Procinctu

Francis vs. Pope Pius XI: The Catholic Position on Sex Education

  • Posted July 12, 2019

from Novus Ordo Watch

by Francis del Sarto

“More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.”
–Our Lady to the children at Fatima on July 13, 1917

“The Least Serious Sins are the Sins of the Flesh.”
–“Pope” Francis to an agnostic French sociologist, 2017 (source)

Ever wonder how pretend-pope Francis wakes up in the morning? It could be that he has his clock radio blast the tango to get him going on the desired chaotic trajectory, after which he rises and consults his day planner to see what part of the Magisterium he’s scheduled to contradict that day. On very rare occasions, he will come across a listing marked “Double Down Day”, when he gets to set aside his vaunted (ahem) humility and take aim at a pair of Church teachings in one fell swoop.

Such an opportunity for double-down lunacy occurred January 28, 2018, during an on-board discussion he had with reporters as he returned to Rome on Airhead One at the conclusion of World Youth Day in Panama City. A previous article on this web site had already taken apart the heretical comments he made then concerning one of the dire consequences resulting from abortion:

In the same stand-up routine — er, in-flight press conference — the Oracle of the Pampas had another such “pearl of wisdom”, this time on the need for sex education. The exchange went as follows:

Q: Many girls in Central America get pregnant too early. The Church’s detractors say it’s the Church’s responsibility because it’s opposed to sexual education. What is your opinion on sexual education?

A: Sexual education must be given in school; sex is a gift of God, it’s not a monster; it’s a gift of God to love. That some then use it to earn money or to exploit is another problem. But it’s necessary to give an objective sexual education, without ideological colonization. If you begin to give a sexual education full of ideological colonization, you destroy the person.

However, sex must be educated as a gift of God. To educate in the sense of having the best of people emerge and to accompany them along the way. The problem is the system: the teachers and textbooks must be chosen for this task. I’ve seen some rather dirty books. There are things that make one mature and things that do harm. I don’t know if they are working on this in Panama; I don’t go into politics. But it’s necessary to have sexual education. The ideal is to begin at home. It’s not always possible because there are so many varied situations in families. And, therefore, the school supplies this, because otherwise there will be a void, which will then be filled by any ideology.

(Source: “Holy Father’s In-flight Discussion with Reporters (Full Text)”, Zenit, Jan. 29, 2018; underlining added.)

The reporter’s question seems as though it may have been scripted, giving Francis an opportunity to respond to the charge that “the Church” is to blame for girls getting pregnant before they should in Panama, “because it’s opposed to sexual education”. He gives the sort of reply one expects from a Modernist, couching part of it in somewhat Catholic-sounding terms like “sex is a gift from God”, but also asserting, in direct repudiation of numerous authentic Church pronouncements, that “sexual education must be given in school”. His justification? After acknowledging that instruction in the home is “ideal”, it is “not always possible because there are so many varied situations in families”. And, as if to assuage any concerns about what will be taught, he emphasizes that he wants “objective sex education, without ideological colonization [sic]”.

Yet if some traditionally-minded souls are somewhat relieved at the qualifier objective, then they really don’t fully appreciate the level of devious mischief Jorge Bergoglio is capable of making out of one little word. For them it means that there won’t be any special interest group taking the lessons into places that impressionable young ears should not hear; for Francis, on the other hand, it has an altogether different meaning, as will be seen shortly.

“Pope” Francis can’t seem to keep Bergoglian dialectics out of any discussion, no matter the subject. Does the term “ideological colonization” have a certain Marxist ring to it? Well, it should, because like much of Francis’ rhetoric, that’s where it finds its roots. Among his many firsts, Bergoglio is the first of the Novus Ordo “popes” to use the term (no true Pope ever used it either, for that matter; but then, none of them were leftist Argentinians either).

His use of the term “ideological colonization” in regard to sex education is only the most recent time he’s invoked it, but don’t let that fool you — it’s a pet phrase of his, a go-to deprecation for whatever irks his Modernist sensibility. According to a Crux article from November 2017, he used the buzzword in the course of a homily. The reporter sought to give it a bit more context:

Francis has used the term “ideological colonization” to describe what he sees as a form of oppression of developing societies by affluent ones, especially the West, through imposing an alien worldview or set of values on poorer societies, often by making adoption of those values a condition of humanitarian or development aid.

(Inés San Martín, “Pope Francis: Ideological colonization a ‘blasphemy against God’”, Crux, Nov. 21, 2017)

If that sounds like so much quasi-Marxist claptrap, it’s because that’s precisely what it is. In its promotion of a book on Francis’ theology, the publishing arm of the radical Maryknoll Order, Orbis Books, notes that

he has drawn not only from the social teaching of the Latin American Church, but also in a particular way from a school of the­ology that arose in Argentina called “Theology of the People.” A type of liberation theology, it emphasizes respect for the culture and popular religious expressions of the poor.

(Publisher’s description of Pope Francis and the Theology of the People by Rafael Luciani)

When “Theology of the People” is mentioned, one should think of the word “People” in the sense it is used by so many Communist countries past and present (as in: People’s Republic of China, Hungarian People’s Republic, etc.), and other similar instances, such as the publication of the Communist Party USA, People’s World (they’re fans of Bergoglio, by the way), ex-Beatle and leftist John Lennon’s song “Power to the People”, or the satirical conservative site, The People’s Cube. In all of these cases, the term signifies the lower socio-economic class — it’s always the people because leftists insist on emphasizing the collective to the detriment of individual worth.

Nearly forgotten due to an attempted Vatican cover-up by the scrubbing of a web page, the recognize-and-resist publication Tradition in Action is to be commended for exposing how Francis celebrated the 60th anniversary of the bloody, anti-Catholic Cuban revolution by welcoming a circus troupe from that island tyranny.

Indeed, the career of the “hammer-and-sickle crucifix pope” has been so consistently to the far left that it’s no wonder famed Vatican reporter Sandro Magister could write a column credibly titled “The Communists the Pope Likes. And Vice-versa”.

In any case, the question may now be asked, what possible relevance could Francis’ mention of “ideological colonization” have in the context of his sex-ed remarks? The Crux article explains:

Francis has a long record of denouncing ideological colonization, especially one form he believes it often takes, which is the imposition of “gender theory.”

“A great enemy of marriage today is the theory of gender,” Francis said in Georgia in Oct. 2016.

“Today, there is a global war trying to destroy marriage… they don’t destroy it with weapons, but with ideas. It’s certain ideological ways of thinking that are destroying it…we have to defend ourselves from ideological colonization,” he said.

(Inés San Martín, “Pope Francis: Ideological colonization a ‘blasphemy against God’”, Crux, Nov. 21, 2017)

Further on in these 2016 comments, Bergoglio had alluded to “that wickedness shown today, by indoctrinating people with the gender theory”, citing this example:

A French father told me that he was chatting with his children at table once and asked his 10-year-old son: ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘A girl!’ the boy said. The father realised that school text books were teaching the gender and this goes against what is natural. For a person to have this inclination, or this option or those who change sex, is one thing. It is quite another to teach according to this line at school, in order to change people’s mentality. This is what I call “ideological colonisations”.

(Andrea Tornielli, “This is how, I, as Pope, welcome homosexual people and transsexuals”, Vatican Insider, Oct. 3, 2016)

But doesn’t Francis seem to be confused here? After all, if there is nothing wrong with a person having such an “inclination”, of what harm is there to acknowledge this in school as part of a broad gender “spectrum”?

Indeed, he himself brings this up in the next breath when he speaks of how he invited Diego Neria Lejárraga, a Spanish woman “identifying” as a man, and her female “fiancee”, to the Vatican, and endorsed their unnatural relationship. So, still more confusion. A photo shows Bergoglio posing with the “couple”. One wonders how Novus Ordo parents explained to their children how the “no gender theory in school pope” is giving free positive publicity to the transgender movement! Of course, as is so often the case, this was not so much Bergoglio’s personal confusion as it was him fomenting it.

Novus Ordo Watch, in an article from that time entitled “Francis on Transgenders: Case-by-Case Discernment Needed!”, addressed his hypocrisy in this way:

So, in short, the apostate pretend-pope gave his standard one-size-fits-all answer that says nothing concrete and leaves everything up in the air, just like in his infamous exhortation Amoris Laetitia. As always, he wants to have it both ways and remains vague and ambiguous so that each side — conservative or liberal — can pick whatever it prefers. On the one hand, he said “sin is sin” and we must accompany with “truth” — but then he also said we need to be “open” and use “mercy” and “accompany”, “discern”, and “integrate” because “this is what Jesus would do today”. You know, like our Blessed Lord did when He sensitively told the Samaritan adulteress at the well: “…he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband” (Jn 4:18). That kind of accompaniment?

Francis can verbally and theoretically reject transgenderism as being “against what is natural” all he wants; in actual practice he sings a different tune, and he admitted as much. Several times he referred to the Spanish girl as “male” simply because she “felt like a boy” and later, as an adult, had herself surgically mutilated. But as a biological female, how would she possibly know what it feels like to be a male, anyway? Still, Francis accepts her as male and thus in practice swallows the entire gender theory he just verbally denounced, hook, line, and sinker. Whatever he may say, the fact is that he accepts genderism; he accepts the female as a male simply because she “feels” that way. What is even worse, Francis also accepts that this woman-pretending-to-be-a-man can enter a marriage with a woman! This is beyond sickening!

But should anyone be surprised? This is a “Pope”, after all, who also believes in a transgender god, as it were, who is both father and mother. Remember?

(“Francis on Transgenders: Case-by-Case Discernment Needed!”, Novus Ordo Wire, Oct. 2, 2016)

The same “Pope” Francis warns that “there is a global war trying to destroy marriage”, but again and again he shows himself to be an ideological colonialist who wages war against matrimony and traditional sexual morality by:

This is what must be considered at the forefront of his promotion of sex-ed. If you’re interested in understanding his spin on “objective sex education” (read: virtue-free, Bergolian XXX sex education), look no further than the July 29, 2016 LifeSiteNews article, “Vatican sex ed ‘surrenders’ to sexual revolution: Life and family leaders react”. Columnist Pete Baklinski opens by reporting:

Three international life-and-family leaders who have defended Catholic teaching on marriage, sexuality, and life for decades have called the Vatican’s newly released sex-ed program for teens “thoroughly immoral,” “entirely inappropriate,” and “quite tragic.”

“I find it monstrous that an official arm of the Church would not only create a sexual education program for teens but one that bypasses parents as the primary educator of their children,” said Dr. Thomas Ward, Founder and President of the National Association of Catholic Families as well as a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

The program, titled “The Meeting Point: Course of Affective Sexual Education for Young People,” was released last week by the Pontifical Council for the Family to be presented this week to young people at World Youth Day in Poland.

(Pete Baklinski, “Vatican sex ed ‘surrenders’ to sexual revolution: Life and family leaders react”, Life Site, July 29, 2016; underlining added.)

In a separate piece on the Vatican’s sex-ed, Mr. Baklinski notes that “sexual sins are not mentioned at all [and] immoral videos are used as springboards for discussion.” And among his bullet points (from a much, much longer list) we read:

  • Handing the sexual formation of children over to educators while leaving parents out of the equation.
  • Failing to name and condemn sexual behaviors, such as fornication, prostitution, adultery, contracepted-sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation, as objectively sinful actions that destroy charity in the heart and turn one away from God.
  • Failing to warn youths about the possibility of eternal separation from God (damnation) for committing grave sexual sins. Hell is not mentioned once.
  • Failing to distinguish between mortal and venial sin.
  • Failing to speak about the 6th and 9th commandment, or any other commandment.
  • Failing to teach about the sacrament of confession as a way of restoring relationship with God after committing grave sin.
  • Not mentioning a healthy sense of shame when it comes to the body and sexuality.
  • Teaching boys and girls together in the same class.

(Pete Baklinski, “At World Youth Day, Vatican releases teen sex-ed program that leaves out parents and mortal sin”, Life Site, July 27, 2016. Further indication of the very naturalistic orientation of the Vatican’s program is evident from a link near the beginning of the article to a slideshow of course offerings that comes with a viewer advisory that reads “Caution: Sexually explicit images.” Novus Ordo Watch reported on the outrage here.)

So, it turns out that the detractors mentioned in the question to Bergoglio were way behind the curve in suggesting that the Novus Ordo religion was against sex education, as it had already been in place and sowing its poisonous seeds for years. Now, if those detractors were somehow confusing the Vatican II Sect for the Catholic Church, then they would be right in thinking there is opposition to sex education, as it was explicitly condemned numerous times by the true Church.

Now might be as good a time as any to contrast what the American hierarchy 12 years before the start of Vatican II and three years after its conclusion were thinking about sex education. If you want a prime example of the hermeneutic of discontinuity, look no further! In an article entitled “Amoris Laetitia and ‘Sex Education’”, author and researcher Randy Engel observes:

On Nov 17, 1950, the National Catholic Welfare Council issued a formal statement titled “The Child: Citizens of Two Worlds” in the name of ALL the American bishops in which the hierarchy reminded parents of their special competence and duty in regard to the provision of sex instruction to their children. The paragraph ended with the solemn warning, “We protest in the strongest possible terms against the introduction of sex instruction into the schools.”

Take note of the date. It’s the last time you will see the American bishops’ collective support of Divini Illius Magistri. Eighteen years later, in their Pastoral, Human Life In Our Day, the American bishops made sex instruction “a grave obligation” and called for “systematic” provisions for classroom sex instruction in the diocesan curriculum due to “the new circumstances of modern culture and communications.” In fact, the only real change was the disintegration and collapse of the collective hierarchial spine.

(Randy Engel, “Amoris Laetitia and ‘Sex Education’”, AKA Catholic, Apr. 29, 2016; formatting given.)

It’s great that she sheds light on this pre-Vatican II/post-Vatican II disconnect but regrettable that she didn’t follow up on her last statement. Yes, there’s been a “disintegration and collapse of the collective hierarchical spine”, but why? That’s the big question, but it didn’t occur by accident, nor were they coerced due to societal changes. This Dr.-Jekyll-to-Mr.-Hyde transformation took place because they imbibed deeply of the toxic, vaporous potion of Modernism concocted at Roncalli-Montini Laboratories (“new circumstances of modern culture and communications”, as if fundamental human nature could be radically altered), and served in tall flasks and test tubes at the mad scientists’ conference known as the Second Vatican Council.

As the Novus Ordo is wont to be, things would soon go from bad to worse. One may reasonably ask the question: How could nominally Catholic teachers ever have been persuaded to turn away from sound teaching to include curricula so vile and impure as to lead countless pupils to embrace sexual promiscuity, even to the point of becoming sodomites, who in some cases became “clerical” sex abusers? To help answer this question, we turn to a 2002 World Net Daily article entitled “Catholics Learning Sex from Kinsey’s Disciples”. There, columnist Art Moore reports:

The U.S. Catholic bishops’ latest proposal to create “safe environments” for children through an “Office of Child and Youth Protection” offers little comfort to some members who closely monitor the Church’s gatekeepers.

For lay activists who have documented corruption in the church hierarchy over the past several decades, it comes as no surprise that the radical, anything-goes philosophy of famed “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey, a reputed pedophile, has triumphed over traditional teaching in Catholic institutions across the U.S., creating a flourishing environment for priests who abuse teens and children.

“It’s like fighting cancer with a topical medication,” said Stephen Brady, president of the lay group Roman Catholic Faithful. “They are not addressing the problem – but they can’t because many of these bishops are compromised and waiting to be exposed [for abuse] themselves.”

The influence of the “father of the sexual revolution” on the Church can be easily illustrated in a course called “Sexual Attitude Restructuring,” which urges participants to rethink “restricting attitudes” acquired in their religious upbringing and adopt a lifestyle of free sexual expression.

The course is a staple of an institute started nearly 30 years ago by Kinsey disciples that directly or indirectly influences nearly every sex education and therapy program in the country. The San Francisco-based Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, or IASHS, requires its students to complete the SAR, where participants have been known to strip down and interact sexually with each other while surrounded by multiple screens that display hard-core pornographic films.

In her book, “Kinsey, Crimes and Consequences,” Judith Reisman, a noted researcher of Kinsey’s legacy, documents the IASHS leaders’ characterization of the course contents as the “f—orama.”

The SAR and its X-rated theater – perhaps missing only the in-class “lab work” – was offered to parishioners for 10 years by the Milwaukee Archdiocese under Rembert G. Weakland, who recently took early retirement after admitting to a $450,000 payment by the archdiocese that settled a complaint by a young man with whom he had an “inappropriate” relationship.

Lay activists, including Roman Catholic Faithful, have documented Weakland’s legacy of amoral values and homosexuality in diocesan schools and in pastoral and lay training.

Activist Thomas Phillips says in the preface to a dossier he collected on the archdiocese: “It is within this climate of lax sexual mores set by Rembert Weakland that proclivities toward sexual abuse have grown and festered, until giving rise to an explosion of pedophilia cases, criminal convictions and lawsuits.”

That was written nearly 10 years ago when seven priests had been accused of abuse. Since then, more cases have arisen, leading up to the present media focus on a crisis that afflicts not only Milwaukee, but the entire U.S. Church.

Brady states what is obvious to fellow Catholics who have connected the dots between the kind of environment created by Weakland and the current sex scandal.

“When you break down sexual barriers and open people to not being sensitive or ashamed, then you start to make them vulnerable to sin,” he told WorldNetDaily.

(Art Moore, “Catholics Learning Sex from Kinsey’s Disciples”, World Net Daily, June 12, 2002)

It was Kinsey who did the most to open the Pandora’s Box known as the “sexual revolution” that has plagued American society and other parts of the world for over 70 years, since his 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. This and its companion volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), were pivotal in leading to the weakening or outright abandonment of traditional morality concerning the sexual act in favor of a naturalistic, statistics-driven, virtue-free conception.

Indeed, the late Hugh Hefner, founder of the pornographic Playboy, a magazine that introduced sexual hedonism to a mass audience, was “inspired” by Kinsey, even stating in an editorial from the inaugural issue that “we believe… we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than the one taken care of by the Kinsey report.”

But there were even darker dimensions to Kinsey’s pseudo-scientific “research”: He utilized the testimony of inmates incarcerated for sex crimes, and he sanctioned and concealed the systematic abuse of children — even infants. By using this “data” and other highly objectionable “scientific findings”,

…Kinsey has created a “field” that advocates for normalization of sex between adults and children, including infants and youths as well as sex with animals. Indeed, Kinsey himself, viewed morality based standards of “normal” and “abnormal” as non-pragmatic, unrealistic and unenforceable. Unfortunately, such a perspective has become the seed of a social contagion that has infected the law, medicine, education, the media as well as religious and cultural institutions worldwide.

(Judith A. Reisman and Mary E. McAlister, “ECOSOC, the Kinsey Institute and Child Sexual Abuse”, International Center on Law, Life, Faith and Family)

And there was also Kinsey’s involvement with the occult, which ties in with the child abuse. In 1955, eight years after the death of the notorious Satanist Aleister Crowley, Kinsey journeyed to Sicily to visit the ruins of Crowley’s so-called Abbey of Thelema, where he met filmmaker Kenneth Anger, a fellow devotee of Crowley, co-founder of the Church of Satan, and producer of movies with explicitly sinister titles such as Lucifer Rising and Invocation of My Demon Brother.

The two were drawn to the site based on its reputation as a center for “sex magick” (as spelled by Crowley to distinguish it from stage illusions). Rumors had it that the children who lived there witnessed — and perhaps participated in — such rituals. Other bizarre stories involved such incidences as when a follower, upon Crowley’s orders, drank cat blood and died. Benito Mussolini forced the cult out of Italy in 1923.

The rumors likely have more than a grain of truth, for in 2011 four members of a Welsh sex magick cult based on Crowley’s Book of the Law (a demonically-dictated tome that solemnly declares the advent of the “Æon of Horus”, an age that would signal the end of Christianity) were convicted of various crimes, including dozens of counts of perverted acts with children.

With such a background of Kinsey, the thought that his warped thinking is echoed in a “Sexual Attitude Restructuring” course, which urges participants to rethink “restricting attitudes” concerning sex, is beyond disturbing. Of course, in order for anti-Christian propaganda to have entered the doors of once-Catholic institutions, it required someone with enough power to open the doors for them in a welcoming manner.

That man was “Pope Saint” Paul VI, who at Vatican II pushed for sex education in the declaration on “Christian” education, Gravissimum Educationis, the first “magisterial” document to go against the previous teaching of the Church on the subject. So important is that declaration to the Novus Ordo revolution that Francis felt obliged to cite it in his infernal document Amoris Laetitia, which itself takes the revolution to a whole new level:

The Second Vatican Council spoke of the need for “a positive and prudent sex education” to be imparted to children and adolescents “as they grow older”, with “due weight being given to the advances in the psychological, pedogogical and didactic sciences”. [Vatican II, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis, n. 1]

(Antipope Francis, Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, n. 280)

In the subsequent paragraph of Amoris Laetitia, Francis attempts to allay concerns by speaking about modesty and the need for age-appropriate material in such curricula, but the truth can be seen by examining the bullet points above to see that neither of these are in reality of particularly great importance to him — it’s just another example of him playacting as a Catholic. What follows will show how vast the divide is between authentic Catholic thought concerning the sexual instruction of youth and what is being falsely presented as Catholic in the Novus Ordo religion.

As a general principle, even before the evil of sex-ed was proposed in recent times, The Roman Catechism (aka Catechism of the Council of Trent, a work written primarily for parish priests) gave a recommendation on how the Sixth Commandment should be taught:

In the explanation of this Commandment, however, the pastor has need of great caution and prudence, and should treat with great delicacy a subject which requires brevity rather than copiousness of exposition. For it is to be feared that if he explained in too great detail or at length the ways in which this Commandment is violated, he might unintentionally speak of subjects which, instead of extinguishing, usually serve rather to inflame corrupt passion.

(Catechism of the Council of Trent, trans. by John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan [New York, NY: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1923], p. 431)

So, the mind of the Church is such that this is a topic about which a priest is to be circumspect even with adults.

As for modern sex education, the first condemnation was by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical titled Divini Illius Magistri (On the Christian Education of Youth) issued on December 31, 1929. Here, His Holiness specifically mentions the great importance of a 16th-century work by a teacher of St. Charles Borromeo (principal editor of The Roman Catechism):

54. While treating of education, it is not out of place to show here how an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in more recent times, during the Renaissance, the holy and learned Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, to whom the cause of Christian education is greatly indebted, has set forth most clearly this well established point of Catholic doctrine. He had been a disciple of that wonderful educator of youth, St. Philip Neri; he was teacher and Latin secretary to St. Charles Borromeo, and it was at the latter’s suggestion and under his inspiration that he wrote his splendid treatise on The Christian Education of Youth. …

65. Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.

66. Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.

67. In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by Antoniano cited above, when he says:

Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra* destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice. *[hydra — The etymology is from the Greek, “a many-headed monster.”]

68. False also and harmful to Christian education is the so-called method of “coeducation.” This too, by many of its supporters, is founded upon naturalism and the denial of original sin; but by all, upon a deplorable confusion of ideas that mistakes a leveling promiscuity and equality, for the legitimate association of the sexes. The Creator has ordained and disposed perfect union of the sexes only in matrimony, and, with varying degrees of contact, in the family and in society. Besides there is not in nature itself, which fashions the two quite different in organism, in temperament, in abilities, anything to suggest that there can be or ought to be promiscuity, and much less equality, in the training of the two sexes. These, in keeping with the wonderful designs of the Creator, are destined to complement each other in the family and in society, precisely because of their differences, which therefore ought to be maintained and encouraged during their years of formation, with the necessary distinction and corresponding separation, according to age and circumstances. These principles, with due regard to time and place, must, in accordance with Christian prudence, be applied to all schools, particularly in the most delicate and decisive period of formation, that, namely, of adolescence; and in gymnastic exercises and deportment, special care must be had of Christian modesty in young women and girls, which is so gravely impaired by any kind of exhibition in public.

(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Divini Illius Magistri, nn. 54,65-68)

There is scarcely a precept expounded on here upon which Bergoglio and his “objective” sex education program haven’t made a full-on attack. The very grave danger against the purity of morals, about which Pius XI warns, namely Naturalism, is the demon lurking just beneath the very thin veneer of a Modernist Rome’s pseudo-Catholic curriculum.

But let us continue, for there is much more of relevance from this papacy. The following year, Pope Pius came out with Casti Connubii, his celebrated landmark encyclical on Christian Marriage. Although not directly addressing sex education, it lays out principles that show that those who advocate a naturalistic approach to treating carnal appetites, one that shoves God aside and relies on “natural means”, are “greatly deceived” to believe this way can “establish chastity”:

87. …since man cannot hold in check his passions, unless he first subject himself to God, this must be his primary endeavor, in accordance with the plan divinely ordained. For it is a sacred ordinance that whoever shall have first subjected himself to God will, by the aid of divine grace, be glad to subject to himself his own passions and concupiscence; while he who is a rebel against God, will, to his sorrow, experience within himself the violent rebellion of his worst passions.

…

1o1. They are greatly deceived who … think that they can induce men by the use and discovery of the natural sciences … to curb their natural desires. We do not say this in order to belittle those natural means which are not dishonest; for God is the author of nature as well as of grace, and He has disposed the good things of both orders for the beneficial use of men. But they are mistaken who think that these means are able to establish chastity in the nuptial union, or that they are more effective than supernatural grace.

(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Casti Connubii, nn. 87,101)

However, Bergoglio’s program is even worse in a sense, because, as noted, not only does it ignore “a healthy sense of shame when it comes to the body and sexuality” — something absolutely necessary to keep passions in check –, it also fails to identify and condemn “objectively sinful actions that destroy charity in the heart and turn one away from God”. In other words, it is pure Naturalism.

In 1931, the Holy Office issued this pertinent judgment:

QUESTION: May the method called “sex education” or even “sex initiation” be approved?

ANSWER: No. In the education of youth the method to be followed is that hitherto observed by the Church and the Saints as recommended by His Holiness the Pope in the encyclical dealing with the Christian education of youth promulgated on December 31, 1929. The first place is to be given to the full, sound and continuous instruction in religion of both sexes. Esteem, desire and love of the angelic virtue must be instilled into their minds and hearts. They must be made fully alive to the necessity of constant prayer, and assiduous frequenting of the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist; they must be directed to foster a filial devotion to the Blessed Virgin as Mother of holy purity, to whose protection they must entirely commit themselves. Precautions must be taken to see that they avoid dangerous reading, indecent shows, conversations of the wicked, and all other occasions of sin.

Hence no approbation whatever can be given to the advocacy of the new method even as taken up recently by some Catholic authors and set before the public in printed publications.

(Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, Decree on “Sex Education” and on “Eugenics”, Mar. 21, 1931; in Acta Apostolicae Sedis XXIII [1931], pp. 118-119; underlining added. Translation taken from EWTN.)

Pope Pius XI even made mention in Mit Brennender Sorge (On the Church and the German Reich), his 1937 encyclical to the German hierarchy in light of the ascendancy of the National Socialist ideology, of how compulsory naturalistic education (though not sex-ed, which was not favored by the Nazis) in government schools was gravely violating the rights of parents. Like with Francis’ sex education, the Hitler regime bypassed parents as the primary educators of their children. So, what’s important here to the present-day discussion is that the Pope restated the Church’s perennial position on said parental rights and obligations, declaring:

Parents who are earnest and conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which in school questions fail to respect this freedom of the parents go against natural law, and are immoral. The Church, whose mission it is to preserve and explain the natural law, as it is divine in its origin, cannot but declare that the recent enrollment into schools organized without a semblance of freedom, is the result of unjust pressure, and is a violation of every common right.

(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, n. 31)

It is certainly worth reviewing the words of his successor, Pope Pius XII, whose comments in 1951 directed to French fathers shows how far the Modernists had made inroads in this regard, showing an ill-disguised contempt for anyone so backward as to think Pius XI’s words were still relevant (as if truth needed to change with the times in order to keep up with the advances of psychology, sociology, and other natural sciences):

There is one field in which the work of educating public opinion and correcting it imposes itself with tragic urgency [i.e., classroom sex-ed].…

…Even the principles so wisely illustrated by Our Predecessor Pius XI, in the encyclical Divini Illius Magistri, on sex education and questions connected thereto are set aside — a sad sign of the times! With a smile of compassion: Pius XI, they say, wrote twenty years ago, for his times! Great progress has been made since then!

Fathers of families… Unite… to stop and curtail these movements under whatever name or under whatever patronage they conceal themselves or are patronized.

(Pope Pius XII, Allocution to French Fathers and Families, Sep. 18, 1951; excerpted in Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, eds., Papal Teachings: Education [Boston, MA: Daughters of St. Paul, 1960], nn. 568,572; underlining added.)

And in the same place Pius XII warned about so-called Catholic sex-ed literature in the strongest possible terms:

One is appalled at the intolerable impudence of such literature; and while paganism itself, in the face of the secret of matrimonial intimacy, seemed respectfully to draw the line, We are compelled to witness this mystery violated and its vision – sensual and dramatised – offered as food to the public at large, even to the youth. It is the case really to ask oneself if the dividing line is still sufficiently visible between this initiation, which is said to be Catholic, and the press which with erotic and obscene illustrations purposely and deliberately aims at corruption and shamefully exploits, for vile gain, the lowest instincts of fallen nature.

(Ibid., n. 570; underlining added.)

Here, Pope Pius almost seems to be casting a prophetic eye towards our times to castigate the sexual instruction favored by Bergoglio and his minions.

To further reinforce where the mind of the Church stands on the subject, let’s also take a moment to reflect on the sage wisdom of Pope Leo XIII, who taught in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (1890) the vital importance of parents inculcating virtue in their children — faith, piety, charity and chastity — which is of special importance when the enemies of Christ had redoubled their efforts to attack Him by attacking families through the instruction of little ones in wickedness:

This is a suitable moment for us to exhort especially heads of families to govern their households according to these precepts, and to be solicitous without failing for the right training of their children. The family may be regarded as the cradle of civil society, and it is in great measure within the circle of family life that the destiny of the States is fostered. Whence it is that they who would break away from Christian discipline are working to corrupt family life, and to destroy it utterly, root and branch. From such an unholy purpose they allow not themselves to be turned aside by the reflection that it cannot, even in any degree, be carried out without inflicting cruel outrage on the parents. These hold from nature their right of training the children to whom they have given birth, with the obligation super-added of shaping and directing the education of their little ones to the end for which God vouchsafed the privilege of transmitting the gift of life. It is, then, incumbent on parents to strain every nerve to ward off such an outrage, and to strive manfully to have and to hold exclusive authority to direct the education of their offspring, as is fitting, in a Christian manner, and first and foremost to keep them away from schools where there is risk of their drinking in the poison of impiety. Where the right education of youth is concerned, no amount of trouble or labor can be undertaken, how great soever, but that even greater still may not be called for. In this regard, indeed, there are to be found in many countries Catholics worthy of general admiration, who incur considerable outlay and bestow much zeal in founding schools for the education of youth. It is highly desirable that such noble example may be generously followed, where time and circumstances demand, yet all should be intimately persuaded that the minds of children are most influenced by the training they receive at home. If in their early years they find within the walls of their homes the rule of an upright life and the discipline of Christian virtues, the future welfare of society will in great measure be guaranteed.

(Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae, n. 42)

It is evident that Catholics have a moral obligation to oppose sex education; and arguably even more so in 2019 than in the late 1800s or mid-1900s, given that the level of vile degradation to which such indoctrination has sunk is vastly worse than anything imagined back in those days. And yet this is the kind of spiritual sickness that Modernist Rome not only says we need not oppose but practically mandates as the only way to spiritual health for teens and pre-teens.

The more we hear from the lips of “Pope” Francis, the more clearly evident it is that he’s on a counter-crusade, a crusade against purity among the youth.

Earlier this year, Novus Ordo Watch carried a report entitled “Moral Advice from ‘Pope’ Francis: ‘The Least Serious Sins are the Sins of the Flesh’”, which covers a series of interviews he gave to Dominique Wolton, a French sociologist who happens to be an agnostic. (Don’t worry, Dominique, your skepticism is safe with Jorge.)

After citing the relevant passage, this web site responded as follows:

This is so outrageous and filled with error and half-truths that, in order to refute it, it’s a good idea to first provide a succinct recap of just what Bergoglio is actually affirming, namely:

  1. Sins of impurity are the least serious of all sins.
  2. Sins of impurity are not necessarily the gravest.
  3. Pride and vanity are more serious sins than sins of impurity.
  4. Not reading the Gospel is a more serious sin than impurity.
  5. Confessors ought not to inquire as to circumstances in which a sin of impurity was committed, and those who do need a psychiatrist.

We offer the following succint points in response, some of which we will then elaborate on:

  1. False. Impurity does not admit of light matter, wherefore every such sin, if committed with full knowledge and consent, is mortal.
  2. True, but so what? It does not follow from that that they are therefore the lightest of all sins or that they are not grave or very dangerous.
  3. False. Ordinarily, pride and vanity are only venial sins, although they can be mortal under certain circumstances.
  4. False. Although reading the Gospels is very much to be encouraged, not doing so is not in itself a sin. There is no divine law that states: Thou shalt read the Gospel.
  5. False. Although needless details must be avoided, the penitent must confess all the circumstances necessary to make known the species of the sin and the number of times he has committed it. If he does not do so, the confessor has the right to ask for this information. Such questions also help the confessor to assess the general spiritual state of the penitent’s soul.

Before we look at the subject matter in greater depth, it must be pointed out that in this controversy no one can defend Francis, as is so often done, on the grounds that he was merely speaking off-the-cuff and therefore may be excused for not having the most theologically precise terminology at the ready. This is not true. We are talking about a book publication that gets proofread, vetted, and edited as necessary before final release in order to ensure all the words printed say exactly what the person interviewed wants to communicate. In other words: There is no “slip of the tongue” in Wolton’s interview book. All of the words attributed to Francis are definitely and intendedly his.

So, is it true to say that the “least serious sins are the sins of the flesh”? That the “more serious sins are elsewhere”? Although it is clear that there are sins graver than those of a sexual nature, it does not follow that therefore sins of lust are among the least serious or the least dangerous.

Sacred Scripture is clear that sins of impurity, if not genuinely repented of, make the sinner worthy of eternal punishment. St. Paul wrote to the Hebrews: “[Let] Marriage [be] honourable in all, and the bed undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Heb 13:4).

(“Moral Advice from ‘Pope’ Francis: ‘The Least Serious Sins are the Sins of the Flesh’”, Novus Ordo Wire, Feb. 14, 2019)

From this we get further proof that the mind of Bergoglio is not remotely one with the mind of Christ and His Church, and is, in fact, much closer to one of the gravest errors against orthodox moral teaching: Antinomianism. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains what the term signifies:

The heretical doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of moral law. The term first came into use at the Protestant Reformation, when it was employed by Martin Luther to designate the teachings of Johannes Agricola and his sectaries, who, pushing a mistaken and perverted interpretation of the Reformer’s doctrine of justification by faith alone to a far-reaching but logical conclusion, asserted that, as good works do not promote salvation, so neither do evil works hinder it; and, as all Christians are necessarily sanctified by their very vocation and profession, so as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justification, and final salvation by any act of disobedience to, or even by any direct violation of the law of God.

…

Although the term designating this error came into use only in the sixteenth century, the doctrine itself can be traced in the teaching of the earlier heresies. Certain of the Gnostic sect — possibly, for example, Marcion and his followers, in their antithesis of the Old and New Testament, or the Carpocratians, in their doctrine of the indifference of good works and their contempt for all human laws — held Antinomian or quasi-Antinomian views. In any case, it is generally understood that Antinomianism was professed by more than one of the Gnostic schools. Several passages of the New Testament writings are quoted in support of the contention that even as early as Apostolic times it was found necessary to single out and combat this heresy in its theoretical or dogmatic as well as in its grosser and practical form. The indignant words of St. Paul in his Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians (Romans 3:8, 31; 6:1; Ephesians 5:6), as well as those of St. Peter, the Second Epistle (2 Peter 2:18, 19), seem to lend direct evidence in favour of this view.

(Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Antinomianism”; underlining added.)

While it is true that Francis doesn’t openly promote the outright rejection of the moral law, he certainly relativizes it in Amoris Laetitia, and he not-so-subtly undermines it by continually minimizing the gravity of sin and its offense to Almighty God. It is fair to say that his is a quasi-Antinomianism, which is no less a heresy since it blurs, and at times erases, the line between mortal and venial sin, as well as trivializes its consequences, as when he went so far as to deny the very existence of Hell. Parents who knowingly send their children to schools that include Francis’s virtue-free sex-ed classes are in effect guilty of poisoning their youngsters’ souls.

Of course, any school using a Modernist, post-Vatican II curriculum will have the same deadly effect on souls, though sex-ed is where the lethal dose is perhaps most likely to find easy entrance. Children must be removed from such schools as quickly as if a venomous snake were about to strike them, because in a sense that’s exactly what happens. The only options available are homeschooling or traditional Catholic schools, though even some schools promoting themselves as traditional have proven to be suspect, to say the least, as shown here.

In any case, parents will not be held blameless before the Judgment Seat if they allow their children to be spiritually ruined, when their responsibility is to raise them chastely and keep them out of harm’s way, and that means keeping them out of Bergoglio’s Schools of Scandal — and out of Novus Ordo schools in general.

How sage has the observation of the English writer Malcolm Muggeridge proven to be:

So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over — a weary, battered old brontosaurus — and became extinct.

(Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus: The Man Who Lives [London: Collins, 1975], pp. 32-33; underlining added.)

And all along, the Novus Ordo Counterfeit Church has been complicit in the destruction, at every step inverting Catholic teaching and becoming more and more openly aligned with anti-Christian maxims of the world. No one seems to embrace this destructive work with so unconcealed a glee as pretend-pope Francis.

May God quickly remove the smirk from his mouth, and by removing him and the rest of the Modernists from Rome, rescue the Church from their clutches!

“Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil.”
–Isaias 5:20

“And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
–Matthew 18:5-6 (Are you listening, Jorge Bergoglio?)

Image source: composite with elements from catholicnews.org.uk (Mazur; cropped) and Wikimedia Commons (Alberto Felici)
Licenses: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and public domain