Sex. It’s a topic of permanent and universal interest. It’s something that’s on a lot of people’s minds a lot of the time, especially among people our age. So why write about it? There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said. Besides, there’s only so much words can say on the matter. The rest you have to learn on your own. And that right there is the crux of the matter. If you are Catholic or a product of Catholic schooling, you’re basically left on your own when it comes to sex.
From about kindergarten to fifth grade, you either believe members of the opposite sex have cooties or you had a close friend or two of the opposite sex and thought nothing of it. Then 6th, 7th and 8th grade hit you like a freight train of hormones. You and your classmates start going through a whirlwind of physical, emotional and social changes that will never leave you quite the same. Your childlike innocence is now gone. You’re like Adam and Eve after they ate of the fruit and realized they were naked.
So now you’ve got these hormones pumping through your body, but at least you have plenty of people you can talk to who know what you’re going through, right? Wrong! There’s no chance in hell you can talk to Mom and Dad about it, that would be way too awkward (yet you don’t realize the irony that unless you were adopted, you were a product of your parents having sex). But your teachers will teach you about it, right? After all, that’s their job to teach you valuable life lessons. Sadly, sex education at the middle school level is virtually nonexistent, especially in Catholic Schools. (Note: I’ve never attended a public school in my life, so pardon my ignorance and generalizations). Between 6th and 8th grade, you learn the most about sex on the playground and in the back of the bus. That “one kid” with an older sibling fills you in on all the dirty details. If the only real sex education our Catholic youth are getting is from this amateur Hugh Heffner, then our nation is in serious trouble.
So then you make it to high school. Those awkward middle school years are behind you, but those “teenage” hormones are surging through your body. Some people start dating. Some people start questioning their sexual orientation. It’s a crazy time. And the sex education is slightly better here, but still not great. A lot of the sex education is aimed at morality, and you are encouraged to ponder it and maybe even debate it, to a point. But then they hit you on the head with “Abstinence only! Abstinence only!” until you are blue in the face. Okay, we get it! We understand the moral arguments behind the Catholic Church’s position, but could you actually give us some scientific knowledge about what the hell is going on “down there” during sex and how the hell birth control actually works. All we know is that there is some magical “pill,” but we are clueless as to what it does. We are told only that it is evil.
I am not saying the Catholic Church should change its teachings on sexuality. Rather, I think Catholic educators (and possibly educators elsewhere) need to rethink the way we talk about sex in schools. Catholic schools have become very adept at drilling the catechism into their students, but they have dropped the ball on fostering those critical thinking skills. Critical thinking means thinking about an issue from multiple perspectives, not just the Catholic Church’s (even if that is the True one with a capital T). John Stuart Mill once said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.” While it’s great that you teach us why the pill is evil, you don’t teach us what it actually does that makes it evil. Wait, you mean that some birth control pills actually prevent the conceived egg from implanting in the uterine wall and that’s bad because we believe that life begins at conception? Oh that makes so much more sense. Why didn’t you teach us that in the first place?
If we are serious about being Catholics, then we should take the word “universal” seriously because it is the literal meaning of the word catholic. Are we encouraging our students to think universally or just to recite our own stance on the issue? The Catholic Church should fight against heresies and untruths and things harmful to the faith, but we must also remember why we are fighting against those things in the first place, and what is so bad about them. Nietzsche once said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” I am by no means saying that the Catholic Church has become a monster. But if we are committed to teaching a full and unified truth, it means we have to tell our kids what the hell is out there and why it’s bad, not simply to avoid the bad things. By teaching what birth control is, we are not undermining the abstinence only stance of the Church. We are giving them a context to understand why abstinence is the best solution, and not just scaring them with pictures of STD’s. We should be enlightening them, not frightening them.
So after high school you go to college, and if you thought middle school was full of changes, you are in for a rude awakening. The amount of growth that takes place in 4 years of college is incredible. You grow on so many levels – physical, emotional, social, intellectual, moral, spiritual and last, but not least SEXUAL. College is a time where one discovers and embraces one’s sexual identity. Catholic teens who know next to nothing about sex are thrust into a minefield of booze and boobs. Sex and alcohol dominate the college social scene, which is to be expected given that your body is at a reproductive prime. It feels like you have a million voices shouting at you at once. Physically, you feel the timeless evolutionary need to mate and pass on your genes. Emotionally, you feel the other timeless need to form healthy and fulfilling relationships. You see how this can be complicated when you have people coming into their own sexual identities in an environment where the drink of choice is one that lowers inhibitions and enhances emotional sensitivity? If you are still Catholic at this point, you are probably really confused. You want to know what you should do. If you crack open your catechism, all you see is that it’s a sin to even think dirty thoughts or touch yourself. Well, that’s totally unhelpful! This is the point where one feels totally left alone. By yourself, you have to navigate through a minefield of sex, relationships and alcohol. I say minefield because there are so many bad choices one could make, each resulting in an explosive situation (pardon the pun, I couldn’t resist).
On average, I would say about 5-10% of my peers are the upright, moral type who would never do anything to compromise themselves. Then there’s another 5 -10% who are going to make bad sexual decisions regardless of how they were raised. That leaves an 80-90% in the middle who could go either way, and it’s these people that I’m worried the most about. Because when push comes to shove, when faith and sex are playing king of the hill, something is going to get compromised.
If Catholics are serious about caring for college students, then it’s time we start acting like it. The Catholic Church is big on pastoral roles and ministry of presence. The best thing a confused college student needs is some kind of counselor or maybe even a spiritual director. Because when your body is telling you one thing and your faith isn’t giving you any useful advice, you need someone to talk to you, preferably someone who knows what you are going through.
The only way I successfully navigated the minefield of college with my faith and sexuality intact was with lots of prayer and the help of some truly amazing friends. I was lucky/blessed enough to have friends with whom I could talk frequently about love and sex. One such friend even felt comfortable enough to confide in me when he/she had made a regrettable hook-up under the influence of alcohol. He/she told me that they could not tell their other friends about this because they were too “conservative Catholics” and would judge him/her. This was probably one of the worst things someone could say about a Catholic. Judging people and condemning people for their sexual sins is the last thing we should be doing. Jesus even tells us so directly in the Bible (Luke 6:37-42). As Catholics, we are supposed to be like Christ who ate and drank with tax collectors and prostitutes. We are supposed to welcome people with open arms and embrace them no matter what decisions they decide to make sexually.
I am sick of the judging/condemning. I am sick of the lack of good sex education in Catholic schools at any grade level. I am sick of people who are too squeamish to talk about it. I am sick of people leaving young people to fend for themselves as they struggle how to use one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, sex. Yes, I went there.
It is time we start seeing Christ in one another and time we start being Christ for one another.
Your thoughts?
-Conor Rogers
From about kindergarten to fifth grade, you either believe members of the opposite sex have cooties or you had a close friend or two of the opposite sex and thought nothing of it. Then 6th, 7th and 8th grade hit you like a freight train of hormones. You and your classmates start going through a whirlwind of physical, emotional and social changes that will never leave you quite the same. Your childlike innocence is now gone. You’re like Adam and Eve after they ate of the fruit and realized they were naked.
So now you’ve got these hormones pumping through your body, but at least you have plenty of people you can talk to who know what you’re going through, right? Wrong! There’s no chance in hell you can talk to Mom and Dad about it, that would be way too awkward (yet you don’t realize the irony that unless you were adopted, you were a product of your parents having sex). But your teachers will teach you about it, right? After all, that’s their job to teach you valuable life lessons. Sadly, sex education at the middle school level is virtually nonexistent, especially in Catholic Schools. (Note: I’ve never attended a public school in my life, so pardon my ignorance and generalizations). Between 6th and 8th grade, you learn the most about sex on the playground and in the back of the bus. That “one kid” with an older sibling fills you in on all the dirty details. If the only real sex education our Catholic youth are getting is from this amateur Hugh Heffner, then our nation is in serious trouble.
So then you make it to high school. Those awkward middle school years are behind you, but those “teenage” hormones are surging through your body. Some people start dating. Some people start questioning their sexual orientation. It’s a crazy time. And the sex education is slightly better here, but still not great. A lot of the sex education is aimed at morality, and you are encouraged to ponder it and maybe even debate it, to a point. But then they hit you on the head with “Abstinence only! Abstinence only!” until you are blue in the face. Okay, we get it! We understand the moral arguments behind the Catholic Church’s position, but could you actually give us some scientific knowledge about what the hell is going on “down there” during sex and how the hell birth control actually works. All we know is that there is some magical “pill,” but we are clueless as to what it does. We are told only that it is evil.
I am not saying the Catholic Church should change its teachings on sexuality. Rather, I think Catholic educators (and possibly educators elsewhere) need to rethink the way we talk about sex in schools. Catholic schools have become very adept at drilling the catechism into their students, but they have dropped the ball on fostering those critical thinking skills. Critical thinking means thinking about an issue from multiple perspectives, not just the Catholic Church’s (even if that is the True one with a capital T). John Stuart Mill once said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.” While it’s great that you teach us why the pill is evil, you don’t teach us what it actually does that makes it evil. Wait, you mean that some birth control pills actually prevent the conceived egg from implanting in the uterine wall and that’s bad because we believe that life begins at conception? Oh that makes so much more sense. Why didn’t you teach us that in the first place?
If we are serious about being Catholics, then we should take the word “universal” seriously because it is the literal meaning of the word catholic. Are we encouraging our students to think universally or just to recite our own stance on the issue? The Catholic Church should fight against heresies and untruths and things harmful to the faith, but we must also remember why we are fighting against those things in the first place, and what is so bad about them. Nietzsche once said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” I am by no means saying that the Catholic Church has become a monster. But if we are committed to teaching a full and unified truth, it means we have to tell our kids what the hell is out there and why it’s bad, not simply to avoid the bad things. By teaching what birth control is, we are not undermining the abstinence only stance of the Church. We are giving them a context to understand why abstinence is the best solution, and not just scaring them with pictures of STD’s. We should be enlightening them, not frightening them.
So after high school you go to college, and if you thought middle school was full of changes, you are in for a rude awakening. The amount of growth that takes place in 4 years of college is incredible. You grow on so many levels – physical, emotional, social, intellectual, moral, spiritual and last, but not least SEXUAL. College is a time where one discovers and embraces one’s sexual identity. Catholic teens who know next to nothing about sex are thrust into a minefield of booze and boobs. Sex and alcohol dominate the college social scene, which is to be expected given that your body is at a reproductive prime. It feels like you have a million voices shouting at you at once. Physically, you feel the timeless evolutionary need to mate and pass on your genes. Emotionally, you feel the other timeless need to form healthy and fulfilling relationships. You see how this can be complicated when you have people coming into their own sexual identities in an environment where the drink of choice is one that lowers inhibitions and enhances emotional sensitivity? If you are still Catholic at this point, you are probably really confused. You want to know what you should do. If you crack open your catechism, all you see is that it’s a sin to even think dirty thoughts or touch yourself. Well, that’s totally unhelpful! This is the point where one feels totally left alone. By yourself, you have to navigate through a minefield of sex, relationships and alcohol. I say minefield because there are so many bad choices one could make, each resulting in an explosive situation (pardon the pun, I couldn’t resist).
On average, I would say about 5-10% of my peers are the upright, moral type who would never do anything to compromise themselves. Then there’s another 5 -10% who are going to make bad sexual decisions regardless of how they were raised. That leaves an 80-90% in the middle who could go either way, and it’s these people that I’m worried the most about. Because when push comes to shove, when faith and sex are playing king of the hill, something is going to get compromised.
If Catholics are serious about caring for college students, then it’s time we start acting like it. The Catholic Church is big on pastoral roles and ministry of presence. The best thing a confused college student needs is some kind of counselor or maybe even a spiritual director. Because when your body is telling you one thing and your faith isn’t giving you any useful advice, you need someone to talk to you, preferably someone who knows what you are going through.
The only way I successfully navigated the minefield of college with my faith and sexuality intact was with lots of prayer and the help of some truly amazing friends. I was lucky/blessed enough to have friends with whom I could talk frequently about love and sex. One such friend even felt comfortable enough to confide in me when he/she had made a regrettable hook-up under the influence of alcohol. He/she told me that they could not tell their other friends about this because they were too “conservative Catholics” and would judge him/her. This was probably one of the worst things someone could say about a Catholic. Judging people and condemning people for their sexual sins is the last thing we should be doing. Jesus even tells us so directly in the Bible (Luke 6:37-42). As Catholics, we are supposed to be like Christ who ate and drank with tax collectors and prostitutes. We are supposed to welcome people with open arms and embrace them no matter what decisions they decide to make sexually.
I am sick of the judging/condemning. I am sick of the lack of good sex education in Catholic schools at any grade level. I am sick of people who are too squeamish to talk about it. I am sick of people leaving young people to fend for themselves as they struggle how to use one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, sex. Yes, I went there.
It is time we start seeing Christ in one another and time we start being Christ for one another.
Your thoughts?
-Conor Rogers
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