Teaching the Right Lessons

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - October 26, 2007

Last week, the state of Maine made national headlines when the Portland School Committee voted to make prescription contraceptives available to middle school students without parental permission or even knowledge.

Parents in Portland responded with predictable and justifiable outrage. The attention given to the story from the national press corps, however, shows that we are dealing with an issue than transcends one Maine city. Interest and indignation from other parts of the nation show growing give witness that parents everywhere are becoming more concerned over the types of lessons that some public schools are trying to teach. In Portland, students' education involves policies driven by a general distrust for the authority of parents over their children as well as zeal to pass on to them the deadly principles and means of the sexual revolution.

By 7-2 decision on October 16, the School Committee authorized the King Middle School health center to start making prescription birth control pills and contraceptive patches available to 11-14 year old girls who request it. In order to access the health center, the girls need parental permission, but once inside, what they request and receive is kept confidential, even from parents.

This confidentiality policy already does harm to the bond that should exist between parents and their children. If parents wish their children to be able to be given an aspirin for a headache or receive a free immunization shot — services funded by their tax dollars — the policy requires them to give health center personnel what they would never have to give doctors and nurses at a hospital: cede all of their rights to approve or even be aware of the medicine and advice being given to their children. This policy is also potentially dangerous to the students, because it does not allow parents or family doctors to know what medication a child is receiving unless the students themselves divulge the information. That there would a confidentiality requirement is already a sign of an arrogant suspicion that these educators think parents either do not know or want what is in the best interest of their children.

But the new authorization for the health clinic personnel to distribute prescription contraceptives does even greater damage. Bishop Richard Malone of Portland expressed his "shock and sadness" in the School Committee's decision in a strongly worded declaration that many Maine Catholics have taken as a call to action.

He wrote that he shared the "outrage and disbelief" of many parents because the decision undercuts the clarity of the moral message that parents have a right to give to their children. "When contradictory messages are given to children from important authority figures such as parents and school officials, it can only create more confusion and difficulty for children themselves in making this important life decision." If parents are trying to form their children in purity of heart, in other words, and schools are pushing an opposite message, young kids struggling through pubescent hormone shifts will only end up more confused.

"The school committee's decision," Bishop Malone continues, "communicates to young people that adults have given up on forming young people in virtues like chastity." Rather than trying to train students in good moral habits, it promotes a technological solution that actually makes children morally weaker with regard to their sexual attractions. Offering contraceptives without parental knowledge or consent "will inevitably lead to more sexual experimentation among younger and younger children."

If we truly care about children, the bishop says, "we need to help them understand the importance of postponing sexual activity until marriage for their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health." The physical risks include sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy; the mental and emotional dangers flow from being used by others sexually and from more painful breakups; the spiritual perils come from cutting themselves off from communion with God through sin.

Bishop Malone deserves particular credit for reiterating the spiritual harm young people receive from the use of contraception to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage. Giving out birth control facilitates young people to engage in activity that is simply evil. While in secular contexts, many do not want to talk about right and wrong and prefer to focus on the easily discernible effects of harmful behavior, this type of consequentialist argumentation occasionally obscures the less perceptible, but just as real damage to one's soul. Condoms, pills and patches do not protect from sin, which is the worst sexually transmitted disease of all.

Unlike the educators who pessimistically do not think that young people are capable of self-control, Bishop Malone stresses that, like the outraged parents, "I believe that it is possible for children and young people to make wise moral choices given caring guidance." This type of guidance contrasts sharply with the pseudo-counsel provided by those who would give contraceptives instead of sustained moral challenge and high expectations for children's behavior.

The members of the School Committee say that their decision was pragmatic, because sometimes students do not live up to parents' expectations and middle school girls end up pregnant. Bishop Malone acknowledges that sometimes students do fail, but his two-fold solution points first to the real cause of the failure and second to a much more compassionate solution. The cause of the failure is not that the young girl becomes pregnant from sexual activity, but the sexual activity itself; for that reason, focusing on a technological rather than a moral remedy avoids the real cause. Secondly, the response to teenage pregnancy must be to stress that "when they might fail, adults will stand by them and not abandon them." School officials will not be there when the students age, but parents will, which is yet another reason why the decision is so short-sighted.

"Everything about this decision," Bishop Malone concludes, "gives kids the wrong message." He has urged parents in Portland to persuade the School Committee to rescind its deeply flawed decision. It remains to the rest of us outside of Portland to protect our kids from similarly flawed policies closer to home.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.