Doubts remain about the Catholic Education Service’s assurances

From Mr Eric Hester SIR – Oona Stannard of the Catholic Education Service (CES) wrote to you (Letters, February 5) saying that my article (Feature, January 29) about the CES contained “misleading statements”. She does not give a single example of a misleading statement. Nor can she, because my article showed quite clearly that the CES is supporting the Labour Government’s scheme to make sex education a compulsory part of the National Curriculum.
I showed, too, that the Catholic Church states quite clearly that the state has no right to do that: the rights of Catholic parents are “inalienable” according to all Catholic teaching, and I quoted Pope John Paul II on this saying that no one can take away parental rights and certainly not the government.
Miss Stannard says that the CES has had assurances from the Government that Catholic governors will retain control of the teaching of sex. Presumably these are the same kind of assurances that this Government made about homosexuals adopting children – assurances that the Government cynically broke, leading to the end of Catholic adoption as we had known it. Her own quotation from Ed Balls, the Education Secretary, gives the game away. Mr Balls says: “It is clear that parents as well as school governors will have a say in how the subject is taught.” But “having a say” is not to have control and that is not good enough. We must retain the full control that governors now have.
My article challenged Miss Stannard to say that, under the Government edict, she will guarantee that Catholic secondary schools will not have to give pupils explicit details of how and when to obtain contraception and abortion without the knowledge of parents and that Catholic primaries will not have to teach innocent children about civil partnerships. Will Miss Stannard give that guarantee?
Readers who want to have more details of the betrayal by the CES could go to the websites of the National Association of Catholic Families and SPUC, which are solidly against the CES on this because of the anti-life nature of the Government’s sex education. The CES is against SPUC but lines up with the FPA, Brook, Stonewall, the Terrence Higgins Trust and all the usual suspects – the anti-life and anti-family organisations who have been attacking morals over the years.
My article ended with a challenge to Miss Stannard to debate Catholic teaching about sex education with me in public. She did not mention that in her letter. What is she frightened of?
Your faithfully, ERIC HESTER Bolton, Lancashire From Mr Alan Bancroft SIR – Oona Stannard’s underlying suggestion that all is well and we mustn’t worry failed to satisfy me. Alas, all is far from well.
The perception of myself and others is, first, that the Catholic Education Service has been rather too convergent with the Government, giving important ground that should have been held. Second, of the CES’s unfortunate naïvety.
As to the first of these, I think in particular of its tacit acceptance that some sex information should be given to the very young. This acceptance drives a wedge between Rome’s guidance and the Catholic primary schools of England and Wales. I cannot understand why the CES has seemingly failed to follow Rome’s deep and weighty document The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, which says that the giving of sex information prematurely (to those in innocence or so immature in age “that they cannot understand and control sexual imagery within the proper context of moral principles”) should be resisted as it “compromises their spiritual, moral and emotional development”.
What reassurance is derivable from the school’s being allowed to decide the precise content of the sex information, when Rome, for our little ones’ good, says that Catholic schools shouldn’t in fact give any such information at that tender age?
The Government presses ahead with the above, and the CES goes along with it. Did that body know of Rome’s guidance? If so, it ought to explain its thought processes to us. Could it not have said to the Government: “Sorry, but this is simply not acceptable”?
As regards older pupils I am astounded that, aside from future dire legislation, ie now, the CES is asking our schools to “welcome”, as careers advisers to Catholic pupils, the contraception-promoting (and abortion friendly) Connexions. In attempted justification the CES points to the fact that Connexions have undertaken not to give advice contrary to the school’s “ethos”. How naïve!
Read the excellent blog of parents Ella and James Preece: “Even if Connexions had a perfect track record for never accidentally promoting contraception in Catholic schools” (there is anecdotal evidence of “oops, sorry, I forgot” sometimes), “what the schools are doing is allowing Connexions to promote themselves to students as a great place to turn to for all kinds of advice...” What positives, anyway, override the inherent negative of Connexion’s ethos?
May our individual bishops act courageously concerning the new spiritual and moral dangers to pupils in the schools under their care.
Yours faithfully, ALAN BANCROFT By e-mail