Sir, Little children of four and five years upwards are being threatened with a sex education programme (RSE) in our primary schools. It is a most unhealthy. dangerous and, I would say, demonic programme. This premature explicit sex information not only disturbs the latency period (that time of childhood often characterised as the years of innocence) but also tends to shatter the emotional and educational development of the child.
Certainly it is at complete variance with the publication of the Pontifical Council for the Family - The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality Guidelines for Education within the Family (Irish Messenger Office, Leeson Street, Dublin; Veritas, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin). This recommends that parents exclude any attempts to violate children's innocence, pointing out that such, attempts compromise the spiritual, moral and emotional development of growing people, who have a right to their innocence. In all this, of course, parents' rights are being seriously usurped.
Dr Gerard Casey, leader of the Christian Solidarity Party, has likewise written an excellent book, Sex Education in the Primary School, highlighting the grave defects in the RSE programme.
Also, Family and Life, 39 Mountjoy Square, Dublin, has produced a leaflet in question-and-answer form on RSE. It is short but very well presented.
RSE is being imposed through the agency of the Department of Education and Health by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) through the activities of its Irish Branch, the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), which since 1969 has been promoting its agenda, which includes compulsory sex education in all schools primary and secondary.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation is the foremost promoter of abortion in the world. Its philosophy is population, control (eugenics), the promotion of hedonism and the suppression of Christian values. Do we want its philosophies and ideologies for our children?
It is important to note that RSF. together with other programmes already in the schools, such as Values Clarification (which means make up your own mind as to what is morally right or wrong).
Life Skills and the Stay Safe programme, all have one thing in common: God and His Cammandments are left out. No moral directives. No right or wrong - and all this against the background of woolly, watered-down and inadequate religious instruction. The Faith has been so weakened in recent times - especially since the catechism was taken out of the schools and replaced with a type of golden syrup theology.
If religious knowledge was properly taught, there would be no need to have any of the above Godless programmes. Chastity and purity, right and wrong, the old Catechism and the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Ten Commandments and the Bible, all need to be taught and made central to the religious knowledge education programme.
There are plans to implement the RSE programme in September. Trainers and facilitators have been seconded to "train" teachers to deliver RSE in schools (and this was done at the expense of children's time). This "training" is designed to coarsen and desensitise the teachers and especially to remove from them the sense of sin, particularly in respect of the sixth and ninth Commandments. The purpose is to remove the inhibitions of the teachers, to make them feel comfortable delivering explicit sexual material and conducting course discussions of intimate matters within the classroom.
Are we going Ia allow the State to dictate to us or are we going to protect our children from these Godless programmes? Those very young people deserve and need our care and vigilance in this area of moral, emotional, mental and spiritual formation. - Yours, etc.,
Nutley Park, Dublin 4.