Chaplains condemn student sex guide

`Carry a condom' says Catholic magazine
BY JOE JENKINS
UNIVERSITY CHAPLAINS are furious at the publication of an article, in a Catholic student magazine, that gives advice on pre-marital sex and lists the telephone number of the Brook Advisory Centres.
The article, which appears in the latest Grapevine — the official magazine of the Catholic Student Council of England and Wales — advises readers to "have a condom handy".
Chaplains this week told The Herald that their students had complained about the article, written by Katherine Evans of the Health Education Authority, a quango reporting to the Department of Health. They said that they would consider removing the magazine from circulation among students.
But Fr Fabian Radcliffe, the national co-ordinator of university chaplains in England and Wales and chaplain to the Catholic Student Council, backed the editors of the magazine after they released a statement on Tuesday expressing regret at causing offence. Fr Radcliffe said that it was "absurd" to suggest that the students had any "rebellious" or "anti-Catholic" intent in publishing the article. "I don't see how anyone could have found it offensive," he said.
In the same issue of Grapevine — which receives an annual grant from the Bishops' Conference through the National Catholic Fund — an article by Bernard Hoose, lecturer in Christian Ethics at Heythrop College, is sceptical about official Church teaching on sexual relations.
Stephen Awre and Alison Gilhespie, the national co-ordinators of the student council and editors of Grapevine, said in their statement that "with hindsight it would have been wise either to omit the article, or to publish it with a clear explanation of why it was offered."
They wrote: "The intention in publishing contrasting articles was to raise the issues of sexual morality and health for discussion, and help readers to a clearer mind. Catholics no less than anyone else have to struggle with these problems; and though they know what the Church's teaching is on these matters, they often cannot easily explain it even to themselves... Unfortunately what seemed like a good plan has backfired."
Fr Peter Geldard, chaplain to the University of Kent at Canterbury, said that he felt his ministry had been undermined by the article. He said: "I was horrified when this fell on my desk because it undermines one's own ministry. The students themselves have reacted against it."
Fr Sean Finnegan, chaplain at the University of Surrey, condemned the piece. In a letter to the editors, he wrote: "I will be very reluctant to take another issue unless I am reassured that its content will not merely ape those things which a Christian should reject and not give approval to those things which the Church in its scriptures and tradition calls serious sin, and which can, after all, be picked up in a much more readable and attractive form in any students' union bar."
Editorial Comment—p9