Too many youths said to take values on sex from society, not church

Published: 2008-04-16

SEATTLE (CNS) -- Catholic adolescents may be more oblivious than opposed to the church's teachings on human sexuality because they are formed more by the culture than by the church, according to several educators commenting on a recent federal study reporting the frequency of premarital sex. At least 1 in 4 teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease, according to the report released in March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. April is STD Awareness Month, an annual observance to raise public awareness about the impact of sexually transmitted diseases on the lives of Americans. While cautioning against imputing the same 1 in 4 statistics to young Catholics, Jesuit Father Thomas Rausch said they "take their values from society, the culture in which they are living, and not from the church. It is certainly true that Catholic moral teaching is often dismissed by many young adult Catholics," said Father Rausch, a professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He pointed to studies which indicate young Catholics lag behind evangelicals and Protestants in terms of practice and knowledge of their religion.

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