Most children are not receiving adequate sex education at home or elsewhere in face of a vast exposure to sex in daily life, Father James F. Scherer, executive secretary of Catholic Social Services, says.

“We cannot afford the luxury of a lengthy debate on whether or not our children need sex education,” the priest told the Northwest Deanery of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women. “It is time we do something constructive.”

The priest said, “Many parents are ill-prepared to present the objective, poised attitude to sex which is so important for a child’s mature development. Even interested parents soon reach the limit of their capacity to help their children, and false pride often keeps them from admitting that their knowledge of sex is limited.”

Father Scherer said many parents consider sex education a very touchy and dangerous undertaking and seem to look for some magic key or mysterious solution. “Others regard sex education as primarily verbal, as a question-answer session between child and parents. They feel the child should take the initiative by asking questions.

“Still others are disturbed by the frank, scientific explanation of human sexuality given in the school setting. The fact stands, however, that no matter what one’s interest or opinion is, the real danger lies in leaving youth exposed to only one kind of teaching about sex—the kind they pick up on their own initiative.”

Father Scherer said, “Since all Catholic homes do not function adequately in sex education, I personally feel, and there are many who agree, that the responsibility rests in the family, the Church and the school.

“All must play a vital role in order to achieve the total effect—helping our children to develop into mature, Christian sexual human beings. If any area denies its responsibility or shirks its duty the total effort will never be reached.”

The priest said there are many persons from certain backgrounds who feel sex is evil, that the sexual parts of the body are dirty, and that even physical attraction is a snare of the devil that God just tolerates. “To many of our youth, because of the over-emphasis on the sixth and ninth commandments, sex is identified with sin, with a consequent fear, a guilt and unhappiness.”

“Our teenagers live in a sexualized age surrounded on all sides by the symbol of sex,” Father Scherer said. “Advertising uses sex to sell everything from candy to coffins.

Movies use it as a come-on. Thus the teenager easily gathers the impression that sex is primarily a physical appetite with some emotional overtones.

“Is it any wonder to us that the teenager, caught between the frozen Puritanism of the past and the extreme freedom of the present, develops two codes of morality to regard to sex. He feels the need to parrot the written law and live with his peers according to unwritten law. The tragedy is that in either case he is being denied his birthright to a realistic, total human, Christian understanding of sex in nature and purpose.”