex). What helps us is understanding the whole vision of marriage that Jesus gives us - rooting everything in self-gift, which involves commitment, communication and the desire to help others grow, and grow together (9f ). Understanding true beauty helps us grow healthily - it is the person who is beautiful, and this is communicated through the physical, but that is very different to just being about physical beauty (9g). As you maybe already know - and we still remember! - this process isn’t ever clear cut because none of us are ‘clear cut’ - but understanding it makes it more manageable and helps protect you from panic. 9h helps us through the confusion.

The last three modules of Y9, on economics, help us think about what money really is, and how we should relate to it. They are more specialised and so a video lesson is offered to help the module, on the accompanying powerpoint and website. You might think it strange to spend three modules on money in a course on relationship. Yet, how we treat each other and ourselves is very much affected by our attitude to money, and whether we see it as simply an instrument to help us, or the boss of everything. Enjoy!

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Glossary Person A rational being for whom relationship is central to their fulfilment and happiness. This is a richer understanding than ‘individual’, which can mean a thinking being whose fulfilment is found primarily in themselves.

Fertility The capacity to cooperate in growth. We are not Creators, but we are not sterile either: we can cooperate in our own growth, the growth of the other and the relationship between us. We tend to think in terms of babies when we hear the word fertile, but you can have fertile crops or a fertile imagination or intellect, etc. Understanding fertility in this broader sense helps us understand that it is as a person that you are fertile, not primarily as a gender: every person is called to be fertile in this sense and every person can be. It is through communion with God and each other, in love, that we are most fertile.

Freedom The ability to readily act in complete accord with my true nature - in harmony with who I truly am. True human freedom always seeks truth and love. The false understanding of freedom is to be able to do what I like.

Tolerance Respect for the other’s true freedom. (So, if we misunderstand freedom, we will misunderstand tolerance as well.)

Nature The given-ness of something, of who I am.

Justice Acting in accord with the nature of things.

Joy The deepest experience of being alive, growing, and being in life-giving relationship; of being and living in accord with who I truly am.

Initiator The one who takes a lead in a relationship of love: not a controller or someone who dominates, but one who initiates out of love for the other. In turn, the initiator receives from the receiver & responder.

Receiver & Responder The one who first receives from the initiator in a communion of love, and loves in return by accepting the love offered and responding to it. In the Bible, this receiving of love is often called obedience or submission, but in a respectful way that is in no way demeaning, and is fulfilled in the response - often an initiating in itself - being then received by the initiator, and responded to, etc. - resulting in a life-giving relationship of mutual submission and respect.

Reciprocal Complementarity This is the relationship of love between initiator and receiver & responder, where both persons benefit from the other and their genuine differences enrich each other. It helps us see how right order in relationship does not mean domination, but rather can be mutually beneficial. It can be seen that the three above definitions are interconnected. This relationship is primarily between persons, but can also be between things - such as reason and emotions.

Appropriate Vulnerability Relationship and intimacy require a certain vulnerability on behalf of both persons. Especially as we are growing, we can tend towards too little vulnerability or too much. Appropriate vulnerability is the ability to allow one’s relationships to grow steadily and with appropriate boundaries, that benefit both persons.

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A Fertile Heart | Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Year 9 Modules a-k

Contents: Year 9 Now we are clear about the centrality of spiritual fertility to human growth, we explore more deeply the process that leads to it - and the difficulties, and particularly the confusion, we might encounter on the way. This process is founded on a commitment to self-gift, which helps us understand our deepest desires, and to get in touch with them through the nuance of self-reflection. A significant difficulty is encountered when we realise that not all our impulses are good or help us. We then specifically reflect on emerging sexuality, as an important dimension of our human personhood. All this helps us more appreciate marriage and family. Getting more deeply in touch with my desire to grow in beauty, and allowing truth and compassion to help us in any confusion, are key to patient growth. We finish with a mini-series on economics, because our attitude to money has a very deep effect on our attitude to others.

Module 9a: Growing into Full Happiness To understand what is meant by ‘personhood’, and the stages of growing as a person which allow me to grow in receiving and giving love: self-knowledge; self-governance; self-possession; self-gift.

Module 9b: Spiritual Desires To describe what is meant by ‘desires’. To understand the seven most important desires of the human heart.

Module 9c: Getting in Touch with my Desires To know the difference between objective desires, (reflected on in 9b), and subjective desires (my own experience of my own desires). To understand that nuance is necessary to understand myself and others and that its absence can lead to sweeping, inaccurate statements.

Module 9d: Experiencing Dis-order To deepen our understanding of what it means to self-reflect. To understand that not every desire in me is good and that it is important for me to be able to accept that and respond to it creatively.

Module 9e: Adolescence, Personhood and Sexuality To recall the skills covered so far about growing into adulthood, and to apply them to sexuality.

Module 9f: Marriage and Family To know what Jesus taught about marriage, and to explain how this is connected to fertility (spiritual and physical).

Module 9g: Growing in Beauty To evaluate what we mean by ‘beauty’, and to discern how to protect ourselves from pitfalls that don’t help us to grow in beauty.

Module 9h: The Path to Authentic Fertility To see that growing, as persons and in our sexuality, needs patience and understanding, and to reflect on healthy processes that lead us to better self-understanding.

Module 9i: Family, Work and Fertility To understand the right order between family life and work life, understanding that money by itself is sterile and that work is fertile.To understand the correct use of money that helps the fertility of work.

Module 9j: The Just Price To describe what is meant by ‘The Just Price’, and to explain why money should be used fairly in the exchange of goods, and in cooperation. To highlight the potential hidden dangers of advertising.

Module 9k: Credit Creation and Debt To understand why ‘creating money’ is unfair and leads to debt dominating the economy. To see how such debt leads to us misusing the environment, and each other.

9a

Growing into Full Happiness

Learning Objectives To understand what is meant by ‘personhood’.

To understand the stages of growing as a person so that I can better receive and give love: self-knowledge; self-governance; self-possession; self-gift.

Key Word Personhood: The understanding that humans have a unique identity that is inseparable from self-awareness and their ability to reason and choose. This means that we RELATE to others through how we think and act, rather than acting as isolated individuals.

Activity 1: What makes you, YOU? (Hint: your physical appearance is only a small part of your identity). What ways are you able to share YOU with others? Draw a line drawing of yourself and put ‘Me’ in the middle. Draw out 6 arrows from your outline and label each arrow with something that describes what makes you, ‘YOU’, without describing your appearance. Think of personality, talents, background, family, friendships, etc.

John Paul II & St. St Thérèse of Lisieux

“The human person finds themselves through a sincere act of self-gift.”

John Paul II.

Step 1 What can you give or not give?

I could give you my watch because it belongs to me, but I couldn’t give you a million pounds because I haven’t got it to give. Could I give you my ability to make people laugh? Or my ability to teach? Not in the sense of handing it to you, but I can, in the sense of using it for you - to make you laugh or to teach you. Giving such gifts is important: it helps both the giver and receiver grow, be happy and fulfilled.

This is at the heart of being a human person: ultimately, love fulfils us and the rest is relevant only if it helps us love or be loved. Love is fertile - it brings to life; it brings the best out of the one loved - eventually. Love is the difference between you being an individual and a person. To love is to be a person, but we have to grow in that ability, and we have to work at it.

“I realised I had a vocation to love” St Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul.

Activity 2: If you wanted to learn how to be a car mechanic, list 5 steps you would have to take in order to become good at fixing cars.

Step 2 Let’s apply the same learning process to the question ‘What steps do I need to take to become a fully happy human being?’ It is a very similar process to being a mechanic! Firstly, instead of understanding a car engine, you have to understand yourself, and other people. Some of this just has to be learnt, some of it comes from reflecting on your experiences, some of it comes from lessons and some from one-to-one chats and discussions. A problem is, part of you, and several influences around you, push you to be an individual, who doesn’t want to bother with this learning, rather than to be a person. We live in a culture where if a science teacher explains gravity to you and you don’t understand, then you assume it is you that is wrong and try again. Whereas, if an RE teacher teaches something about the truth of God or what it is to be human, people easily decide that that is just opinion, and if I want to hold the opposite view then that is equally valid. You can believe the world is flat - it certainly doesn’t 58

A Fertile Heart | Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Learning to be a car mechanic.

feel like I’m standing on a big ball - but it doesn’t mean it is. What is true, is true: regarding the earth, gravity, cars, humans and God. Let’s call this first step self-knowledge. Of course, the RE teacher and/or the science teacher could be wrong: what we are noting here is our typical, emotion-led reactions to hearing things we don’t understand.

Step 3 Particularly as adolescents, you are ready to begin to ‘practice’ being a responsible person. Why don’t you drive? I’m sure we could find a car for your size, and some of you could learn the coordination needed; but it also takes a level of concentration, of understanding others’ actions, of judgement, that all come with growth as a person. Similarly with other important things: marriage, sex, voting. There is a process of maturation that is needed, while practicing to be a responsible person. Just like the trainee mechanic needs, first, to practice on something simple, under supervision, so we all need to grow in responsible love in small ways, before being ready for bigger ones. We call this self-governance, when, the more you understand yourself and what is going on inside you, the more you begin to take control of decisions.

Activity 3: You aren’t allowed to drive until you are 17; should friendships, but not dating, be encouraged until you are 17 and ready to date? Discuss the pros and cons if this were to happen.

Key Point Understanding that love - self-gift - is a choice, and a commitment, helps us to judge more wisely the different pressures we encounter - from within (our emotions) and from outside (peers, the media etc).This really helps our journey of self-knowledge to stay on track.

Step 4 As we continue in this way of self-governance we move towards self-possession, when we really own ourselves and our actions. Then we are really ready to love responsibly - self-giving. I can only give what I possess. So, I cannot truly love (give myself ) until I reach a certain level of self-possession (truly own myself ).

We are tempted to think we can love now, immediately, but emotions are very strong, and very changeable and love needs constancy - it is a choice, a commitment, not an emotion. Most soap operas are filled with people letting emotions decide their actions, and it is always disastrous.

We need patience with ourselves, to grow through this process in order to grow into someone who can truly be loved and love, and thereby find happiness.

Summary

Suggested Activities 1. Design a poster that illustrate the 4 stages of growing as a person as described in learning objective 2.

2. Prepare a 100 word text message to someone who was absent from today’s module explaining what you have learnt.

3. Young people trying things too early, whether it is cars, alcohol or sexual relationships face clear dangers. Discuss with a partner and then share with the class 5 things that could go wrong when young people start dating too young.

4. Explain with examples what you understand about the term ‘gift of self’.

5. “Love is a commitment. A choice.

A constant effort. Not an emotion.

You don’t feel love. You do it.”

Write an evaluation of this statement showing you have considered more than one point of view. Give your own concluding view.

The process of maturity leads to us being fully persons, who are creative through our love. If I refuse to learn what it is to be me, then I won’t work properly. If I learn to grow only so I can be a talented individual, then I will remain unfulfilled. I need to enter the process of self-knowledge, self-governance and self-possession, so that my self-giving will last. You can only give what you’ve got!

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9b

Spiritual Desires

Learning Objectives To describe what is meant by ‘desires’.

To understand the seven most important desires of the human heart.

Key Word Desire: a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

“O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

St Augustine.

Step 1 To fulfil our ‘desires’ and therefore find fulfilment seems a relatively straightforward task: just work out everything that you want and then ‘go for it’!

However, understanding what I truly want isn’t easy. Activity 1: Watch the first 2 minutes of both of the following songs and then tease out in discussion what difficulties they are trying to face.

Rolling Stones-‘Satisfaction’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrIPxlFzDi0 U2- ‘I still haven’t found what I am looking for; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmxOUIddBm0

Key Word Satiated: Restlessness persists despite money, fame and power. We see this in our world. Many things enrich us but, unlike the cat in a cosy basket we are never satisfied to the full with our lives. Never satiated.

Struggling to understand my true desires.

Our strongest desires are rarely the most rational or deepest. We may be able to fulfil all our physical desires but still be left with an ‘empty feeling’, a restlessness for something more, this is our spiritual desire.

Step 2 If it is relationship that truly makes me happy, and communication is central to relationship, then good communication is central to being happy. Some things you can know about me automatically as soon as you know I’m a human: that I get hungry, that I need vitamins, that I need love etc. This is natural communication - it doesn’t involve me choosing to tell you. But personal communication - telling you about me, my hopes and fears and so on, needs me to know these things about myself and want to tell you - and it needs you to choose to really listen to me. When we reflect on why our best friends are our best friends we often say something like, ‘because they really listen to me’ or, ‘they understand me’, and of people we don’t get on so well with, ‘they never listen to me’.

Sharing life, knowledge and love.

I desire to receive life, knowledge and love and I long to give life, knowledge and love. All this though makes me vulnerable, although it is very special: personal sharing always creates a bond of intimacy between the persons. We love that intimacy, but, understandably, fear the vulnerability.

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A Fertile Heart | Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Human desires are deeper.

Step 3: The seven most important desires of the human heart.

We have been made for relationship, for communication, for intimacy. This is what being a created person means. Six deepest human desires, then, are: 1. to receive life 2. to receive knowledge of the other 3. to receive love 4. to give life 5. to give self-knowledge 6. to give love A problem is that you and I cannot actually give life, we can only cooperate in giving life, through making a difference, helping the other to grow.

That’s ok though! Christian belief is that God is our beginning and our end, so the person we most want to share life with is God. Our deepest desires are to receive life from God, to know him and be loved by him - and to cooperate with him in giving life and love, and be known by him. Spiritual fertility is cooperating with God in giving life.

Key Point We know we have these six desires through experiencing our seventh deep desire: joy. Lots of other things give us pleasure, but nothing gives us as much joy as having these six desires fulfilled.

I don’t automatically know my deepest desires, but by reflecting on my deepest reactions to what goes on inside me and happens to me, I begin to understand what makes me truly happy. It would be a lot harder to understand what I really desire, what is really good for me, without this. (Remember the ‘happiness graph’ in Y4 and Y8.) It takes time and stillness to get in touch with this, though.

If I don’t find this time to reflect, I’m more likely to believe one-liners I hear, or stronger surface emotions in me.

Summary We didn’t make ourselves, so we can’t completely decide what makes us happy even though we spend a lot of time trying to. Instead, we first have to discern our deepest desires. So much of the BATTLE within us is between our strongest desires and our deepest desires. Our reflection together leads to the conclusions that our deepest desires are to be given life and love from God, and to know him; and to cooperate with him in giving life and love to others, and to be known by him. From that, we desire the same with others. All this gives us joy. The invitation now is to find time and stillness to reflect, to see if you agree with these conclusions.

We have been made for relationship, for communication, for intimacy.

Suggested Activities 1. Design a flowchart that illustrates the 7 deepest desires of the human heart. Or draw a cartoon strip.

2. “Animals are very content when they have everything that they need; humans find it much harder to find what they are looking for.” Write about 100-150 words reflecting on this statement, bringing in some of what you have talked about today.

3. “Being able to share myself with others, making a difference, is what gives me the greatest joy.”

Write an evaluation of this statement showing that you have considered more than one point of view.

4. Write a song, poem or rap about spiritual desires and the restlessness of human beings.

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9c

Getting in Touch with my Desires

Learning Objectives To know the difference between objective desires, (reflected on in the previous module), and subjective desires, (my own experience of my own desires).

To understand that nuance is necessary to understand myself and others and that its absence can lead to sweeping, inaccurate statements.

Key Words Objective and subjective: Something objective isn’t influenced by personal emotion or opinion but represents the facts; something subjective is influenced by or based on my self-awareness, feelings or personal tastes. Objective: It is raining. Subjective: I love the rain! Objective: Blue is a colour. Subjective: Blue is the nicest colour.

Nuance: A subtle difference; something slightly different in me, that I can learn from if I see it and reflect upon it.

“Every emotional experience is spontaneous and, upon reflection, can reveal something of what is happening within one’s very self.”

John Paul II, The Acting Person.

Activity 1: Watch France receive the World Cup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WavRayelYOI Step 1 Who has ever won a cup, or a prize? How did you feel beforehand? How did you feel afterwards? Reflecting on these emotions can help you understand your deepest desires from the standpoint of your own experience. Normally, the emotion of winning and then receiving the cup will be pleasurable and quite strong, with lots of emotions happening at the same time. Later, upon reflecting and separating out the different emotions, you can learn more about yourself. Remember, nuance is important. It might be that you realise you had a great feeling of elation, but also felt a bit of embarrassment at being the centre of attention, or further enjoyment by being the centre of attention! You might also have felt a more subtle sense of anti-climax as you realise that your deeper desire is not fulfilled by winning a cup.

The emotions of winning.

We can only say you may have felt those things because when we are dealing with the objective; what is true is true. But when we are dealing with the subjective, (looking out of your eyes), I haven’t got your self-awareness, so I can’t reflect on it for you. Only you can do that.

Activity 2: Can you think of a time in your life when you won something either as an individual or part of a team? Share with a partner some of the emotions of winning.

Step 2 Reflecting back on memories of your childhood, you may remember drawing a picture and enjoying showing it to mum (or someone else). You may remember another occasion, when you made a card for her and gave it to her, and the delight you felt in doing this, and in seeing your mum’s face light up. Again, you might remember a time when mum and you made something together - maybe you helped bake a cake with her. Again, no one can tell you which you enjoyed most, but I can suggest that there is joy in someone we love appreciating something we’ve created (the picture), there is deeper joy in creating it for them (the card), and even deeper joy in creating it with them (the cake).

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The joy of giving a card I’ve made.

Imagine too that after you gave mum the card the telephone rang or your older sister came in and laughed at you and the moment of sharing was over. What different emotions might you have felt then?

Activity 3: In twos, each share a childhood memory about an event where you made mum, dad or grandma happy? Did anything happen that spoilt the joy?

Share what different desires you think might have been at play?

Key Point Every time I follow a desire, I strengthen it in me. So if I consistently choose a deeper desire, I add to its strength. If I choose my deeper desires, eventually they will become my stronger desires, and then it’s a lot easier to make good decisions. But it takes a long time for us to get there.

Step 3 What is important in these examples is not so much the answers suggested, but understanding the process and how important it is. Emotions need unpacking.

They are uniquely important in helping us understand what is going on inside us - but only when they have been reflected on with sensitivity and honesty. This takes time, a certain stillness and an appreciation of nuance - that little changes matter. One important lesson is that strong emotions are not necessarily deep emotions. In fact, they rarely are. Our surface emotions are more connected with our ‘physicality’ - our animal dimension - and so, like our physical desires, they are felt more strongly. I feel hunger for food much more strongly than hunger for love, but which is actually my deeper desire? A big difficulty in really getting in touch with myself is finding the stillness to sift out what is a strong emotion and what is a deep one.

Similarly, we need to understand the importance of nuance. Just being aware of that tiny sense of anti-climax in winning the cup can lead me into a whole realisation of deeper desires, but it could be so easily overlooked. This sensitivity to nuance is so important. When we are quite young we often like strong impact: bright colours, fast food, a quick answer, sudden decisions, a strong beat. Being open to nuance, we begin to learn that we like gentler colours too, subtler tasting foods, understated styles, other types of music.

Summary Reflecting on our emotions helps us to get in touch with, and understand, our deepest desires. We need sensitivity, honesty and nuance to know our deepest desires. Raw emotions are not good guides: a strong desire is not the same as a deep desire.

We need stillness and truth to understand our emotions.

Suggested Activities 1. Do you like receiving cards?

Are you too old to make mum or grandma one? Why not make a thank you card, for whatever reason you choose, and see if you both still enjoy your giving it to them.

2. Under 2 headings, objective and subjective write out 5 pairs of statements in the appropriate place. E.g. ‘blue is a colour’ and ‘blue is the nicest colour’. Include some of the ideas you have talked about today, your memories, desires and actions.

3. Think of a time when you had a very strong emotional rush/ crush over something or someone.

Reflect on this experience and write about how through a more nuanced approach you came to understand your emotions better.

4 . Use the ‘summary’ to create a poster of the key points of the lesson.

5. “Every emotional experience is spontaneous and upon reflection, can reveal something of what is happening within one’s very self.”

Explain what you think this quote means and in 100 words evaluate whether you agree or disagree.

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9d

Experiencing Dis-order

Learning Objectives To deepen our understanding what it means to self-reflect.

To understand that not every desire in me is good and that it is important for me to be able to accept that and respond to it creatively.

“For whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Cor. 12:11.

Step 1 The pictures below show glimpses of humanity’s amazing capacity for good.

And an amazing capacity for self-destruction.

Why can’t we all live in peace?

If we look inside ourselves, we each have a similar tension: an amazing potential for good and a potential for self-destruction. At the heart of all this is a desire to love, and a desire to have my own way, respectively.

Activity 1: Write down three good character traits that you know you have.

Then write down one or two negative or weak sides to your character. How difficult did you find that task? Why? Step 2 If it was difficult, the good news is that you are normal. You are not a freak or a failure for having flaws, faults and struggles. The truth is that we are all works in progress, and loved as we are. Through Jesus, God tells you he loves you as you are, and if you let him love you, he can bring you wholeness, happiness and freedom. He does not say: sort yourself out and then I will love you.

The first 3 chapters of Genesis help us understand why the world, and myself, are very good, but flawed. This is as a result of sin, which damages us, as individuals and as a human race. So, that is why we experience dis-order in our lives. From understanding that, it is easier to learn how to respond to my situation.

Activity 2: Watch: ‘Noah Movie Universe Creation Story’ to 4:10 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMDWWDZ8ozE

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Genesis helps us understand why the world, and myself, are very good, but flawed.

The Church uses the word ‘disordered’ about desires in us that don’t lead us to true happiness. Some people dislike that word, but all it means is that the right desires to make you happy are already in you, and you just need help in understanding them and in getting them in the right order. For instance, it’s not wrong to want to be popular, but if that is stronger than my desire to be a good person and true to myself, then it is disordered, and I will be tempted to do things I know are wrong and am uncomfortable with, just to be popular.

Step 3 Appropriate vulnerability – responding positively to my own dis-ordered self.

We can only be honest about our disorderliness, and not panic, to the extent that we know we are truly loved. That has to be given to you, and received by you. No matter how many self-help books say that we can sit in front of the mirror and ‘will away’ our destructive bit, we can’t. It’s vulnerable being human, because I am the only one who cannot heal myself. That means trusting in God and letting him love you; trusting in others and finding help when appropriate; and trusting in yourself that you are amazingly good, even though at times you will not act like it.

Step 4 There are practical steps we can take also. Strong desires don’t last. They may come back, but that is different. Sometimes, if I am tempted to lose my temper, to lie, to gossip, to lust, to be mean, I just need to step away. Some people wear a cross or a medal, or carry one in their pocket, so that in times of need they can just touch it and be reminded of a better way.

When we are not in the middle of the temptation, it is sometimes good to have the courage to communicate with someone you can trust. Sometimes the issue isn’t the point of temptation. When we are feeling stressed we can more likely feel lust or anger; by communicating about the stress going on inside, we can defuse the other things too. Sometimes, though, we do have to share about the actual temptation, and in the sharing we are helped to know, within ourselves, that doing good really is more appealing, because ultimately sin is boring and predictable. Keeping things to yourself tends to make them build up and then we either ‘buy out’ or lash out.

Deeper than our sins, there is ‘sin’. We experience it most in obstinacy - when we turn all our will towards being right. There is something in us that is determined to do it my way, full stop. Of course, we can be strong-willed and determined - and these are seen as positive qualities: obstinacy is being strong-willed in having my way.

Activity 3 Watch the Simpsons’ clip https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8dgnFr5z5Tc and then discuss obstinacy: What it is? Who is willing to admit they have it? What most brings it out in them? Is it destructive?

Suggested Activities 1. How would you rephrase ‘disordered desires’ to explain this term to a younger student?

2. Remembering the standoff in the Simpsons clip, write about a similar incident that might have happened to you. Be prepared to share with the class.

3. Look up the story of St Augustine and ‘the pears’ and discuss how this incident is similar to today’s topic.

4. “As our dis-ordered desires come from our free-will it would have been better if God had created us without free will.” Do you agree/ disagree? Show you have thought about more than one point of view and give your own view in conclusion.

Summary Humanity is amazing, and flawed.

And so are you. And that’s ok. You are loved and loveable as you are, AND in need of healing: being loved, and responding to it, brings that healing.

We need to be completely honest with ourselves and with God, and appropriately share with others. We also need to be able to walk away when temptation is particularly strong. Overall, facing my disorders teaches me the right balance between trust and self-responsibility: when I am weak, then I am strong.

To overcome obstinacy and disorder we need to pray. Not in a frantic way. Just in spending time with the God who loves us and helps us to grow. Admitting our dis-order and obstinacy can also help us be more generous and forgiving of others and their faults.

Activity 4: How might someone respond positively to dis-ordered desires they experience in themselves?

1. Being tempted to say something mean about someone on Facebook, out of jealousy.

2. Being tempted to send a naked photo so as to be liked by the other person.

3. Being tempted to look at pornography, out of curiosity.

4. Being tempted to drink shots with a friend, because it will be a laugh.

5. Being tempted to shoplift and thinking “It’s a big chain store, they can afford it.”

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9e

Adolescence, Personhood and Sexuality

Learning Objectives To recall the skills covered so far about growing into adulthood.

To understand how these skills can be applied to sexuality.

“Don’t rush to grow up.”

Traditional.

Key Words Sexuality, Appropriate Vulnerability, Communication, Patience, Responsibility.

Activity 1: Look at the quote “Don’t rush to grow up” and discuss what you think it means.

Step 1 In previous lessons, we have looked at what it means to become fully mature people. This involves learning how to receive love and how to give love to others. As children, we get used to receiving attention and love from others. As we get older and move into adolescence, we also have to discover more how to respond to others. More is expected of us and we have to develop skills of being responsible in the ways we react and respond. This time of discovery can reveal some interesting tendencies in each of us. I can have desires that are disordered and this can be difficult for me to accept. Our process of growth is never perfect either. We grow up in widely differing environments. We weren’t all encouraged to get in touch with our relationship with God. All sorts of things can make growth more difficult. However, central to our growth into happiness are the gifts of reason and choice, an experience of being loved and our own response.

Our disorders are not such a big issue if we handle them in a way that will make us happy.

Activity 2: Think of a habit that you have that irritates you. Explain how this habit can cause disorder or unhappiness in your life. How could growing out of this habit give you greater happiness in life?

Step 2: Sexuality and Reason The theme we have been exploring all along is ‘fertility’ and what it means to be a Fertile Person. During our teenage years, we grow in different ways: physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. All of these work together to help us become fertile or ‘life-giving’ people. A hugely important part of what it means to be human is our sexuality. It could be said to be the vehicle through which we communicate and make a difference. As we have seen, it is important to choose to put the spiritual above the physical. If we don’t, sexuality quickly reduces to sex, and loses much of its beauty.

Think of a habit that you have that irritates you

We are also called to choose truth above what I want to be true - that is particularly difficult regarding sexuality as our sex drive can be so strong.

Step 3: An Individual or a person?

Which one are you? The answer is important because it determines how you will cope during the turbulent years of growing up. Generally speaking, if you see yourself as primarily an individual, you will feel greater pressure to be in charge of yourself, in absolute terms. This focuses me on ‘me and my wants’.

It also tends to be a road to unhappiness.

Individual or a person?

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Knowing I am loved, especially loved by God, helps me know the truth that I am a person - someone who receives and gives - who desires to have some control of their life, but not complete control: someone who can be vulnerable enough to have real relationships.

Step 4: God loves you, no matter what Adolescence is an exciting time, when new opportunities arise, but it is a confusing time too. Understanding the given-ness of who you are helps you to keep the adventure part of life, but tones down the fearful part. Understanding you are loved

by God, and are called to cooperate with him in your growing as a person steadies you through adolescence and all life. It doesn’t stop all the ups and downs of life, but it does anchor you and stops you from drowning - like a ship in a storm.

Today’s culture is fast. We are bombarded with messages and images that urge us to act on all of our desires, to experience life to the full. But you know this is not a healthy way to live. When we are 14, we need the time and space to enjoy being 14, without the pressure of trying to be 16. Similarly, at every stage of our lives, we need to take the time to grow. Relationships grow over time, often over many years. If you and I are created for healthy relationships, then it makes sense to allow those friendships to grow. This is where we need to be patient with ourselves.

Activity 3: Describe something that worked out well for you because you gave it time and patience. E.g. learning to ride a bicycle or play a musical instrument.

Step 5: Child-like v Childish The child-like person knows that they are truly free. They can trust appropriately, and have a sense of joy and mystery. They can have bad days, make poor choices and yet still know that they can accept help and even have a laugh at themselves along the way.

The childish individual is stuck in the desire to be in control, and always thinks that ‘life isn’t fair’. They want to be free, but keep taking back control through addiction to self-image and misuse of sex, power, money or fame and may find themselves unhappy and lonely.

Summary In adolescence we are called to grow into fertile persons. This primarily means spiritually - as persons able to commit to others. It also includes physical fertility, and our need to mature in our sexuality. The process can be difficult and imperfect, but so long as we remember that we are cooperators in who we are, not initiators, then we can learn how to respond. This understanding will allow you to be patient, to enjoy the journey, to let others help you appropriately and to be able to stand up to panic and to influences that strongly encourage you to choose those things that don’t make you happy.

Child-like or childish?

Suggested Activities 1. Watch ‘Crystalina’s testimony’ 7:53 minutes and mind map 5 different connections to the theme of today’s lesson. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4DLxGiCFeY4 2. Recall a recent time when you felt fearful, upset, anxious or confused. Imagine that you are God. Write a short note to your anxious self from God, reassuring you. What reasons does God give to encourage you?

3. Write a short text message to discourage someone who is too young, not to get involved with someone older.

4. ‘True Love waits’. In 100 words evaluate this statement showing you have thought about more than one point of view.

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9f

Marriage and Family

Learning Objectives To know what Jesus taught about marriage.

To explain how this teaching is connected to fertility (spiritual and physical).

Key Words Covenant: A committed relationship bond that can never be broken.

Reciprocal Love: Love that is given, received and returned, between two people.

Step 1 You are capable of sharing in the creation of a new human person. Allow that thought to sink in for a moment. It is one of the most awesome dimensions of being human. Most people, if you ask them about themselves, will tell you about their children before they tell you about their job. The older people are, the more they naturally think about what they can pass on to their children and grandchildren. As we have said before, a child takes a moment to conceive and a lifetime to raise. So the ability to procreate cannot be separated from the ability to raise the child to become a fully mature person.

Seen in this way - a sharing in the creation of a new person - helps us understand the dignity of the sexual act. What gives it meaning is the giving of our precious gift of fertility to the other person, and receiving theirs from them.

This is what opens it up to being so deeply loving. We can only give the fertility we have, so if for some reason outside my control, I am not physically fertile (more normally the woman, with her natural cycle of fertility), then I am still giving the fertility I have. However, if I choose to change the act so that I am not giving my fertility, then I have radically changed the meaning of it in a way that takes away its beauty and dignity.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’

So they are no longer two but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Jesus, Matthew 19:4-6

Activity 1: Watch: Prince William and Kate Middleton exchange wedding vows (3:21). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD0XUcJ9stM&t=105s Step 2 In the same way that we cannot separate conceiving and raising a child, then we cannot separate our physical and spiritual fertility. The sexual act may be at the heart of procreation, but it is the communion of persons, united in reciprocal love, that is at the heart of spiritual fertility, which includes conceiving and raising the child. Hence, the only completely realised setting for the sexual act is marriage. The commitment to a life-long, exclusive covenant of love between a woman and a man is naturally ordered towards conceiving and raising children, and in helping both persons and their relationship to grow. Marriage unites spiritual and physical fertility in a way no other relationship can. That isn’t because a church or a state says so, (marriage pre-dates the Church), but because it is central to human fertility. What Christianity does is to help us see more deeply why this is so. For example, Pope Francis tells us that “sexual union, lovingly experienced and sanctified by the sacrament (of marriage), is in turn a path of growth in the life of grace for the couple.” (Amoris Laetitia, n. 74.)

What did Jesus teach about marriage?

Our precious gift of fertility.

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God is a Trinity of love: the Father initiates love, the Son receives and responds in the same love, and the love is the Holy Spirit that unites them. From this relationship God is creative. This relationship of love is reflected in marriage.

Step 3 Any new parent will tell you of the wonder of holding their baby for the first time, and of the awesome responsibility they feel for raising them - not least when the front door first closes and it is down to the new mum and dad. Marriage makes this huge responsibility easier to manage because it is shared. This strengthens both mother and father and they both find they have complementary strengths, which can be further drawn out by the other.

Perhaps, in particular, it is the mother who most helps the dad to discover his fatherhood within him.

None of this is easy! But it is achievable, and it is very fertile, in every sense of the word. We may know lots of people who live in different types of family by choice: civilly married, cohabiting but not married, civil partnerships - all heterosexual or homosexual, single parent families by choice, etc. As a loving Father and Mother, God and the Church love everyone and gently call us all to what is best for us. Also, many people have to bring children up in imperfect situations: single parenthood because of one spouse dying or leaving; fostering or adopting because the child’s initial circumstances weren’t ideal, etc. - and many parents do a great, loving, even heroic job raising children in such diverse circumstances, which God wholeheartedly supports. All of this should be remembered and appreciated, and the beauty of Christ’s vision of marriage remains - even if many people question whether such a life-time commitment is realistic.

Step 4 Many of us will have experienced separation and divorce, some close up, some from further away - and it is hard. But this too shouldn’t put us off marriage - instead it should make us more determined to prepare well for it. One of the ways we can prepare less well for marriage is by living together or ‘cohabiting’. Not living together before marriage can seem unrealistic and naïve, and even some Christians think it makes sense. The argument is that, for something so important, it is better to have a trial run first. This goes against vast amounts of statistical and scientific data and evidence which clearly show that more couples split up if they cohabit, either before or instead of marriage. A problem is that cohabiting by its very nature is a temporary contract arrangement; marriage a lifelong covenant - so it is not really a trial run at all. Commitment leads to appropriate compromise; compromise doesn’t lead to commitment. The benefit of marriage, with its public vow of commitment to God and each other, is that this can hold the couple together when things are difficult, helping them to withstand the very human desire to give in and start again in another relationship. This isn’t judging anyone - no one is a statistic: and it certainly doesn’t mean that any particular cohabiting couple will not stay together. We are inviting you here to think about you, not others, and the evidence clearly argues that cohabitation would decrease the likelihood of your relationship lasting; God’s commandments are there for our good.

Summary Without ignoring the reality around us, marriage is still beautiful and life-giving. It unites spiritual and physical fertility, as well as the ability to help children to grow in a way that helps the spouses and their love to grow as well. Marriage is the journey of life, love and fertility, shared.

“One cannot live a trial life or die a trial death.

One cannot love on a trial basis or accept a person on trial and for a limited time.”

St John Paul II.

The infinity symbol of reciprocal love.

Suggested Activities 1. Think of responsible and irresponsible ways that people might use: a phone, money, a car, a talent for playing sport, or playing the flute, or making others laugh. How does the meaning of the object change when it’s used irresponsibly?

2. How is the important job of raising a child made easier when the parents are married to each other?

3. Read these marriage vows: “I promise to love and cherish you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” How do these help married couples to remain committed to each other?

4. “God’s gift of fertility and marriage is a beautiful reflection on how God loves”. In 100 words evaluate this statement and give your own verdict in conclusion.

5. Read John Paul II’s quote on trial marriages and discuss as a class.

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9g

Growing in Beauty

Learning Objectives To evaluate what we mean by ‘beauty’.

To discern how to protect ourselves from pitfalls that don’t help us to grow in beauty.

“Love is always patient and kind.”

1 Cor.13:4.

Step 1 The more we understand the beauty of marriage, the more it will appeal to us. The more we realise how much we need to grow to share in the beauty of marriage, the more we realise we need to learn how best to help ourselves and each other now. The first thing to understand is the relationship between beauty and brokenness. We tend to start by thinking that imperfect, or broken, means not beautiful. We need to look deeper.

“Beauty is more than skin deep.”

Charlize Theron.

Love is always patient.

Key Point

Each of these images expresses beauty about the human person. In them, the beauty is much more than cosmetic. Many people who live with disabilities are inspiring because of the struggles they sometimes have to go through. Their beauty usually shines through their personality.

We naturally strive to become more beautiful. You are a fertile person. This means that, no matter what, you are beautiful. If we see that beauty is about the person, then we will direct our efforts towards deepening that personal beauty more than our physical beauty.

Step 2 All this is important because it gives you the courage to know who you are: you have dignity as a human person. It also means you can recognise the dignity of others around you. This is particularly true regarding sexuality. We are all, as humans, and to varying degrees, disordered in some way and that is normal.

This means that our sexuality is also broken and disordered and, at first, while we are discovering who we are, it is confusing.

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We have covered a wide range of topics in this module but they are all connected. You are beautiful.

Marriage is beautiful. Family is beautiful. The more we understand our inner beauty, and trust in our being loved, the stronger we will be against pressures that could harm our growth.

Love is patient and kind: You are not your sexuality. You are firstly, and most importantly, a person. So, when our sexuality is developing, we have to be patient and kind with ourselves. True love is always patient. We can be overwhelmed with voices around us and in the media telling us to rush decisions about our sexuality.

Bullying: Of all the bullying people can do, bullying regarding sexuality is one of the worst. Especially in adolescence, when you are possibly at your most vulnerable. Bullying or ridiculing someone because say, they have, or appear to have, homosexual desires is completely wrong and very destructive. None of us chooses our immediate desires and anyone dealing with any desires that are in a different direction to the natural fertility of sex needs support in understanding themselves and reflecting on their inner reality, not prejudice and discrimination.

Any pressure put on someone to immodest actions, photos or texts, is encouraging someone to tarnish their beauty, and is destructive. The person who encourages that is behaving in a destructive way because they are using and degrading another person. Sending sexualised photographs or images of a young person could also result in a criminal record. It is illegal to send such images which, in law, are classed as pornography.

Modesty and Beauty: We can be tempted or pressured to wear provocative clothing. If I am tempted, what response am I wanting? If I am pressured, why are others doing that? Is it naïve to think that flaunting external beauty encourages others to see your inner beauty? Isn’t the exact opposite true?

Activity 1: Watch Leah Darrow clip from 0.00 - 1:41 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ84oSJcrFE&t=191s and then watch Jason Evert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80FOp Small group discussion. Answer sensitively the following questions: What reasons are there for dressing provocatively? What reasons for dressing more modestly? Is there a difference between looking sexual and looking feminine?

Which is more attractive? What about looking sexual or masculine? What do you instinctively think when you see another girl dressed provocatively? Is there an instinctive male reaction/female reaction to a girl dressed in such a way? What is it? Does it lead the boy to want to get to discover the girl’s inner beauty? Does something similar happen when it is the other way around?

Have you ever encouraged someone to dress sexily? If so, why? Do you feel pressured to dress provocatively? Remember, however someone dresses, we are called to respect them as a person. Always. There is no excuse for any lack of self-control in any of us.

Step 3: Feels versus Reals We usually have no choice about our immediate feelings, but we do have a choice in how we act on them because as persons, we should be guided by truth and reason. This is why we can choose not to allow our emotions or our hormones to control our actions. Love is a choice and the surprising thing is that it often involves saying ‘No’ if something isn’t right, so that later we can say a more perfect ‘Yes’. Saying ‘No’ is an act of love to the one you marry, even if you haven’t met them yet. You are worth it. They are worth it. Even if your partner will be your spouse, having sex unleashes huge desires and chemicals that an immature relationship just can’t handle. Then sex, that was intended to be part of a relationship, soon dominates the relationship and ultimately destroys it.

Suggested Activities 1. “Beauty is more than skin deep”. Write out a text message to someone missing from today’s session explaining the key points.

2. Mind map out all the reasons why having sexual relations outside marriage might be damaging Arrange into a list starting with the most persuasive reason first.

3. “We shouldn’t be reduced to parts; we have more dignity than that”. Leah Darrow.

Do you agree with this statement?

Write in 100-150 words explaining your views.

4. If you were to wear fashionably modest clothes next time you go out, would it make a difference to how you see yourself?

Summary The vision of marriage, commitment and relationship is attractive. It makes us want to grow in beauty - personal beauty. We all need help in achieving that. We need to be patient with ourselves, and supportive of each other, especially regarding emerging sexuality. In its right setting, sex enhances relationship; outside of that it damages and may destroy it. Choosing things that help us form personal beauty, rather than giving in to the pressures to be more superficial, is hard but worth it.

If someone pressures another into having sex to ‘show their love’, then they love sex, not the other person. If this happens to you, ask them to ‘show their love’ by abstaining. And remember, legally and morally, consent means full, clear consent: if anyone uses pressure, alcohol, high emotion or anything else to get someone else to have sex with them, they are showing no respect in a serious and perhaps criminal way. They are damaging two people’s very personhood for the sake of a physical, emotional experience.

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9h

The Path to Authentic Fertility

Learning Objectives To see that growing, as persons and in our sexuality, needs patience and understanding.

To reflect on healthy processes that lead us to better self-understanding.

This module is about something most, if not all, of us experience: adolescent confusion regarding emerging sexuality. Very few of us avoid such confusion revealed in things like crushes, negative self-image or body-image, awkwardness, obsessions, confusion about who I am attracted to, confusion about who I am, confusion as to why those around me seem dominated by feelings that I am not experiencing: the list is endless. What one experiences as a mature person, who has emerged from adolescence, needs to be taken seriously by all; this is not connected with the confusion we are dealing with here. Sexuality is such a complex and deep dimension of our being, that it is not surprising if initially, we find it confusing. Truth and compassion help us discover our authentic fertility, and the joy it brings.

Step 1 In Y7 we explored Nature and Nurture (7f) and realised we have lots of impulses within us - affected by lots of influences! (Activity 1.) They include: God creating you and guiding you; humanity’s turning away from God; your genetic make-up and hormones; your family, relationships and history; our culture; your thinking and choices. That’s a lot of influences! They don’t all direct our impulses the same way - and that’s hard and confusing. As we mature, we should choose which things influence us most, which gradually affects our impulses. You grow as a person if you choose God as your initiator, the one who influences you most, and yourself as your prime receiver-responder, the one who is the second most important influence on your life. This means how you let others influence you is filtered by your choice of the person you want to be.

“...before all else comes the individual person, in their wholeness and dignity. And people should not be defined only by their sexual tendencies: let us not forget that God loves all his creatures and we are destined to receive his infinite love.”

Pope Francis, The Name of God is Mercy

This year’s modules have included: growing in self-knowledge and self-giving (9a); our deepest desires (9b&c); that some of our desires are ‘dis-ordered’ (9d); that all this affects our personhood, and our sexuality which are focused on love and fertility (9e&f); being loved in our beauty and brokenness (9g).

We’d like all our impulses to direct us to love and spiritual fertility - to have a truly fertile heart. Instead, in adolescence, especially with hormones and cultural pressure, we can experience a confused fertility. This requires patience and understanding, from ourselves and each other. We need to always remember that we are persons, whom God loves as his children.

This gradually leads to understanding who I am, which directs my sexuality. Without truth, patience and compassion we can too quickly do it the other way around: first making decisions about our sexuality, letting this ‘decide’ who I am, which then ‘decides’ if God loves me (often convincing myself that he doesn’t). This is so hurtful to ourselves. And not true.

Don’t let others label you. Don’t self-identity with a label. No label will communicate your beauty, your potential, your dignity, your love and your fertility. You already have 3 truths that identify you: I am N. (your name); I am a person; I am a loved child of God. You don’t need a label as well! Watch https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UmpphrcS2OI Labels - Spoken Word (2:40). Read quote from Pope Francis.

Step 2 Confusion is part of the human condition, and is ‘unpacked’ by truth and compassion. Truth by itself can be received as condemnation. Compassion by itself can tempt us to plaster over the confusion with defiance. Truth and compassion slowly set us free.

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It’s confusing to be confused!

Helpful Definitions Lesbian refers to a woman who is sexually attracted to women.

Gay normally refers to a man who is sexually attracted to men.

Bi-sexual refers to someone who is sexually attracted to men and women.

Trans-gender is an umbrella term connected with persons who understand their own experience as being of the gender different to their genetic one.

Gender dysphoria refers to the distress that living such an experience can cause.

We hear a lot about LGBT. Whatever our situation, we are all persons, all loved and worthy of respect, all on a journey, all a bit confused about who we are, all called to help each other on our journey, not judge or make it harder.

Within the definitions of lesbian, gay and bi-sexual is a whole spectrum of situations, concerning what the person means by attracted, how that integrates or doesn’t with their other impulses, whether it leads to sexual activity, where the impulses emerge from, how permanent they are etc.

Jesus says “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.

Shoulder my burden and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For… my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

Gender dysphoria can be very painful and disorientating for the person. Sometimes people seek to resolve this through medical intervention, though we have no means of transforming anyone into a biologically fertile man or woman. Gender reassignment causes biological sterility.

As sexuality emerges in adolescence various attractions and self-perceptions can emerge, or recede - but sometimes they don’t. And that is then a different matter, of which we need to be aware.

Step 3 What if you have such attractions or self-perception? Please, don’t panic. Panic stops your inner journey. You are a beautiful and loved person - there’s no confusion about that.

There is a given-ness to you and there is your experience of yourself. Both are important. E.g. You are loved by God. You might not always feel loved by God. The first is objective and true. The second is subjective and real - whether it is true or not - because it is your experience. Neither, saying, ‘You are loved by God, so stop feeling that you’re not!’ or, ‘If you don’t feel you’re loved by God, then you’re probably not.’ wouldn’t help. The first lacks compassion, the second lacks truth. We need truth and compassion.

Gentle self-reflection.

God takes your reality seriously and your experience of yourself seriously. Both.

Jesus and his Church will never ask you to reject either. That’s important. To share our inner journey, we need courage and discernment. Here are two acid tests to help you choose wisely who to trust: 1) Someone offering truth and compassion might say, “There’s a hill to climb here, but we can do it - I’ll walk alongside you if you’ll let me.” Someone who offers just compassion might say, “There’s no hill to climb here, walk alongside me and you’ll be fine.” The second might sound more appealing, but isn’t actually helping. Read Matthew 11:28-30.

All means all.

2) Growth takes trust in God, and humility. God made us; he loves you. Trying to grow without God is like refusing Apple helping you with your iPhone. Pride says ‘I am who I decide I am and you can leave if you don’t accept that’. Humility says ‘I am who I am and I invite you to love me, and journey with me, as I grow’.

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The Path to Authentic Fertility

You are holy ground. Correctly understanding yourself takes time. We get lots of things wrong about ourselves over our lifetime - otherwise we wouldn’t need to grow. Don’t let anyone condemn you. Don’t let anyone use you as food for their ideology. (Jesus offers himself as food for us to eat; some others see us as something to be consumed.) Don’t let anyone label you. And remember, patience obtains all.

Finally, it is our journey with God into our most vulnerable heart that most forms us and reveals our deepest beauty. Never forget that.

Step 4 We use defence mechanisms when we feel uncomfortable. That’s understandable, but not helpful. In lessons, conversations or sharing, we need to be sensitive and loving, not hide behind humour or bravado. (Activity 2.) It is best to assume someone hearing you is personally affected by the subject being discussed especially if it concerns homosexuality or gender dysphoria. This might seem a small step, but it has a huge effect. Stray, thoughtless comments can be so hurtful. Truth and compassion slowly create a healthy, life-giving atmosphere.

Suggested Activities 1. Think of as many influences on you as possible - including influencers!

2. Discuss what reactions you find helpful when sharing with someone, and what reactions make you feel worse.

3. Shake each others’ hand in your group saying, “God thinks you’re amazing!” Then do the same again, saying, “I think you’re amazing!”

Don’t panic if someone shares with you: just show understanding and respect.

Obviously, all bullying is horrible and destructive; bullying or teasing about sexuality, or any protected characteristic, is hateful. We must never engage in it. It is immoral and illegal.

Key Point You are an amazing person! The journey of self-discovery can be confusing, but allows you to cooperate fully with who you are. Your fertility and sexuality are good. Never forget you are loved, unique and are never alone on your journey.

Step 5 There is no ‘right time’ for sexual impulses and attractions to start in someone.

We are all unique. The right time to explore them is if and when they happen.

Life is confusing enough without worrying that I’m the odd one out. You’re not!

Remember, life is beautiful. You are amazing. (Activity 3.) The bad things in life are only bad because the good things are so good. Remembering this helps us to focus on the good, and stay positive. Your sexuality can be initially confusing because your fertility is such an amazing, precious gift. You have the capacity to share in the creation and nurturing of a new human person! Wow. The path from confusion begins with understanding ourselves as loved persons.

It never involves rejecting our fertility. Much attractive advice is really a move from confused fertility to confused sterility - which isn’t helpful! Our culture deceives us by saying that fertility complicates sex. It doesn’t! It gives it meaning! We want to be freed from the confusion, not from the fertility. Fertility is a blessing, not a curse.

Shared spiritual fertility unites us; shared sex by itself doesn’t. Our future is unknown, but Jesus promises that trusting God will slowly lead to your confusion decreasing and your fertility increasing. When we grow as persons, we grow in spiritual fertility, which directs our biological fertility, slowly freeing us from confusion. It’s a longer path, but it leads to eternal life.

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Friends to help.

Summary The process of growth in our personhood and sexuality can be confusing for all of us, as we unpack all the influences on us that affect our impulses. Truth and compassion, including sensitivity and patience, allow us to journey positively. LGBT covers a whole spectrum of issues regarding sexuality, impulses and self-perception. Ideology, labelling, bravado and pride don’t help.

Journeying together as persons, loved by God, does. Only God can truly lead all of us, as persons, from confused fertility to authentic fertility.

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Family, Work and Fertility

Learning Objectives To describe the appropriate order between family life and work life.

To understand that money by itself is sterile and that work is fertile.

To understand the correct use of money that helps the fertility of work.

“You cannot serve both God and money.”

Matthew 6:24.

Watch 9i podcast provided - available in powerpoint or on website. (This has been provided due to these last three Y9 modules covering more specialist materials.)

Step 1 What would you say is a normal working week? How many days? Why do people work that many days?

Does it seem strange that most people work a five day week and many work six days? Life is about living, but often we make it about earning money. We obviously need food, clothes, a home and so on, and money started off as a way of getting those material needs. Those things help us to live together more effectively.

However, money today has become a goal in itself. Who has heard the phrase ‘Time is money’? It was first coined by a man called Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the U.S. He claimed that the most important thing we could do with our time was to make money. It even changed our English language: we ‘spend’ time doing things rather than ‘pass’ time as they say in other languages.

We talk about what people are ‘worth’ rather than their ‘dignity’. We use the phrase ‘you’re worth it!’ – But, worth is really about things to which we can give a price.

The Sabbath: A day of rest.

Step 2 At the heart of being a person is relationship but, when we put money first, we put relationship second. Very quickly we use each other in order to make money.

We have a deep need to make a difference, to be fertile. And we have an amazing capacity to be fertile - in family life and in work, but, by putting money first, we are saying that it is not WE who are fertile but the money, and that those who make lots of money are the ones who make a difference in the world.

You and I know that with or without money we can make a difference in the world.

So, believing in the fertility of money instead disempowers us, making us feel sterile and unimportant. It is a lie about who we are. If you list the top three things in your life that bring you joy, you can see that it is relationship and not money that comes out on top.

As persons, there are three main areas: family life, work and recreation. Each of these needs to be in right relationship with the other for us to be happy. People can feel work pressures more strongly than spiritual and family needs. This pressure is often made worse by our present day culture.

A good example of this is the idea of having a day of rest each week. This idea comes from the Creation story itself (Gen. 2:2-3): God rested after he had made the world and one of the Ten Commandments asks us to keep the Sabbath day holy.

By keeping the Sabbath holy we focus on ‘being’, rather than ‘doing’; Because our culture says we can have anything 24/7 that means that someone has to be there to provide it. Shop workers aren’t free to spend time just being with their families. If we want to do away with the Sabbath rest then why can’t schools be open?

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Time is money. Wrong!

Activity 1: In 4 minutes, create a simple pie chart that shows, roughly, how you spend your time each week: working, recreation, time with family. Which portion is most important?

Key Point Keeping Sunday holy is the best way of protecting ourselves from stress, the love of money and the focus on doing: it re-centres us on appropriate trust, mystery, being and relationship. Family enriches work when we put it first.

Step 3 We started off by bartering for goods. I’ll give you a goat if you give me three chickens. But maybe you didn’t need the goat. Money came in so you could have a token to buy what you needed. If not the goat then maybe 3 sacks of flour from someone else. Money allows us to exchange things of equal value so that we can all get what we need. As well as goods we could buy services for money. You do my ploughing and I will give you the agreed money so that you can buy a new roof.

Activity 2: use downloadable worksheets to play the trading game.

Money is also useful in helping people work together justly so that everyone gets fairly rewarded for their efforts.

Activity 3: use downloadable worksheets to discuss your business venture.

We don’t often think about how money actually works. Adam Smith, the father of economics, saw that money was ‘stored work’ but that the wealth of the nation was its workforce. Money is an amazing invention that serves humanity - SO LONG AS WE REMEMBER THAT IT IS STERILE. If a painter had better paints and brushes, she could possibly paint better - but it is still her that is ‘fertile’ - not the paints. It is the same with money.

Step 4 One reason why we are tempted to see money as more than a tool that allows us to exchange goods and services is that, sometimes work is boring. We all love the sense of achievement when we make something or do something, but especially as you get older you also experience the drudgery of work. When work becomes monotonous it becomes stressful.

When we work for the sake of family and for others, we find strength to overcome the drudgery of work. Work takes on new purpose and meaning when it is done in service of others.

Summary Work is fertile; money is sterile. Through work we are fertile: making a difference each day, slowly, potentially, making the world a better place, and growing ourselves at the same time.The person and family give value to work, and work gives value to money. When we try to change that order we damage the harmony of human life.

Money aids the fertility of work when it helps the fair exchange of goods and helps people to work together justly.

Money helps generosity, it doesn’t replace it.

Suggested Activities 1. Just a minute - produce a summary of the key points of the lesson that you can give as a 1 minute speech to the class.

2. “Money by itself is sterile and work is fertile.” In 100 words evaluate this statement showing you have considered more than one point of view. Write a concluding paragraph drawing together your thoughts.

3. “You cannot serve both God and money.” Being a ‘rich’ Christian in an age of hunger would be a contradiction. Debate.

4. “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:24 (NIV) A stark warning from Jesus but what do you think lies behind this message? Discuss or write a reflection.

5. Above the entrance to the World War II Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz was a famous inscription which translates, ‘Work sets you free’. Are we as human beings meant to work so we can live or live so we can work?

Discuss.

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9j

The Just Price

Learning Objectives To describe what is meant by ‘The Just Price’.

To explain why money should be used fairly in the exchange of goods.

To highlight the potential hidden dangers of advertising.

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Oscar Wilde.

Fairtrade coffee Watch 9j podcast provided - available in powerpoint or on website. (This has been provided due to these last three Y9 modules covering more specialist materials.)

Step 1 Adam Smith, the Scottish economist, said there were two prices for everything: the actual value of the item for sale and the amount that it could be sold for.

So, a price that the item is actually worth and a selling price. So much justice in our world depends on which one of these two ideas people decide is more important. It is hard to put an absolute value on anything. The best we can do is try and work out the relative value of an item compared to something else. In Roman times work clearly gave value to money. At around the time of Jesus, a day’s unskilled labour (or that of a soldier) was paid with one denarius. From this, other things were given a relative value.

Step 2 Continuing from Roman law, the Church encouraged ‘The Just Price’ in Europe. ‘Just’ means fair. Value is added to things by human work, making things more useful. For example, the coffee beans grown by the farmer need to be harvested and roasted, then ground and then infused with hot water and served in a cup. The value of the cup of coffee at the end is not added to by money, but by the people involved in the process of making it. It is work that is fertile; money by itself is sterile.

The Just Price: Until the 16th century the value of goods was discerned from the value of what the thing was made from, plus the value of the work gone into it, to make it more useful. Let’s say £10 worth of silver was mined (including paying the miner etc.), and £5 worth of labour went into turning that into a plate. Then the plate should be sold for £15. If a particular silversmith was skilled, or for any other reason the plate was better than average, it might be sold for more. However, the important thing is that it was sold for its value: ‘The Just Price.’

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A Roman coin

Since the 16th Century, we have increasingly become a money-led society.

Nowadays, we tend to think that if you can sell the plate for £15 it is worth £15; if you can sell it for £30 it is worth £30. It sounds harmless, but it changes everything. Now money is giving value to things, and to work, and very quickly it gives value to persons. How easy is it for people to link respect with the amount of money they get? Is a lawyer or an accountant really more important than a teacher or nurse? A culture that has decided money is fertile will pay people who make money, more; a culture that thinks persons are most important will pay people who help persons to grow, more.

“Let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like a never ending stream.”

The Prophet Amos.

Step 3 To help us realise why trying to sell something for as much as I can get is wrong, we have to understand justice. Justice means being fair to the other person. It isn’t simply getting them to agree to what I want, such as the asking price. Justice is a fixed truth that doesn’t change, no matter what the other person agrees to.

Step 4 Since our culture broke away from the idea of ‘the just price’ around four hundred years ago, many more businesses are now set up with one aim: to make money.

You might think there’s nothing wrong in that. However, when money has a higher value than people, it damages relationship and community. Think about TV adverts – are they always honest? Are they suggesting you buy something you need - or trying to convince you that you need their product to be happy? Is this education or manipulation? Is the advert interested in a fair exchange or maximum profit?

Activity 1: Watch this video up to 1:57 and then discuss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOeuHJhj-gc

Suggested Activities 1. How much is a silver plate worth?

How much does a coffee in a local café cost? How much is a similar coffee at the Ritz Hotel in London?

A bit more! Why? Think of as many reasons as you can why the same thing can vary so much in price.

What affects the market value of an item?

2. Think of three very effective TV adverts that make you want to buy the product being advertised. Why are these adverts so effective?

3. Draw a flow chart explaining the 5 main points of this module.

Summary We can’t do a whole course in economics in 45 minutes, but the fundamental building block of trade is simple. Work gives value to things, and money is used to exchange things more easily. Once we trade so as to make more than the thing is worth, we are putting money before people - with disastrous results for society, and for our greed.

This will, in turn, affect our whole attitude to relationship and justice.

4. Rank in order of most to least important, what you hope for in your future work: chance to work in a team; a chance to travel; working outdoors; working independently; money; helping others; weekends free; using your gifts and talents; making a real difference. What was top of your list? Why? Where did money rank in your list?

5. “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” 1 Timothy. 6:10.

Write a short evaluation of this statement, giving a number of arguments and concluding with your own opinion.

Are TV adverts honest?

A spice market, Aleppo, Syria.

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Credit Creation and Debt

Learning Objective To understand why ‘creating money’ is unfair and leads to debt dominating the economy.

To see how such debt leads to us misusing the environment, and each other.

“Be indebted to no one, except to one another in love.”

Romans 13:8.

Watch 9k podcast provided - available in powerpoint or on website. (This has been provided due to these last three Y9 modules covering more specialist materials.)

Step 1 Society works better when we work together. Interdependence brings out the best in us. Since the Industrial Revolution money is increasingly seen as having power and work as having less. Money is seen as fertile.

Activity 1: Why might it be good if big companies were to allow ordinary workers onto their management boards? Discuss.

Step 2 How lending actually works: before the 16th century people could borrow money from banks, but only the money the bank had. This had to be the case when money was gold and silver, because the bank had to physically lend these coins. However, as paper money, then cheques, then electronic money were invented, it became easier and easier for the bank to lend money that it didn’t have.

Why might it be good for profits if big companies allow ordinary workers onto their management boards?

To see why that is wrong we need to understand why countries have always aimed to have a fixed amount of money. Money is a measure, and if you keep changing what that measure is, then it is very hard to measure with it! If a metre was different today, from yesterday, suddenly you would be a different height.

You may have heard of ‘inflation’ and of ‘exchange rates’. These are connected with how much your money is worth, in your country and elsewhere. Let’s say our economy is valued at €4,000, and it has £1,000 as the amount of money in circulation, thus every £ is worth €4. If a bank suddenly loans someone £1,000 by simply creating it, then immediately there is £2,000 in circulation and every £ would now be worth only €2. So, the moment before this loan, say you had £50, which was worth €200, but suddenly it is worth only €100. Your money has been stolen. Yet it doesn’t feel like theft. The bank wasn’t intending that. However, none of that changes the fact that your money has been stolen.

This might not be so bad if the loan was quite quickly repaid. But what if it took a long time? What if it was never paid back at all?

Since 1913 and the foundation of the U.S. Federal Reserve, national banks have started to ‘print’ vast amounts of money that won’t ever be paid back. We call it ‘national debt’. Britain’s national debt, in 2020, was estimated at £1.8 trillion, and was increasing at over £5,000 per second! Thats’ £1,800,000,000,000.

Step 3 Again, this is hard to take in, but since money only measures value you cannot just create money out of nowhere, because you are just pretending to create value. Two things we experience reveal evidence of the damage being done. Firstly, debt is rising.

It is rising ever increasingly. There are governments, banks, businesses and people.

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Debit cards have largely replaced cash.

Key Point These debt figures are crazy, and grasping it all is difficult, but the important thing is to realise that money is there for fair exchange and to help people to work together.

When it is misused to ‘create’ value, people suffer. Accepting the ‘rules’ of credit creation changes how we treat each other in other ways, too.

Debt is rising

Suggested Activities

One of the uses of money is to help people co-operate and work together but we have created a system, based on believing money is fertile, that increases debt.

Think about it for a moment. Does that sound like a fertile way to live?

People are finding it impossible to buy a house and are permanently in debt. Credit card debt is vast. Student debt is too. In the UK our national debt is so big, it is hard to imagine the figures. In 2008, when suddenly it was the banks who were in debt, the world went into a credit crunch, because the banks don’t like it when it is they who are in debt. That credit crunch was caused by $16 trillion debt, and was ‘solved’ by creating at least another $19 trillion debt. Logic tells us that eventually this mounting global debt will collapse in on itself.

Activity 2: Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3PCjk7YAo0 The Gold Standard explained in 1 minute.

Secondly, if we are claiming more value than we have, and the only way we can make real value is through the world’s resources and human work, then we are going to feel pressured to increase these, to increase the real value. This is exactly what we see. More resources grabbed from the earth. More people pressured to work, for longer and longer hours, being told to be more and more efficient. Retiring later and later. You may find credit creation hard to understand, but you are affected by it because of the work pressures put on the people you love. And all this because we have put money before persons and work.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It has been going on gradually for 400 years, but specifically since the 1970s, and we have got used to it and assume it’s just the way things work. But in reality it is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Jesus called us to trust in God’s abundant fertility (Mt. 6:25-33), to appreciate how much we already have and rely on the Father’s love for us. When we receive from God we get what we need and the love of the giver; when we take, we get what we thought we wanted.

1. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”. William Shakespeare. Write a short letter to Shakespeare explaining how difficult this is in the modern world.

2. Design a flow chart for today’s session that explains the key points.

3. A famous slogan from the Catholic charity CAFOD is “Aspire not to have more, but to be more”. – Explain what you think this means.

4. “You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt”. Daniel Hannan. Evaluate this quotation in 100 words bringing in what you have learnt in today’s module.

Summary Money measures the relative value of a country’s assets; work gives this value and increases it. Credit creation - banks loaning money they haven’t got - works against this. This is especially true of national banks creating government debt. Our debtled economy is destructive. Instead of this we need to trust in the fertility of God the Father, and of every human person and their ability to work.

Activity 3: Watch and then discuss: Gabor Maté about society and alienation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs39tNLQss8

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A Fertile Heart Receiving & Giving Creative Love

Dear young person, If you don’t know how a car works, you’re not likely to be able to fix it. If you don’t know how crops grow, you’re not likely to be a great farmer. If you don’t understand a mobile phone, you’re not likely to get the most out of it. Understanding what it is to be a human person will help us know how to think and act, and so be happy and fulfilled.

This booklet goes from Y7 to Y9, comprising eleven modules every year. It offers you a vision of what it is to be human, helping you to understand yourself more deeply, and therefore make better, more informed choices. At the heart of being a fertile person is the desire for relationship, the desire to grow, to give life and to help others to grow too. These are complementary: the better we relate, the more we grow; the more we grow, the better we relate.

Y7 deals with important foundations such as knowing we are made in the image of God, being able to think correctly, understanding freedom and tolerance, and person and nature. It then helps us see that to relate well we need to learn appropriate vulnerability, and to apply this to all our relationships. In Y8 we explore the need to choose the spiritual over the physical; truth over being right; and love over my ego-life, in order to truly grow. From this we discover our own beauty and the true beauty of others. In Y9 we learn about our deeper desires for relationship and joy, and about the process of growing in understanding ourselves - as persons, and also as male or female. This helps us to move from confusion to self-understanding. In Y9 we also explore our attitude to money, because this has a big effect on our ability to relate well.

Enjoy the journey of self-discovery!

RRP £9.99 ISBN 978-1-7397628-9-6

9 781739 762896

Version 7 | September 2021