Family Seminar on Adolescent Sexuality FCorpus Christi, Texas January 14-16, 1983
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Family Seminar on Adolescent Sexuality FCorpus Christi, Texas
January 14-16, 1983
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The purpose of this seminar is to enrich our understandTn
biological truths of sexuality, and to enhance our ability to
unieate the®
iths to our chilclren"*KnowWge is powefr This is true in every aspect of life, and it
irticularl^ t uc in matters of sexuality. We believe thafc men and women who
ui .derstand their fertility are in control of their bodies and their lives. If they have the
gift to i^ass tfiis knowledge on to their childr m. they are. to some degree, in control
^of the futufw^fS well.
CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS
JANUARY 14 - 16, 1983
SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE PROCEEDINGS
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Selected papers from the
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Family Seminar on Adolescent Sexuality
F
Corpus Christi, Texas
January 14-16, 1983
I
Editor:
Michael Meaney, Ph.D.
E:
Published by:
Family of the Americas Foundation, Inc.
308 South Tyler Street
Covington, Louisiana 70433
All Rights Reserved
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COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
326, V Main, I Block
Koramong?la
Bangalore-560034
India
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Family Seminar on Adolescent Sexuality took place through
efforts and.dedication of many people.
We are especially grateful
for thd -geherous financial support of Bishop Thomas J. Drury and
A r' *
*: ’I
■that 0T‘Bishop Gerhard J. Ganter, The Strake Foundation, and the
Catholic •Telecorotnunic at ions Center, Corpus Christi.
So many people contributed so much to handle the numerous
details of the seminar.
A special thanks to:
Dr. Francette Meaney
Dr. Elizabeth M. Oliveira
Birthright of Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi Ovulation Method Council
Ushers and Usherettes from private and public high schools
Response to the seminar, which was the first of its kind and
therefore something of an experiment, was overwhelming.
We were
gratified to see that so many people shared our belief that one
of the main responsibilities of Family Life is to dispel the myths
and fantasies about sexuality and to substitute solid information
and values in their place.
We hope that this report will be of use both to those who
attended the conference and to those who could not.
We recommena
its contents as an excellent primer for a complex and important
field of study.
Mercedes Wilson
Director of Family of the Americas Foundation, Inc.
Marge Harrigan
Director of Parent & Adolescent Program
PREFACE
Michael Meaney, Ph.D.
These talks are realistic in the best sense of the term,
i.e.z neither utopian nor cynical but conformed to, or true to
reality.
In this problem-filled area, each of the speakers could
easily have stressed various pathological aspects of.adolescent
sexuality.
Such a potentially depressing repetition of symptoms
would have been considerably less constructive and less helpful
than the more balanced approach that was actually presented.
Since the reality described is extremely diverse, so are
The speakers vary in many ways:
the different descriptions of it.
they range in age from adolescents to mature adults; they include
internationally known scientists coming from countries as far apart
as Australia and England to meet in Texas; their message touches
on areas ranging all the way from poetry, philosophy, medicine.
and theology to statistics.
Much of that message was interspersed
with a delightful sense of humor.
These descriptions are not projections but perceptions or
insights into what exists:
tive.
they are objective rather than subjec-
This may seem too simple, too obvious to mention.
Yet
primary assumptions and ultimate principles are crucially impor
that and must be exposed if one is to validate anything else.
If truth is creative self-projection, then everything is subjec
tive :
individualism, relativism, positivistic law, subjective
bias become "normal."
But can one then speak of "norms?"
If/
on the other hand, truth is correspondence of judgment to objec-
tive reality, then that reality is the source of norms and of
1
natural law.
If the entity or reality we try to describe is called
nature r then our description of it can be called natural, i.e.,
conformed to nature or reality.
Thus the group organizing the
seminar calls its approach "natural family planning" but could
just as well have termed it "realistic family planning."
This
accuracy of nomenclature should be carefully noted, for it contrasts
sharply with the common tendency in these areas to hide what one is
really doing behind euphemisms or 1984-type double-think expressions
like "Reproductive Services ii as a name for "abortion clinic."
At
any rate, natural is perhaps preferable to realistic in describing
our frame of mind. for this stresses the fact that it is not only
the nature around us that is being polluted by chemical wastes, but
also our bodies that can be harmed by drugs and our most vital
natural processes that can be frustrated, violated and maimed by
various artificial contraceptive devices and operations.
The
ancient medical adage "First do no harm . . . " might well become
our first concern in many areas.
Our "return to nature" as far as sexuality is concerned can
take on many forms, some of which are dead ends.
Our contemporary
"return to nature" need not be a voyage of Christopher Columbus,
for the man has throughout history accumulated much experience and
many valuable insights concerning himself.
Being wise enough to
profit from that experience and interpret those insights is what
challenged the speakers.
The central theme or key insight of all the speakers, one
which unifies the diversity of the talks into an evolving, dynamic
harmony, is the concept that adolescent sexuality is not simply
an instinctive drive to be studied biologically, but a
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many-splendored human reality which must be analyzed within the
context of the family.
This seminar was therefore called the
Family Seminar on Adolescent Sexuality in much the same way that
the method is called natural family planning.
Our speakers pointed
out the crucial importance of the family in the best way it can be
done:
by many and varied examples taken from their own areas of
experience and expertise.
This renders great service today, for
there are many who do not yet see how important the family really
is.
The family is the environment within which the child and
adolescent matures and then forms a new family. the context of
loving interpersonal relationships within which sexuality develops.
matures and is fulfilled.
Since sexual maturity occurs years before adolescents are
ready for marriage, they are faced with the choice of either becom
ing "sexually active" in pre-marital or marital relationships before
they have reached maturity in educational, psychological, economic,
moral, and religious ways. or of working towards acquiring these
various forms of maturity as long-term preparations for successful
marriage.
Virtually everyone agrees that the second alternative
is preferable —if it is realistic or possible.
contribute to making it possible:
Many things can
formation, discipline, customs.
virtue and example in Christian families and communities, for
example.
This in turn cannot be realized effectively without
rediscovering our deepest values and re—dedicating ourselves to
our highest ideals.
lives human.
Only then will our families be healthy and our
These talks explore this stimulating theme, and there-
fore range across the whole spectrum of adolescent sexuality seen
in relationship to the family.
3
Excerpts from welcoming speech of Bishop Thomas J. Drury, D.D., L.L.D
. . Since the family unit is the basis of society, our concern
must be that it is safeguarded in every aspect of its existence.
and particularly so in its relation to God, who has created
marriage as such, and the family . .
. . He created us male and female, but he placed within us those
qualities and urgings that would attract us to each other and
thereby continue the human race.
And because we are different
from the rest of animal life in that we are endowed with reason.
with an intellect and a will, he as placed our continuance within
the framework of what we call marriage . .
Cliff Zarsky
City Councilman
Representing the mayor and the city of Corpus Christi
...It is a very important thing, I believe, that your seminar.
Family Seminar on Adolescent Sexuality is being held in the City
of Corpus Christi.
We all know that the city of Corpus Christi
is the city of the body of Christ and it seems quite appropriate
that this seminar is being held in the city of the Body of Christ,
God Incarnate, so that the members of the mystical Body of Christ
will be able to benefit and learn some of the most troubled issues
that we have to confront us in our society today.
In this age
of the ego and selfishness, your world wide movement is a beacon
of hope for any and all who are inclined to follow the teachings
of Christ in his Church...
TABLE OF TONTENTS
LEARNING TO LOVE
John J. Billinqs, M.D.
FACING UP TO PEER PRESSURE
Maggie Flood & Tom Ek
THE PROBLEMS OF HOMELESS CHILDREN & THEIR FAMILIES
THE ADOLESCENT’S RIGHT TO THE WHOLE TRUTH
COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS:
Margaret White, M.D.
PARENT TO PARENT, PARENT TO ADOLESCENT - Donald Conroy, PhD
- Mary Thormann, PhD
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF THE OVULATION METHO)
THE VALUE OF FERTILITY
KNOWLEDGE IS PCWER
Stephen E. Torkelsen
John J. Billings, M.D.
Kevin Hume, M.D.
John J. Brennan, M.D.
CHRISTIAN SEXUALITY PROGRAM
Mercedes Wilson
PSYCHOLOGY OF ABSTINENCE - DISCUSSION OUTLINE
Merrilyn Currie
EXAMPLES OF SOME EXISTING ADOLESCENT PROGRAMS:
Sixth Grade Girls & Their Mathers
Kevin Hume, M.D.
Parent to Parent - Ruth Taylor, M.D.
Fertility Awareness
- Charles W. Norris, M.D.
THE NEED FOR BASIC MORAL STANDARDS IN GOVERNMENT
The Honorable Lindy Boggs
STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION
Corrine McGuigan, PhD
GOOD NEWS ABOUT ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
Michael Meaney, PhD
ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY - A HISPANIC PERSPECTIVE
Maria Hilda & Fernando Pinon
INVOLVING ADOLESCENTS - ADOLESCENT CONCERNS:
Do Not Stir Up love Before It’s Time - Fr. William D. Virtue
Beyond Knowledge - A Young Married Couples
Experience in Working with Adolescents - Anne & David Trufant
Adolescent Fertility Awareness Report
of Work in Progress
Hanna Klaus, M.D.
FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR LOVE - ST. AUGUSTINE
Evelyn L. Billings, M.D.
LEARNING TO LOVE
John Billings, M.D.
St. Francis of Assisi once said, "Love is not loved enough."
St. Augustine wrote a book
which he dedicated to God with the
inscription, "For love of Your love."
These two men were very
different in temperament, yet they had learned to become great
lovers.
Some years ago I wrote a little booklet which I called.
"Every Man a Lover."
Recently it was published in England, but a
change of title was demanded, it being suggested that my title would
mean to many people, "Every Man a Sexual Athlete."
The meaning of
a work may become corrupted, even the word "love."
So we agreed
upon "Of Life and Love," because human life had its origin in the
love of the Creator and because it is the greatest of all human love.
the love of husband and wife for each other, that ensures the con
tinuity of creation.
A child learns to love by being loved, as we can all
observe, by living in an environment of love which he first recognizes intuitively and only later intellectually.
Even those of us
who are lonely with longing for human love can recognize that God’s
love is and was always there.
So every human personality can reach
full maturity in the enjoyment of being loved, developing as a result
the capacity for the giving of self which is the essence of love.
Since Lyn and I began to travel overseas frequently in about
1969, we have experienced a wonderful enrichment of our lives as a
The Chinese people have an expres-
result of the people we have met.
sion, "You bring goodness out of me," and certainly we have had many
1
•J
experiences which have made us better persons than we otherwise
might be.
Perhaps I should really say they have made me a better
person; Lyn has always been so lovely there was hardly any room
for improvement.
Our primary concern has never been that of fertility regulation
except insofar as we have been anxious to contribute to the develop
ment of a method which will help couples to have children or to
space their pregnancies, without causing physical harm or corrupting
their love.
There has been no thought of persuading people not to
have children.
It has become a matter of constant experience to
talk to men and women of the love of husband and wife for each other
and for their children, and then to observe essentially the same
response from every human heart, amongst people in Africa, Europe,
the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific Islands and the Americas.
Many
of these people are illiterate and may be living in demoralizing
poverty; in some cases they have been pagans or adherents of some
primitive, superstitious religion, and in those cultures the status
of women is often inferior, because they have yet to feel the human
izing influence of Christianity.
Yet they are all able to respond
to the irresistible call to love, which is the essential characteris
tic of our humanity.
We all want people to recognize their dignity, to experience
intelligent growth without fear, to rise above the social, economic
or cultural limitations of their environment. and also above any
limitations which may seem to have been imposed by physical or intel
lectual imperfections.
Love begins within the family, that organic
unit composed essentially of father, mother and children, whose status
is determined by the basic elements of human biology.
2
The special
mission of the family is to care for those of its members who are
weak , because they are so young or so old. or in some way handicapped, offering a haven of refuge and protection.
From this exam
pie, there extends into society a recognition of universal brother-
hood.
However differently the biological roles are given practical
expression, the husband remains the protector and provider, the
wife the comforter whose love makes the house a home.
Both husband
and wife become at the same time the lover and the beloved.
Pope John Paul II, who has proved to be a great Christian
leader, has reminded us that when making a commitment to one another
in marriage we accept two responsibilities:
1.
The responsibility of the gift of oneself to the other
for life;
2.
The acceptance of the gift of the other person for life;
We have to remind ourselves of these responsibilities day by
day:
"I take you . . . for better, for worse, for richer, for
poorer, in sickness and in health."
There begins a duet, a love
song which presages that time when creation will be set free from
its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:21) and each of us will contribute a
unique, rich, and clear note to the full measure of celestial harmony.
"If Christian marriage," Pope John Paul says, "can be compared
to a very high mountain which puts the couple into the immediate
neighborhood of God, we must recognize that to climb this mountain
takes a great deal of time and effort.
But would this be a reason
to destroy or to lower the mountain?"
There are foolish people who say that love is blind.
Sometimes
one may hear the remark. "I could never understand what she saw in
him. "
Love is not blind, love sees the potential for goodness that
3
exists in the other person, and love works to bring that goodness
to perfection. "The good which the lover creates through his love
in his beloved, is a measure of his love"
(J.P.ll).
Sometimes young people think that older people, the "wrinklies"
or the "mouldy oldies" do not understand what love is about.
Cer-
tainly the love that young people have for one another at that time
when they pledge themselves in marriage, is most admirable.'
It is
strong, vibrant, fierce, but older people have not forgotten that in
learning more about loving than they knew then, having learned so
much more by exploring its depths through hard times and good times.
to know that by struggling through times of difficulty the struggles
So the message we have for young
have made the good times so good.
people is. "Don’t be afraid."
Above all, do not be afraid to love
and to be loved.
The poet Edwin Muir has said that a good marriage is one:
"Where each asks from each
what each most wants to give
and each awakes in each
what else would never be."
Just recently in Melbourne there was a splendid revival of
the musical "Oklahoma" produced by James Kammerstein, the son of
Oscar Kammerstein II.
This reminded me of the many fine and truly
poetic lyrics written by Oscar Kammerstein which combined so wonder
fully with the melodious music of Richard Rodgers.
Thus, in "Carousel" Julie Jordan sang these words:
"When he wants your kisses you will give them to the last
and anywhere he leads you, you will go.
Anytime he needs you, you’ll go running there like mad.
4
You’re his girl and he’s your fellah, and all the rest is told."
We may perhaps find those words sentimental, because of course there
was much tenderness in Julie’s emotion for the wayward Billy Bigalow.
So let us take another song which was made a hit by Frank Sinatra,
whom in Australia we call the Chairman of the Board:
"Who knows where the road may lead to.
only a fool would say.
But if you let me love you
It's for sure I'll always love you
all the way."
We recognize in these words a truth which is to be perceived in every
love song, love poem or love letter that was ever written. a truth
we express by saying. "That's the real thing."
We know in our hearts
that when a man and woman really fall in love with each other they
mean it to be forever.
You remember that Billy Bigalow was always struggling against
his baser inclinations, and reveals some measure of self-understanding
in that marvelous song, as he stood on the edge of a commitment of
which he was fearful:
"If I loved you,
words wouldn't come in an easy way,
'round in circles I'd go.
Longin' to tell you but afraid and shy.
I'd let my golden chances pass me by."
Well, don't.
Don't let your golden chances pass you by.
It
is difficult at times to control one's emotions, but one can always
command the will to love.
And one can command oneself to express
that love in a way that is understood - especially by kindness.
5
thoughtfulness and perhaps most of all by speaking about it.
We are living in a culture which has been corrupted by
sexual permissiveness and we have to struggle to avoid contamina-
tion by it.
It is sad that nowadays many young people go into
marriage afraid of their fertility.
We have to some extent lost
the delight and wonder that we should feel at our ability to share
in the creation of a new human life by an act of love.
We have
lost our proper sense of the value and beauty of coitus, as an inti-
mate physical giving of self which expresses that total commitment
we made when we decided that henceforth there would not be two
individual lives but one life in common.
We often fail to appreci-
ate the freedom we experience in following laws of morality which
were designed to help us escape from servitude to ignoble desires
which we all experience.
In the Psalms, David was continually
praising God for His laws because they were providing a rule of
He said:
life which brought him happiness.
"If I flew to the point of sunrise,
or westward across the sea,
your hand would still be guiding me,
you right hand holding me" (Ps. 139).
It is their fertility which provides the bond between husband and
wife.
In every act of coitus there exists the possibility of con-
ception, and it is an injustice to the child for that act to occur
except in marriage.
The injustice extends beyond the immediate
possibility of conception.
Those of us who marry look forward to
children in our new family which has come into existence at the
time of marriage, and we have to keep in mind what sort of parents
we want to be.
As our children. sons and daughters, are growing
6
up, we want to know what it is they will see when they look at us.
As they learn the wonderful story of their creation, what attitude
will they find in us towards the act which gave them life?
There need be little wonder that Pope John Paul reminded us
that even in marriage love may be contaminated by lust.
The essence
of love is generosity, the essence of lust is selfishness.
It is
certainly possible for a man to be lustful towards his wife; indeed,
there need be constant vigilance to guard against it.
This is a way
in which natural family planning is of such benefit, because it
introduces into loving, into this most intimate expression of love
in the physical act of coitus, an element of sacrifice,
tance of abstinence
the accep
though desire for coitus be strong, for the
sake of the beloved person.
Coitus should be the source of deep
happiness, physical contentment and pleasure, and also fun, using
the word in a respectful way, to mean lighthearted joy.
There is a freedom to do what you must, which is slavery; a
freedom to do what you like, which is anarchy; and a freedom to do
what you ought, which is the freedom that human dignity demands.
In conclusion I should like to quote to you some words of
Ronald Knox which are most appropriate to young people about to
marry:
"Like swimmers carried away by a silent undertow that is
too strong for them, you are being swept into the current of that
divine love which reaches beyond time and sense; united beyond
your knowing, with that divine will which made you for each other."
7
FACING UP TO PEER PRESSURE
Maggie Flood
Good evening.
It is my pleasure to come before you this
evening to talk about peer pressure.
Pressures affect us.
Pressures influence everything we do.
In an adolescent, pressures are especially significant, and pres
sures from peers seem to be insistant.
In preparing for this talk. I, myself, have learned much
about peer pressure.
There are so many different influences pres
suring today’s adolescents that it would be difficult to name them
all.
Each different group has a unique set of pressures and fur-
thermore,
the pressures exerted on and by each individual adoles-
cent are unique.
So that I can only speak from my knowledge of
pressures that affect me, and pressures that I can recognize con
tribute to the lives of others.
An adolescent is becoming less dependent on his parents and
ventures into friendships with kids of the same age and/or same
interests.
The morals of these peers and the effect that they have
on an adolescent individual are what peer pressure is all about.
Refusing to conform to the standards that these friends and group
maintain, is reversing the struggle for friendship—that friendship
that is such an important part of growing up.
To exemplify that different groups have different pressures.
I
can tell you about my group of peers—those who affect me.
For
us there is not a pressure to have sex; as a matter of fact, it is
somewhat looked down upon in my group.
The only pressure for sex
would arise between the two individuals whose choice it is.
Nar
cotics, smoking cigarettes, and smoking pot, are the same way.
1
yet alcohol is accepted.
Perhaps because it is the chosen outlet
of emotions for this group.
compared to others.
Now, these standards are different
In other groups it is a pressure from the
whole group to have sex, to take drugs, to smoke cigarettes and
pot.
Still in other groups there are pressures to do none of these
things.
The pressures vary with the group.
What determines the difference in pressures?
Well, I'm sure
that pressures on me as a Corpus Christi resident are different
from those in New York, California, or in New Zealand.
contribute to the pressures.
The fads
In the 1960's and ’VO’s kids smoked
pot more than I can see the adolescents of the '801s smoking.
Stages
of development influence the pressures.
For myself, junior high
was the time to smoke—pot or cigarettes.
I am now a senior in
high school and those pressures are no longer as strong.
pressure is to drink.
What will it be in my future years?
Now the
The
economic group that you are divided into also affects your pressures.
Perhaps you are more influenced to carry on faults that your parents
had.
And their habits are usually results of what economic part
they play in society.
And also, what you wear and the image that
you portray influence the types of pressures that will be put upon
you.
Making the transition between a smaller school and a larger
school, I can see that the size of groups can also lend to the in
tensity of pressures.
As a member of a larger school, there seem
to be larger groups, and so, there is a greater chance to find more
people like you, whose morals and abilities correspond with yours
and thus ease the requirement to change in order to be accepted.
Adolescents seem to be asking for the chance to act like an adult—
2
do the things that adults do yet they usually don’t feel the need
to maintain the adult sophistication of it.
For instance, I've
noticed that kids my age can drink and get drunk and not feel the
need to maintain an adult manner of acting.
An adolescent acts
like a kid even though he or she has chosen to do something
reserved by law for adults.
These are all specific ways of act-
ing, and specific pressuresr but what role does society. as a
whole, play on adolescents?
The peer pressures felt by today’s adolescents reflect the
pressures of today’s society.
The pressures from and on adolescent
peers are not unique to their age only, they are a different appli
cation of society’s morals.
"If it feels good. do it," is a slogan which our society
feeds on. Developing individuals are defining their ideas of right
and wrong concerning feelings.
Premarital sex "feels good" and for
some people is "the thing to do."
Biological urges are not the only
influences now, because peers are very persuasive in the matter of
sex.
Drinking, smoking cigarettes, and smoking pot are much the
same.
They "feel good."
In this world, if something is irritating
or difficult, you should get rid of it.
Some adolescents are believ-
ing this and are going so far as to apply it to life.
Adolescents
are being pressured into committing society's faults. faults of a
society centered around feelings.
But a lot of adolescents are waging the peer pressure battle
and surviving.
sides.
They are making mature decisions, weighing both
They are beginning to act like adults even when some of
the "so-called" adults around them aren't.
There are adolescents
standing up for their decisions even when it means standing up alone.
3
There are kids that can block out the sex and money oriented radio
and television and aim at a goal that won’t bring immediate grati
fication.
kids.
Worship, prayers, and God are still a big deal to some
Those that can maintain positive pressures are those that
will look forward to an optimistic adulthood.
It is through the
pressures exerted by these adolescents that there is hope.
4
FACING UP TO PEER PRESSURE
Tom Ek
I'm pleased to be here to talk to you about peer pressure this
evening.
In my school of about 560 kids, the peer pressures might
not be as great as you might experience at larger schools.
But I
think I'm speaking for most high school students in America today,
as far as the big pressures are concerned.
Peer pressure probably started around first grade, from what
This is when you feel you are supposed to act a
I can remember.
certain way. have your hair a certain way. dress a certain way or
even say the same things as everyone else.
But when you are in
high school, the pressures are more serious--drugs, drinking, and
sexual pressures.
What you have to do as a student, I think, is to set up goals
for yourself.
You have to say, as far as the drinking goes. "I'm
not going to join those who get drunk every Friday night."
When
kids ask me if I am going to a party, I just say, "I might be there."
That is an example of peer pressure in an indirect way.
They are
not telling you that you have to drink; instead they ask if you are
going to be there.
If you are at the party and you can drive kids
home, it's another way of facing up to it.
Sexual pressure can sometimes be even harder to resist.
Even
though there isn't a lot of it at my school, there is some pressure
for girls to have boyfriends and for boys to have girlfriends.
When you come into a relationship with a girlfriend or boy
friend who you really care about and you're getting really close.
you have to sit down and talk about what your plans are for the
future.
Do you want to remain chaste until you are going to be
1
involved in marriage?
about.
This is something that you have to talk
If you love the person, you are not going to commit sin.
And it’s really important, because what you are doing now, and
how you are reacting to peer pressure, will influence your life
later.
Another aspect of peer pressure is positive peer pressure.
It can be just as important as the peer pressure we are talking
about now; the negative peer pressures where people are telling you
to do bad things—like doing drugs, having pre-marital sex and abus-
ing alcohol.
Positive peer pressure is having a group of kids who
have your same goals and values and who say that it's okay not to
go to parties and drink and who say it's okay not to have pre
marital sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend.
It can be just as
important and even more so than negative peer pressure—it could
really help out a kid.
This is especially so if you are not really
involved in a group at school, if you are not with the jocks or the
people that party--it can be the same group, anyway.
But if you
are a borderline student, where you really don't know which way
you are going, whether or not it's the party scene, it's really
going to help if you have a group of people who are saying that it's
okay not to do those things.
This kind of positive peer pressure
is really going to help your decisions and you'll probably end up
making the right ones.
Peer pressure really affects you all the time--where you
hang out and what kinds of things you do.
As I was saying earlier.
before you make a serious decision, it would be a good idea to have
a goal in mind.
How you are going to lead your life and what you
want your life to be like later on is really going to affect the
2
decisions that you make now.
I came across something that I think really summarizes how
you can face up to peer pressure--"Oht Lord, help us to stand for
something or we will fall for anything*."
i
3
THE PROBLEM OF HOMELESS CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES
Stephen E. Torkelsen
In this paper, I will discuss the theme of homeless children
and their families by sharing with you some of my experiences with
homeless children and their families over the last eleven years at
Covenant House, with references from New York, Guatemala and
Toronto.
This paper, then, will explicate the history of Covenant
House as an example of a program that addresses the needs of aban
doned and exploited children; some issues underlying the large
numbers of children who live on the street in all of our major
cities; and recommendations for change as it affects children,
youth and families in the United States today.
Covenant House, as a child care agency that operates centers
in New York, Guatemala, Toronto, Houston, and in other urban cen-
ters, started out in 1968 as the response of a few people to the
situation of homeless, abused and sexually exploited children in
New York City.
The director of the agency is a Franciscan priest
named Fr. Bruce Ritter.
How Fr. Bruce describes the formation of
Covenant House as a response to homeless and neglected children is
that he was literally kicked off campus during the mid-1960s by
his students who told him to go and practice what he was preach
ing.
One day in a talk, perhaps a little bit like this one. Fr.
Bruce confronted his students in a self-righteous way.
He looked
out at them and said. "What age will you be when you sell out, and
when you give up on your values and principles?
the age of 25?”
Will it be by
From the back of the room a student raised his
hand and said, "Bruce, you're making two mistakes.
1
The first
mistake is that we will sell out not by the time we’re 25 but by
the time we're 21.
The second mistake you're making is that as a
religious person, you should be leading us more by your lifestyle
than by your words."
I think what Fr. Bruce did was say "Harumph," was silent
for a moment, and then finished his presentation.
thought about what this student had said.
Afterwards he
During the Easter semes
ter break of that year, Fr. Bruce left the university setting and
moved to a very poor area of New York City to conduct what he termed
was a ministry of "availability."
In community organizational terms,
availability meant that he was there to get to know the people of
the block and neighborhood, and have the people get to know him.
Some got to know their new neighbor very quickly.
Fr. Bruce was
robbed every day for a month until his economic situation was more
in balance with theirs.
Covenant House, which today provides a full range of services
to thousands of children and their families, began literally one
night in the winter of 1968 at two o'clock in the morning.
Six
youths knocked on Fr. Bruce's door--four boys, two girls; their
ages were fourteen to seventeen.
asked, "Are you Father Bruce?"
Standing in the doorway, they
When he responded. "Yes," they
said, "Can we come in and sleep on your floor, because we've got
no place to stay."
Again he answered, "Yes," and brought them in.
They stood there in the living room, shivering and looking inno
cent and charming, and that's not hard to do if you're on the
street and need a place to stay.
good that night.
The children promised to be
They promised not to be a bother.
Fr. Bruce
then found some spare blankets and bedded them down on the floor
2
in his living room.
home.
The next day he figured they would return
Instead, one of the kids snuck out and brought back four
more of their friends.
This was their family.
I am recounting this story to you now because what happened
to Fr. Bruce in 1968 is exactly what happens to us today in New
York and in most of our urban centers in both the north and the
south.
The children told Fr. Bruce that they were being harrassed
by the pimps and street people in the area.
Two of them had to star
in a pornographic movie in order to earn their daily bread.
Upon
hearing their stories, Fr. Bruce figures he would obtain some care
for these children.
He assumed he could either get them home or
have them enter one of the departments of social services.
He
approached over 23 agencies at the time, from all sectors of the
private and public systems of care.
we're still told today.
What he was told then is what
He was told that the children were "too
old" for some places, "too young" for others; "too sick" for
some agencies, or "not sick enough" for others.
The bottom line
was that the children were not reimbursable--that is to say. no
one was willing to pay for their care. and secondly, an official
in the child care system informed Fr. Bruce that since he was
unlicensed and unchartered, he was violating various child care
laws, i.e., he was contributing to the delinquency of minors.
He
was breaking one of the laws of interstate commerce, for those
children that were from out of state; and he was "alienating the
affections of youth."
The third admonition he received from one
of the directors of child care was:
Have the children arrested.
If Fr. Bruce did this, the children would then enter the family
court system, obtain funding, and perhaps if they were lucky they
3
could get into a group home or foster home.
However t the large
bulk of our children then and now would end up in our large
children's detention centers.
Each city, each country, each
state has one.
The response of Fr. Bruce at that time has had great personal
and programmatic significance for all of us.
He said. "It is not
a crime to have left your home; it is not a crime to be kicked
out of your home; it is most definitely not a crime if the home
has deteriorated.”
arrested."
He then said. "I will not have these children
It was, of course, an excellent decision.
every decision has a price.
However,
The price of this one was that he
became the instant father of ten adolescents in one day, and the
founder of an agency called Covenant House.
In the early years from 1968 to 1972 Covenant House consisted
of groups of volunteers who both lived and worked with homeless,
abandoned and neglected children and youth.
I joined the staff
as a counselor in 1971 after getting my masters degree in educa
tional psychology, and during our history I have worked in various
capacities as counselor. as project director of the Under 21 cen-
ter in New York, and as advisor to our child care project in Guatemala.
In 1972 Covenant House received its license and charter—its
legitimization as an agency.
From 1972 to 1977 Covenant House
operated group homes and residences throughout New York City.
In
1977 we made a decision to open centers called Under 21, designed
especially for both children and youth who are forced to live
and survive on the street because of the breakdown in families
and in some of our institutional structures.
detail the situation of our children today.
4
Let me describe in
In this section I will focus on the situation of homeless
children and the services we provide for them in the Times Square
area of Manhattan in New York City.
Times Square, as you know,
is the entertainment capital of the East Coast.
Every year
thousands of people come for the shows, the plays. and the res
taurants .
Times Square is also one of the unofficial "red light"
districts in our country, along with the Combat Zone in Boston,
14th Street in Washington, the Montrose area in Houston, and the
various "strips" in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
In this un
official red light district in New York near our crisis center,
there are literally scores of pornographic bookstores, massage
parlors, sleazy bars, hotels and live sex shows.
You may not know
though that Times Square is also the area where young children are
bought and sold.
A while ago, when I was standing in front of the center with
Fr. Bruce, a finely dressed gentleman came up to us and said, "If
you will accompany me around the corner , I can get you any boy or
girl you’d like.
Now, they’re black, white. or oriental.
Come
in, sit down, watch the show, buy a drink—it'll cost you $25 for
the first fifteen minutes.
Well, fellows, what do you think?"
When we told him that we were not interested, he smiled
and simply walked over to another group of men.
Let me give you some statistics to describe
further.
this situation
In New York City at any one period of time there are
approximately twenty thousand runaway and homeless children under
sixteen years old, according to police estimates.
This does not
include youth who are sixteen. seventeen, eighteen or nineteen
years old.
The Department of Health and Human Services has estimated
5
that between one and two million children leave their homes each
year.
Most of these kids come to our large urban centers.
In response to the tremendous needs of these young people,
and in response to the felt need of various community groups in
the Times Square area, we opened our Under 21 center in April 1977.
(At the center we provide a full round of services to the children
on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis.)
I will describe the ser
vices of this center to you in the context of the five principles
and practices of our child care called the Covenant Process as
Environment.
The first principle that informs our care of children is
immediacy—that is, the center is open 24 hours a day, seven days
a week.
The purpose of this policy is to respond to the children
as immediately as possible through an open intake.
away any child or youth.
We do not turn
Second, all staff (professional and
volunteer) and all departments respond to the children’s needs as
immediately as we can.
Therefore, we provide them with food,
clothes, shelter, medical care, and other forms of counseling.
In New York, we serve over 800 meals a day in the kitchen and are
sheltering close to 200 young people night by night,
These num
bers and statistics may vary, depending on the city where we are
located.
The second principle of our child care is called sanctuary.
This means that we provide these children with safety and protec-
tion.
We first protect them from themselves—i.e., from harsh,
categorical judgments concerning their painful pasts.
We also
protect them from the "street," i.e., from their pimps and from
the violence that is endemic to street life.
6
We further implement
sanctuary by providing a very comfortable, beautiful and clean
environment.
Cleanliness and beauty are essential elements in
lowering the potential of violence in a large group setting.
They are also the necessary preconditions to re-establish in our
youth their sense of dignity and self-worth.
Both of these
aspects must exist before any further counseling can be initiated.
The third principle of operation is value formation.
As
the children become safe and secure, we provide various forms of
counseling:
intensive individual, group, and family.
On an
average, about 12 percent of our young people return home.
may seem to be a very successful and ideal resolution.
75 percent of our kids cannot return home.
That
However,
For those who stay
at Under 21 (on an average of two to three weeks), value formation
consists of the principles and values that are important to us.
as adults and as staff.
Examples of these values are:
care and
respect for the dignity of each person; cleanliness and order;
and a commitment in some way to education and work.
Our fourth principle is called structure.
While at the
center, the structure is as individualized as possible within a
group setting.
Each youth has his or her own plan of activity,
e.g. , attendance at school, looking for work, preparing for independent living.
Structure is also the rules, roles and account
ability systems that all the children and staff must abide by.
The fifth principle of operation is the principle of choice.
A choice by definition means that behavior has consequences.
With
regard to our children, we, through our example, words and actions.
ask them to continue to make choices that support their growth
(e.g., a return home, or getting a job) ; and with our advocacy
7
and assistance, to discontinue the violent or self-destructive
acts that so dominated their lives on the street.
Since my time here is short and there is much more to talk
about than just a description of our children and the services
provided, I will present a small summation as a context for a
discussion of issues.
We see over 10,000 children a year 21 and under.
There are
about three times as many males on the street as females.
All of
the children come from fractured nuclear and extended families;
the majority (80 percent) come from single parent families.
Inci-
dences of running away and being on the street cross all classes
and cultures.
However, the bulk of the children on the street are
the children of the poor.
All are victims of some form of child
abuse, neglect, or deprivation at home.
All are victims of con-
tinned abuse on the street and in our institutions.
are the products of a lack of love.
Indeed, they
There are a number of issues
that underlie the tremendous numbers of children on the streets of
our urban centers.
We have unclear applications of the laws as they affect
children.
For example, in New York if a child reaches sixteen
years of age (in various states, the age is seventeen or eighteen)
and that person leaves home or is kicked out of his or her home,
the youth is immediately self-emancipated.
That is to say, they
are too old for the family court system and are usually not
acceptable to the accompanying child care system.
By and large.
they are also too young for most adult welfare services.
For
example, about 70 percent of the children and youth that come to
our center are between seventeen and twenty years old.
8
As too
old or too young for most social services, they fall into a "noperson’s-land."
These youth as a group also have the largest
unemployment rate of any group in the country.
(For example,
white youth between the ages of sixteen and nineteen have about
a 20 percent unemployment rate; black and minority youth unemployment rates are between 25 and 70 percent, depending on the area.)
Of the children who have lived on the street and have been
through our centers, about 60 percent have been involved in some
form of prostitution.
Think about it.
When one is poor, homeless.
hungry, without marketable skills and cannot return home, prosti
tution is the almost inevitable step to take in order to survive.
There is the lack of enforcement with regard to issues of
pornography, prostitution, and pimps.
"victimless crime."
Prostitution is seen as a
No one is supposed to get hurt.
It is not a
priority, admittedly, by the police and the judicial system.
In
comparison to other crimes, many pimps, even if they are brought
into court, are released with misdemeanor charges and/or minor
fines.
Moreover, even though statutory rape is a felony, many
children and youth do not prosecute their pimps because of two
factors.
One is a very personal guilt at the forced non-choice
that they have made.
The second is even more serious.
They do
not prosecute their pimps because they are afraid of retaliation.
At Covenant House we have had twelve children die who at one time
were in our center.
is an industry.
In New York City, prostitution and pornography
Unofficial estimates are that it nets over a
billion dollars a year.
A third issue is the changing values in our society and the
devaluation of youth.
Our society sees that sex is good business.
9
Sex is entertainment, and sex sells.
Most of the children on the
streets who act as prostitutes do so right around the corner from
the theater and business districts, and right around the corner
from the tourist hotels.
Sex also sells clothes and cosmetics.
There are countless references to this in advertising and the
One result of these increased profits, however, is the
media.
accompanying eroticization of our children.
We see child and
adolescent models in magazines and on 50-foot billboards used as
sexual objects in order to sell designer jeans.
Another major concern is the lack of supports for the
family, particularly in our urban centers.
This is true both
here in the United States and throughout the urban centers of Latin
America.
We can look at the cycle of industrialization--the migra-
tion of families to the cities with the hope of work; the accompany
ing poverty, unemployment and the environmental violence in our
urban slums.
We see the fracturing of extended family ties be-
cause of this distance, and then the breakup of the nuclear family
with the father leaving either from the pressure, the attack on
his pride, or looking for other work.
The family then disintegrates,
with the mother as the single parent and head of the household.
Most of the children with whom I have worked have come from single
parent families.
Also the poorest group in the United States today
is the single parent family.
In addition to the cycle of industri-
alization, we can see the increase in the statistics on divorce.
At this time, approximately one out of two marriages ends up in
divorce or separation (cf. recent article in Newsweek, January 10,
1983).
There is an added statistical profile on working women.
10
Well over half of our women with children are working in the
marketplace.
This is indeed the first generation where both
parents are working outside the home and where children are
experiencing, at best f inconsistent child care practices even in
the best homes.
Moreover, there have been fiscal cuts across
the board in all of the social services, especially to families,
That is to say. there have been cuts in various forms of day
care programs, child care programs, school programs. lunch and
after-school programs.
These issues need a response.
The first recommendation with regard to children and families
is a very personal one that affects all of our attitudes and values.
First, you must think well of the children and youths who live on
the street.
They are really good kids.
And please remember that
they do not like themselves; they do not like their lifestyles—
they do not want to be on the street.
I was told by one of my
kids, "Steve, I can't tell you the truth about the way I live,
because if I did you would hate me.
ii
Please do not blame the
victims of this so-called "victimless crime."
Please think well.
and do not blame the children of the poor or our minority kids.
For underneath it all, these children are really the churned-out
byproducts of unequal industrial development, unemployment, inflation, the breakdown in family structures, and changing societal
values.
Second, no matter what community we are from, there could be
stronger enforcement of the existing laws with regard to prostitu
tion and pornography.
Pimps should go to jail.
And although
there are difficult First Amendment questions to be struggled with.
many pornographic establishments could be closed because there is
11
usually on the statutes a proviso that says a building can be closed
if it is against "community standards."
It seems much easier for
a group to open a pornographic bookstore or a massage parlor than
it is to establish a residential shelter for the homeless.
Third, we need to redefine sexuality as it affects children.
Children should not be bought and sold for adult sexual use.
I
have never met a young adult prostitute who was not first a home
less, neglected or abandoned child.
Also, we must really under
stand that making children erotic, sexual objects in order to sell
blue jeans and cosmetics is wrong.
We could protest the commercials
and we don’t have to buy the products.
Ten-year-olds do not need
to dress in designer jeans.
Fourth, we need to concentrate on the values of family.
We
need, both in private and public forums, to explore new models of
family.
We also need to provide more adequate supports for work
ing mothers, e.g., day care and child care programs.
As we have
said earlier, this is one of the first generations where both
parents are working outside the home.
I have discussed with you the situation of some of our
children who are forced to live on the streets in some of our
urban centers.
I have also described one program which attempts
to address some of their needs, analyzed some issues and given
recommendations concerning homeless children and their families.
12
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kahn, Alfred J., and Kamerman, Sheila B. Helping America's
Families. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982.
Kamerman, Sheila B., and Kahn, Alfred J.
Benefits and Working Parents. New York:
Press, 1981.
Child Care, Family
Columbia University
Keniston, Kenneth, and the Carnegie Council on Children.
Children, The American Family Under Pressure. New York:
Brace, Jovanovich, 1977.
Tacon t Peter.
My Child Minus Two.
New York:
All Our
Harcourt,
UNICEF, 1981.
United Nations Children's Fund. _________
The State of the World's Children-London: Oxford University Press, 1982.
1982-83. London:
13
*
THE ADOLESCENT’S RIGHT TO THE WHOLE TRUTH
Margaret White, M.D.
I was told that this conference was not to be yet another
repetition of appalling statistics on the plight of the young and
I don’t intend to regale you with an array of horrifying facts.
I intend to be as positive as possible but in order to proselytise
our solution to teenage pregnancies and promiscuity it is necessary to be able to expose the quite appalling track record of the
sex education that has the support of the government in both our
countries.
The results of the contraceptive lobby’s lavishly
expensive ill-named "sex education" program has been, in a word.
disastrous .
In 1960, in the United Kingdom, before our children
were exposed to contraceptive education, we had a pregnancy rate
in girls under 16 of .039 per thousand, and in girls aged 16-19,
7.67 per thousand.
(Pregnancy rate is the rate of abortions plus
live and stillbirths.)
By 1970, these figures had risen to 1.89
and 24.98 per thousand and by 1980, after nearly twenty years of
free availability of contraception and contraceptive education,
2.54 per thousand girls under 16 had become pregnant and 35.57
per thousand girls between 16 and 19.
It is important that the
government, who are the paymasters, should be shown the expensive
failure of the prevailing orthodoxy.
An interesting sideline to
the statistics in the United Kingdom shows that in spite of sex
never having been more easily available, rape has increased by 100%.
I have long suspected but only recently been sure that many
of the false prophets whose work and writings were responsible for
the degradation of the sexual mores in the western world were them-
selves sexually inadequate in one way or another.
Havelock Ellis,
almost the grandfather of them all, in his old age wrote his own
autobiography .
In it, he said he was impotent until he was sixty
and that his wife was a lesbian.
He also admitted to getting
pleasure from watching women urinate.
(This strange perversion
crops up regularly today in the obscene books and videotapes that
I am forced to view as part of my judicial duties in order to make
a suppression order in court.)
Dr. Kinsey, whose Rockefeller-funded work you all know, did
not write his own autobiography but his co-worker Wardell Pomeroy
wrote some interesting highlights about his excessive interest in
homosexuals and their lifestyle.
He seemed to become, in his old
age, what some people would call a "voyeur."
Tragically, Dr.
Kinsey’s statistically unsound work came to be regarded with more
respect than Holy Writ!
Margaret Sanger in the United States and
Marie Shopes in Britain shared more than initials!
Neither can
be called shining examples of marriage fulfillment.
Marie Shopes'
first marriage was annulled for non-consummation.
The head of our
British "Institute of Sex Education and Research" has been married
three times.
His third wife wrote an article in a Sunday newspaper
She also acts as a "surrogate"
describing how she was a lesbian.
sex partner to the sexually inadequate men who attend his center
for treatment.
Perhaps the main purveyors of sexual information
and standards for the average young woman is the "Agony Aunty."
Alas!
They are not very well served even here.
Press interviews
with two Agony Aunts of mass circulation women’s magazines produced the following information about the advice dispensers:
One
was divorced and had been having psychoanalysis twice weekly for
five years and her teenage daughter had a child by a man already
2
married with three children.
The second was separated from her
husband and deeply involved with another man.
She said, "I’m 33,
I very much want to have a child but before that I’ve got to find
a lasting relationship."
To coin a phrase, "Agony Aunty, heal
thyself. ’’
Long before I knew the strange sex lives lived by many socalled "sex experts" when I was getting together a team of speakers
to talk in the schools. I laid down two necessities for them.
1) Above all else, they had to be happily married people; 2) We
would accept no volunteers.
Far too many people who volunteer
for this sort of counseling are trying to work out their own
problems.
In 1961, the Croydon Newspaper ran headlines (almost as big
as those used to announce a declaration of war) to report that
out of our population of around half a million we had 20 school
girl mothers.
It was a dreadful figure then.
The contraceptive
lobby immediately came up with a scheme to teach contraception
to all school-children.
The Mothers’ Union (The Anglican Wives
Association) and the Rural Dean countered this by asking me to
help organize a team of speakers to teach "personal relationships"
to school children from the Christian point of view (though at
no time did we mention religion).
We collected 9 speakers--5
women doctors, 3 qualified and state-registered nurses, and 1
ex-teacher of biology.
by various experts:
We arranged a training course for them
1) How to put the message across; 2) V.D.-
by a venereologist; 3) Personal relations by a psychologist;
4) Marriage problems by a marriage guidance counsellor; 5) Marriage
and property law by a lawyer; 6) Theology of marriage by a theologian.
The team together drew up a syllabus and submitted it to the
local education authority schools committee.
We had already
"primed" the two or three good Christians on this committee and
a special sub-committee was set up of the head teachers of all
the senior schools (in our case these are schools for children
aged 11-18).
The head teachers put forward suggestions for addi
tions and deletions. all of which we were able to agree to.
I
made a tape of a specimen talk which was heard by all the committee
and accepted.
Within a few weeks we were in business.
The usual
plan was to go and speak to groups of not more than 35 at a time
and then go back about a week later and answer their questions
which they wrote out and put in a box on the desk before the
speaker arrived.(That way the shy and the worried weren't afraid
to ask anything because no one knew who had asked the question.)
At first we went to girls of 15 years old. but we soon discovered
by a questionnaire to the girls themselves that this is too late;
we now like to talk to girls of 13^-14 years old.
I have no doubt
that it is best that there should be no sex education in schools
and that all such knowledge should come in the home.
If there were no constant media propaganda from moral
anarchists we could rely on parents, but there is such constant
proselytizing from press and planned parenthood propaganda that
we must try to reduce the damage done to our children and neutralize
the poison they are fed by large doses of truth.
Sexual permis
siveness is the opium of the atheist intellectual.
There were 24 senior schools in Croydon and we were invited
into 21 of them.
We were not asked into the convents neither
Roman Catholic nor Anglican.
In the second year, the Mother
4
Superior at the Anglican Convent discovered that she had been at
the same college at Oxford at the same time as my sister t and on
such inadequate and fortuitous grounds asked me to come and talk
to her girls.
Her invitation was tentative and hedged around with
many warnings that her young girls were as pure as the driven snow.
When I showed her the scrawled questions they had asked on my
second visit her features were a mask of horror and she said
sadly. "You haven’t come a moment too soon."
We tried hard to recruit men to go and talk to the boys.
(We do not go to boys until a year later than the girls because
When
they are not emotionally mature enough as early as girls.)
we could find no suitable men who had free time to give during
school hours, we went ourselves in fear and trepidation.
To our
surprise we found that we were able to reach a real rapport with
the boys and on several occasions considered whether we should
not search harder for men to talk to the girls!
I ran this team
for over ten years; I still go into three schools each year; I
handed the organization over to a Health education officer I
could trust; to my knowledge contraception agencies have so far
not succeeded in getting into the schools.
It is very important what we say to these children, because
It must
children they are.
We must tell them the total truth.
not be religious.
(Most of these schools are secular state
But at the same time we must
schools; only a few are private.)
be able to convey some of the spiritual and mystical aspects of
sexual relationships.
Plain sex instruction scares away the
poetry and leaves the functions of the sex parts high and dry
and banal.
The 40-minute talk would be a general discussion of
5
sexuality; we would leave details of special subjects such as
V.D.r homosexuality, contraception, and abortion to the question
period.
They always asked but if perchance, it was forgotten, I
would bring up the subject myself (Incidentally, the commonest
question from girls was, and still is. "Will my husband know if
I'm not a virgin?" and from boys. "Do girls realize what they are
doing to us with that sexy gear and behavior?")
We did not
announce ever that we were going to give "sex education" talks;
we always claimed we were there to help with "personal relationships."
I would always begin by telling them we were not there to
spoil their fun but to help them to enjoy themselves painlessly
and emerge into adult life without too many deep scars.
then go on to define a person.
and a spirit.
I would
A person consists of a body. a mind
There's not a lot we can do about our body; some
of us are lucky and we have lovely, slim, tall bodies and blond
hair and others of us are not lucky and we have dumpy, squat
bodies and mousie hair. so there's a lot of luck about that.
The mind is much the same but in this case we can take a pretty
ordinary mind and by using it a lot make it much better than it
was but the third bit of a person, the "spirit," is what really
counts.
Your spirit is your personality; it's what makes you
into you! and the nice thing about it is that you can do something
about your personality; you can make yourself into a friendly,
helpful, cheerful sort of person, and then people will like you
even if you are not either bright or beautiful, or you can make
yourself into a miserable, moaning. and mean sort of person and
then no one will like you even if you are both clever and pretty.
Personality is what counts and so there is a sort of rough justice
6
in the fact that personality is what you can do something about.
There are three stages of sexual development, the first one
we call "auto-erotic" and that starts at birth; it means that a
All babies have to develop
child is interested in his own body.
a "body image" and to do this they have to discover about their
own body.
Babies will play with all different parts of their
anatomy from their ears to their belly button to their genitals.
This is just a normal part of discovering their own shape and
size.
At about 6 or 7 years old a child becomes homo-social.
That means that in general at this stage boys play boys games
with boys and girls play girls games with girls.
Sometimes
at puberty a boy or a girl may get a "crush” on a teacher or a
prefect of the same sex.
This does not mean that they are going
to become a homosexual; it is just part of growing through adoles-
cence that happens to lots of people.
school.
It was very common at my
(It varies from area to area and school to school rather
like being keen on hula hoops or ecology!)
I adored my music
mistress for several years and wept for weeks when she left the
school to go elsewhere.
At some time after puberty, and it can
be almost any age between 12 and 20, we reach the heterosexual
stage and that is when we suddenly realize that there is something
Any mother of an adolescent boy
exciting about the opposite sex.
can tell you that she knows when he reached the heterosexual stage
because she found he went to the bathroom and really washed his
face and hands without being bullied by her to do so.
strongest instinct of all bar one.
Sex is the
(The strongest of all is
hunger.) Because it is such a strong instinct it has to be surrounded
with taboos.
All races and all religions (and all atheists) have
7
had some rules about procreation.
marriage was abandoned as a
the order of the day.
After the Russian revolution,
"bourgeois habit" and free love became
By 1927 there were so many abandoned children
and disturbed women that production was being interfered with.
Soviet government back-tracked and re-instated controls.
The
It is in
fact easier today to get a divorce in America than in the U.S.S. R.
What should today’s adolescent do?
of people of both sexes.
Most important is to know lots
To girls I say. "go out with all sorts
of boys, boys who like rock music and boys who like Bach, boys who
like messing about with motor bikes and boys who love back-packing.
You’ll learn something from all of them and you’ll find out the
type of person that fits in with you."
totally frank.
too young.
Here I am being less than
I am very anxious to stop youngsters "going steady"
The reason is the simple and well known fact that the
longer you go together the further you go together.
I do my best
to encourage adolescents to go out in groups and to take their
boy or girl friends home.
(For some reason schoolchildren always
find it comical that I want their parents to know what sort of a
person they are going around with.)
I reinforce the suggestion by
telling them that they will have less trouble being allowed out
on dates especially late at night if their parents are happy about
their partner.
I assure them that if their mother does not know
their partner for the evening she will be sure to suspect the
worst, because that is a dominant trait of all mothers.
Having got my couple on a date, I then go onto the subject
of petting.
Every child knows at least fifty different types of
erogenous stimulation because the sort of magazines that adolescents
certainly read even if they don’t buy them, will describe them in
8
detail.
I give a brief description of light petting and heavy
petting and tell them that because they are all under 16 they must
stick to "necking."
The next bit is very important.
Girls do not
realize that boys have a much more rapid rate of sexual arousal
than girls.
Girls can keep a fairly steady respiratory rate of
20 per minute quite a long way into a petting session; a boy can
sound like an asthmatic fairly quickly.
I therefore point out
that because it is tougher on the boys (they have a built-in "tiger
in their tank") the responsibility for controlling the petting lies
fairly and squarely on the girl because they can keep cool longer
than boys can, and therefore must not lead on boys.
I demonstrate
polite ways of dealing with roving hands.
There are a few practical tips which are useful to both boys
and girls.
One caveat I insist on is "Never take your boy (or
I have found
girl) friend with you when you go baby-sitting."
that this is one of the common causes of school-girl pregnancy.
The adolescent is being paid to be alone in the house with the
baby; they know they will not be interrupted.
To be alone and
together for several hours is asking a lot of a pair of randy
adolescents.
"Nothing propinks like propinquity!"
The other
practical tip is mainly for girls and is a warning about alcohol.
I explain that it is much easier to say "yes" and much harder to
say "no" to sex if you are euphoric on alcohol.
It is a fact
well known to most young men and expressed succintly in the immortal
phrase "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker."
To both boys and girls, I point out that what they all want
is a happy life-long marriage.
(Despite all the media propaganda
against fidelity in marriage, I have yet to find a boy or girl who
9
doesn’t admit that they hope for a life-long happy marriage.)
They must be impressed with the fact that this means loving somebody with a boil on the back of their neck and a cold in their
head making their nose glow likq Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
Boys should be warned it is fatal to many a girl because she has
a gorgeous figure because after ten years her shape may bear but
the slightest relationship to that which was enclosed in the bridal
gown.
Girls should be told how useless it is to fall for a gorgeous
head of hair because some men are bald by thirty.
Kindness and
generosity do not fade with the years.
I usually finish my general talk by giving them reasons for
chasity before marriage.
given for chastity.
It is important that positive reasons are
It is quite simple to produce a well documented
list of the ill effects that can follow sexual permissiveness.
To
merely put forward negative reasons for chastity is the equivalent
of teaching children not to steal because they might get caught
and punished.
Therefore children must be made to realize the posi-
It is helpful to explain that
tive value of premarital chastity.
there are two sorts of sexual relationship available to the young.
The first type that is peddled on the television screen is sex for
kicks, i.e., a purely genital and physical experience, sex that
goes with commitment is both a physical and metaphysical experience
and is vastly superior to its second class sister ’’sex-for-kicks . ”
It is useless to know 57 different positions to have coitus hanging
from a chandelier if you wouldn’t even recognize true caring life-
long love if you sat beside it at the dinner table.
People who
peddle sensual secular sex are sad, unhappy people who have missed
the gold and settled for the dross.
10
(Examples known to the young
abound; I usually talk of the tragedy of Marilyn Monroe.)
It is
important also to debunk the prevailing mythology that a trial
marriage is helpful to choose a life-long partner.
The simplest
way is to explain that sexual compatability may arrive instantane
ously and disappear after the first pregnancy or may take months
even years to reach its acme? therefore, for how long does a trial
last and by what criteria is it judged a success or failure?
There
are certain men who can only perform sexually to their satisfaction
in an illicit relationship? the literature is littered with cases
of men who became impotent on marrying their mistress.
There are
many women who can only "perform" well sexually when they are in
a totally secure relationship. i.e., marriage.
Each couple develops
their own sexual pattern and experience with one partner does not
help with a different one, and may hinder.
The other negative
reasons for premarital chastity are known well enough to the young
but only in part, and the whole truth of the harm they can do to
their health both physical and mental seems to be deliberately
concealed from those who need to know most.
They must be told
that no contraceptive is 100% efficient; they should be told the
total truth about the serious medical side effects of the oral
contraceptive and the intra-uterine device.
The evils and dangers
of abortion (always played down in girls' magazines) and the
frightening increase in venereal disease and its increasing
resistance to anti-biotics .
At no stage do we talk from the point
of view of any religion, the line we take is what is the most
natural and healthy behavior for the young.
What we say to boys varies slightly.
their point of view.
We try to talk from
We tried talking to mixed sex groups but it
11
COMMUNITY HEALTH
CELL
326, V Main, I Block
Koramt ng' I?,
didn't work, partly because girls need to be counseled at a younger
age than boys but mainly because we all found that the boys tended
to show off in front of the girls, asking sophisticated questions
and pretending to knowledge and experience they did not have.
St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things.
cents have lost their innocence.
Our adoles-
I would like to see a tertiary
Order of St. Anthony of people who will give some time to be
trained and to go into schools and youth clubs to tell children
the total truth and help them to find what is lost.
job, but it is possible and it can be done.
It's a tough
No one was ever more
wrong than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
If you have no friends on your education committees or P.T.A.s,
do what we do in some areas—get a pupil to ask for someone to
speak "from the other side."
If that fails, get a pupil to ask
for a debate—it's hard for a head teacher to refuse a debate.
Finally if you can't get into the schools anyhow (and in some towns
we couldn't) we would book a hall and arrange a conference and
invite all the local schools to send their 14 year olds.
We would
have a 10:30 to 3:30 day and have three short talks by different
people--"Boy Meets Girl"—"Going Steady H and "Getting Married,"
followed by at least an hour's question time.
We always got a full
house.
If this task seems too much, I would point out that if we
succeed in showing up sexual permissiveness for the deceivers
the problems of contraception and abortion will diminish, and our
adolescents will regain once more their youthful innocence.
12
COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS:
PARENT TO PARENT, PARENT TO ADOLESCENT
Dr. Donald Conroy and Mary Thormann, Ph.D.
The program indicates that the next hour would be shared
equally by Dr. Mary Thormann and myself.
When* Dr. Thormann
called me to say she could not come, we talked about various ways
to adjust to her absence.
We decided she would outline her pre
sentation for me over the phone (she has a Watts line) and I would
then talk for the whole hour.
I want you to know that the material
I present on adolescent development is from Dr. Thormann's outline.
However, it should be noted that she is in no way responsible for
the way I present it.
I am going to proceed from the assumption that the ultimate
goal of this conference and the ultimate goal we all want to
achieve is the creation of the whole person.
I want to express
another assumption; viz, that the theme of this conference, Adoles
cent Sexuality, focuses on the developmental process of all human
beings; that when we speak of adolescence we are referring to a
process; that when we speak of adolescence we are referring to a
process, and not primarily to a class of people or a specific
group.
3J
I want to ask your indulgence from the very beginning--we
are limited by language.
I want to say something in particular to
all those present between the ages of 13 and 19:
be as tolerant
as you can be with my efforts to develop a very complicated topic.
When I say adolescent, don't take the word personally.
Try to hear
it as a theory that applies to us all.
Again, our ultimate goal is the creation of whole persons.
1
and when we speak of sexuality we are speaking of both the male
and female aspects of our personality.
Adults are those who have
an awareness and an acceptance and not a denial of their maleness
and femaleness.
Adolescents are not expected to have such aware
ness, but through contact with adults they can grow to wholeness
by way of modeling and sharing with other human beings, hopefully
their parents and extended family, as well as others.
Adults, in their relationship with adolescents, need to know
where the adolescent is in terms of psycho-social development.
An
understanding of the psychosocial development can be arrived at by
looking at three characteristics:
1.
Age.
Young adolescent (13-15)
Middle adolescent (15-17)
Older adolescent (17-19)
That’s the easy part.
2.
Cognitive.
Thinking stage.
3.
Identity.
Achieving identity stages.
Let's look at the latter two briefly:
Cognitive/thinking stages:
When we raise this topic we refer
to the work of Jean Piaget, who gave us the definitive work and who
gave us words for the goal of our thinking process, formal opera
tional, which we can achieve sometime around 17 years, but there
is much variability in the time frame.
David Elkind writes about the processes we go through to get
to formal operational thinking:
a)
We go through a time when we have difficulty distinguish
ing ourselves and others. i.e., distinguishing what we
think from what others think, especially what they
think about us.
We perceive others as locked into
2
what we think about ourselves.
ego-centrism.
Elkind calls this
We can’t decentralize.
We have
difficulty or even find it impossible to allow for
Another charac-
an opinion different frojn our own.
teristic of this kind of thinking (ego centrism) is
called "personal fable."
This is the idea of my
uniqueness, in the sense that nothing bad can happen
to me because I am in some way protected from harm,
We go through a
injury, and negative consequences.
time, many of us, when death does not really apply to
us; we are simply alive.
Elkind says that this kind of
thinking can be related to teen pregnancy; such a con-
sequence cannot happen.
When we approach formal operational thinking we are able to think
abstractly and say. "No, that’s not true.
That person is not
thinking of me all the time. ii
We can also listen to and absorb
other opinions than our own.
We can be tolerant (as I asked the
young people here this morning to be tolerant of my language, my
limitations, even my theories).
So, those are cognitive characteristics of adolescent
development, some of it.
Identity - Achieving identity is a process.
Another author.
James Marcia, discusses this identity process as a continuum.
Identity achieved
Identity diffused
1.
who I am.
+
+
+
+
Diffused identity, no identity at all.
I don11 know
The two stages in this identity process we want to
focus on what Marcia calls Foreclosure and Moratorium.
3
2.
Foreclosure, follow in another's footsteps.
that other person expect of me?
What does
I'll do that; I'll do that
thing for myself in the long run.
Marcia says not necessarily;
maybe for a while, but not long-term.t
The point here is facing crises and decisions and commitments.
The growth process includes facing up to and passing
through crises and making decisions, if a person is to achieve
his or her own identity.
3.
Moratorium:
proper stage for adolescents.
Still no
commitment by the individual but a necessary period of trying
things out, experimenting, all sorts of experiments, clothes,
hair style (appearance), friends, sexual activity, trying things
based on the individual's decision to experiment and not just
being swept along with the stream.
4.
But still no commitment.
Identity achieved; who one is in society, what kind of
contribution is to be made. choices are marriage, children, etc.
I have attempted to point out two very important characteristics
of the development stage of adolescent, cognitive/thinking stage
with its ego-centrism and personal fable and the second stage
regarding identity with special emphasis on foreclosure and
moratorium.
I hope you have found yourselves in some of these descrip
tions of adolescent development because to some extent. these
characteristics continue with us as we achieve adulthood.
Some
of us never achieve adulthood, as it is defined by Piaget, Elkind,
and Marcia, and those who have been stuck
in one of these stages
will confront that stage with conflict when their child shows the
signs of that stage.
What we have repressed in our own growth
4
will surface as we experience the growth of our children.
There is no settling in.
never stop growing.
states it simply:
We
As the Buddha
Adulthood has its
Life is a struggle.
stages also and it is proper to say as well that families have
stages.
- There is marriage and the joining of personalities.
- Then the birth of the first child. a crisis stage in
family relations.
The introduction of the third
The
party and a new kind of intimacy and love.
boundaries of the married couple are challenges.
The third party introduces the concept of triangle
in family life, and since the 50*s family therapists
have identified the triangle as the basic building
block of any emotional/interpersonal system.
(More
can be said about this later.)
Some other stages in family-adult life are:
Child starts school.
Social institutions now play an
intimate part in family life.
- Child moves into puberty and adolescence.
The family
style and values are challenged.
The child leaves home.
All families experience crises and some families are deeply
wounded and crippled by these crises.
When a family encounters
a stage in its development and is not equipped to deal with that
stage, conflict and serious problems develop.
symptoms:
We call them
I'm referring to running away, attempted suicide.
truancy, promiscuity, or anorexia and bulemia.
these later as well.)
(We can discuss
They view such symptoms as misguided
5
attempts at changing an existing difficulty.
The well functioning family has problems and these problems
A comparison can be made here
persist but they do not paralyze.
to arguments in a family:
a good argument is one which gets the
issue settled and leaves the participants feeling closer together
afterwards rather than further apart.
Dysfunctional families
develop problems because they are not able to adjust to transi
tions which occur within the family life-cycle.
Illustrations might help; the father, let's say, has been
running the family business for years; it was passed onto him by
his father.
His son comes along and shows no interest in the
business.
Let's say the father, as he grew through adolescence.
never questioned the issue of his career; he knew and his whole
family knew he was going to go into the family business (fore
closure—it is possible he foreclosed very early in life).
Now
his son is 16 or 17 and he does not want to foreclose, decide for
sure his future—conflict.
Another illustration; our society is facing a new phenomenon:
women at age 40 or so are emerging into the business world with
what Levinson of Chicago calls an "executive ego."
They have
been confined to the home and its many responsibilities and to
They have accomplished that
their motherhood and parenthood.
task and with full confidence and a sense of purpose present
themselves to the larger world of business. finance, and pro
fession .
In the meantime. their husbands are beginning to con
front the end of their dream of "rising to the top;" these men
are realizing just now that they indeed are limited in their
talents and skills and will not be made president of the company.
6
Needless to say, if these two grownups are not well developed
adults, they will experience tumultuous conflicts and just at
that time when their children are achieving adolescence—15 to
20 years into the marriage.
Symptoms develop in families and are viewed by family
therapists as communicative acts.
Children have an enormous
investment in their parents' relationship and if they have no
vehicle to express their concern verbally, they will express
their concern non-consiously and symptomatically.
Such problems
then are not the young person (though the symptom must be treated),
the problem for the therapist is the way the family reacts and
interacts and attempts to adapt to the crisis stage it has
entered.
You might ask, what would hinder the child from expressing
his/her concern in a healthier way?
One answer to the question
lies in the family rules.
Virginia Satir writes very clearly about family rules in
her book. People Making.
should.
Rules have to do with the concept of
Rules are very important in any social group, when one
lives with others.
All families have rules. some are open. some
hidden; some conscious. some not conscious.
rules, children have theirs.
Parents have their
Parents are continually trying to
clarify their rules with their children.
For example, for more
than two years I have been trying to establish a simple rule that
the kitchen is clean and dishes done by 4:30 on school days.
Recently, I learned that the children have been operating under
a rule of their own; when one of the two older kids is not home.
the other two do not have to clean the kitchen.
7
Obviously, their
rule and mine have collided frequently.
deduced their rule.
But I have only recently
I assumed we were operating only under one
rule, mine.
How are rules made in the family?
rules?
Especially the unspoken
One way to examine this question is to ask:
free to say to individual members of my family?
say what I think?
How I feel?
What I see?
what am I
Am I free to
Must I comment only
on what should be rather than what is?
Our freedom to comment within the family is very important.
And we can check ourselves on this issue with four questions:
1.
What can you say about what you are seeing and hearing
and feeling?
Or what can you way about what you
experience?
E.g., you are 14 and you just heard dad
swear and there is a rule against it.
2.
What can you do?
To whom can you say it?
In regard to the swearing dad.
Say something to
mother, to dad, sibling, canary.
3.
How do you go about it if you disagree or disapprove
of something?
Again, in regard to the swearing.
I was working with
a family and the youngest was 16, the oldest. 23, all
boys.
There was a lot of earthy language and their
mother asked them not to use that language. not for
my sake, but hers.
4.
Nothing changed, so she gave up.
How do you question when you don't understand?
E.g.,
if you ask a family member to repeat, is that the same
as picking a fight, does clarifying put others on the
defensive?
8
Let’s think about this for a minute.
that must never be raised in your family?
Are there some subjects
For example, I know of
a family that sets the table every night for father, mother, and
five kids. and father never came home.
He was down the street at
the saloon drinking his supper, and no one said anything. and
more, no one in the family ever talked about the fact that no one
said anything.
When the rule is that the family talks about only what is
good, what is right, appropriate, relevant, then a lot of reality
which is present, cannot be commented on.
Such families have expressions such as "You shouldn’t feel
that way!" as a way to keep out the negative, the hurtful.
expressions keep us apart, disconnected, distrustful.
These
They affect
our self-worth adversely.
How many of us parents have experienced our young children
staring at a handicapped person in public?
What did we do?
child in public:
No legs or arms.
We have all witnessed parents admonishing their
"Sammy, don't stare at people!
It isn’t polite,"
when Sammy was curiously examining a new experience, an amputee.
We know the parent was embarrassed; we can assume the child was
confused and bewildered.
What are the rules in your family about affection?
Do
spouses kiss or hold each other spontaneously or at set times?
Does father kiss his daughter after the age of 5, 10, 15?
father kiss his son?
Does
As one therapist-author, Satir, puts it.
"I wonder how much the truly satisfying, nurturing potential of
affection among family members is not enjoyed because family rules
about affection get mixed up with taboos about sex."
9
So many of our families struggle over accepting, enjoying
and appreciating the spirituality of sex.
taught and continue to teach the rule:
anyone else's in any form.
So many of us have been
Don't enjoy sex—yours or
Psychotherapists are keenly aware of
the relationship between this rule on sex and emotional illness.
The fostering of ignorance or head-in-sand, promotes an attitude
of shame, imposes the burden of unnecessary limitations. and en
courages the attitude of low self-worth.
We have been discussing
family rules as a systematic.
though often unconscious, way families have of keeping the members
from expressing outwardly their legitimate concerns.
Let's sum-
marize with a few questions for ourselves.
1.
Was I raised in a family that kept secrets?
E.g. ,
mother was pregnant when she married father . .
. Uncle
Bill spent a couple of years in the slammer for armed
robbery . .
. and, have I kept secrets from my children?
Such secrets are shrouded in shame.
They are not pro
tective of the children so much as protective of our
shame.
2.
They restrict communication.
Do we operate in our family with a rule like this?
"No matter what happens, look happy," which is nearly
humanly impossible to keep.
3.
Or this rule:
"Don't talk about it.
though it didn't exist."
Treat it as
An open rule designed to
hide our experience.
4.
Or,
Never say what you think or feel."
I believe the
greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is
to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and
10
touched by them.
The greatest gift I can give is to
see, hear, understand, and to touch another person.
When this is done, I feel contact has been made.
Virginia Satir
(People Making)
As we uncover the rules of our families, we begin to expose
some of the fundamental patterns of our communications.
rules are the basis of our family interactions.
Our family
These rules pro
vide us with the underlying meaning of our family communications.
The final point I want to discuss with you is this over-used
word, communication.
I want to present a couple of very important
axioms of communication and then briefly discuss a program which
has been developed to teach couples and families communication
skills.
1.
First, two axioms about communications:
We cannot not communicate.
communicative.
All of our interactions are
So much has been said about this axiom
that we need say no more.
2.
All communications have two aspects. content, and
relationship; there is the message and there is the
commentary or statement regarding the communicators
included in the interaction.
This needs some developing.
We cannot not communicate means we cannot ask whether we
communicate in a marriage or family but rather we can only ask
what we communicate.
And secondly, focusing on our marital interactions. we not
only send messages (content) but we also reveal to the world the
kind of relationship we have.
Again, it isn’t a question of
whether we reveal our relationship. but what we reveal about our
relationship.
11
I am not going to develop this any further except to say
that our communications do reveal a great deal about our families
and our relationships, the kind and degree of intimacy, whether
we are enmeshed and fused or separated and disengaged, who has
the power, the energy, and much more.
In recent years. a number of programs have been developed
to help couples and families attain skills which can help them
through troubled times or prevent problems from paralyzing them
and even help them in increasing their self-esteem.
For families
there is a program called Understanding Us which deals directly
with family life cycles as well as family rules.
And for couples.
married or not, there is Couples Communication.
I would like to
conclude with a few comments on Couple Communication because this
program offers a lot of hope to us all.
Couples Communication is a program, a workshop, which is
part of an overall model called "effectiveness training."
It
imparts skills, how to do something.
First:
How to tune in to oneself, become more self-aware.
so that one can:
Second:
Tune into our partner. and become aware of that
These skills can be applied
special person outside ourselves.
to any person outside ourselves who is important to us and willing
to cooperate with us so that we can become more aware of him/her;
e.g., our adolescent child. even our colleague at work.
3.
We learn about ways of talking which lead to achieving
our goal of self-disclosure.
4.
And, finally, we develop skill in understanding how the
attitudes we hold about ourselves and our partners influence our
12
communication and conversely how our communication (the style
of our interaction) affects our attitudes.
Another way of putting
this is, we learn skills which are directly related to building
the esteem of both ourselves and qur partner.
We are humbled by the observation that all communication is
learned behavior; we are also given hope that we can truly learn
to communicate well in our marriages and our families.
13
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF THE OVULATION METHOD
John J. Billings, M.D.
Natural Family Planning first became established on a scientific basis
some 50 years ago when Qgino and Knaus demonstrated that when ovulation occurs
in the human female, a menstrual period follows about 12 to 16 days later, in
the absence of pregnancy.
These observations gave rise to the Rhythm Method,
a predictive method of determining the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle;
the calculations were based on the assumption that the cycles would continue to
vary only within the range previously observed.
The Rhythm Method depends there
fore upon the persistence of regularity of the menstrual cycles, at least within
a particular range.
e.g
The method is inapplicable at times when ovulation is suspended;
during lactation, and an additional problem arises when ovulatory bleeding is
is incorrectly interpreted as menstruation.
Where the woman is habitually susceptible
to marked irregularity of the menstrual cycle the calculations allow little time
for coitus.
In the application of the Rhythm Method the calculations take into account the
generally held opinion that following ejaculation the sperm cells may survive for
up to 3 days and rarely longer within the female genital tract. Charts provide for
a 3-day, 4-day, 5-day sperm survival; the; "early safe days", i.e., days on which
infertility is predicted are then determined from the shortest cycle in the woman’s
record. The formula S-21 (length of the shortest recorded minus 21 days) allows
for a 5-day sperm survival, S-20 for a 4-day sperm survival etc.
The Rhythm Method came to be regarded as very unreliable, partly because of
its genuine weaknesses but also because it was often poorly taught and sometimes
not understood even by the teacher.
Thus, for example, the woman might be told
that she could presume the presence of infertility for "7 days after the period and
10 days beforehand".
The teacher would mean "7 days from the ccmmencement of the
menstrual period”.
Unless the "failures of the method" were carefully investigated
the teacher might never learn to correct the teaching error - the teaching error
quoted is an actual experience in the case of one senior Australian gynaecologist,
and it remained uncorrected for years.
Occasionally pregancies wauld occur from
an isolated act of coitus in the cycle, e.g., day 8 and on another occasion much
later in the cycle, e.g., day 24.
The mistake might then be made of interpreting
the events as though they had both occurred in the same cyclQ, that is, that two
separate ovulations occurring after the appropriate interval on each occasion; it
is now established that there is only one day of ovulation in any cycle, even if
multiple ovulations occur.
Because menstruation can determine the time of ovulation only retrospectively,
attention was transferred from the Rhythm Method to the detection of ovulation,
particularly by reference to the biphasic pattern of the Basal Body Temperature
which commonly, though not always and sometimes without precision, reflects the
occurrence of ovulation. Cervical palpation, chemical analysis of the cervical
mucus for glucose and saline content, the measurement of ovarian electrical
potentials etc., have also been employed.
There have also been attempts to impose
regularity of ovulation upon the woman, efforts which have generally been un
successful and produce a variety of ill-effects to be expected of continuing
medication.
The detection of ovulation can provide only for the definition of
days of probable infertility between ovulation and the next menstrual period.
and cannot therefore provide for the pre-ovulatory phase of the cycle nor for
those circumstances when ovulation may be delayed for weeks, months, even a year
or more during lactation, the pre-menopausal years etc.
There are therefore three important problems to be solved if natural family
planning is to be able to provide a dependable technique for the regulation of
fertility in different physiological circumstances, without protracted abstinence:
(i)
We need to know the limits of sperm survival time
and the determinants of such survival.
(ii) A specific marker for the occurrence of ovulation
is required to replace the non-specific temperature record
which may be distrubed by influences unrelated to ovulation.
(iii) We need to correct previous assessments of the
reliability of natural family planning methods by means of
this new information, e.g., by using the biological knowledge
to evaluate the statements of the husband and wife in regard to
the absence of intimate sexual contact during the presumed
fertile phase of the cycle.
There is now a substantial volume of scientific evidence to show that the
sperm cells survive for a very limited time, a few hours or even only a few
minutes, following ejaculation into the vagina, unless the environment of the
vagina is altered by the presence of cervical mucus.
The cervical mucus protects
the sperm cells from phagocytosis, supplements their energy requirements and
facilitates their transport through the cavity of the uterus to the Fallopian
tube where fertilization ordinarily takes place. Although the subject requires
further study, it can now be said that there is no hard evidence to substantiate
the survival time of sperm cells (with the ability to fertilize the ovum) beyond
3 days, even in the presence of satisfactory amount of the most favourable mucus
(which ferns, forms channels etc., and which is found in fertile women close to
the time of ovulation).
The presence of the cervical mucus is responsible for observations during the
menstrual cycle which are familiar to fertile women.
The Ovulation Method has
sought solutions to the problems enumerated above by teaching women to understand
the changes in sensations and in the visual observations which depend upon the
presence or absence of cervical mucus at the vulva, and upon the characteristics
of the mucus at a particular time.
These observations have been correlated with
measurements of ovarian hormones and pituitary gonadotrophins, and with microscopic
examination of the mucus aspirated from the cervix from day to day throughout the
cycles of different women.
The hormonal correlations were first published in
lancet in 1972 and these laboratory studies by Brown and Burger in Melbourne have
been independently confirmed by Casey (Sydney), Flynn (Birmingham, England) and
Hilgers (Onaha r U.S.A.).
Hilgers has also demonstrated by mucus aspiration that
women consistently make observations which accurately reflect what is occurring at
the cervix, without the need for any internal examination.
The Ovulation Method attempts to provide the solutions for all physiological
circumstances, many of which are beyond the scope of other natural methods of
family planning.
It is essentially simple to understand and has the potential of
universal applicability, because it not only teaches the woman to identify the
occurrence of a fertile ovulation but also to recognize the existence of infertility
even in the absence of ovulation.
Its practical rules are based on the biological
facts and clinical observations mentioned above.
That ovulation needs to be
acccmpanied by the secretion of a particular kind of cervical mucus for the woman
to be fecund is a primary thesis, as is the need of the spermatazoa to find a
favourable environment in order to retain their virility within the female
genital tract.
THE VALUE OF FERTILITY
Kevin Hume, M.D.
Whenever a medical practitioner who has a special interest
in fertility awareness is called upon to speak to adolescents in
high school on Christian sexuality he must keep several things in
mind.
The first and most important of these is that he is speaking
in loco parentis and he may not speak to anyone’s adolescent children
without at least the implied consent of their parents.
Next is that he must keep within proper guidelines.
Catholics
are fortunate because these have been laid down clearly and expli-
citly by
the Magisterium and the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith; in the encyclical Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI and
those of his immediate predecessors; in the Declaration on Certain
Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics and in the Apostolic Exhortation
Familiaris Consortio of Pope John Paul II.
Paul VI appeals to medical scientists, especially Catholic
ones, to establish by research
the truth of the Church’s claim
that "there can be no contradiction between two divine laws—that
which governs the transmitting of life and that which governs the
fostering of married love" (Quotation from Vatican Council II
Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the World of today.
et Spes N.51, AAS 58 (1966), p. 172).
Gaudium
Later in Humanae Vitae he
appeals specifically to doctors and nurses to make themselves fully
proficient in this difficult field of medical knowledge, so as to
be able to give proper advice to married couples.
In speaking to
adolescents on this matter, then. the doctor's role is to properly
prepare them for marriage, in the area of fertility control.
The statement in Familiaris Consortio on sex education which
1
I think sums up the Magisterial view most succinctly has tremendous
implications for those who undertake the onerous responsibility of
teaching these things to children, and it deserves to be quoted
here:
"Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents,
must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether
at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them.
In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity,
which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex
education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the
parents.
In this context education for chastity is absolutely
essential, for it is a virtue that develops a person’s authentic
maturity and makes him or her capable of respecting and fostering
Indeed Christian parents,
the "nuptial meaning" of the body.
discerning the signs of God's call will devote special attention
and care to education in virginity or celibacy as the supreme
form of that self-giving that constitutes the very meaning of
human sexuality . .
. . . the Church is firmly opposed to an often widespread
form of imparting sex information dissociated from moral principies.
That would merely be an introduction to the experience of
pleasure and a stimulus leading to the loss of serenity
while
still in the years of innocence - by opening the way to vice."
So the doctor must enter into the same spirit that animates
parents and he must play his part in education for chastity, pre
senting his information as a specialist contribution, always in
a context of clearly defined and positively promoted moral
2
principles .
He must of course be well informed and up to date in
his knowledge of his subject as well as being personally convinced
of the inherent truth of those moral principles.
He must not only research medical journals but should also
try to keep up with what is being presented in the various branches
of the media—magazinesr newspapers, radio and TV.
A passing know-
ledge of adolescent jargon and colloquialisms is no handicap if he
is to hold his audience long enough to get his message across.
It
is safe to assume that his subject has been covered in a wide rang
ing manner at superficial level in adolescent rap sessions—if that
is the correct expression.
Children are exposed to the media—and
their peers—from a very early age and often have quite firmly held
erroneous ideas which can be dislodged by accurate information
presented in language they can understand.
In front of a class of teenagers he stands as an authority
figure in an age which holds little respect for authority.
However
if he has done his homework he will know at least as much as the
best informed member of his captive audience and is certainly well
ahead on experience.
He needs to be articulate and able to make
his subject come alive.
advantage.
Being a practicing clinician is a distinct
Everyone loves a human interest story and adolescents
are no exception.
The doctor who can illustrate his points by
examples of brief case histories from his own practice—while
ensuring anonymity and the preservation of confidentiality—will
have an interested audience.
The occasional humorous throwaway
line or a brief, well told and appropriate joke serve to warm an
otherwise unresponsive group.
The subject of the physiology of reproduction is probably
3
old hat to a high school class.
The sexually experienced will be
set to treat the doctor's contribution as one big yawn.
As an
opener he needs to present some arresting information as a signal
to the interested and uninterested alike that this session is going
to be something different.
It can be safely assumed that the audience is familiar, at
least by name, with different contraceptives, sterilization and
abortion.
Many of them will have come from a family where the
parents have constantly practiced contraception.
In these a
strong contraceptive mentality may already be well entrenched.
The sexually active among them, often children of broken families
who have formed sexually-orientated relationships in an effort to
capture the love and security which their estranged parents have
denied them, will be giving witness to a distorted view of sexual
ity.
Older brothers or sisters may already be involved in pre
marital sexual relationships of varying degrees.
The philosophic vein running through all this is that sex
is primarily for fun. a healthy and readily available recreational
activity which can be enjoyed alone by means of masturbation or
shared with another of either sex.
Masturbation and homosexual
activity carry no risk of the inconvenience of a pregnancy while
"protected" heterosexual intercourse using modern "reliable" contraceptives is held to be equally effective in avoiding the procreative potential of heterosexual intercourse.
Abortion is now
easily obtainable for the indiscreet, the irresponsible who have
failed to avail themselves of suitable protection or for the
unlucky few whose contraceptives have let them down.
However, youth is a time of idealism when chivalrous ideas
4
are fostered.
It is a good time to appeal to the better side of
human nature.
Many young people are now sympathetic to a natural
life style and opposed to any disturbance of the internal environment
of the body.
The role of the doctor is to present human fertility posi
tively, emphasizing that it is a precious gift of the creator, not
a curse as taught by the promoters of the contraceptive culture.
All, almost without exception, have a desire to reproduce themselves.
Young people need to be properly informed as to the threats that
modern ideas of sexual permissiveness pose to that fertility and,
indeed to their general health.
Before deciding to embark on pre
marital sexual activity, or even opting for contraception in marriage.
they need education in certain facts that underpin the case for
chastity.
Among these, and indeed pre-eminent among them, is
information about the existence of modern natural methods of birth
control that are reliable, harmless, and providing serenity of
conscience, as well as being a positive help to the infertile.
Adolescents, both boys and girls, need to be informed of the
results of their indulgence in sexual activity.
The first of these
is that for those who become sexually active, the name of the game
is pregnancy.
This is in spite of modern contraceptives.
The ineffective adult user of contraception who is likely
to experience an unplanned pregnancy exhibits well-defined
characteristics:
*
A lack of sexual partner mutuality in contraceptive use.
*
A lack of involvement in a committed, long-term relationship, especially a marital relationship.
*
A lack of maturity.
5
These are the characteristics which, of course, define
the typical adolescent.
While there are no hard data available
in Australia on adolescent pregnancies r a lot can be learned from
a study of the statistics of live and still births.
The percen
tage of live born ex-nuptial babies in teenagers in my home state
of New South Wales has risen from 20.1% in 1945 to 37.0% in 1973
and 53.5% in 1980.
The overall percentage of live births for
women of all ages born ex-nuptially has risen steadily over the
years and is now 12.68%.
fin New Zealand, it is now 22%.)
Ex-nuptial births have a stillbirth rate far higher than that
for babies born in wedlock.
Furthermore, this rate shows a drama-
tic and continuous increase.
In 1975 in N.S.W. it was 56% higher.
By 1979 it was 197% higher.
It is probable that neonatal mortal«
ity is similarly increased.
Pregnancy in an adolescent of less than 18 years is universally
recognized as being at risk.
Teenagers are notorious in their
failure to attend ante-natal care regularly.
A shop front-type
clinic in a near downtown suburb of Sydney established to provide
adolescent ante-natal care at no cost is being closed because of
lack of demand.
While there has been a decline in the overall number of
births to Australia among teenagers since 1971, the decline is
less marked than in other age groups.
This decline coincides
with widespread availability of abortion on demand.
It is esti
mated that about 1 in 3 of all abortions are performed on teen-
agers.
So we can see here not only the disruptive effects of
pregnancy on the education of adolescent mothers and their later
difficulties with employment but also a poor record with regard
6
to live births in teenagers.
In the U.S., according to Michael Schwartz and James H.
Cure or Cause of Pregnancy?
Ford (Family Planning Clinics:
Linacre Quarterly.
May 1982) the figures for teenage out of
wedlock births have increased from about 190,000 in 1970 to about
240,000 in 1978.
The birth rate among unmarried teenagers rose
from 22 to 27 per 1,000.
At the same time abortions among teen
agers increased fivefold from perhaps 90,000 in 1970 to almost
half a million
by 1978.
The lead editorial of the September/
October 1980 issue of Family Planning Perspectives admitted that
"more teenagers are using contraceptives and using them more con-
sistently than ever before.
Yet the number and rate of premarital
adolescent pregnancies continue to rise."
In fact the percentage
of teenagers experiencing a pregnancy almost doubled.
The obvious
cause for this increase has been the continuing rise in the per
centage who engage in premarital sexual intercourse coupled with
the notoriously high rate of contraceptive failure among teenage
users .
Another contributing factor is the fact that the avail
ability of contraceptives leads to an increased exposure to the
risk of pregnancy by stimulating an increase in the percentage
of teenagers who are sexually active and an increase in the fre
quency of intercourse among those already sexually active.
The effect of induced abortion is seen in the now well
recognized sequelae or after-effects resulting from the procedure.
"Reported complications in pregnancies subsequent to first tri
mester induced abortions include increased rate of premature
delivery, cervical incompetence, pregnancy loss in first and
second trimesters, bleeding in each
7
trimester and retained
placenta after delivery," according to a review of the literature
by Barrett, Boehm and Killam (Induced abortion:
A risk factor for
placenta previa Am. J. Obstet. Gynec. Vol. 141 No. 7 Dec. 1, 1981,
P- 769-772).
These authors themselves noted a threefold increase
in the incidence of placenta previa in women at Vanderbilt Uni
versity Hospital who had had induced first trimester abortions,
probably the result of scarring of the endometrium, particularly
after suction curettage.
Teenagers seeking abortions notoriously present late, which
means that a higher proportion undergo second trimester termina
tions with greater risk not only to their fertility but even to
their lives.
Adolescents are noted for the transient nature of their
relationships with members of the opposite sex.
For those for
whom intercourse forms part of that relationship a new risk to
fertility appears.
Once there is a departure for a one to one
sexual relationship then sexually transmitted disease becomes
the name of the game.
Gonorrhea has until recently been the most
common of these diseases with an ever downward trend in the age
group showing the peak incidence.
It has been stated that this
peak incidence occurs in 18 year old girls in the U.S.
The male/
female ratio which in 1960 was 4:1 has now reached unity.
One
of the difficulties in arriving at a diagnosis in an adolescent
is what is known as the nice-girl syndrome.
It is very hard to
consider gonorrhoea as a diagnosis if a doctor has known a patient
for many years, or even watched her grow up in a good family.
Uncomplicated gonorrhoea is symptom-free in approximately 70% of
women.
However it is very frequently associated with other sexually
8
transmitted diseases, notably trichomaniasis, chlamydial infec-
tion, and candidiasis or thrush.
The greatest risk to fertility comes from gonorrhoeal
salpingitis or, more accurately,' pelvic inflammatory disease.
which occurs in about 10% of patients with untreated gonorrhoea.
There is a higher incidence of this in adolescent girls infected
under the age of 16.
Where the disease is suspected but uncon
firmed by smears for the gonococcus, laparoscopy may be necessary.
Gonococcal septicemia is most frequently seen in young
women with otherwise symptomless infection, occurring in about
1% of cases in developed countries.
But the loss of fertility
in gonnorrhoea comes from loss of tubal potency as a result of
pelvic inflammation and subsequent adhesions.
Genital herpes virus infection of types both 1 and 2
occurring as a result of multiple sexual partners is increasing
very rapidly in the last 5 or 6 years.
While less infectious
than gonorrhoea, more cases are being seen due to increased exposure.
As a result of the increased adoption of homosexual
practices by heterosexuals, herpes pharyngitis may be seen con
currently with genital herpes--the double infection occurring in
up to 10% of patients in one clinic (The Diagnosis and Treatment
of Genital Herpes:
8) .
Corey L. JAMA Sept 3 1982 Vol 248 No 9 1041
The primary infection may be complicated by problems such
as numbness of the sacral region, urinary retention and even
impotence in men due to damage to the sacral autonomic plexus.
Recurrences occur at the rate of 5 to 8 times a year, producing
a considerable psychological burden to the sufferer.
There is
an epidemiologic association between genital herpes infections
9
and subsequent abnormalities of the cervix which may be pre-
cancerous.
A report from Houston suggests a similar association
with cancer of the vulva.
All women who have had an STD and
those with genital herpes in particular are at increased risk
of abnormal cell changes of the cervix and should have Pap smears
at least yearly.
There has been an increase in cancer of the cervix in women
in younger age groups in recent years.
In one hospital in Sydney
there has been a doubling of the rate in women under 35.
disposing factors have become more clearly defined.
The pre-
There is an
increased incidence in women who have commenced intercourse in
their early teens before the genitalia are fully mature and
especially those having multiple sexual partners.
The herpes
virus and possibly the one responsible for genital warts are
also incriminated and there is increasing evidence that sperma
tozoa play a part.
Another problem of recurrent genital herpes involves
recurrence during pregnancy.
The obstetrician needs to know
if there is a history of herpes so that he can manage the preg
nancy to minimize the risk of transmitting the infection to the
newborn.
The major risk to the infant is through transmission
of the infection during vaginal delivery while shedding of
viruses is occurring.
During pregnancy itself there is a risk
of chorioamnionitis if severe HSV cervicitis is present, which
may lead in a few women to an increased risk of abortion or pre
mature delivery.
If lesions are present, then caesarian section
is the safest form of delivery.
However, even abdominal delivery
is not foolproof as neonatal herpes infections have been known to
10
occur even when this has been done.
The risk to the child is
much greater if the mother is suffering from a primary herpes
infection at term with an infant infection rate of up to 50%.
Although treatment is now available in the form of vidarabine
which leads to decreases in the mortality from neonatal HSV
infection z it is still a serious disease with a very high
morbidity and every effort should be made to prevent it.
The use of condoms appear to be ineffective in the
prevention of spread of HSV.
Once the infection is acquired,
transmission can occur even during asymptomatic periods.
The
implication of all this for adolescents is that once sexual
activity commences, pregnancy, with all its ominous problems.
can be expected.
Once the one to one association is departed
from, the door is open to STD and a veritable Pandora's box of
problems.
In short, adolescent sexual activity is irresponsible
activity threatening the precious gift of fertility and even
life itself.
What can be said about the Pill when used by adolescents?
Does its use carry any threat to fertility in this age group?
The answer, of course. is yes.
The bio-rhythmic centre in the
hypothalamus controlling the menstrual cycle is the main target
of the Pill.
This centre may begin to function quite early, but
the first appearance of menstruation up to the age of 16 is con
sidered to be within the range of normal.
Regularity of cycling
may not become established until a year or two later, suggesting
some immaturity of function.
A small percentage of women, though
they may be fertile, never achieve this regularity, especially
those having a late menarche.
Even among mature regularly
11
cycling women, it is common to see considerable delay in re
establishing cycling once the combined Pill is abandoned.
Some
never regain it and are eventually classified as post-Pill amenor-
rhoeas.
They can achieve pregnancy only after considerable help
in stimulating ovulation with fertility drugs.
The adolescent hypothalamic-pituitary axis, because of its
immaturity, is even more vulnerable.
Even strong advocates of
the Pill recommend that its use be delayed until 12 months after
the establishment of regular cycling.
The direct effect of the
Pill on fertility is therefore an unknown quantity.
Allowing for
the fact that at least 10% of married couples will turn out to be
infertile even when the Pill has never been used, its use before
fertility has been proved serves to delay recognition of infertil
ity, sometimes even until it is too late for couples to qualify
for adoption, allowing for the now long years of waiting.
Planned Parenthood type family planning clinics recommend
the higher dose Pill for adolescents because of their unreliabil
ity as Pill takers.
The newer low dose Pills require very regular
dosage and missing a single dose may permit an escape ovulation.
While it can be argued that adolescents are a low-risk group, many
are quite heavy cigarette smokers and in addition some are given
to quite heavy alcohol consumption and the combination of the
Pill, cigarette smoking and binge drinking in teenage girls has
been known to produce a severe stroke.
The real risk of the Pill in teenagers, howver, is the false
sense of security it produces, as though protection against pregnancy
was the only thing that mattered.
This means that it is easier to
swap partners as one "meaningful relationship" follows another.
12
with the threat to fertility that this implies.
It is important to disabuse adolescents of the idea that the
the Pill regulates the cycle as this is still a widely held idea
and one fostered, tongue in cheek, by many doctors, who look on
this as a back door means of introducing them to so-called
"responsible" sexuality.
Similarly the Pill is still widely
prescribed for painful periods--dysmenorrhoea.
This problem can
be adequately handled by a short course of one of several anti
inflammatory agents taken just before and during the first couple
of days of menstruation.
They have the added advantage of reduc
ing menstrual flow and are recommended by contraceptionists to
reduce the extra bleeding and pain produced by the IUD.
One of the advantages of a sound instruction in the facts
of female fertility, particularly in recognizing the cervical
mucus symptom and the significance of the Peak Symptom of the
Ovulation Method, is that the mystery of the menstrual cycle and
its sometimes quirky behavior is solved.
Adolescents can and
should be taught that during the teen years every bleed is not
necessarily menstruation, as ovulation can be accompanied by
quite heavy bleeding in the teen years giving the impression of
a period almost every two weeks.
The discharge between the
periods is in fact an indication of fertility and not of infec
tion as many adolescents--and even their mothers--sometimes
believe.
Learning to recognize the time of ovulation by iden
tifying the Peak Symptom can be handled quite well by adolescents
and is a much more practical proposition than identifying it by
means of daily basal body temperature readings.
Having learned
to recognize ovulation accurately carries the bonus of being able
13
to predict the onset of menstruation about 14 days later, which
has many advantages not related to family planning.
In teaching adolescents about their fertility, it is not
necessary to dwell on the side effects of the Pill.
In my experi-
ence, question time will provide that opportunity.
However, it
is important that they understand how it and the IUD act to pre-
vent pregnancy.
It is important too, to distinguish between the
combined Pill and the progestagen only or mini-Pill.
Because
this involves some knowledge of female pelvic anatomy and the
control over the ovulatory and menstrual cycles by the hypo
thalamic and pituitary hormones and the subsequent secretion of
estrogen and progesterone, this must be explained in some detail,
with particular emphasis on the importance of the cervical mucus
symptom in fertility.
This can be vividly portrayed by appropri-
ate slides, diagrams and even just with the help of a blackboard
and chalk.
Even more important is to emphasize that one is pro- not
anti-life.
The positive side of fertility and the wonder of its
product—the baby—should be promoted at every opportunity.
The
various stages of development of the embryo and the fetus should
form part of the presentation with the emphasis on the recogni
tion of both its humanity and personhood from the moment of
conception.
With the advance in knowledge of fetal physiology
and behavior, we can now talk at length on the fetus as a per-
sonality, a subject which never fails to fascinate a young
audience.
The combined Pill has three main actions:
1.
The estrogen-progestrogen combination has an inhibiting
14
effect on the hypothalamic-pituitary axis.
This is a
sterilizing effect.
2.
The progestagen inhibits the production of estrogenic
cervical mucus resulting in the production of sperm
blocking G-type mucus.
3.
This is a contraceptive effect.
The estrogen-progestagen combination produces an out-ofphase endometrium which is hostile to the embryo.
This
effect is, of course, abortifacient .
The mini-Pill, which contains only progestagen, relies
mainly on the 2nd and 3rd of these effects.
Its effect on the
hypothalamic-pituitary unit is less certain.
While both types
have an abortifacient action, this is much more likely to be
brought into effect by the mini-Pill.
In fact this is featured
by the drug companies which market this type of Pill.
The mini-Pill has been slyly renamed the milk Pill, to
persuade women that it has some beneficial effects in breast
feeding and to take their minds off the fact that their infant
will inevitably receive some of it in the feeds, with as yet
unknown long-term effects.
It is now generally accepted that the combined Pill has an
effect on vitamin metabolism, and vitamin supplements are recom
mended, especially for women coming off the Pill in order to
achieve pregnancy.
A good working knowledge of what constitutes
an adequate diet should be acquired by every high school student.
The work of Smithells has demonstrated that a whole range of con-
genital abnormalities, collectively known as neural tube defects
(NTD), of which spina bifida is the best known example, can be
prevented if deficiencies in the diet of women who have already
15
given birth to such abnormal children are corrected by the addition
of a multi-vitamin preparation.
Alternatively Lawrence and his
co-workers have prevented NTD by re-educating such women in regard
to faults in their diets.
These discoveries have led to the estab
lishment of pre-conception clinics in England in order to set mothers
to be on the right path for pregnancy.
Adolescent girls have a penchant for inappropriate dieting.
In those who have a distorted body image leading to the self
conviction that they are overweight, excessive weight loss will
lead either to oligomenorrhoea (cycles of 35 to 90 days) or even
amenorrhoea (intervals between cycles greater than 90 days).
Dietary counselling in personal development courses should draw
attention to the potential threat to fertility by ill-advised
attempts to reduce weight.
Fortunately the condition is reversi-
ble except in the more intractable condition of anorexia nervosa,
which requires expert psychiatric and endocrinological handling.
In a recently published survey of the prevalence of oligo-and
amenorrhoea in a college population (Bachman, G. A., and Kemmann,
E.:
Prevalence of oligomenorrhoea and amenorrhoea in a college
population.
Am. J. Obstet. Gynec.
(1982) Vol 144 No 1 Sept 1,
p. 98-102) when the amenorrheic group were asked if they thought
they ovulated, 48% said they always did or occasionally did!
71%
of this group, who were sexually active, expressed confusion about
the best contraception method because of their irregular menses.
This speaks volumes about the ignorance of their fertility of a
well-educated group and how much stock is placed on rhythm
thinking.
The investigators noted that 2.6% of the 991 college girls
16
studied had amenorrhoea, while infrequent periods occurred in 11.3%.
Most of these girls had menstrual irregularity prior to college
entry, regular cycles never having been established after menarche,
which had occurred later as compared to women with regular cycles.
The significant factors associated with these abnormalities were
weight loss in excess of 21 lbs. and jogging.
These menstrual
abnormalities did not appear to be related to stress, either of
college life or family upsets or to the occurrence of polycystic
ovary syndrome.
In another study published in the same journal (Sanborn, C. F. ,
Martin, B. J., and Wiltz, W. W.
to runners?
Is athletic amenorrhoea specific
Am. J. Obstet. Gynec.
(1982) Vol. 143, No 1 Aug. 15,
p. 859-61) it was found that amenorrhoea was present in 12.3% of
swimmers, 12.1% of cyclists and 25.7% of runners.
While the figures
remained constant for cyclists and swimmers, the incidence increased
in runners according to the number of training miles run per week.
and with loss of body weight.
The lightest group of women had a
higher level of amenorrhoea.
It is already well recognized that a
certain amount of body fat is critical for maintenance of normal
menses, as indeed achieving a critical weight level is necessary
to initiate the menarche.
After oral contraceptives, the IUD is recommended by contraceptionists as an up-to-date. alternative form of reliable contra
ception .
it is important that the mode of operation of the IUD
be clearly understood by high school students who may entertain
ideas about its adoption for control of their own fertility.
find it impossible to find any characteristics of the IUD that
call for anything but condemnation.
17
I
It is a foreign body deliberately introduced into the uterus
to disrupt the normal physiology of reproduction and so is illconceived and ill gotten.
Its action is predominantly, if not
exclusively, abortifacient.
To me it represents medical science
reduced to its ultimate in depravity.
It is estimated that a woman with an IUD who is consistently
having intercourse will experience three to four early abortions
annually.
In addition, it produces dysmenorrhoea and menorrhagia.
Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), often of insidious onset, is
a frequent occurrence, frequently causing complete loss of fertility.
The presence of an IUD enhances the likelihood of acquiring STD.
The incidence of tubal and ovarian pregnancy is dramatically in
creased, bearing a relationship to the total number of conceptions.
This incidence increases in long term users of the IUD, even though
the incidence of uterine pregnancies may fall almost to zero.
If
accidental pregnancy occurs in a woman who has worn an IUD for
more than 3 years, the chance of it being ectopic is about 1 in
10.
Such long term insertions have been shown to be associated
with colonization by the rare but dangerous organism actinomycosis.
The device may perforate the uterus and require operative
removal from the abdomen while the scar it leaves in the uterine
wall is a threat to its integrity in a subsequent pregnancy.
After
some years the device may become embedded in the uterine wall. or
may disintegrate in situ.
All forms of IUD have been associated
with septic abortions, in some cases resulting in maternal death.
When the IUD is removed during the first trimester, the risk of
abortion is near 30% while the rate for those in whom the strings
are no longer visible is near 48%.
18
All this in return for a uterine pregnancy rate of up to
7 per 100 women years, with a lowering of the rate to 0.5 if the
device can be tolerated for more than 2 years.
The device is not
recommended for nulliparous women, but is inserted in such cases
nevertheless .
Sterilization of either sex is no longer a remote procedure
It has become so common in
of little interest to the adolescent.
the community that one or other parent of the teenager may well
have undergone the operation.
It is of equal interest to both sexes because the incidence
of sterilization, which in 1971 had a female/male ratio
1 is now 3 to 2.
of 18 to
While it is claimed that the overwhelming majority
of sterilized subjects are very satisfied with the results, it is
now agreed that the incidence of men regretting vasectomy in the
U.S. is almost 7% and increasing rapidly.
It is claimed that 25%
of sterilized women in California are now seeking reversal of the
operation.
Male candidates for reversal give several reasons for their
request (see Howard G., Who asks for a vasectomy reversal and why?
BMJ Vol 285 1982 14 Aug., p. 490-2).
Some want to be "put back
to normal" saying that they thought they had been unduly pushed
into vasectomy by doctors, while all emphasized the same point—
that it seemed unreasonable to sterilize a healthy partner because
of the health problems of a wife.
The husbands thought that doctors
had oversupported the wives and had not considered the man's
feelings.
Almost all the men requesting reversal emphasized that the
vasectomy had been carried out at a time of crisis when they were
CPHE
19
He
^7
\^o
convinced that sterilization was the only way out of their
difficulties .
Many thought it had been carried out too quickly.
some within seven days of their first inquiry, one within 24 hours
of a telephone call.
In vasectomy decisions, the man may be particularly vulverable, the ill wife having the sympathy of the doctor and rela
tions .
In some cases wives may have an unconscious wish to
castrate or punish their husbands.
There is a high divorce rate
in those having the vasectomy while still young, especially where
the husband has fathered a child while still in his teens, suggest
ing immaturity in managing personal relationships.
While vasectomy may be a simple operation, reversal is not.
It is a major operation requiring a stay in hospital and the ser-
vices of a skilled micro-surgeon, and even then it is not always
possible or successful.
Pregnancy after reversal occurs in only
25-50% of cases. so for most men, vasectomy is likely to mean
permanent infertility.
It is simply unrealistic to view steri
lization as anything other than permanent.
Probably only about one-fifth of all women sterilized by
current techniques could have their sterilizations reversed in
a long, difficult, and costly procedure.
Even after reversal,
they can expect tubal ectopic pregnancy rates 10 times higher
than normal.
Furthermore doctors are now reporting symptoms
suggestive of significant physiological and psychological compli-
cations following what was previously regarded as a minor and
relatively harmless operation.
So much attention being given to the Fallopian tube has
brought an awareness and fascination for the complexity and beauty
20
of form and function of the tube, whose unique and varied structure
and physiology has been the subject of enormous study.
As much of
this information as possible, as evidence of the priceless heritage
of female fertility and how it has so often been callously and wantonly destroyed by mindless men, should be conveyed to adolescents.
The reversal operation is a major procedure performed under
general anesthesia and lasting from 2 to 5 hours, the patient being
kept completely immobile throughout.
costs between $4,000. and $5,000.
In the U.S. the operation
Much has been learned recently
about the ravages caused to the contents of the female pelvis from
almost routine abdominal and pelvic surgery by adhesions with re
sulting infertility.
The uterus, tubes, and ovary demand the
respect that is their due if they are to successfully fulfill
their august destiny as the site of the miracle of human
reproduction.
The aggressive promotion of the cult of homosexuality among
the young as not only a valid expression of genital activity but
also as an acceptable alternative lifestyle should be exposed for
the utter sham that it is.
This promotion should be confronted
and resisted. as it represents a concerted attack on the family.
Adolescents are confused about many things and often have an
ambivalence about their sexual orientation.
The period of adoles
cence is one of sexual experimentation which might well mean be
coming involved in homosexual activities, which. in the absence
of clear guidance and under pressure from older, committed homo-
sexuals, can result in mistaken ideas about sexual preference.
The position is further clouded by the current cult of unisex.
The medical profession, although in possession of very
21
important information about the medical and psychological aspects
of both homosexuality per se and of homosexual practices t has
remained singularly silent.
No attempt has been made, to my
knowledge, to challenge the assertion that homosexuals are born.
not made.
The laws of inheritance of disability are better under
stood than ever, yet no one has tied the gene of inherited homo
sexuality to being either autosomal or sex linked.
In spite of
rare
the proud boast by the profession of its ability to diagnose
and exotic diseases prenatally with their subsequent elimination
by mid-trimester abortion, no one has suggested that amniocentesis
might be utilized to announce the presence of a budding homosexual.
The secular humanists and social engineers are swiftly foisting their atheistic philosophy upon us through the media and by
the replacement of laws rooted in the Judaeo—Christian tradition
with those more suited to their own beliefs,
In my own state,
anti-discrimination legislation has been introduced to prevent
discrimination against homosexuals in employment, especially for
Private and religious schools
teachers in government schools.
have been exempted for the time being, displaying a curious
anomaly—that the parents of children in government schools will
be discriminated against by not being permitted to shield them
from the depredations of homosexual teachers alienating their
children by their Gay propaganda.
An adolescent lad lost to the Gay cause is a threat to
fertility because homosexuality produces no progeny.
Gay "families" the less true families.
The more
Promotion of homo-
sexuality is a form of discrimination against the family.
The unique value of the traditional family as the basic
22
unity of society, with a claim prior to that of the individual.
needs to be presented positively to adolescents.
Not the manda
tory and token family of western society of one or two children
elevated to luxurious living by two incomes.
Not the family built
and dependent on a deeply entrenched contraceptive mentality but
one where the loving act of unity of the parents is performed
fully and naturally and always open at least to the possibility
of procreation.
The grand finale of the presentation to adolescents on the
value of fertility should be an outline of the Ovulation Method.
Having been brought to the realization of the blessing of fertility
and the threat posed to it by the modern cult of sex for recrea
tion, they should then be shown what is meant by true sexual re
sponsibility .
The emphasis should not be placed on its use to
avoid pregnancy, but rather first how to achieve it, pointing out
that, like it or not, between 10 and 15% of the audience will.
without help, prove to be infertile in marriage, while another
10% will be denied the number of children they desire.
Then they
can be told of the degree of reliability of the method when pro
perly learned and practiced to avoid pregnancy, free from harm
to body or soul and the positive value of mutually imposed
abstinence.
The details of rules can be left till the appropriate time
and place, preferably as part of a proper preparation for marriage
in a course for engaged couples.
23
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
John J. Brennan, M.D.
The greatest gift that our Creator has bestowed upon us is
life itself.
The next greatest gift is the ability to transmit
human life to the next generation.
freedom than their parents had.
Young people today have more
Automobiles make them very mobile.
Parents used to enforce a chaperone system far more than they do
now.
Teenagers were never alone.
Their parents were always nearby
protecting their reproductive organs.
Now teenagers have had the
big responsibility of protecting their own reproductive organs
thrust upon them.
Teenagers often misuse or abuse this gift.
it is gone it cannot be regained.
Once
Intellectual maturity may not
come as early as sexual maturity.
In fact. a boy may be able to produce a child even before he
develops pubic hair.
A girl always gets breast development first.
and then pubic hair before she has her first menstrual period.
I am convinced that every talk on this subject should be a
PRO-LIFE talk.
If ever a person is totally PRO-LIFE it is while he
or she is in grade school.
Certainly then he would want mother and
father to give him a little brother or sister, not destroy an unborn
baby.
How does human life begin?
Through sexual intercourse.
The
husband deposits about a spoonful of spermatic fluid into his wife’s
vagina.
In that fluid are up to half a billion sperm.
Most of the
time sperm will die in her vagina, but for a few days before his
wife releases her egg she puts out a secretion which keeps sperm
alive.
It envelops sperm, nourishes sperm, and gives the sperm a
1
liquid pathway to her inner body.
The rest of the cycle, her
inner body is closed to her husband.
which is a pear-shaped organ.
Now the sperm enter her uterus
They enter through the cervix, an
opening where the stem of the pear would be.
her uterus out into her tubes.
About ten thousand sperm enter each
tube and a thousand sperm bombard her egg.
from her ovary.
The sperm pass through
The egg has been released
The ovaries are two walnut sized organs which lie
adjacent to her uterus.
The egg is no larger than the head of a pin.
Under the microscope we can see the thousand sperm striking the shell
of her egg.
One sperm enters and the shell seals over keeping other
sperm from entering.
The genetic material in the head of the sperm
then unite with the genetic material in her egg.
moment.
That is the time new life begins.
That is the magic
Half of the chromosomes
the new baby has, comes from the father and half from the mother.
At that moment it becomes either a little boy or a little girl
because while all eggs are the same, sperm are of two types.
Fast
moving but short-living sperm which produce boys and slower moving
but longer-living sperm which produce girls.
Whether the hair is
curly or straight, brunette or blond. whether the eyes are blue or
brown, what the height will be is all determined at that magic
moment.
Then if ever. each of us was perfect.
Genetically we have
all that we ever will have, and still we have to make a weeklong
journey down our mother's fallopian tube before we settle in the
wall of her uterus.
If there has been previous infection in the
wall of the tube which causes the tube to be narrowed or kinked
the fertilized egg
can attach itself at that point, become a tubal
pregnancy and grow in that abnormal place until the tube distends
2
and ruptures.
Otherwise the fertilized egg settles in the wall of
the uterus and continue to grow.
Obviously teenagers shouldn’t put their reproductive organs
to use until they have the proper environment to raise a baby.
A
young man needs to have a trade or skill or profession before he can
ask a young lady to become his wife.
for her and for their children.
by their parents.
else.
He has to be ready to provide
Most teenagers are provided for
They are in no position to provide for anyone
You have to become a totally mature person and have taken a
responsible place in society before you are ready to start a new
generation.
It is best that each of you set up a defense of your own
reproductive organs from this day forward.
See to it that your parents
have always been introduced to your companions.
not as a couple.
Party in groups.
Always let your parents know where you are.
home at a predetermined time.
Look to your future.
Be
Don’t linger saying good-night.
What would happen if you, as a boy or
a girl, started a pregnancy in the next year.
What would you choose?
A recent study of teenagers showed that 55% of unmarried girls
who reach the age of nineteen have had intercourse.
percent increase in ten years time.
cents become pregnant.
That is a fifty
One out of every ten adoles
Of teenagers who are having intercourse
one out of four becomes pregnant each year.
A girl has four alternatives.
Like opening the doors in the
hall of a school building, she can open the doors to her future.
One door leads to abortion which totally destroys her son or daugh
ter and may partially destroy her.
3
The long-term effects of abortion
both psychical and emotional, may be far greater than the physical
effects.
Though the baby may not live and grow in her uterus the
baby will live and may grow in her heart.
Guilt and regret may
come months or years later.
She may open the second door - to adoption.
She realizes
that she shouldn't destroy her baby and that others may have a far
better environment to raise her baby.
On the other hand, it is
difficult to give up your own baby especially after being so close
for nine months.
You know that you would always love your child.
You can only hope someone else would love and care as much.
guilt and regret may occur years later.
Again
There are few adoptions at
the present time.
You can open the third door to keeping the baby and raising
the baby.
That's attractive but it's an imposition on the baby's
grandmother.
Generally it is the grandmother who raises the child
while daughter continues to work or continues her education.
Teen
agers may want a baby like they want a doll. someone to dress and
feed and play with.
By the time the girl is twenty, like her dolls,
the baby may be discarded.
The fourth door leads to marrying the boy.
However, if the
boy is a playmate or a classmate chances are that he has no trade,
skill. or profession.
The chances are that he is in no position to
provide for himself much less provide for a wife and child.
There are sexually transmitted diseases which can be terribly
destructive to teenagers.
Cancer of the cervix is the first of these sexually trans
mitted diseases.
Somehow the cells in the transformation zone between
4
adolescent girl’s endocervical and ectocervical cells allow sperm
head to penetrate.
Something in sperm or seminal fluid causes
dysplasia of the cervix.
Dr. Gagnon did autopses on thousands of
nuns without finding one who died of cancer of the cervix.
Women
in India who married about three years earlier than women in the
United States developed cancer of the cervix an average of three
years earlier.
It all seems to depend upon how early first inter
course takes place and upon how many sexual partners a teenager has.
There is an interval phase usually lasting several years.
Then there
is as yet an unknown stimulant, perhaps a herpes virus or something
like it which causes dysplasia to become malignant and spread
throughout the body.
The most certain way to avoid the disease is
to delay first intercourse until after the T-zone has developed
enough maturity to resist the factor that enters with seminal fluid.
Syphilis is a second sexually transmitted disease.
as a genital sore that isn’t sore.
It starts
It has a second stage that causes
a skin rash and a third stage which enters the blood, the brain.
and many other organs of the body.
Gonorrhea may start with a discharge but it may have no
symptom at all.
It enters the Fallopian tubes of a teenager and
may cause them to become red, swollen and tender.
fill with pus.
The tubes may
Tubal infection in a teenager may take away her gift
of transmitting life to the next generation.
Herpes II is due to a virus which starts as a painful blister.
There is no treatment for it.
in life.
It may recur over and over again
If it is present at the time of delivery. Cesarean Section
is the only safe method of delivery.
If the baby is delivered nor-
mally and naturally the baby may get the disease and die from it.
5
There are several other sexually transmitted diseases most
of which are not so lethal.
The moral of the story is this:
the main value to teach is
that the teaching of values is most important to teenagers,
If
so-called sex educators are brought into a school they teach sex
without a value system.
animal level.
That lowers teenagers to less than an
That is one of the biggest problems in our educational
system today.
Boys should be told that some girls are just looking for a
ticket to get out of the trap they call home.
Other girls never
had a doll and want a baby just because they never had anything which
was totally theirs.
Babies like dolls may soon be discarded.
Girls who become pregnant as teenagers are those with a confused
or missing value system; they may come from disruptive families;
they may have little or no self-esteem.
Some boys are totally selfish.
They exploit girls for their
own pleasure.
A total PRO-LIFE program must be taught.
Mature-thinking boys
do not want to produce a baby they cannot raise, a baby that may
be destroyed by abortion or given to someone else in adoption.
Nor
do they want to cause a girl to lose her opportunity to produce and
raise a baby sometime.
As virtue is the basis of all goodness, chastity is the basis
of all sexual goodness.
Teenagers learn that with maturity they
learn to control their temper, their jealousy. as too they also must
control their sexuality.
6
Whenever a teenage does what is right and good, he or she
becomes a better person.
and less selfish.
With maturity a teenager becomes less
The main value to teach teenagers is the value
of teaching values.
7
CHRISTIAN SEXUALITY PROGRAM
Mercedes Wilson
The Christian Sexuality Program was prepared out of a response to the
growing awareness of a tremendous need in our society for family involvement in
sex education.
Because of this need, Family of the Americas Foundation organized
a Parent and Adolescent Program whose goal is to develop and disseminate an
educational program based upon the teachings of the Catholic Church for which
there is such a need today.
The two-fold purpose of this program is to:
1.
Assist parents to become more effective in providing sex education to
their children, and;
2.
Teach adolescents about their fertility, the importance of protecting
their capability for procreation and encouraging them to accept respon
sibility for their sexual behavior.
The belief underlying the Parent and Adolescent Program is that sexuality
should be dealt with in the wider context of love and marriage and should emphasize
the teachings of the Church concerning the virtue of chastity.
Children need to
be taught how to grow into responsible and caring husbands and wives, mothers and
fathers, and not just how to be satisfactory sex partners.
I was recently visiting a very dedicated priest in New York City, Fr. Morton
Hill, who had taken it upon himself to enforce "Morality in Media".
In other words.
he is fighting the very powerful multi-million dollar industry of pornography.
They profit from the most common of human weakness - the exploitation of the sexual
drive by changing it to all kinds of imaginative perversions, publishing them in
magazines, books, movies and now, the most threatening of all, directly into the
homes through cable television.
The laws are there to stop this invasion into the
homes, but the powerful mafia that controls the industry of pornography makes sure
that such laws are not enforced.
This very courageous and holy priest had read
about our organization, and he wanted to know more about our work, particularly
about our teenage programs.
We informed him that our main service was to teach
women around the world about natural family planning, to make them aware of their
wonderful gift of their fertility, a power to be treasured and protected.
However, as the demand for our work increased, we found ourselves, not only
teaching married couples about the damaging physical and moral consequences of
artificial methods of birth control, but we realized the need to bring this
information earlier to the young generation that are being exploited on the basis
of their ignorance regarding the harm to their bodies and soul.
So, we have undertaken the task of challenging the pharmaceutical industry,
governments and institutions who finance programs of birth control, sterilization.
and abortion throughout the world.
Worst of all, there are entities such as
Planned Parenthood in this country and abroad who have invaded the minds of the
young with a false idea of independence from traditional family values that have
been protecting the young for generations in the past.
They are telling our young
people that they should feel free to fulfill their sexual desires, but to be pro
tected and if this should fail, abortion can resolve their temporary indiscretion.
They are teaching our children not to be free, but to become prostitutes and slaves
of their sexual drives, because self-control and responsibility in sexual matters
are ’unnatural’.
They assume that young people are no better than animals, so they
turn them into junkies for pills and devices to satisfy a few moments of sexual
satisfaction.
They then become unfeeling robots hurting the physical and emotional
well-being of the young man or woman they use to satisfy their imnediate desires.
How often in the past have we presented natural family planning to married
college students and the question often arose:
anniversary and you can’t have sex?
engaged?"
What do you do when you have an
Our reply is:
There is laughter and they reply:
"What did you do when you were
"But that is different.”
People have
been conditioned to believe love can only be expressed through the sexual act.
Often the greatest demonstration of love is their mutal continence for the well
being of the beloved.
Love can be expressed in innumerable ways.
As Mother Teresa
says.
"i
'Do not imagine that love to be true must be extraordinary, No, what
we need in our love is the continuity to love the One we love, See
how a lamp burns, by the continual consumption of the little drops of
oil. If there are no more of these drops in the lamp, there will be
no light, and the Bridegroom has a right to say: ’I do not know you’."
"My children, what are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the
little things of everyday life: fidelity, punctuality, little words
of kindness, just a little thought for others, those little acts of
silence, of look and thought, of word and deed. These are the very
drops of love that make our religious life burn with so much light."
ir
'Do not search for Jesus in far off lands; He is not there. He is in
you. Just keep the lamp burning and you will always see Him."
It certainly is not expressed by asking your wide to take the pill because it
is your anniversary and disregard the physical consequences to her physical
well-being or to ask the husband to sterilize himself because their anniversary
is coming.
A very intelligent lawyer with six lovely children and a wonderful wife
told me a few days ago that he thinks that the only group truly in favor of love
and pure conjugal relations is the Catholic Church.
I think he is right.
Planned
Parenthood seems to hate love and sex; they want to dehumanize it and they want
to convert the young into unfeeling robots that will never discover the magic of
true love and happiness.
True love can only be achieved when you love him or her
more than you love yourself.
We know, as parents, how hard it is to discipline our children and to limit
their activities according to their age and maturity.
Especially today, when so
many parents give in to their children’s pressure for permissions that we know
may endanger their innocence.
How often do we battle that question from our
children, "How come everyone can go but me?"
If we can convince them that it
is our great love for them that restrains us from giving in, not only to their
pressure on us, but the unnecessary liberties being given by other parents to
their children.
Deep down, children know that there is something wrong in all that freedom
from responsibility and deep emotional involvement.
This is why our programs
must be accurate, complete with scientific and medical references and we must
give them a strong and logical alternative to the promoters of artificial birth
control, sterilization and abortion, vdho tell then half truths and purposely
avoid the fatal consequences of irresponsible behavior.
We as parents, must revive our values and teach them to our children; nobody
can be a better teacher than us.
We know exactly when our children are ready
to receive a more detailed program on human sexuality.
Don't fall for the new
fashion that sex education must be taught in the schools without your careful
screening.
We must teach our young people that the greatest gift they can give
their spouse is the gift of their virginity on their wedding day.
words of wisdom of Mother Teresa.
These are the
John Paul II once said that "The strength and
vitality of any nation depends on the strength and vitality of the family 'within
that nation'."
The only way to accomplish this strength is through education.
Our programs must be precise, accurate and to the point, backed by theological.
philosophical and scientific references when necessary.
Keeping in mind the words
of wisdom from St. Augustine
"an amateur teacher teaches everything he/she knows;
an experienced teacher teaches everything there is to know;
a good teacher teaches only what the student needs to know."
Family of the Americas Foundation has started a program for the Catholic
high schools and colleges that includes the following subjects:
1.
2.
How to prepare for a happy marriage
3.
4.
Reproductive anatomy and physiology and the concept of combined fertility
Responsible parenthood and the privilege of procreation
Physical and moral consequences of promiscuity
5.
How to become responsible and mature adults
6.
7.
Harmful effects of artificial contraception, sterilization, & abortion
8.
The values of chastity and dangers of promiscuity
Process of achieving sexual maturity
There will be no profitable business for the pornographers, or children to be
exploited by the peddlers of prostitution, or pills or mechanical devices to be
purchased by the young or married couples from the drug conpanies, or abortionists
profiting by the killing of the unborn, if we parents give love, affection,
education, and a good preparation of human and moral values to our children.
you love them, they will never want to disappoint you.
of them just as much as you want to be proud of them.
If
They want you to be proud
PSYCHOLOGY OF ABSTINENCE—DISCUSSION OUTLINE
Merrilyn Currie
1.
First Assumption Governing Discussion
—Our code of morality is not a set of arbitrary rules which
must be observed as a sort of test of worthiness to acquire
salvation.
—Our code of morality is an attempt to define what makes man
"tick," what makes him serene, fulfilled—a whole person.
—Therefore, this code is very practical and crucial to man’s
happiness.
To act immorally is to damage the self in some
way--physically , spiritually, emotionally, or psychologically.
—If we accept this assumption, we can talk about the psychological
benefits of abstinence and thus observe the wisdom and practi
cality of the moral code governing our sexual behavior.
2.
Second Assumption governing our Discussion
--Goal of our sexual nature is to achieve a healthy, completely
permanent, committed relationship with another person and to
have a family.
—Evidence for this comes from observing two dimensions to our
sexual nature:
(a)
We observe the creative dimension imbedded in the biologi
cal design of our sexuality; this means part of the ful
fillment of our sexual nature comes in having children.
(b)
We also observe the love dimension imbedded in the psychological and emotional design of our sexuality; this means
part of the fulfillment of our sexual nature comes in
being totally involved with another person.
Both these
dimensions are fulfilled in marriage and family; in fact.
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you will notice that each backs up and reinforces the
other.
—If we accept this assumption, then we should see how abstinence
helps us psychologically to achieve the goals of our sexual
nature, to achieve a successful marriage and family.
3.
Abstinence
—Abstinence, which means not engaging in sexual intercourse
before marriage, is a protective mechanism psychologically and
emotionally, in forming and developing a successful relation
ship.
(a)
It does the following:
Provides the emotional distance necessary to observe our
relationships objectively;
(b)
Provides the emotional protection necessary to make really
free decisions about our relationships;
(c)
Provides the psychological room to allow the other aspects
of our relationships to develop;
(d)
Provides a safeguard to the integrity of our relationships;
i.e., preserves the truth about the stage at which our
relationships are;
(e)
In overall terms, abstinence represents the ability to be
in control of one’s life. to be able to make free, percep-
tive choices, to be able to order our priorities.
Absti
nence challenges our ability to manage our feelings in
terms of what is truly good for our life.
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EXAMPLES OF SOME EXISTING ADOLESCENT PROGRAMS:
SIXTH GRADE GIRLS AND THEIR MOTHERS
Kevin Hume, M. D.
Parents, or at least mothers, have a clear obligation to
inform their daughters of some simple facts about menstruation when
the time is approaching for the menarche.
age of 11.
This means at about the
It is an injustice to a maturing girl to neglect to
convey some information.
Most mothers of course do speak to their
daughters about it but my experience is that they are uniformly
grateful for any help that can be given to them.
, While it is clearly acknowledged that such information is at
the discretion of the parent, there can be no objection to a pre-
sentation made in a mother-daughter situation.
While it should be
a primary aim to inform parents so that they can instruct their own
children, an occasion like this offers the opportunity to inform
both the mother and her child.
In addition it sets the scene for
an ongoing exchange between them, triggering off a communication
that is especially valuable on the threshold of adolescence.
I took part in such a program for a number of years.
a great success.
grade year.
It was
A night was set aside near the end of the sixth
Attendance was always 100%.
The girls were usually
accompanied by their mothers, some of whom returned year after year
with younger daughters.
Sometimes the mother delegated her atten
dance to an aunt or an older sister.
The night began with a suitable film produced and loaned free
by a company that had a commercial interest in menstrual pads,
tampons and similar female accessories.
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I found these quite well
produced and very informative although obviously intended to sell
the firm’s product.
Next a presentation was made of slides together with a cassette
commentary, outlining the facts of human reproduction, with due
emphasis on chastity, marriage and the family.
This was prepared
by a diocesan organization known as the Christian Maturity Program.
However, neither the film nor the slide-cassette set, while
explaining ovulation and conception, made any reference to the
cervical mucus symptom, displaying a peculiar and anomalous ignorance.
Not that the object is to introduce any reference to family planning.
Information about the mucus sympton and its relationship to fertility,
ovulation and the ensuing menstruation is basic and should be given
to every woman, young or old.
My object was to make good this deficiency, as well as rein
forcing those aspects I considered important, which I did by showing
a few slides of my own, highlighting the role of the cervix in
fertility and the ease of recognition of the Peak Symptom as an
indication of the imminence of ovulation, once cycling is established.
While keeping the information as basic as possible, I realized
that eleven year olds could not be expected to absorb it all.
How-
ever that did not deter me, as my contribution was aimed also at the
mothers, many of whom were getting this information for the first
time and who would be better able to answer their daughters’ questions
later on.
While the primary objective was to explain menstruation, this
could not be done adequately without reference to the ovulatory
cycle and indeed the overall control exercised by the higher brain
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centres and the hypothalmic-pituitary unit.
So while discussing
mens t rua t i on, a unique opportunity was offered to concentrate attention on the more important event of ovulation.
In brief, my message
was that anyone who understood ovulation, and the events leading up
to it, should never have any need to be concerned about menstrua-
tion, as identifying ovulation accurately predicted the time to
expect menstruation.
This could then explain the occurrence of
cycles of varying lengths, as well as the significance of the intermenstrual discharge which some mothers and girls imagine to be abnormal.
Question time always brought surprisingly sophisticated requests
for information that indicated to me how the girls were ready for
this knowledge.
I suppose it reflected the acceleration in the
acquisition of knowledge due to modern teaching techniques.
It also
indicated how much the girls were absorbing from the treatment of
current affairs in the media, especially T.V. and radio.
I found
myself explaining the causes of miscarriage and what was a caesarian
section, how twins came about and how the sex of the baby was decided.
No doubt many of the questions came about as a result of events that
had happened in the family or in that of girl friends.
Then there were the Dorothy Dixers from the mothers, who were
using me to supply expert answers to questions they felt they could
not adequately answer themselves.
Others used me to get points
across to their daughters on the grounds that it was better coming
from an outsider, especially one with the weight of authority of
medical knowledge.
With such a captive audience and one so willing to learn, an
occasion like this offers an excellent opportunity to get across not
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only information but positive values, reinforcing the importance of
the family, marriage, modesty and chastity.
It is a poor speaker
who cannot turn a question to his own advantage, as we know only too
well from the performance of those promoting a philosophy alien
to the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
In short a presentation to sixth grade girls in the presence
of their mothers offers a unique opportunity to supply information
important to them both, to correct misapprehensions, to instruct
them in aspects of personal and public health, open up on-going
communication and to underwrite and reinforce Christian values in
regard to marriage and the family.
Such a presentation is therefore
of great assistance to parents and serves to lay a suitable founda
tion for a wider-ranging coverage of Christian sexuality in more
senior years.
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PARENT TO PARENT
Ruth Taylor, M.D.
Several years ago we attempted to initiate a series of
lectures on human sexuality involving parents and adolescents
in the parochial schools and CCD classes in Wichita.
Ours is a
conservative diocese and at the time we weren’t able to accomplish
the program.
Therefore, we developed a human sexuality program.
targeting only the parents and called it "Parent to Parent."
Its
purpose was to assist the parents in helping their adolescents to
cope with their sexuality.
We obtained the cooperation of the best qualified professionals
our community could offer--adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists,
pediatricians, obstetricians, gynecologists, priests, lawyers.
teachers, social workers who freely gave of their time to present
such topics as femininity and masculinity, communicating with your
teenager; human sexuality and fertility, public and peer pressures;
the pregnant teenager; sex education programs in our schools and
so forth.
Surprisingly, we were given excellent radio publicity.
The
lectures were held in the Educational Building of our Hospital
and the attendance at each lecture averaged around fifty.
The
written evaluations which we requested after each session were
very good.
We had considerable amounts of literature that were
available for them to buy or to have free after each session.
Last year we changed our format by having outside guest speakers
come to Wichita and present the program.
H
One program was entitled.
A Christian View of Human Sexuality" presented by Don and Sylvia
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Kramer of Minneapolis.
Another special session was given by
Father Tom O'Donnell.
The title was "Christian Marriage and the
Family" and finally a wind-up session was presented by Father Tom
O'Donnell, Dr. William May from Washington, DC, and Father Lawler
from Houston, Texas.
Our attendance for that weekend was well
over 200 parents.
This year a chain of events changed our format again and
redirected our focus.
In our previous series all of our audience
was composed of middle-class parents, predominately white.
As I
have had the privilege of being on the Executive Board of the
Wichita Urban League for several years, an opportunity opened to
reach this group.
For those of you who may not know what the Urban League is,
it is a national civic organization focusing on serving minority
groups in many areas.
They become involved in most of the social
issues that affect minority groups but especially the black com
munities .
There are local branches of the Urban League located
in every major city in the United States and they are usually
heavily supported by the United Fund.
In 1983, three of the major
thrusts that the National Urban League Organization branch Urban
Leagues across the county became involved in programs for the
Prevention of Teenage Pregnancy.
Knowing of my involvement in Natural Family Planning and
Adolescent Sexuality programs I was appointed Chairman of the
Teenage Pregnancy Committee.
I agreed to serve at this capacity
if I could set a program with the Christian philosophy.
I found
that indeed the Urban League was totally in agreement and felt
that:
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a.
Society’s concern in their regards concerning abortion
was tantamount to genocide;
b.
Black adolescents are targeted for sex education programs
with contraceptive persuasion more than our other groups
in society because society believes that blacks are all
genitally active at an early age.
You and I know that the blacks are not coming to our Natural
Family Planning Centers.
must go out to them.
I think like other minority groups we
Therefore, we have set up the first series
of Parents to Parents lectures this year in the Penecostal Church
centrally located in the black community.
in March.
The programs will begin
It is a two-edged sword to educate both parents and the
adolescents in a pregnancy prevention program that will be a viable
alternative to the contraceptives that have been pushed at them,
and at the same time to teach them respect for their bodies,
appreciation of their fertility, and help in understanding what
family planning really means.
We would, then, assist parents in
helping their adolescent offspring to deal with and understand
their sexuality.
Two members of the Urban League Teenage Pregnancy Committee
are with me this meeting.
I would like to introduce them:
Mrs.
Myrtle Triplett, who is a counselor in our Natural Family Planning
Center and Mrs. Barbara Franklin who works in a school for re
tarded children.
I am sure they would be glad to discuss any
aspect of the adolescent program and need as they see it.
I strongly suggest to any of you who can do so, to contact
the Urban League directly in their respective cities, let them
know that you are aware that one of the thrusts of the Urban
3
League for this coming year is to set up programs for Teenage
Pregnancy Prevention and care of Teenage Pregnant Mothers in the
black population.
I urge you to offer them a program with the
good news of fertility awareness and fertility respect.
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FERTILITY AWARENESS
Charles W. Norris, M.D.
Our Adolescent Program centers around our recently published
book, Know Your Body - A Family Guide To Sexuality and Fertility
(Our Sunday Visitor Press, Inc., Sept., 1982 - $3.95).
Our belief that it is the parent who has the primary right,
obligation, responsibility and yes, even privilege to instruct their
own children in this most delicate and sensitive area of family
life, served as the motivating force in the writing of the book.
We also saw that adolescents were being misguided by the media, by
so called ”Sex Education” school programs and we wanted to provide
the parents with a tool which they could use in fulfilling this
responsibility .
We saw that it was primarily because of ignorance, embarrassment and/or even intimidation by the ’’helping professions" in addi-
tion to an underlying uncertainty as to precisely how to proceed
which kept them at a distance while the schools, with their aggressive
ii
Sex Education ii programs which teach anything but a respect and
reverence for the beauty and power of human fertility flooded the
country’s school districts.
Our book is designed to fulfill this need.
Family oriented,
after our introduction where we describe our motivation in some
detail, we discuss the general subject of growing older and growing
up (which we do not equate).
Here we discuss some of the physical
and emotional changes which occur in an adolescent as he/she goes
through this period of life.
youngsters grow.
These changes are inevitable as all
It is desirable and advisable to maintain a sense
of humor during the process - it helps.
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We define human sexuality as everything that makes a person
masculine or feminine.
This includes all the traits, feelings,
values and characteristics which combine to make you the individual
and unique male or female person you are.
We point out that the
brain is the primary sexual organ in our bodies, as it is the brain
which enables us to appreciate the sexualness of every other person,
and because of this our sexuality and our spirituality are insepar
able.
Our fertility is the ability to become a parent which becomes
a biologic fact with the onset of puberty.
This ability - or power
places upon us all a very serious responsibility.
The book describes
reproductive anatomy and physiology in simple language and in suffi
cient detail for a clear understanding of reproductive function.
We
believe that if a person were just to understand the illustrations
in the book, they would know as much reproductive physiology and
more about the signs and symptoms of fertility in women than most
doctors know.
Because we believe that the key to the understanding
of human fertility is the understanding of the function and behavior
of cervical mucus, we stress heavily the hormonal relationships and
sequences which govern its production and flow.
We then devote two
pages in chart form to dispelling some of the many myths and mis
conceptions surrounding women’s fertility, as clearly and forcefully
as possible.
Our chapter on reproductive hygiene treats the subjects of
genital health, sexually transmitted diseases and the role that
stress can play in normal reproductive function in sufficient detail
to inform the reader of information which he/she should have in these
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areas, not to create undue anxiety or fear, but to provide the
reader with facts which can assist him or her to make informed choices
regarding genital behavior.
The book defines our three responsibilities in this area:
first, to learn everything we can about our fertility, second, to
respect our own fertility and thirdly, to respect the fertility of
all other people.
Just for openers, if everyone were to start to
live this way today, all of the abortion clinics would be closed
within a year.
There simply would be no business.
The responsibi-
lities are presented in the context of traditional Christian moral
teachings and identified as such.
A chart detailing the values of
fertility awareness and of maintaining chastity until marriage is
provided.
Our last chapter, on natural family planning, discusses more
the values of NFP than anything else.
In no way does it teach NFP
or even charting, but it does assert that some of the values surround
ing the practice of NFP (always within the committed relationship of
marriage) is the experiential learning of patience, self control,
generosity and sexual maturity.
And when people learn to live these
four virtues, more than they have for the last 2000 years, Christian-
ity may have a better chance to work on the face of the earth.
In order to promote this viewpoint, we formed a non-profit,
tax-exempt charitable trust in November, 1979.
Instruction, Inc.
Inc.
Fertility Awareness
The primary purpose of this corporation is the
education in fertility and Christian sexuality of adolescents and
their parents.
Our Board consists of myself, a nurse educator, a
clinical psychologist, and instructor/trainer in the Billings Ovula-
tion Method, and the Dean of a School of Nursing.
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We present to classes of students, to clubs, to parent groups,
civic and fraternal groups and their wives, to family life fairs
and gatherings—almost any place or group to which we are invited.
Naturally, we believe that understanding leads to knowledge,
and knowledge to respect for that marvelous, irreplaceable value
We promote self respect and respect
which we call human fertility.
for others in the exercise of loving chastity for adolescents as
the only 100X effective method of not only avoiding pregnancy but
also the ravages of sexually transmitted diseases and the side
effects and complications of the medical methods of birth control.
Perhaps, just perhaps, respect for human life begins with
respect for human fertility.
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THE NEED FOR BASIC MORAL STANDARDS IN GOVERNMENT-FUNDED PROGRAMS
The Honorable Lindy Boggs
It is a pleasure to be here this evening before such a
distinguished audience, especially the young people - my admiration
for whom ensues from my involvement with my grandchildren and their
friends.
I wish to express my special appreciation to my dear
friend, Mercedes Wilson, for her gracious invitation to participate
in this seminar.
It has been a joy for me to have been associated
with Mercedes over the course of years to raise awareness within
the government structure of natural family planning methods, and to
secure recognition and funding of the programs through legislative
and regulatory actions.
I have specifically expressed my interest
and concern as to the implementation of the natural family planning
programs through the agency for international development, and con
tacted personally the Honorable George Schultz, Secretary of State,
urging his fullest cooperation in this effort.
I am delighted to
learn that Mercedes is presently in Africa in connection with the
A.I.D. Program.
Another development of great importance and
encouragement is the newly announced appointment of Margaret
Heckler as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I look
forward to a period of enlightened leadership under Peggy’s wise and
compassionate guidance.
The topic of this seminar ’’Adolescent Sexuality” is the
subject of grave national concern in view of the harsh fact that
over one million teenagers become pregnant each year.
resulting births are illegitimate.
Half the
The social impact and the health
risks to the young mothers and their babies are the cause of deep
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concern for us all.
What are the roots of this disturbing trend?
What must we do to diminish the scope of this growing problem?
What is the appropriate response of government to an issue with
such complex moral and social implications?
As all of you are aware, there are no easy answers to the
questions I have posed.
The entire arena is packed with contro-
versy, confusion, and heated reaction.
often laced with guilt.
Emotionalism is rampant,
But we must pursue a course, and explore
the avenues of possibility.
We must do this because we love our
children, and we need to find a way to help them in a positive,
morally responsible manner.
How does a government such as ours which seeks to serve a
diverse, pluralistic constituency, formulate a policy reflecting the
moral values of that society?
I recently read an interesting commentary by Norman Jacobs
entitled ’’Morality and the National Interest” from which I would
like to quote:
”Our system of government conceives of the state as
existing to serve the individual; it draws its moral
outlook from a religious tradition that proclaims the
dignity, worth and preciousness of every human being.
With this heritage, it is not enough for our leaders
to justify their conduct of policy by invoking the
national interest; they have to show how policies
designed to protect the way of life of the nation’s
populace are somehow compatible with the moral
principles of the individuals who constitute the
populace.”
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The moral values of a society are, however, not permanently
fixed, and they change, although slowly, in response to changing
conditions.
The involvement of the federal government in family planning
is an example of a slow change of policy in response to shifting
social attitudes within our society.
In the late fifties and early
sixties a growing concern over two problems - indigency and population provided the impetus for the government's entrance into the area
of family planning.
Although there was a generally favorable public
attitude toward subject of birth control at that time, public
officials viewed this issue as a very personal one, and not fit for
the arena of public debate.
But public pressures were increasing:
rising welfare costs; the need for equality of treatment and
opportunity; the desire of families in the lower S.E.S. Group to
control the size of their families; the post-war baby boom; the
development of new methods of birth control.
were coming into focus.
All these factors
A change in attitude among social, reli
gious,- scientific, and medical associations aided the developing
consensus favoring governmental intervention, and it was no surprise
that the Gallup Polls indicated by the mid-sixties that 63X of
American's favored the proposition that "The United States Government
should give aid to states and cities for birth control programs if
they request it.”
The social atmosphere was gradually being trans-
formed, and the character of the legal response reflected this grad
ual evolution.
The first serious indication of change came with the recommendations of the Draper Commission appointed by President
Eisenhower in 1958.
This report, although dealing with foreign
3
i
policy, contained a recommendation favoring increased governmental
attention to birth control.
The government at that time, however,
was not prepared to deal with the controversy,
as was indicated
by President Eisenhower’s statement:
I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a
subject that is not a proper political or govern
mental activity or function or responsibility ...
this government will not ... as long as I am here ...
have a positive political doctrine in its program
that has to do with this problem of birth control.
That is not our business.
President Eisenhower later repudiated this stand, but at the
time it was a clear reflection of the government’s noninterventionist
policy.
What the Draper Commission’s recommendations did do, however,
was to bring the issue into open public debate.
In the ensuing years, there was an increased interest among
Kennedy administration officials to formulate a family planning
policy.
But it was the Johnson administration that focused and
expressed support for a more active program of publicly supported
family planning:
in the words of President Johnson in his Health
and Welfare Message on March 1, 1966:
”We have a growing concern to foster the integrity of the
family and the opportunity of each child.
It is
essential that all families have access to the inform
ation and services that will allow freedom to choose
the number and spacing of their children within the
dictates of conscience.”
4
i
Policy directives were issued in this area by H.E.W. in
Government
1966, and later reaffirmed in more detail in 1969.
policy was thus set to provide family planning services, with the
stipulation that the programs conducted or supported guarantee
freedom from coercion or pressure of mind or conscience.
At the
same time, similar policies were being evolved at the local govern-
ment level.
In 1963, only thirteen states offered some type of
tax-supported programs; but by 1966 over forty states had acted although serving a very small number of clients.
The number of
publicly finance birth control clinics increased from 400 to 700.
President Nixon continued the federal commitment in this area
in his message of July 18, 1969:
In my first message to Congress on domestic affairs,
I called for a national commitment to provide a
healthy and stimulating environment for all children
during their first five years of life.
One of the
ways in which we can promote that goal, is to
provide assistance to more parents in effectively
planning their families ... I believe, therefore, that
we should establish as a national goal, provision of
adequate family services with the next five years to
all those who want them, but cannot afford them.
This we have the capacity to do. it
The Congress began to respond to the new public mood,
although reluctantly, and eventually considered and passed the
family planning services and population research act of 1970,
creating an office of population affairs within H.E.W., placing
a cap upon the formulation and acceptance of federal government
policy in this area.
5
What did the seventies bring us?
Heightened government
intervention in a previously very private family issue of birth
control, a Supreme Court decision allowing abortions, and a coming
of age of the baby boom.
The impact upon our most vulnerable sector of the population,
our youth, from the convergence of these factors, coupled with a
general eroding of moral values within our society as reflected
by the nature of the films, literature, comic strips and T.V. pro
grams to which they have been exposed, may well be the crucial
elements which have led to the very serious increase in the teenage
pregnancy problem we are facing.
The family planning program established by the government in
1971 as Title X of the Public Health Service Act has been surrounded
by controversy.
One of the chief concerns has been that of pro-
viding birth control to teenagers.
This practice has come under
attack by some groups which feel that the policy implicitly con-
In addition, there is some question
dones teenage sexual activity.
as to whether the provision of family planning services is the most
appropriate or effective way to prevent teenage pregnancy in any
case, in view of the fact that the teenage pregnancy rate has been
steadily rising even since the advent of the family planning program.
Statistics reveal that during the seventies teenage sexual
activity increased significantly, and with it any hope for a
significant impact by governmental programs to contain the problem.
Although the teenage birthrate has been decreasing slowly, the
increase in the number of teenage women in the population has led
to a larger number of teenage births.
This trend, however, is on
the wane as the population numbers are beginning to decline.
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Concern over the growing problem of teenage pregnancy led
to the adoption by Congress of the Adolescent Health Services and
Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act of 1978 - Titles VI, VII, and
VIII of the Health Services and Centers Amendments of 1978 (P. L.
95-626), a
comprehensive
young people.
approach to the overall needs of these
A special office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs
was created within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health
to oversee the administration of funds for the program.
Appropriations for this program have grown from an F.Y.
supplemental request of one million, to F.Y.
’79
’80 figures of $7.5
million (originally the Congress had approved $17.5 million, but
this was cut to $7.5 million in a recession request).
provided $10 million.
F?Y.
’81
I might add that the House of Representatives
voted to provide the entire $16 million requested by the Reagan
administration, but this figure was reduced by the Senate.
Within this accelerated interest, those of us committed to
natural family planning must assert ourselves and make certain that
the programs, such as WOOMB, receive the respect, the funding and
the volunteer training necessary to their success.
Whether this program will have the effect it intends, i. e.
the reduction of the teenage pregnancy problem, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, it is our best effort to recognize the difficulty
and cope with it.
Our children are in trouble, and we admit it
and we must do
some national soul-searching to seek the cause and the cure.
Are we reaping what we have sown?
The answer, I am afraid,
is yes - and the seeds of that difficulty stem from the very heart
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of our society.
To find a cure, therefore, we have to look at
ourselves, and examine our values, our attitudes, our beliefs.
I have been particularly impressed by the efforts of my dear
friend, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who has formed and guided a
magnificent program "A Community of Caring" to help pregnant
adolescents.
Allow me to quote from the forward to this exceptionally
fine program:
"Adolescent pregnancy is as old as humanity, but today
we often hear it described as an epidemic, a tragedy,
To be sure, all these words of
a cause for alarm.
dismay contain elements of truth.
But to the 600,000
t
teenagers who give birth each year, to the young men
who father the babies, to the grandparents who are
often called upon for understanding and support, to
the teachers and providers of health care who must
counsel and serve the families, such judgmental
expressions are of little help.
- For whatever the age of the mother or father, what-
ever the nature of their commitment or the circum-
stances of conception, we are dealing with matters
that are awesome:
the bonding of a young woman to
new life within her:
the mystery of birth:
the
building of a family that will shelter and nurture
the baby during the baby’s childhood and development.
- What can we do as individuals, what can families
do, what can society or government do to deal
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constructively with these tangled and profound
difficulties?
- I think none of us can do very much as individuals.
Government is too distant, too remote, and
too depersonalized to be of much help except with
money.
Society is likewise too vague a concept
to be helpful.
Instead of these abstractions, we
need, I believe, a new community of caring.”
The program encompasses total care and education, and seeks,
in addition, to build up concepts of self worth, and ethical and
family values.
deep
It focuses on the themes
which give shape and
meaning to family life ... and addresses as well the moral
problems these young men and women face and the virtues required
to cope - patience, love, and trust, and courage in the face of
great odds.
In the face of economic reality, we know that we must teach
young couples to parent their children and to share household responsibilities as they share the family economic burdens.
of course, cannot provide the personalized answers.
Government,
It can,
however, adopt a holistic view of the American family, and coordinate
the established programs, and channel the future programs accordingly.
Government also has the responsibility to provide moral perimeters in its necessary quest farther and farther into the new
technologies that result from and aid in the rapidly unfolding new
scientific knowledge.
In addition, it is the business of government
to promote literacy in science because this generation will not
otherwise be able to make valid moral, political or economic
decisions.
9
If we desire basic moral standards in government, we must
look to our society to be the seed of that standard.
Our institu
tions are affected by prevailing attitudes and values, and over
the course of time we change our institutions - although slowly and
fitfully - to reflect these norms.
If we look in the mirror, and
do not like what we see, we must bear the responsibility.
10
FAMILY SEMINAR ON ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION
Corrine McGuigan, M.D.
This morning I’m going to speak briefly to you on 'How do you
teach the pieces of information that you want to get across either
to your children, or to your students?’
For those of you that are
working with adults, what are some of the strategies that we can
use as educators or as teachers that will help the adults learn
just as effectively as the little first graders are learning to read
their words in the first grade reader?
The first thing I usually
have to do when I’m meeting with a group of people, is to acknow-
ledge that most people know teaching theory.
Almost everybody in
this room by this time has heard of Piaget.
My very first task
is to see if we can’t arrive at some definition of what we mean
by teaching.
For example. let me ask you this. "Has a teacher
taught the student to raise his hand, who from September to October
has learned to shout out every time he or she wants to say an
answer?
Has the child learned anything?
learned?
How to shout out."
Yes.
What has the child
So one of the very first things we
have to acknowledge is that when behavior changes, whether it
increases or decreases, that involves learning.
That the child
has learned to do this or that, if learning is occurring then we
have to suppose that some place along the line, teaching took place.
Now, what we like to be as teachers. is in control of what
we are teaching and not have learning be a by-product or an unexpec-
ted outcome of what we are doing.
An example I can give to parents
sometimes, is the story of a little child I worked with a couple
1
of years ago in Seattle.
The parents came to me because, when the
baby was about a year old, before they could put the baby to sleep,
they had to walk the baby around the block.
If you’ve been to
Seattle, it's very hard, because it's raining there all the time.
So we talked about how it started. and when the baby was about 4 or
5 months old, the baby started crying when they put the baby down
into the crib and the baby would cry and fuss, so of course they
would pick the baby up and hold it and cuddle it - it was a very nice
little feeling - so as the baby grew older and they would put the
baby down, the baby simply would cry and when they went to put him
back again, the baby learned that if he would cry again. Mom and Dad
would pick him up and cuddle and love him.
Well, pretty soon, this
little tyke had his parents into holding him for half an hour and
then pretty soon, watching Johnny Carson at eleven o'clock together.
then pretty soon walking around the block.
Now, the child had
learned that if he cried - Mom and Dad would pick him up and give
him what he wanted - hence the parents had taught the child that if
the child cried, we would pick him up.
I use that illustration to
show the very tight relationship between teaching and learning.
If
learning has occurred, it has been taught and conversely. if we
teach in the best sense of the word, then people learn.
Now, some of the best teachers in our society right now happen
to be the "Jordache Co., Sesame Street, true?
is an excellent teacher.
Who else?
McDonalds
And why can we say they're good teachers?
Because people do what THEY want people to do.
They eat their ham
burgers, they buy their jeans, and they talk about them.
What you
want in this conference is for people to engage in behaviors related
to Adolescent-Adult Sexuality.
So first, we have to find where we
2
want to go with that - that is,what do we want to teach so that
when it happens we’ll know we've gotten there.
one.
Okay - point number
Now the second point about teaching is that despite all the
different theorists, not a lot of people trained in education really
get a lot out of educational theory.
I don't mean to degrade Piaget.
His work has a wonderful place, but if I go into a classroom and I
ask "what stage of Piaget development is this little tyke at?"
teacher is not going to know.
The
So in my work, what we've been trying
to do for the last few years is try to look at how children learn and
how can we identify that as when they really have learned in terms of
developmental theory.
What we did is coordinated a lot of our work
with two researchers at the University of Washington who have been
contracted to simply look at this issue in terms of how adults and
children learn.
The very first thing they found out is that if you
learn something to 100% you haven' t necessarily learned it.
Okay?
Now, most of you have been at Mass in the last two weeks, right?
Two Sundays ago - what was the sermon about?
was it about?
hands up.
How many remember?
Two Sundays ago- what
So, there is like four or five
How many of you then today can say that you learned
anything from that Sunday's homily?
Just the four or five of you
technically, that remember what it was about because to say we
learned means that we have it in our heads and we can use that piece
of information.
So the first notion we have to dispel
is that
learning does not mean you know something at 100%.
Many of you took chemistry when you were in high school or
college - or statistics. but you don't remember that now..
You
might have learned it back then, but you can't say that you learned
3
it now, because you can’t recall it, so the very first thing you
want to dispell is that acquisition learning, something from 0%
to 100% means that you have acquired a piece of information, but
it does not mean that you have learned it.
You have not learned a
I often
piece of information until you can remember it and use it.
think that this is one of the reasons why, as teachers, we become
very frustrated at the secondary level or at the college level when
we present one or two lectures and expect our students to generalize
and transfer that information to their home settings. because it
doesn't work that way.
What helps people remember information is
the second stage called proficiency.
That is, not only can the
person recall the piece of information correctly, but they can recall
it very quickly, or on a number of times very consistently and it's
the second stage of learning that leads to remembering.
So, the
first notion we've dispelled this morning is that acquisition does
not lead to remembering - proficiency leads to remembering.
Now, if
you ask a first grade teacher. they'll nod their head and say, "Yes,
that is right."
And we get that because we drill over and over and
the kids become very good at it.
It's called 'Over learning'.
In
the home, we do it by the same kind of situation coming up and
McDonald's does it by how?
finally the child learns it.
Jordache does it by having advertise-
trying it over and over again.
ments every place you look.
Yes, by
That's why the name is so familiar to us.
We've become proficient at that label. just as we were 20 years ago -
proficientat the name Levi.
So that we use what we remember and
once we remember something then we can go to the higher stages.
You can generalize or transfer the information.
4
That is, I can take
it from the classroom or the learning situation that I’m in back
to my environment and because I remember it. then I can engage in
that behavior.
Acquisition learning does not lead to learning and
if you are going to teach and you are not going to take the time to
go through proficiency building, then don’t bother teaching.
Quite
frankly, if you simply teach to 100%, people aren't going to remember
and you’re wasting your time as a teacher and their time as a learner.
When we start out teaching a skill. we ought to know where we
are starting with skill one and then we progress to skill two.
Very
often what happens, in terms of learning, is that people say,
"okay, I'm going to teach my kids or I'm going to teach my group of
adults some communication skills and I have three skills I'm going
to teach them."
I really want them to be able to generalize and use
this because it's part of their overall program.
I'm going to begin
with skill number one. so I bring my group together and I realize
that I have some very bright people in my group on skill number one.
In fact. some of the people in my group have already acquired that
skill, so that when I begin my instruction on that skill, they are
really going to be moving into the second stage of learning - pro
ficiency.
It makes sense then, there's the most of us right here
in the middle, we're about 50-60% acquisition - that's a good place
to start teaching and there's some people down here who have never
even heard of this concept, and so you go along and do your lectures
or presentations or movies or roll playing and at the end of the
first lesson, these people have by the extra instruction. become more
proficient.
This group of people has moved to either high acqui-
sition or complete acquisition and this group down here is finally
5
So you, being the excel-
getting about 40-50% of the information.
lentteacher that you are, say, well, I'm not going to move on till
we have everybody together and so on day two, you continue to present
lesson number one, and this group, who has been proficient at it is
going to either be very good and help you out with this group, who
now is moving on to proficiency, or if you're with a group of kids
and these kids are already proficient up here and you stay too long,
they are going to become behavior problems.
So, you try to match
them up and then finally at the end of day two here, you bring this
group all the way to complete acquisition.
teachers do in this case?
Now, what do most
Everybody has gotten at 100% now, they
move on to the next skill, don’t they?
Well, what that phenomenon
does is keep these low learners at the low learning level and it
keeps these people getting a lot of acquisition level material that
they are not going to be able to remember because they were never
given the opportunity to become proficient.
So, even though we
think we're only teaching well for two-thirds of the class, as
important as this is for children. it is equally important for adults.
We assume because people are older, that their learning styles change -
there is no research to support that - in fact, most research on
adult learning and how adults learn, mirrors how children learn.
So, when you’re working with a group of adults, make sure that you
stick with your group on a topic long enough for them really to be
able to become proficient at it.
That’s what we mean by teaching
for learning.
The second thing I want to speak to you about is.
decide what you're going to teach?’
6
'How do you
The conference here has been on
Adolescent Sexuality - sexuality doesn't begin and end at adolescence.
Sexuality is part of a human being that comes with them when
they are born and that we grow into our sexuality and we don't outgrow our sexuality when we become twenty-one or when we're incapable
of bearing children.
We carry our sexuality all the way to our death.
So, when we talk about teaching human sexuality - we have a lot of
areas we can pick from in terms of how to approach that as an
instructional program and I just want to show you a few pieces or
topics that I brain-stormed yesterday afternoon.
From the different
talks that have been given, we could teach human sexuality if we
took any of these topics.
The Nature of Unconditional Love - when
do we start teaching that?
Do we start when the baby is 2 or 3,
or do we start in terms of human sexuality or adolescent sexuality
when the young man or young woman is 14 or 15.
have to answer.
It's a question you
It depends on how you're going to approach it.
Do
we start teaching adolescent sexuality by focusing on the relation-
ship between the Creator and the created?
Or the purpose of each
Or do we start human sexuality by
man and woman in the creation?
talking about ourselves as sexual beings?
And one of the points
I want to make here is that we need to make sure that our dis
cussions of human sexuality aren't necessarily focused on marriage.
There are other life styles - remember there are two other life styles
not included if we just limit it to marriage.
So, if you want to
bring your children up and your students up with open minds about
selecting life styles for themselves and talking about the single
state or a clerical or religious state and a married state we have
to see that human sexuality runs through all three of those.
7
Let' s
not forget that.
Do we want to talk about in terms of sexual res
ponsibility, life styles, decision making skills, communication
skills or intimacy?
These are just a few general ways that you can
jump into the area of human sexuality.
Once you decide the major approach that you want to take.
you're going to call this your general philosophy of approach and
under that then you must begin to develop the specific skills that
you want to teach.
The development of those specific skills; for
example, under the topic of decision making, become what is called
your curriculum for instruction and those of you teaching should
know what your curriculum is.
Those of you who are simply teaching
the method - the Billings Method of Ovulation - should know how the
teaching of that method fits into an overall curriculum.
Now, once
you've identified your general focal area, and all the pieces of
information that comes under that, then you begin to teach.
And
so the next question is,
And
'How do we most effectively teach?'
so here I tried to think of something that again you all would have
in common. or many of you would have in common. a text book or a
piece of information. and I tried to think of different teachers
that you would have read.
I came up with one of the gospels, and so I looked through it
and I said obviously we have learned from the gospel, so it must
have been a good teaching instrument, so let's analyze it and look
what it had in its development that helped us be good learners and
this is what I came up with.
If we ask ourselves,
'How did Christ
teach through the authors of the different gospels?'
The answer
is, first thing He gave us as educators and its guideline for teachers
is to teach in little steps.
If you look at the gospel very carefully
8
in terms of teachers and how it works, you’ll find that when He
wanted to teach us that God came to earth to forgive sins. He didn't
start out with a bombshell and say this is what you should know and
this is how you should be able to believe it.
He started out in
He started out with one of His
very small steps in His curriculum.
first miracles being the water to the wine, where the only person
who even knew about that was His mother.
Remember that story?
Good.
And following that story in the gospel, Christ coming down from the
desert and curing Martha's fever.
Now you have to think - there is
this woman and she just had a fever.
It's not a real big miracle
to cure a fever, but it helped us learn so we can believe in this
Man.
He only had his friends here.
around Him.
He didn't have a big crew
In fact, He didn't have anybody He didn't already know.
and from that He went into curing a little girl who was sick in her
home.
And again here we are not sure about how sick the little girl
was, but again it was a very private type of setting where the
miracle occurred.
And then we progress from those miracles through
the sick son, when the father came to Jesus.
from a distance.
about it.
There he cured him
Again it's a small group of people still knowing
Let me move from illness into disease - a more severe dis-
ease - the progression getting more and more difficult to under-
stand
when we come to the story of the lepers.
First there was
one leper. and then there were nine lepers, and remember, they weren't
supposed to tell anybody.
But here we go again. a progression from
the most believable progressing through least believable things.
then into the public healings, then into the public feedings.
then into raising somebody else from the dead, and finally to the
9
very resurrection.
So what we can learn as teachers from the pro
gression of the gospel in terms of strategy is that we have to help
people believe in what we're doing and we do that by progressing
in very small steps, very consistently.
Once we decide that we’re
going to progress consistently - slowly - then we can take a teaching
step and begin teaching it.
It is very important as teachers that we know if we are trying
to increase a behavior or decrease a behavior. or simply maintain a
behavior.
And it is very important for every single learner to know
why they’re being taught something.
consequence.
That WHY is what we call a
The consequence that Jordache uses is peer pressure
and having a beautiful body and being liked by your friends.
McDonalds uses food.
Many of us teach in schools and in universities
or other places because we like to teach. but also because we’re
paid.
If they took away our pay. as much as we like doing what we
are doing, we might do something else.
So we are reinforced.
When
we teach things to people, we have to be able to reinforce them.
I met a teacher once working with emotionally disturbed kids, who
wanted the kids in the classroom to be good, simply because they
should be good.
And what we had to point out was that these children
didn't know what being good was.
And so to expect an abstract from
somebody who is not capable of it simply was not very realistic.
If we are going to talk about communication skills, we have to be
able to give our learners a reason why it’s nice to have fluent
communication skills.
We have to, in our teaching, make sure that
they demonstrate the positive consequences of being able to say no.
or being able to critically analyze an argument or to engage in
10
debate or to initiate conversation.
Never teach without knowing
why you are teaching, and never begin to teach by assuming that
the people simply should want to learn this.
It’s not true and it
won’t work.
This brings me to a point in terms of sexuality - training in
human sexuality.
From my own experience that I think might be help
ful to you, and that is if we looked at decision making skills and
made that part of a curriculum that started way back in the first
grade.
If parents consciously started saying "That was a good argu-
ment" our children would start developing good decision making skills.
"That was a good argument" and the children would learn to initiate
in more types of discussions more often, and by the time they became
the age 13 or 14, they would have become fluent at that skill and be
able to engage in it.
That just helps as we are going along.
I’m
trying to make the point here again that human sexuality is a long
progression of and the interrelation of a lot of skills happening
from very young in life and right up to death.
I’ll tell you a good consequence story here.
A lot of my
work, I've been 13 years in special education, that's why I know
a lot about teaching theory.
But, we had this young man who was
21 years old in our classroom a few years ago, who was schizophrenic.
in a very medical sense, the guy was crazy, koo-koo.
He used to sit
in the back of the classroom and he would say really bizarre things.
like "I see a pound of flesh on the couch", or "A fire engine is
coming through the window."
And what we decided was that
Tom was
feeling or imagining in his head, and what we wanted to do in terms
of the ethics of teaching, was to let him be able to express that, but
11
in terms of his societyt to be able to express that in an appropriate way.
So we said to him, "Tom, that's not really very approp
riate, that you keep saying these weird things and you keep breaking
out in these weird laughs all the time." So we decided that the
appropriate thing to do for Tom would be to give him a journal and
teach him to write down the weird things that he was thinking.
because then he had an outlet for it. and then we also tried to say.
"Now Tom, don't laugh all the time because people will think you're
weird (which you are), but you don't have to tell the world that
you're weird.
You'll get along better if they don't know."
So we
have put him on the journal so he can have an outlet for his weird
thoughts, and when he laughed, we said, "Okay Tom, now when you have
an appropriate laugh, we'll tell you. All right?"
Then as we were
teaching and something funny happened and Tom laughed, we would say.
"Good Tom, that was a very appropriate laugh."
And pretty soon his
inappropriate laughter decreased and his appropriate laughter
increased.
Ingred and I patted ourselves on the shoulder and said.
"Good teaching, you know - good planning up there."
Until the day
we took all the kids on a snow trip to the mountains and Tom, a big
boy sitting in the innertube getting ready to go down the hill.
said, "I think I'm going to have an appropriate
Ha. "
laugh, Ha, Ha,
I left teaching shortly after that.
Okay, I want to wrap up here.
One more point.
Curriculum is
a huge thing. you're going to have to spend some time looking at
it.
You're going to have to know that you want to get all the way
to generalization and transfer and that you're going to have to do
it in small steps making sure that you understand your consequences.
12
Lastly, we had better take a minute and look at how long does
it take for people to learn?
It takes a very long time.
to show you the diagram for how people learn.
learning starts by awareness.
has done here.
I’m going
And that is. all
Awareness is what this conference
It raises your awareness.
It helps you to believe
in something, but it's used to create a belief.
But creating a
belief does not mean that a person can go out and do what they
believe in.
So we use certain strategies to create belief, and we
need to do that before we begin to teach.
We need to have people
believe that it's important that they learn about their sexual
identity for themselves as sexual beings.
Once they become aware
of that. then they can move on to a stage called trial use.
can try out these different decision making styles.
They can try
out different ways of dressing or talking with people.
can move on, if they try it out and it works.
They
Then they
Then they adopt it
just as they've been taught, and a little bit longer, after they've
adopted it, they make it more personal and that's called adaption.
And pretty soon, those old things that they're doing now by adaption
become habit and that's either called institutionalization. or habit,
and that's how it happens.
The reason these stages here are very important, is because
they each require different types of teaching strategies and more
importantly, different amounts of support from the teachers them
selves .
When a person is in awareness, you have to be there with
them all the time.
When they're trying something out, you need to
have a high level of support.
You're there telling them when it's
working and helping them out when it's not working.
When they adopt
it. you can withdraw some of your support, but you still have to be
13
there and as you go into adaption and habit or institutionalization.
then of course, the support has been internalized by the person
themselves.
In terms of time, if we're looking at a change in an
office and a lot of my training is with businesses, helping them
to develop more efficient time management strategies, or what ever,
we have learned that going from awareness to internalization or habit
or institutionalization is guess how many years?
But
Five years.
if you expect it to take that long, you’re not disappointed.
Aware
ness is almost a year if you’re working with a group of people.
So don’t be discouraged.
Trial use:
someplace between three to
six months, and then a year at adoption phasing into adaption and a
latter year without support.
That's how adult change differs a
little bit from child changing classrooms.
Because our steps are
somewhat bigger. I hope that's helped you a little bit in terms of
becoming somewhat better teachers and knowing what you can expect
in terms of the people that are going to learn from you as you
teach very well.
Dr. McGuigan elected to speak in an informal way.
Therefore,
she did not present a formal paper for this publication.
Dr.
McGuigan graciously consented to allow her paper to be published as
it was taken from tapes.
Any error or confusion should be con
sidered an error in playback and not that of Dr. McGuigan.
We are indebted to Carolyn Underbrink for hours of listening
and recording tapes for this paper and others.
14
GOOD NEWS ABOUT ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
Michael Meaney, Ph.D.
We have all heard a great deal of bad news about sexually
active teenagers.
In this, as in other areas, it is the bad
rather than the good news that makes the headlines:
1,000,000
teenage American girls become pregnant each year; around 300,000
of them "terminate" their pregnancies—or kill their babies.
Some enter into pressured marriages, 90% of which fail; some form
single-parent families.
Upwards of 1,000,000 American teenagers
run away from troubled homes every year—but soon get into much
more trouble—as Fr. Bruce Ritter points out so well.
1,100 teen-
agers attempt suicide every day; in this age group, suicide is the
third greatest cause of death.
About 5,700,000 fourteen to seven-
teen year olds have serious drinking problems.
A recent incoming
group of Notre Dame University freshman answered a survey in which
23% admitted already having had blackouts due to alcohol.
However
striking such bad news may be, we need also to see the good news.
Where does one start in analyzing adolescent sexuality?
One possible place, one key fact is that adolescents mature sexu
ally and experience peak sexual drive years before they mature in
other ways, years before they are ready for marriage.
Everyone
agrees that it would be ideal if they waited for marriage before
becoming "sexually active. ii
Yet with dismal uniformity. secular
youth counsellors immediately despair of this, and therefore
spend all their efforts tying to minimize some of the damage of
years of inevitable premarital sexual activity and promiscuity.
Their despair, contraceptive mentality, and abortion-referrals
1
are misleading mistakes which generate and compound rather than
solve problems.
In any event, the raging epidemic of incurable
genital herpes (and many other problems) is rapidly making such
counselling obsolete.
What we really need in order to solve adolescent sexual
problems is to present premarital continence to them in a meaning
ful, attractive and positive way, but this is a large order.
We
cannot do it without re-examining our basic values and rediscover
ing our highest ideals.
The values of western culture have gradu
ally shifted away from future-oriented work and duty, sacrifice.
and savings towards immediate leisure and recreation, comfort.
pleasure, and consumption.
Within the first type of culture.
adolescents were socially encouraged towards the difficult prepara
tion of maturity, whereas within the second, they naturally became
interested in various forms of immediate enjoyment.
It is cer
tainly unrealistic to expect very many sexually mature boys and
girls in a pleasure-oriented society to postpone becoming sexually
active as a result of laws or regulations, fear, or customs.
In
fact, the only way we can sublimate the sexual drive effectively.
positively, and creatively is through a higher and more powerful
love.
One of the ways this regularly occurs is through friendship
or "falling in love."
After years of experience with gangs. one
New York social worker claimed that boys falling in love with girls
whom they respect and want to marry accomplishes more good than
all the social workers who ever lived.
In any event, when "falling
in love" is joined to the sexual drive, their union results in
something quite different from pure sexual drive.
Whereas a purely
sexual relationship is an impersonal, brief, blind, genital pursuit
2
of pleasure with almost any sexual partner, a loving relationship
is eminently personal, growing from mutual appreciation to a shar
ing of affection, friendship and love.
Because it is our most
fundamental response to persons. love is as far-reaching. as
profound and as long-lasting as human life itself.
Everything, however, depends on what kind of love is
involved; love affairs are as great or as mediocre. as positive
or as destructive as the love which gives rise to them.
Two
false forms of love are particularly common and terribly destruc
tive .
Romantic love pictures love as a fantastic feeling which
will happen to us when we finally meet the perfect object of
love.
Then and only then can we really begin to love.
Such a
yearning is impossible to achieve or sustain; it is an unlivable
substitute for love based on a false view of man.
The Playboy
type of "love" is simply the selfish pursuit of pleasure as one’s
supreme good in life.
It is carefully sterile and casually
abortive of any life it may have accidentally generated.
Since
both romantic yearnings and Playboy pleasures are based on false
sets of values and are in opposition to life, they frustrate our
natural hunger for an authentic love which is in profound har
mony with life and truth.
Authentic love means pursuing a good or ideal worthy of
man.
How much we need this might well be illustrated by the Ft.
Wayne high school teacher who became so discouraged by student
problems and behavior that he was seriously considering getting
out of teaching and into some other, less depressing. form of
work.
But when the terrible flood of 1982 came. "Like thousands
of others, I went downtown to help—and what did I see?
3
Hundreds
of students whom I had written off as lazy, irresponsible goof-
offs.
They had come as volunteers to work in the sandbag lines.
haul rubble and trash, help evacuate the elderly and the stranded.
do whatever needed to be done.
lives if necessary.
Some were even ready to risk their
And they were having a great time—the best
ever."
This was the first time that these students had ever been
effectively challenged by a great need, a worthwhile goal. a
great opportunity to serve, a high ideal.
How did we come to this point—that it takes spectacular.
catastrophic needs to get many of us to pursue ideals?
Throughout
history from antiquity to modern times, our cultural heritage and
ideals have been passed on from one generation to the next largely
by liberal education.
Plato even went so far as to define the
poet—such as Homer, "the great educator of Greece"—as a person
who "clothes all the great deeds accomplished by the men of old
with glory. and thus educates those who come after."
This was
prophetic, for Greco-Roman classics became the creative sources
of much of western liberal education, culture and ideals for two
thousand years.
Times have changed, however.
Liberal education has largely
been replaced by scientific, technological and commercial courses
which have impressively demonstrated their value without concern-
ing themselves with honor or beauty, courage, or sacrifice, and
whereas technology merely diverts attention from heroic values.
much contemporary literature, journalism, movies, and philosophy
has actively set about denouncing ideals and dethroning heroes.
For heroic values are incompatible with pragmatism, relativism.
4
and skepticism.
They cannot survive in an atmosphere of pessimism,
cynicism, and despair.
They wither away in self-centered people
who love themselves and their pleasures.
In a post-ideology age of the anti-hero, where can the impetus to rededicate ourselves to greatness come from?
We are not
likely to get it from scientists who speak of man as "the naked
ape, " from literary figures who speak of man "the trousered ape,"
from philosophers who speak of men as "wolves to other men," or
from businessmen who assure us that "what is good for General
Motors is good for the country."
Ideals are proposed to us not only in schools but also at
home and in church as well as by various social and political
groups.
But how many of these prestigious groups always offer as
much full participation to the teenager as gangs do?
Gangs offer
full acceptance, mutual appreciation, warm fellowship, active
involvement, leadership roles to play and responsibilities to
fulfill.
Is it surprising if many teenagers find this better
than the adult world which often leaves them idle, but lectures
them in school. scolds them at home, preaches at them in church.
refuses them jobs, excludes them from politics and discourages
them from marriage?
We have too often preached at young people without giving
them enough real opportunity to share in the action.
We have
failed to realize that "unless you live as you believe. you will
soon believe as you live."
Adolescents are especially critical
of hypocrites who do not practice what they preach.
We adults
have often given them a generous dose of preaching—and sometimes
much good example as well—but little real opportunity for them
5
to follow or join us in practicing what we preach.
The many
exceptions to this, such as President Kennedy’s Peace Corps, or
Youth Cursillos or Search Weekends, have almost always aroused much
enthusiasm and been highly successful.
Freely choosing and actively working towards a major goal
or main ideal in life is not only indispensable to success but
is crucially important to our mental and even physical well being.
Victor Frankl, for example, found that the most significant difference between World War II concentration camp inmates was not
age, health or sex. but the fact that some succeeded in having a
goal in life despite their situation and some did not.
Those who
did not lived in the pleasant past rather than in the valueless.
pointless present.
They withdrew into themselves, stopped working
or putting out any effort, grew apathetic and listless, and even
tually declined and died of contagious diseases from which the
others recovered.
In a similar way, adolescents who are not
actively pursuing meaningful goals soon find themselves going from
alcohol and drugs towards apathy, promiscuity, delinquency or
suicide.
Even though everyone learns, to a great extent, by doing.
this is especially true of adolescents, whose strong need to be
active, moving, and expending energy is a major, although not
always fully appreciated, source of their growth towards maturity.
Whereas a child spends much of his time playing. an adolescent
begins to particpate in sports, which soon becomes a major ele
ment in his life and an important part of his passage from child
hood to maturity.
Sports are midway between play and work:
they
are enjoyable and yet demand maximum, sustained effort, voluntary.
6
and yet require long, difficult training.
They are interesting
ways of spending leisure time, but also involve major sacrifices
and persistent discipline.
They combine competition and coopera-
tion in the pursuit of individual and above all team achievements
which are rewarded by honor rather than money.
By accomplishing
something difficult through considerable effort, by reaching a
goal through perseverence, an adolescent begins to discover what
he is capable of doing and of being.
In rural environments, this
happens naturally through work, which prepares a maturity filled
with vigorous self-reliance and self-confidence.
But in urban
societies, where there is little opportunity for them to work.
adolescents remain idle, often receiving as gifts not only neces
Even at home, parents too often
sities but also luxuries as well.
do for them what they would be better off doing for themselves.
Adolescence becomes a no-man’s land of self-destructive idleness
situated between school and work.
The impetus to re-dedicate ourselves to greatness can come
only from a profound re-discovery of what we are and what we can
become.
These have been perennial concerns of mankind—explored
by poets, philosophers, historians, sociologists, psychologists.
psychiatrists, and countless others.
With all due respect to
them, the most profound description as well as the highest
praise of man ever made was the first statement by God about man.
God said:
"Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of
ourselves"
(Gen. 1, 26).
Created in the image of the Trinity,
we are also destined by God to share in the inner life of the
triune God:
we participate in the infinite wisdom, life, and
love of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit above all through
7
faith, hope, and charity.
God founded the Church and the family
in order to give us two divine schools of love for life, two sacred
societies in which love will be in harmony with truth and life.
The love of God and neighbor is powerful enough to transform our
lives and spirit, powerful enough to transcend and control, guide
and permeate sexual experience.
The New Testament presents this
not as a utopian ideal. but as a realistic prescription for ordinary Christian life.
History confirms it as a fact.
and is being lived in two main ways.
It has been
Many, following Jesus, have
given up marriage and inspire us with their lives of total dedica-
tion to God.
And fervent laypeople have shown that pre-marital
continence leading to enduring, unfailing fidelity to one’s part-
ner in a happy marriage is thoroughly normal.
Many married couples have found that the Billings ovulation
method of natural family planning is not only an important scientific discovery but is, in its own way, a harmony of love. life,
and truth.
It teaches us about ourselves as sexual beings in a
way that is essentially open to life, showing us when and how we
can generate new life.
It fosters not only knowledge but also
love and authentic respect for the other person, for it demands
that self-control, self-discipline, and spirit of sacrifice that
we all greatly need to love rightly.
It presupposes that love is
greater than pleasure, and is inherently incompatible with instinctive sex or roving promiscuity.
It is most compatible with
"love-making" that is thoroughly human:
that involves knowledge
and freedom, personal love and responsibility in enduring marriage.
In order to live and mature peacefully in today’s world.
adolescents need all of the help and inspiration that the family
8
and the church have to offer.
Without that help and inspiration,
they will be in deep, even desperate trouble.
For, while adoles-
cence is naturally an age of hope. it can also be one of despair.
Adolescents are susceptible to despair for many reasons,
have great expectations—which are hard to fulfill.
of potential, but empty of achievement.
graveyard of ideals.
anti-hero.
They
They are full
They are idealists in a
They are hero-worshippers in an age of the
They have rigorous, high standards of perfection, but
cannot see how anyone can rise to those standards.
They are in
pursuit of honesty and authenticity in an age of propaganda, ad-
vertising and ideology.
They want peace, but are unstable, sim
mering cauldrons of conflicting emotions and drives in a world at
war. They want to be where the action is, but are too often
passive spectators.
They must be themselves, and yet cannot sur
vive outside of their group.
They want their satisfactions now,
but are unwilling to sacrifice their future, and unhappy with
compromise.
bravado.
They disguise their fear and anxiety with bluff and
They want guidance, but are afraid to ask for it.
They
are looking for unity of truth and life. but are pulled in all
directions.
They can be seduced by easy pleasure, but uncon-
sciously realize that that is the death of both effort and hope.
They are capable of dreaming great dreams but may settle for drugs,
They hunger for hope in a world of despair.
If that is life, they
may think that death is better.
Wbat we really need to prevent and to solve these life-
threatening and life-crippling problems is a profound and lifelong
renewal of Christian family life.
This is what God offers us.
Through the family, through the church. through the Gospel, Jesus
9
transcendently meets the greatest needs and aspirations of each
stage of our lives.
Our first contact with God is one in which
the Trinity creates and infuses the soul into our tiny bodies,
thus preparing us for an eternity of beatitude.
being is best prepared by a stable marriage.
Our coming into
The Gospel is "Good
News" even to the unborn. not only in safeguarding and respecting
that new life, but also in fostering its well-being as well.
Many fascinating scientific studies have shown that chronic and
severe anxiety, aggressivity , frustration, or depression in both
animal and human mothers regularly sends massive amounts of stress
hormones into the maternal and fetal bloodstreams creating a wide
range of fetal problems.
One common result is a hyperactive
fetus who is underweight and "neurotic at birth"—fussy, con
stantly crying, needing to be fed and changed too often, anxious r
startling too easily, regurgitating food too often, etc.—the baby
difficult to love and easy to abuse.
Since such stress often
comes from the absence of a husband or from unfaithful, abusive,
or threatening husbands r we effectively avoid such problems
to the
extent we live the Gospel. What the helpless newborn needs
above
all is a great deal of tender loving care;
even the best of hygienic
care without personal warmth results in very high infant mortality
as well as severe, long-lasting problems for the survivors.
The fact that we need the enduring, dependable presence and
warm love of a mother throughout infancy and into childhood
if we
are to survive and develop normally is now well known,
What is
not so well known is the relationship between such early love and
prayer. Baptism has already brought God’s grace,
life, and love
to the infant. A mother who tells her 2^ or 3-year old about God
10
and his love for him will find that, because of his experience of
being loved, he will believe that God loves him far more readily
and fully than an adult will.
Anyone who believes that God really
and personally loves him responds by loving, trusting, hoping, and
believing in him.
Since this is what simple affective or "mental"
prayer is all about, it is not surprising that experts on teach
ing mental prayer agree that the best period in the entire human
lifespan to learn mental prayer is from 3 to 6 or 7 years.
We
find this confirmed over and over again by the first-hand witnesses
whose testimony is the heart of the beatification procedure mate
rials leading to the canonization of recent saints.
It has been
affirmed and explained by some of the greatest theologians of the
20th century:
by the great Carmelite theologian Bruno de Jesus-
Marie, by the great Dominican theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange,
by the great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, and by many others.
Studies show that most 3 or 4 year olds respond very well if they
receive a minimum of parental instruction, example, and encouragement.
My wife and I have found this to be true by teaching cate-
chism to small groups of 3-year olds, and we have had it confirmed
in our own home as well.
One day at breakfast some time ago, our youngest 4-year old
girl said "Mommy, I love you."
Francette gave her a little hug
and said. "I love you. too, Elizabeth.
is?"
"Love is making other people happy."
6-year-old Mary and asked her.
body."
But what do you think love
We then turned to our
"Love is doing something for some-
Then our 8-year-old Joseph said that "Love is doing some-
thing you don’t like for somebody."
sacrifice?
If that is love, what is
"Sacrifice is doing something you don’t like for
11
somebody you like a lot."
Shortly after this at our family night
prayer, a question came up and has been recurring ever since:
"What have I done for somebody else today?"
If you want to keep
prayers for other people from becoming a list of names, try that
one!
Learning to please, help, and obey parents and others helps
children appreciate the fact that they can please. serve, and obey
God.
This introduces them to the heart of Christian life.
St.
Therese of Lisieux, "the greatest saint of modern times," wrote
"If you want to be a saint, that will be easy for you . .
only one goal:
to him."
. have
to please Jesus and unite yourself more closely
A little child of 3 can understand that; a little child
of 3 can begin to live it also.
Such a young child is incapable
of moral virtue in the strict sense of the term. too childish for
social and political virtues, too young for science or art, work.
or wisdom.
And yet Jesus offers him a share in the inner life
of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
Since the child of today is the adolescent of tomorrow.
such formation has lasting consequences for adolescence, youth.
and maturity.
Of course. it evolves to meet the needs and aspi
rations of each new stage in life.
One of the most distinctive
characteristics of adolescents is a need and enthusiasm for heroes
and heroines.
tion :
Their reaction to heroes merits its common descrip
hero-worship.
Adolescents naturally want their heroes to
be as great, as admirable as possible.
But they also want to
imitate and follow them, to identify with them and share in their
greatness.
But these are largely unrealistic desires for the more
admirable a hero is. the less imitable he is; and the more imitable
12
he is, the less admirable he is.
The greatest heros are almost
impossible to imitate or follow.
On the other hand, the person
next door may be easy enough to follow but is there any point to
it?
The only exception to this general rule is the greatest of
all heros, Jesus Christ.
For he is great, admirable, perfect, as
only a God-Man can be.
And yet he is also the most perfectly and
fully imitable person who ever walked the face of the earth—for
he shared his divine nature with us through grace.
In the words
of St. Thomas Aquinas, "We can become through grace what Jesus
Christ is by nature."
No less than children and adolescents. we all need a Savior,
we all need Jesus Christ.
best friend.
He alone is our tremendous lover and
He alone is our greatest hero, our highest and most
realizable ideal.
He alone is the leader. teacher, and personal
absolute we are all, in each stage of our lives, hungering for,
from the innermost depths of our being.
13
ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
A HISPANIC PERSPECTIVE
Maria Hilda Pinon and Fernando Pinon
We developed this topic on the contention that the problems
of all adolescents are similar by nature of their maturation pro-
cess; but while biologically this process is similar. it is mani-
fested differently because of cultural, social, moral and environmental conditions.
Accordingly, we'll talk about how this maturation process
is influenced by the combination of traits, customs, traditions
and experiences commonly ascribed to "Hispanics. H
Understanding these traits and customs that shape the
Hispanic adolescent can help us in helping them with the expression
of their sexuality.
Why is there a need to focus on Hispanic adolescents?
Simply because of our numbers. our age, our common exper-
iences.
For the first time in history, we can consider the U.S.
Catholic Church a Hispanic church.
In 1980, the Hispanic population
of the United States increased 61 percent over the previous decade.
We are now 14,608,673.
Hispanics make up 37 percent of the pop-
ulation of New Mexico, 21 percent of Texas, 19 percent of California,
16 percent of Arizona, 12 percent of Colorado and 7 percent of New
York, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada and New Jersey.
It is estimated that 85 percent of all Hispanics in the
United States consider themselves Catholics, even though only oneThey make up 40 percent of the U.S.
third attend church regularly.
Catholic church and by the end of the decade should increase to
60 percent.
1
Besides its numerical strength, the Hispanic population and thus the Catholic Hispanic population - possesses other social
characteristics that sets them apart from other groups.
Overall, it is economically poorer and less educated than the
majority of the population.
The median income for the total U.S.
population is $15,000 per year.
That of the Hispanics is $10,000.
Unemployment for Hispanics is much higher; overall it is 10 percent.
although with the present policies of the Reagan Administration it
is much higher than this.
In education, the Hispanics fare just as bad.
Seventy percent
of the U.S. population finished high school while only 40 percent
of the Hispanic population did so.
And their percentage drops sig
nificantly at the college level.
These statistics are relevant because there is no denying that
the Hispanic population is poor.
Unfortunately, many who are not
familiar with the Hispanic base its concept of them primarily on the
socio-enonomic criteria.
The Hispanic is much more than this
because their poverty - while cyclical in many respects - has not
deprived them of a strong sense of attachment to religion and to a
faith that has allowed them to survive generations of cataclysmic
events.
Que sea lo que Dios quiera!
than a resignation of the will.
(May God's will be done) is more
It is an acknowledgement that in
this world God's will does determine events.
John F. Kennedy's
inaugural
address:
must really be our own.
2
Contrast this with
"In this world, God's work
And so, looking at the Hispanic population within the Catholic
Church, we see that it is increasing in numbers to the point that
it will make up the majority of church membership, that it makes up
the poorest of her flock, that it is the less educated, that it is
by far the youngest and that, because of its deprivations, is the
most vulnerable.
All of these factors provides the Catholic Church - and the
WOOMB (World Organization of Ovulation Method Billings), a great
challenge.
To understand the Hispanic adolescent of today, we have to
look back three generations to better appreciate the struggles made
in trying to integrate and uphold their values and attitudes.
While it is true that everybody is influenced by former
generations, the Hispanic adolescent of today is more a product of
his descendants than any other group that has been able to integrate
much better into the overall American society.
The grandparents of today’s adolescents grew up prior to World
War II.
The majority were immigrants from Mexico who came to the
United States after the Mexican Revolution.
They were mostly rural
and uneducated and traveled in family clusters.
They migrated
within the United States in search of agricultural work and isolated
themselves within their own communities.
They settled mostly in rural areas, working in the fields.
Later on, after the war, they began migrating into the urban centers
to work in the factories and created their own "Mexican" barrio
communities.
3
Within the social environment in which they lived, the role of
the women was strictly that of wife and mother and for the man that
of provider and father.
These were the values of their rural up
bringing which they retained.
Under this upbringing, boys grew with the double standard where
moral deviations were socially acceptable simply because of their
sex.
They idolized the epitomy of masculinity in figures like the
Charro, which in Mexico represented the ultimate in male chauvinism.
The charro is the embodyment of the Mexican macho psyche, a carefree
womanizer who spends his days drinking and playing.
Interestingly enough, in a personal interview, former Mexican
President Luis Echeverria told me that if Mexico wanted to industria
lize and get ahead economically, it first had to kill the image of
the charro.
A girl who deviated morally not only shamed the family but was
socially stigmatized.
This in itself was psychologically traumatic
as the girl had to remain within the family group and in the area.
She could not pack up and go someplace as might be the case today.
The purpose of dating was to find a husband, a provider, and
it was frowned upon to date several men at the same time.
Dating was
not to have fun or as a means of growing and maturing sexually or as
a means of understanding oneself better.
from among these girls.
The men were to find wives
If men wanted to have "fun" they dated
"looser"girls, those who had been stigmatized, not the decent type.
Sex was solely for procreation.
To have it any other way was
considered sinful.
It needs to be understood that these values were enforced upon
the children much more because they interacted closely among
4
themselves, not with the majority of the community.
They lived in
clusters in specific Mexican barrios, and in this setting obedience
and acceptance was deeper engrained in them.
Not all the values transmitted by the Hispanics of this
generation were negative.
They had a strong sense of family unity.
of togetherness, that kept the family in a strong mold.
They had
a strong sense of joy of life, despite their economic and social
handicaps.
Theirs was a cosmic existance.
Life meant death, family
and friends, joys and sorrows and was seen as a gift from God which
unfolds mysteriously and brings with it both joy and sorrow.
They
had a profound respect for the person, not the institution nor
materialism.
Above all, they had a deep love for children, whom
they saw as God’s special gift.
Characteristically, the Hispanics have a tendency to communi-
cate indirectly.
Parents resorted to sayings in providing social
Often, these sayings had double
value guidelines for upbringing.
meanings which were never really clarified as to the intent.
For example, Date a desear (make yourself desirable) meant
"don't make yourself so available, play hard to get. ii
At face value,
however, the saying could also be interpreted as "become desirable.
in a teasing and provocative way."
Since the intent was never clarified, many girls grew up with
some confusion about aspects of their own sexuality.
Adolescents did not discuss problems of growing up, or raised
questions.
They just obeyed.
They respected authority and the
Opinions were kept to themselves.
person, especially older ones.
The parents lacked the education, the information and the experiences
to act otherwise.
The church to them was mostly ritualistic and
5
and they related to it mostly through symbols.
Ninety percent
of the Hispanics of this generation identified themselves as Catholic.
Obedience was pretty much a part of their existance.
Obed-
ience to their parents, obedience to the church and the priest,
obedience to the patron.
They were victims of catastrophic changes -
the Mexican Revolution, the breakdown of the hacienda system in
Mexico, the clash of cultures as they migrated to the United States
In their plight, they sought refuge within their family. their
friends and their church.
When the parents of today's adolescents were themselves
adolescents, during the mid 1950s, they followed through on the
ascribed traditions with all the moral overtones passed on to them
from their parents.
Although World War II created a surge in
education for Hispanics, the vast majority of them still remained
pretty much under-educated, although they spoke much better English
than their parents.
They still lived in their own sections of town,
still followed the crops as migrants and still remained in the lower
echelon service jobs.
However, they did have more access to information. and because
of this they were aware and could understand better some of the
setbacks and impracticalities of strict upbringing.
The period of
their adolescence from the mid to the late 1950s was pretty stable.
Even though the adolescents of this time faced greater peer
pressure than their own parents, who because of overt discrimination
kept to themselves, they still were able to conform to their value
system because of their deep respect and obedience to authority.
6
However, their need was greater to integrate themselves into the
American culture and were thus more susceptible to peer pressure.
The social mood of the times was beginning to change dramatically,
peaking by the mid 1960s, at which time these adolescents were by
then married.
Being unable to adapt their attitudes to fit the
demands of the changing times, and once their understanding of
events and circumstances reached their limits, they began to search
for answers, looking in all directions, especially the Catholic Chruch.
These social changes that were occurring mainly involved the
upper middle class white Anglo Saxon.
Since the Hispanic was still
at the lower echelon of education and economics, they could not
relate to or identify with the crisis.
They were, nonetheless,
affected by the attitudes of the issues like civil rights, equal
opportunity, planned parenthood, draft, abortion, Vietnam.
Not feeling part of any of these movements, they sought
answers within their own ethnicity. at times manifesting itself in
movements such as La Raza Unida, Chicano Power, etc.
It was even more obvious to these young families that their
resources of experience and knowledge with their upbringing were not
compatible with the new moral standards surging out of these changes:
free love, drugs, sex for recreation, abortions, breakdown of
authority and responsibility for own actions often disguised as
"people's rights. •I
The sexual revolution was seen everywhere:
movies, in books, in school.
on television, in
Sex education left out the morality.
Instead of being responsible for one's actions. the new morality
talked about rights, often on a very selfish and self-serving manner.
7
Women had a right to do whatever they wanted to do with their
bodies.
Abortion was given legal sanction.
longer direct their children.
The family could no
Teachers could not discipline with
out getting slapped with a civil rights violation.
The biggest problem was then to find answers to.
going to educate our own children?"
ft
How are we
The parents could not turn to
the government, as it had responded by funding clinics and programs
which left out morality in its attempt to meet the demands of a
clamoring constituency.
The Hispanics turned toward the church, who they felt would
bring stability and unity to the family, as its foundation was being
shaken by the turmoil of the period.
While the church was not fully
prepared to provide immediate solutions, especially those needed
to be geared to the ethnic consciousness of the Hispanic, it did
mobilize to bring about greater family strength and unity, as
evidenced by programs such as marriage encounter, engaged encounter.
family encounters, etc.
While the church mobilized, it wasn't fast enough or perhaps
relevant enough for many Hispanics, as they turned away from their
Catholicism.
* Houston
Mormons, have increased 150 percent in Hispanic
membership just during the latter part of the 1970s.
■k
The Atlanta-based Southern Baptist Convention has 1,500
Hispanic churches, and it adds at least 150 new churches each year.
* Jehova’s
Witnesses have 45,000 Hispanic members.
The
fundamentalist Church of God has 10 Iglesias de Dios in Washington,
D. C. alone. and many more among Puerto Rican communities in New York.
8
It became very common during this tine for nany Hispanics
to trade off some of their ethnic identity and values in order to
Anglicize and belong to the "American way of life".
In spite of
the outside looking in.
this, they still found themselves on
By the beginning of the 1980s, their children had grown to
the adolescents of today. Overall, the Hispanics of today are much
better educated and integrated into the general community. most of
them being bilingual.
Their attitudes are not as regimented as
those of their parents, but they still retain a healthier attitude
on obedience, morality and sexuality.
For once, parents and adolescents are not adversaries as in
They
the 1960s. They’re more willing to listen and compromise.
have a better chance to make sounder choices, as social pressures
are not as slanted as in the 1960s.
There are, however, many more
pressures and choices.
Major social issues are manifested in parallel movements such
as pro-life versus pro-abortion, homosexuality versus moral majority.
The pendulum has swung from the pre-war sex-for-procreation to the
sex-for-recreation of the 1960s to the sex for both recreation and
procreation.
But the struggle remains for the adolescent to find a healthy
balance between these two extremes and within himself.
Integrating
his personality with social responsibility, emancipating his depen-
dence from his parents, creating new patterns of relating to the
opposite sex, accepting new images of the body and choosing the
vocations he will follow.
The challenge will be to form a movement to counteract and
offset the prevailing mood of sex without morality which is
9
oiranercialized and pervasive and taken out of the context of sex-
^ality.
This damaging attitude is exemplified in the reaction of
Pl nned Parenthood to the government’s attempt to force them to
notify at least one of the parents of any youth under 18 years of
age that receives birth control prescriptions.
Their argument in opposing the government's proposal is that
teenage pregnancies will dramatically increase because "many young
people will not discuss contraceptives with their parents out of
fear or embarrassment," and "the regulation won't keep teenagers
from having sex because once somebody starts having sex nothing is
going to stop that."
This type of attitude does not take into account the adoles
cent of today but assumes sexuality as being amoral and promiscuous,
a carryover of the 1960's attitude.
Adolescents today, we feel, are
different than those of the 1960s when they were more antagonistic
to parental authority and more rebellious.
The adolescent of today
is more conciliatory and more willing to communicate.
of the 1960s and the 1970s isn't there.
The hostility
We need to give them credit.
Our attitudes that anticipate that adolescence is a period to fear
and not one to enjoy with them and that premarital sex is to be
expected may well turn out to be a self-fullfilling prophesy.
To conclude, we feel that the Hispanic adolescent is at the
crossroads of his social development.
He still retains the value
system stressing family unity, love of children, obedience to parental
authority, religious faith and a humanistic outlook on life.
Regard
less of ethnicity, we think we all recognize that in order to uphold
values to pass on
we must live them.
10
We need to worry about
ourselves and what we're trying to do, which is to become examples
of those truths and values to our children.
Unless these values are reinforced, the possibility exists
that we may lose them.
We feel that the Hispanic adolescent today
is in a stage where he will be most receptive to developing a
healthier attitude toward his sexuality and we need to mobilize our
efforts in this regard.
*
i
community health CEU
11
326, V Main, I Block
Koramcngala
Bangalore-560034
India
ADOLESCENT CONCERNS:
INVOLVING ADOLESCENTS
DO NOT STIR UP LOVE BEFORE ITS TIME
Fr. William D. Virtue
The chart which accompanies what I am going to say is based
on the Treatise on Emotions in St. Thomas Aquinas 1 Summa Theologica,
with additional insights from two contemporary Catholic psychiatrists,
Dr. Anna A. Terruwe, and Dr. Conrad W. Baars.
Much of what I give
you today is a sharing with you of the wisdom of these teachers.
Our teacher and shepherd. Pope Paul II, once said, "The truth
owed to man is. first of all. the truth about man."
That is what we
the truth about our human nature. about
are going to consider today:
our human emotions. about our human personality - as St. Thomas
Aquinas and these psychiatrists have explained it in their teachings.
I have asked one of the teens to tell you about the chart
that we are following. and so in Janet’s own words:
has two sides, or dimensions.
"The human person
On the one side is the Heart
muscle of your body that pumps blood - but your very soul.
the other side is the Mind.
not the
And on
The Heart is the side of affection
more feminine quality. for girls are more touched by emotions than
men.
The definition of this affectivity is:
to be moved.
On the
other side, the mind has a very masculine quality of effectivity.
It means to act, to move.
Men are more assertive.
However, God
gives us all both qualities in different degrees."
"Next on your chart, below the intellectual level, is the
cognitive, or learning powers.
On the side of the Heart are the
five external senses and the imagination.
These are instruments
not only of learning but also enjoyment.
On the other side, going
1
a
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with the Mind, are memory and the usefulness judgment—which
are instruments of survival and self-assertion."
"The next level is the emotional dimension, divided into
pleasure and utility (or usefulness).
of pleasure and of utility.
for living.
There are specific emotions
All the emotions are good and important
You can see on the chart how each basic emotion has
an opposite one."
fi
The lowest level of the chart is about emotional disorders
(neuroses) .
Deprivation is felt when pleasure is not adequately
fulfilled.
Repression acts through the assertiveness drive, and
happens when a child is taught that one emotion is evil. and then
fear prohibits that forbidden feeling."
Thank you,Janet.
You've received your first lesson in thom-
istic psychology well, and given it back to us.
to focus on only two emotions on that chart:
Today we are going
desire and joy.
But
we needed to see the chart in order to appreciate the whole per
spective from which we will understand these two emotions.
First of all we will consider the developmental psychology of
the emotion of desire.
As an infant and small child, your emotions
were like your muscles.
You know an infant cannot walk at first
because the muscles are not developed.
the muscles by exercise.
First they crawl and develop
So it is with the emotions:
born we feel pleasure and rage.
when we are
As we grow we differentiate and
enrich our emotions by exercising all kinds of different feelings
in response to the varied emotional life of the people who raise us.
Our emotion of desire grows throughout our childhood and youth.
How does it grow?
What exercises help desire develop?
2
Let me tell
you a story which illustrates the growth of desire.
There were
two fellows. Dennis and Mark, who went to the same high school.
Dennis all his life wanted to own a car.
He loved cars:
his room
was cluttered with models of every model of car, even a working
plastic model engine.
When he got his driver’s license he got an
old junk car but his heart was set on owning a Trans-Am.
His dad
said he could buy one if he worked to earn the downpayment and kept
up the insurance, and his dad, who was well off, would help with
the payments.
Dennis couldn’t wait till he graduated and could work
full time and make more money to buy his Trans-Am.
Each day he went
past the dealer's lot and anxiously looked to see if the Trans-Am he
had his eye on was still there.
The dealer let him test drive it
a few times. and those rides fired Dennis' anticipation for the day
when the one he had picked out would be his very own.
Finally, two
months into the summer after graduation, he had the money and bought
the Trans-Am.
Boy, did he take care of that car:
keeping the interior clean.
polishing it and
He was always under the hood too.
He
had waited a long time to realize his dream, and he enjoyed every
time he got into his Trans-Am, and it remained a thrill for him to
drive it for many years.
Now in the meantime, the other fellow, Mark, who likewise came
from a well-to-do family, had heard Dennis singing the praise of
Trans-Ams, and he got interested as graduation approached.
He
mentioned it to his dad, managing to give just the right impression
to him:
tion!”
"Hey, dad, Dennis is going to get a Trans-Am for his gradua-
Well, Mark's parents thought:
"wouldn't it be a surprise
for Mark if we bought him a Trans-Am for his graduation; after all.
Dennis' dad is getting him one."
3
And so on graduation day Mark was
handed the keys to a Trans-Am which he enjoyed that summer
same summer Dennis was still working to earn his own.
Mark didn’t take the best care of his car:
the
Of course,
there were scratches;
and McDonald's shakes spilled on the interior; and Mark seldom
looked under the hood.
By the end of that summer, Mark had heard
some fellows talking about how great Corvettes are.
in his Trans-Am for a new Corvette.
So he traded
He lost interest in the first
car, and wanted another.
Let me interrupt this story for Tim to tell us something about
a friend of his and a car:
ii
I have a friend who's crazy about cars.
He got a part-time job to pay for his Trans-Am.
And like Fr. Bill
said, my friend is always under the hood; he put new high-performance
parts in it because he likes to race.
He's real, real proud of it,
and since he was young he always wanted a nice car, and so this
Trans-Am is important to him."
What do we see happening here?
The experience of wanting some-
thing very much - that is what builds us up and prepares us to enjoy
it when we finally do get it.
similar experience:
Let us listen to Tom, who had a
"I'm a football player; I started out in Sth
grade, and by junior year I was on the varsity.
But junior year the
seniors were all ahead of me and they played and I had to sit on
the bench all that year.
I didn't play at all.
Sitting on the bench
in Minnesota where I live is a lot worse than sitting on the bench
down here in Corpus Christi - 'cause it's cold up north.
You can
always tell who's gonna be sitting on the bench; when they come
through the gate, the guys who aren't gonna play wear mittens,
my junior year, I was one of the guys who wore mittens.
4
Well,
"So, over the summer before my senior year.
I worked out a lot,
and I ran every day to get in shape.
senior year.
It was great.
Finally, I got to start in my
It was such a transition from sitting
on the bench to playing; now I felt so much involved and it
was
a lot of fun.
This shows that when you wait and want something,
then you really enjoy it when you finally get it.
I remember the
first day I ran out into the field and I was going to play in the
game:
it was such a thrill to hear them call my name out that day."
Linda also has something to tell us about the growth of desire:
"Ever since I was a little girl I loved to dance.
My parents never
had to ask me twice to dance in front of company or relatives.
But
at the age of 10 I got a terrible disease which weakened my arm
and leg muscles.
liked.
Then it was very hard for me to do the things I
I had an operation and afterwards I had to stay still;
during that time I couldn’t dance. or go skating with my friends.
I
had to be very careful how and where I stepped, and what kind of
shoes I wore. and I missed the activities I loved.
When I got to
high school there was a dance group I wanted to get involved in,
but my parents felt it would be a risk.
They were afraid I might
hurt an ankle and then we would have to go through the whole thing
again.
I understood the concern, but by my junior year I was deter
mined to go ahead and try out for the dance group.
We had to wait
a week to find out if we made it; I was so impatient that week!
When I found out that I made the dance group it meant so much to me
because of how long and how much I had wanted it, and now I had it.
And when I hear the other girls complaining,
’Why do we have to
practice so early in the morning!’, I just think to myself,
I’m so
grateful and glad I’m in this dance group and finally get to dance!"
5
Thank you,Linda, Tom,and Tim, for your examples which have in
common the realization that when we don’t have something that we
want, we are flexing a particular muscle. as it were, really an
emotion.
What emotion is being exercised every day that we don’t have
what we want?
Desire is only exercised when we don’t have the object
of desire.
we want.
The emotion that is developing then is the emotion
Once we get the thing, once we possess it, then we have
reached another feeling; the emotion of joy.
There is a sequence of feelings we go through:
first we see
the good in this thing or person, then we want it. and finally we
possess it, and we rest in the joy of having the thing or person we
have loved.
But when we finally have it. we are no longer waiting
or wanting.
The desire is past.
Now we have joy.
One of the important requirements for the emotion of desire
to develop is that time must pass.
development.
The same is true of muscular
If I lift weights for three months - do the curls
my bicepts will improve a little.
But if I lift weights for two
years, then I’ll have bicepts like the Hulk!
So, time must pass for
the development, because there is in our bodily and emotional growth
a ’law of gradualness.’
instant.
Living organisms do not mature in an
Our muscles grow gradually; our emotions grow gradually.
And our emotion of desire can only grow when we do not have what we
want, when we are in a time of waiting and looking forward to the day.
The opposite of this gradual process of ripening is when
people in our life, in a mistaken idea of trying to benefit us. to
be good to us, always give us the good thing immediately.
They don’t
let us have the time, the chance, to gradually grow in a desire
proportionate to the greatness of the gift.
6
They mean well.
perhaps, but they prevent us from desiring.
famous woman
This happened to a
Ethel Barrymore, whose life became a wreck, because
from childhood her wealthy parents gave her everything right away.
When she finally got herself together she wrote her autobiography
and entitled the book with four words that define exactly what
occurs when we are not raised allowing our emotion of desire to grow.
"Too Much, Too Soon."
The name of her life story is:
This is the
definition of the opposite of the gradual growth of desire.
the definition of 'to be spoilt'.
What has been spoilt?
It is
The emotion
of desire, and the capacity for joy.
Linda is going to tell us about spoilt children:
cousins between the ages of 8 and 10.
want, right away.
"I have some
They have everything they
They ask for something, and it's there at the
snap of the fingers.
It's a pity. because they are very selfish.
When I babysit, or when I'm over at their house for lunch. I can see
how they pick up a toy for five minutes, and then they leave it.
They are not happy with anything.
They are never satisfied or
content with what they have."
Milissa is going to tell us about the effects of spoiling when
we grow up to be a teen:
"It's hard when you're 16 and when you've
always had it your way and been spoilt, and now you find out you
can't always get in life what you want right away.
It's pretty
bad when you're 16 and throwing a tantrum like a baby.
And then
after you get it, you don't seem to want it anyway. or take care of
it.
You become greedy too, because you realize you can get whatever
you ask for."
Mauro also had an experience with a spoilt person in teen
years:
"I used to have a friend - if you could call him one.
7
He
had everything.
asily.
Not just material things, but popularity came to him
We had got along in high school:
and played sports together.
things began to change.
we studied and went out
But when we went to the same college
The fraternities wanted him.
phone calls, and the girls were asking about him!
I would get
One year when
school started and we came together in the car and got to the dorm
to unload our stuff. everybody came out right away to help him get
his things out of the trunk of the car.
I had a lot to carry too.
but no one came, and my friend just ignored me.
I began to see that
our friendship was really on the surface. it was a convenience for
him which he didn’t need anymore; I was no longer useful to him."
Mauro's friend took him for granted because he had been given so
much attention and didn't appreciate what he had.
Not having gone
without, never having lacked popularity, he was somewhat spoilt
because he disregarded a longtime friend for new faces.
Maybe if
he had suffered some loneliness, he would desire and appreciate
a true and lasting friendship.
Not everybody has been spoiled.
There are many teenagers who
have been waiting for the good things in life.
Their parents, even
those who may have been wealthy, were rich in wisdom too.
These
parents wished their children to have good things, but when the child
is ready!
They didn't drag the child by the ear, screaming, to the
symphony - because 'my child is going to have culture!'
Instead,
they first let them experience the pleasure of music for many years
and when the child had some appreciation of fine music. and a desire
to hear the marvel of the symphony, then they take the child to
orchestral hall.
8
I
The person who is spoiled only thinks of gratifying himself or
herself.
But because they have never developed the emotion of desire,
they cannot actually have much pleasure.
things.
They cannot deeply enjoy
This is because joy follows desire.
intensity of desire.
have desired.
Joy depends on the
The measure of joy# is the measure that we
The more we have desired something, the more we will
enjoy having it.
But some people never learn this, and are never
satisfied with anything because they have no capacity for joy - not
having ever desired enough.
This is one good reason for waiting till marriage before having
sexual union.
We allow our desire to grow before we receive the
joy of possessing our beloved.
We wait because it is good to first
desire; this is the law God Himself has placed in our nature. in our
hearts, and that is why He made it His law in the 10 Commandments -
which simply express how to live true to our real nature as created
by God.
And this waiting is not only a respect for God's law and
our own nature, but it also is a sign of respect for the good of
the other person who also must develop gradually and also is called
to obey God's law in his or her own life.
What can a young person do about the desire for sexual union.
a desire which is growing stronger, yet which should not be satisfied
until the time of marriage?
How can we react to our emotions when
it seems that the urge is so strong and intense?
Let us presume
you have allowed the desire to grow with time, gradually. and you
have waited for many months in a very intimate relationship.
How do
we find the control to wait until marriage when our love and desire
have ripened but circumstances are not present for getting married?
9
In order to respond to this situation, we should consider
.hat we learn from the chart which was explained earlier.
We see the
side of the Heart, which has the feminine quality of being moved, of
receiving, as distinct from the side of the Mind with the masculine
quality of doing and giving.
Responding with self-control over our
desire does not mean only a sort of masculine effort over our feel-
ings.
There can also be a feminine way of internally receiving
the desire, affirming it, saying within ourselves, ’it is a wonderful
feeling I now experience; it is very good for me to desire the person
I love in every way; I may be attracted to and aroused by this
son - but it is not necessary for me to do anything about this
feeling.
I do not have to let it proceed to an outward act1!
If we respond to our emotions, our desire, in this fashion.
gradually we will become more capable of internally acknowledging
and receiving our feelings, however intense, but not necessarily
giving them outward expression unless it is the appropriate time and
place and person for the act that naturally unfolds from the feeling.
To experience the feeling, but not always complete this in an act.
In the recent past, in what was called the Victorian era.
people were trained that to be good you had to repress the very
feeling itself, internally fight it, thinking. ’I must not feel this
desire.’
A boy raised this way might defend
This led to problems.
his upbringing by saying, ’But my parents never said sex was evil’.
No, they may not have condemned sex, but the fact that they never
talked about it and didn’t explain it to the youth may have been
because it was absolutely taboo.
And the boy picked this up.
He
sensed, he got the message that you should fear sex as something
evil and sinful.
In this way the emotion of fear led young people
10
I
to repress the emotion of desire every time it was felt.
What this
leads to is an obsession with the very thing forbidden.
Adolescent
masturbation turns into a compulsion that doesn't stop, and an
occasional adolescent curosity in a pornographic movie or magazine,
later on becomes a constant preoccupation.
The stifled emotion
is buried but still alive and protesting by drawing attention all
the time.
Desire becomes a source of private shame and guilt.
On the other extreme from these results of the repressive
training of the past, there is the way things are going today in our
permissive era.
After the 'sexual revolution’, youths are growing
up with parents who openly encourage promiscuity.
A father boasts
that his son has 'proven his virility' by seducing a girl.
And when
the boy is only a sophomore and hasn’t dated yet, then the dad says.
'what's the matter with you, are you queer?'
This prompted one boy
to go on a binge of promiscuity to prove what a man he was.
Such
youths get in the habit of having sex as the goal of each new
’conquest.’
A real relationship is not the thing:
and maybe such a
youth will enter a longer friendship just for convenience because
it's easier to have a regular partner than to have to go out cruising
and looking for a new one all the time.
wear thin.
But even these relationships
I talked to a girl after she had broken up with her
boyfriend whom she went to bed with very often for a year and a half.
She feels used and is brokenhearted and bitter.
She never realized.
or refused to believe, that from the very beginning the guy knew he
didn't love her enough to ever marry her. but she was useful for a
few years for his pleasure.
involved.
All that time she was becoming more
But for him every act of sex altogether could be summed up
as one act, for none had a deep meaning each time.
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But for her, each
net was a special moment of love.
was harmful to spoil him.
For the boy the carelessness
But for her it was a wound that hasn’t
healed, a heartbreak because women are more committed if they have
a true womanly heart.
The harm to the boy is that he has gone on
to young manhood with the attitude that womem are to be used; a
selfishness has set in, and his relationship to other people remains
on the surface.
He doesn’t allow his depths, his heart and feelings
to become involved with the girls.
That would mean to care about
them, and would place limits on his freedom.
In a sense, the fellow who has been somewhat spoilt is better
off than the one who repressed, because at least this fellow has
a more natural and spontaneous expression of feelings of desire.
whereas the repressed individual is somewhat rigid, even business
like in regard to feelings.
But the one who is overcontrolled can
always loosen up, while the one who has never learned self-control--
how can he. in a society like ours which constantly awakens desire
and provides the opportunities for improper gratification?
Meanwhile, there’s a third fellow, who is kind of in the
middle of the two extremes I’ve mentioned.
he's not permissive.
He's not repressed and
This youth dated, but he didn't have sex.
He
had a good relationship with his girlfriend in high school but when
they went away to college, they decided each should have freedom
to date others.
In college, the guy found that there were girls
who wanted to go to bed right away.
get involved with such girls.
But his attitude was not to
He sees that those girls don’t
realize what they are like, or what happened to them, probably in
high school, when they lost something precious.
12
Some of them regret
how casually they took sex, and wish they could erase their past.
Now that they are older they realize sex is part of a much more
serious and bigger picture in our lives, and not a plaything for
partying.
They wish they could start over, and he's glad he never
got on that track.
He plans to continue his self-control. and he
hopes that when the day comes for him to marry the girl he loves,
that then he will be truly ready to give his whole self to her.
All that I have said is to explain how we can respect the 'law
of gradualness' which God has placed in our nature. and also how we
can respect this need for growth in other persons.
There is a book
in the Bible, the Song of Songs, in which it says:
"0 daughters of
Jerusalem,
(and it applies to the sons as well!) do not stir up love
before its time!"
Give the love time to develop.
grow stronger and more intense.
Let the desire
And when you feel it passionately,
do not repress it nor prematurely express it.
Instead, inwardly
recognize that you may feel it, but you don’t have to act upon the
feeling.
You can wait until you are married.
This will take on a new importance in your marriage, too.
because in marriage the same principle will apply.
Desire will still
need to develop in order for pleasure and joy to be great.
You
have heard the other speakers mention Natural Family Planning,
about the married couple having times when they say ’ no ’ to the
sexual act during the fertile days. if they are for a 'good reason
avoiding another pregnancy’.
How can a young couple who are so
deeply in love have the ability to say ’no' for the days they are
fertile?
How can they wait?
Only if they have learned to do this
from the beginning of their lives by having exercised and developed
13
the emotion of desire along with inner control.
Natural Family
Planning doesn’t work too well if the only way a man can control
his sex drive is by running away from his wife during the fertile
time, and sleeping downstairs on the couch.
This denial of the
affection she needs will make the whole thing miserable.
The man
who is afraid of getting aroused has never learned to internally
receive his feelings and let them subside without an act.
The man
or woman who has genuine self-control can enjoy a feeling and an
intimacy and the natural arousal, yet refrain from placing an act
if there is reason to wait.
The persons who have this balance of feminine and masculine
qualities, of Heart and Mind, of being and doing, are able to live
a rich and full emotional life.
within their personality.
They have reached a true integration
There is a time for the more feminine
inwardly receiving, and a time for the more masculine outwardly
giving.
Here is the integration of our emotional dimension under
the guidance of our intellectual power of soul.
It's not a matter
of forcing the issue over our passions; it's not a matter of giving
in to them permissively.
Rather, we accept our feelings, we allow
them to gradually grow to their natural intensity in the situation.
and let them be felt internally, within our own body. and then if
the time and place and person is appropriate, we may at times follow
through into the complete act, but at other times it is necessary
to say to our passion a very firm but kind ' no' .
The emotions
will readily obey the proper guidance of our intellect and willpower.
St. Thomas teaches us that our emotions have two goals in view:
they want the object they seek (or desire) and, secondly, they also
14
1
want and need the guidance of our reason and will.
This is our
nature, to be intelligent beings and rule ourselves.
feelings rule us, then our lives become chaotic.
If we let our
And so it's per
fectly alright for us at times to say ' no 1 to our emotions; they
will be at peace because they are content to be guided, they are
more secure in this role.
larger whole:
They feel thus integrated, part of a
our personality with our entire life on earth lead
ing to God.
Let me tell you one more story.
It's about desire.
It's
about how waiting can make you want something, and make you apprec
iate and cherish it.
Unless you wait, you will not have the desire
develop, and without sufficient desire, you lack joy.
A farmer friend of mine who grows corn was out along the
field one day when I was with him.
it had been a very dry month.
of green.
It was the end of summer, and
The corn stalks were yellow instead
I asked him if the dry spell had meant he would have a
poor crop this year.
He told me he wasn't worried. because at the
beginning of the season when he planted the corn, during the two week
period when the corn stalks develop their root system, during that
time there was a dry spell.
Then there followed regular rainfall
through the middle of the summer until another dry spell at the end
before harvest.
He told me that during that first dry spell when the
roots were starting there was no water on the surface of the ground
because there was no rain.
As a result. the tap roots had to go
down deep to the subsoil to find water.
Now, at the end of the season.
when there is another dry spell, with no water on the surface. those
corn plants have deep roots and so they can reach the water deep
down.
And they will survive and bear fruit.
15
Likewise, a young person should allow his or her whole emotional
dimension and Heart to develop first, so that later in life there
will be a richness of desire and love, and joy.
If you allow desire
to grow deeper and stronger by not quenching it at the surface
immediately, by not spoiling it, if you wait for the good thing
until you are truly ready, then in marriage you will be mature and
able to practice Natural Family Planning.
You will be able to wait
for the duration of the time to abstain, until the time to come
together again in sexual union.
The times of waiting, you will
realize, renew your desire through wanting and expectation, and make
the time of sex and the joy of union more perfect.
The couple who
has shallow roots, on the other hand, can be plucked out so easily
and lose their home. because of their ties are weak, because they
never had to desire strongly.
We should let ourselves have something left untouched. some
thing we have not yet had before marriage.
ahead of time.
We wait.
We don’t take everything
If you take all beforehand, there is
nothing left to wait for, to look forward to, for you've had it all.
If there is not more desiring, then the desire is not deepening.
It has stopped developing.
They are already satisfied, perhaps
at a much more shallow level than will be needed for true happiness
and stability in marriage.
But if before marriage they were engaged and remained chaste
as unmarried people should; if they spent this time as a sort of
sexual dry spell because no satisfaction of this desire, then they
are driven to go deeper into their relationship and make other bonds
the ties that bring them closer.
Then later in life when there will
be the inevitable dry spells of married troubles, or just the
16
*
monthly period of abstinencer then they will have the depth of
desire, the capacity, the exercised and strengthened muscle or power
to wait and want.
They realize their joy will be fulfilled in time
and in great measure. for the measure of our joy is how much we
have desired.
God made us to be fulfilled in joy.
ness on our own, though, for it is a gift.
gift if we wait.
We cannot take this happiGod will give us the
But when we try to take it wrongly or too soon,
then we spoil ourselves and perhaps miss the gift altogether because
we deprive ourselves of the ability to enjoy the gift.
let ourselves grow in readiness and expectation.
We should
This is why in the
larger picture of life, God is hidden and we have only Faith.
This
is why God is silent - so that in this life we do not possess him
entirely and therefore our desire can grow in proportion to the
tremendous gift of being with Him forever.
He gives Himself to us.
When we are ready, then
This is what Purgatory is all about. too,
for some people when they die are still not ready to appreciate
God, and God respects the law of gradualness in their nature and
gives them more time to learn to desire Him above all things.
us too respect our nature. our God-given nature. and we will be
happier for doing so.
17
Let
Chart of the
DIMENSIONS OF THE HUMAN PERSON
Spiritual powers
Dimension of Intellect & Will
HEART
Intuition
Receiving
Being
MIND
Problem-solving
Giving
Doing
Cognitive powers
5 SENSES
MEMORY
IMAGINATION
USEFULNESS
JUDGMENT
Emotional powers
PLEASURE
Love
Hate
Hope - Despair
Anger
UTILITY
Desire
Aversion
Courage - Fear
Joy - Sorrow
Emotional disorder
(neuroses)
DEPRIVATION
REPRESSION
Chart based on Summa Theologica, and
writings of Anna Terruwe & Conrad Baars
BEYOND KNOWLEDGE
A YOUNG MARRIED COUPLE’S EXPERIENCE IN WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS
Anne Trufant
As a former adolescent, youth director, teacher, and camp
counselor, and presently a social worker, I have had some experience
with young people...I claim no expertise, but do claim experience.
This I will share.
When I think of the title "beyond knowledge", I think of four
things that I think are needed to serve as roots for information
If this information does not take
already given to young people.
root, the young have no reason not to simply use the Billings method
or the awareness of their fertility as another contraceptive.
The first thing I see as essential is PRESENCE.
Young people
don’t want adults with pat answers - they want someone to be willing
to share him/her self ... someone who is present - really listening,
giving the teen’s thoughts and feelings equal time and consideration,
not just judging their feelings.
to be vulnerable and honest.
They want adults who are willing
They want role models and boundaries.
and they expect their role models to live up to a great deal.
This
was a fabulous experience for me. because no one can call you forth
I
like an adolescent.
Adolescents have" a tremendous amount of energy and imagination.
They are capable and willing to take on incredible challenges.
No
one can be more of a skeptic, but once something passes an adolescent's
scrutiny and finds acceptance, no one can embrace a cause or a belief
with greater fervor.
1
What do I think causes roots once the knowledge has been
given?
No. 1
Presence and No. 2
Humor.
Once I decided my youth group needed a fund raising project.
We went all over town from house to house.
At the first house we
would ask for a donation of an egg for our youth group,
We would
get strange looks, but most often we'd also get an egg!
At the
next house we'd ask if they'd buy an egg for our youth group!
made $150.00 in an hour.
We
The kids thought I was nuts, but they
jumped in and really carried it off.
(Unending enthusiasm).
They
used to tell me they'd come to my youth group just to see what I'd
come up with next!
We want our young people to be great and wonderful people.
To be committed to high principles and values - to shine like beacon
lights amidst the darkness ... Ahhh!
What are we showing?
talked about the bombardment of advertising.
Think about it.
years ago the Supreme Court legalized abortion.
that give?
David
Ten
What message does
So often we think that what is legal is right - what kind
of powerful messages are we giving?
I worked for one year at a counseling center at Louisiana
State University.
I remember one group therapy situation.
co-leading the group with a psychologist.
One female member of the
group was having difficulty with her boyfriend.
she didn't.
I was
He wanted sex and
The psychologist brought the situation up to the group
and asked each person his/her opinion.
Each group member, male
and female, recounted his or her decision to be sexually active.
message to this one girl was, "maybe one day you'll be big enough
and mature enough to handle it."
2
I was appalled.
I jumped right
The
in telling this girl that she had every right to say no, etc. etc.
Soon after that I was no longer the co-leader of this group!’
Again, what are we as adults showing?
marriage?
Of adulthood and of
Many kids have told me that they dread adulthood.
All
they think of is bills, boring jobs, soured relationships with
spouses, screaming kids.
Where do they get this?
Do you think
this would be implanted in them if their parents embraced life and
family as a gift to be cherished and enjoyed?
If there were
affection displayed, if parents hugged and kissed, laughed and
played with each other and their children, their children would
feel differently about approaching adulthood.
Then too, things
aren't always marvelous, and dealing realistically and openly with
life allows the children to learn the same.
We don’t know how to play anymore.
run dry.
We often let our creativity
We don’t play together, and consequently we are such a
somber and serious generation.
I propose that we learn to laugh and play again.
the element of surprise back in our lives.
That we put
We are the TEACHERS.
Now,
if we want the kids to be able to have a well rounded life and be
able to have fun doing lots of things, we have to do it.
If we
paint a dismal portrait of adulthood, is it any surprise that kids
would try to get all the kicks in before they feel "descended upon"
by adulthood?
Commitment should be added to humor and presence as the third
requirement necessary to root significant knowledge in young people.
No, we cannot stop the wars or the entire teen pregnancy problem.
for that matter. but we can change our own individual little worlds.
3
We can touch people's lives.
few
It has never been a call for a chosen
rather, it's an on-going call for anyone who will be quiet
long enough to hear it above the din.
Commitment takes believing in more than what you see.
means that we have to be IALAC builders.
signs we each wear every day.
It
IALAC's are invisible
It means, I am lovable and capable.
So many people thoughtlessly crunch other's lALACs as days go by,
but I want to be an IALAC builder ... and you?
Commitment - believing past the problem into the person, and
what he/she can become.
The modern day resurrection.
capacity to call people into being more.
We have the
I know this works because
David does this for me in a thousand little ways, we can all do it.
Lift each other up.
LOVE.
Love is a decision.
Love is my fourth necessity.
The number one problem
underlying every other presentive problems in therapy centers around
a poor self-esteem.
This has been my experience.
Young people live
in a society that says anything goes - until you get caught.
on
"Go
screw around - but. if you come up pregnant you're still an
outcast."
Confusion and mixed messages make it terribly tough to figure
things out.
But, love is easily recognized.
Commitment is too
as is a true, caring presence and a light heart.
Life and God and
you don't have to be dull!
So what is the legacy I want to leave?
future children, to my little world?
lift - simple in some ways
this is my commitment.
To my husband, child.
I want to laugh and love and
a life challenge to be sure.
But,
I believe in people and our capacity to love
hard enough to call others forth too.
we have to start with ourselves.
4
We can change the world, but
I’ll close with this reading, from the book of Habukkuk.
"Look around and be amazed!
at what I am about to do.
You will be astounded
For I am about to do something
in your own lifetime that you will have to see to believe.
but these things I plan won’t happen right away.
Slowly,
steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision
will be fulfilled.
If it seems slow, don’t despair, for
these things will surely come to pass.
They will not be overdue a single day."
5
Yes, be patient.
BEYOND KNOWLEDGE
A YOUNG MARRIED COUPLE’S EXPERIENCE IN WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS
David Trufant
There are more forces than ever affecting teens today.
Today’s
higher density cities, technological advances and today’s advertis
ing industry have put stronger pressure than ever on the teen to
act in certain ways that may not be true to his/her own heart.
The teen of today may watch hours of television each week.
Most shows are filled with typecast "machos” who are rich and good
looking, often taking the law into their own hands, and who have
scoring with women.
one form of recreation
Today’s teen has sexually oriented advertising to face -
everywhere!
Bus benches, public transit, radio, billboards, maga-
zines, etc.
This bombards him/her constantly with the theme of "if
you’re with-it, you’ll buy my product and be successful."
Of course.
they insinuate that the only way to be successful is to be escorted
by several beautiful women with whom you are obviously sexually
active (and the women obviously love it!)
Today’s teen is also confronted with large schools.
often thousands of students and an inadequate staff.
information travels fast.
There are
In the schools.
Social systems evolve in which the cool
guys are often the rude guys.
As a teen I really didn’t start dating much until I was a
Junior or Senior.
The guys that I was mostly associated with were
boys in my own class.
Those who were sexual hotshots in ninth
grade were on the football team and talked a lot about their dates.
They insinuated even more.
Whether what they said was true or not
1
doesn't matter.
They were looked up to as popular.
So it's no
surprise that when I started dating I had certain goals in mind.
These goals weren't the goals my heart would have chosen.
A lot
had to happen to get me to finally change my goals and my life.
There is a need for adults to be "real" with their children.
There is a need to be close. involved in their lives, and vulner
able. willing to share histories and feelings as well as experiences.
In this way, the teen is offered a security found in
knowledge and wisdom.
And when the time comes to be more involved
with peers than parents, the teen has roots from which to grow.
2
NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAMS AND TEENS
Adolescent Fertility Awareness Report of Wark in Progress
Hanna Klaus, M.D.
Introduction
In spite of massive public and private sector funding, teen pregnancy is
increasing yearly in the U.S. (1,2,3).
The predcminant approach is to provide
sex education and contraceptive services.
rewarding.
The results have been far from
Diamond summarizes the current status (4).
Between 1971 and 1977
45 percent more girls experienced pre-marital pregnancy, 41 percent more engaged
in pre-marital intercourse and that there were 18 percent more out-of -wedlock
births.
The rate of pre-marital pregnancy among girls who are sexually active
increased 4 percent and 30 percent more pre-marital pregnancies ended in abortion.
Between 1972 and 1980 well over $1.5 billion was expended under Titles V, X, XIX
and XX for family planning services with the result that only one-third of sexually
active teenagers used contraceptives with every act of intercourse, 65 percent
had used contraceptives for the last intercourse prior to interview and one-third
used a "effective" contraceptive-pill or IUD. The overall unintended pregnancy rate
for 1976 was 9.3 percent.
It was 11.2 percent among girls using the pill all the
time.
As an obstetrician working in the fields of teen pregnancy and clinical
research in natural family planning for several years, I obtained funding support
from the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation to offer Fertility Awareness/Natural
Family Planning to adolescents and their parents.
The goals of this study were
as follews:
1.
Evaluate the acceptability of fertility awareness/natural family planning
instructions to adolescents via the Billings Ovulation Method (6,7,8) after
obtaining parental permission.
2.
Evaluate the effectiveness of instructions on a) consistency in
observation and charting of fertility signs;
b) the employment of this
information in sexual decision-making where sexual activity was occurring;
c) to monitor personality growth through human figure drawing11 and Loevinger
2
sentence completion tests given at intake, at 12 weeks—after the intensive
initial instruction period—-and at 12 months;
d) to evaluate personality
growth and the integration of the instructional material into social
behavioral choices as surfaced in group discussion, with analysis of the
group process.
Results
The initial results are summarized in the Table:
parental involvement in
all research groups appears to exert a protective action in terms of sexual
activity of the study group.
Group D was not part of the formal protocol,
There
was no change in the rate of the girls’ sexual activity—their teacher had
elected not to contact the girls’ parents.
Currently 200 girls are in the program, data collection is complete on 68, and
is still in progress for the remainder.
Discussion
Our program differs from public school sex education programs currently
offered in our area in that it asserts that there is value to human sexual
behavior.
In public sector the expectation has been that human sexuality will
Sluman figure drawing is a good approach for non-verbal people, exploration
of drawing and painting yields ratings of global interpretations which can be
scored similarly to the Rorschach system of interpretation. (9) Human figure
drawing has been used in pinpointing the function of menarche in body image. (10)
2
Loevinger ego strength scale is an open-ended projective test (11) which
measures development of ability to make more reflective responses, shows changes
in cognitive complexity, and reflect morality as an aspect of ego development.
It is an open-ended projective test.
be taught in a "value free" setting in order to allow the students to arrive at
their own values based generally on the exclusion of parents.
See Ref. Diamond.
Our position is that a human act always has a value, that the sexual act is always
a personal act as well as a biological one which cannot be discussed without
teaching values.
I believe that one of the tasks of adolescence is to integrate one’s gender
identity into one’s total person.
One’s emerging fertility plays a pivotal role
in the attaining of gender identity.
The widely advocated use of fertility
rejecting contraceptives is going contrary to the developmental and integrative
thrust, and this may well be the reason for their widespread irregular use or
nonuse by sexually active girls.
Among adolescents classical denial still often
operates but for many youngsters there may be a need to find out whether the
body "real" — if the girl can really become a mother if this boy is really capable
of being a father.
On the other hand fertility awareness approach when used has
been found to give the girl a sense of power and control — not one of dominating
the male, but of being on an equal basis with him.
Our approach differs from all the others because it joins the didactic
and the physical by inviting the participants to actually learn the language of
their body in regard to their cyclic fertility and then to engage the girls in
a discussion of what this means.
At this time values are indeed surfaced;
parental prerogative and presence is assured by approaching the parents initially.
inviting their written consent to the girls’ participation in the program and
meeting with the parents during the course of the study to invite their questions
and feedback.
The confidentiality of the girls’ charting and discussions is assured
but even with this constraint, parents have been open about speaking with the
teachers and expressing their approval of the project.
The fact that sexual activity
has diminished and that (fortunately) there have been no pregnancies are seen as
I
positive outcomes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.
Akpom, C.A., Apkom, K.L., Davis, M.: Prior Sexual Behavior of Teenagers
Attending Pap Sessions for the First Time. Family Planning Prespectives
8:203-6, 1976.
2.
Improving Family Planning Services for Teen Agers. Report of Urban and
Rural Systems Associates of San Francisco, California. Publication
Department of Health, Education and Welfare, June 1976.
3.
Eleven Million Teenagers. What Can Be Done About the Epidemic of
Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States? Alan Guttmacher Institute,
N.Y., 1976.
4.
Diamond, Eugene F. "Title X Parental Notification Regulation — A
Different Prognosis." Linacre Quarterly 50:56 February 1983.
5.
Zackler, Jack, Andelman, Sam L., Bauer, Frank, The Young Adolescent as
an Obstetric Risk. American Jour. Gynecol. 103:302-312, 1969.
6.
Billings, E.L., Billings, J.J., Brown, J.B., Burger, H.G. Symptoms and
Hormonal Changes Accompanying Ovulation. Lancet 1:282, 1972.
7.
Billings, E.L., Billings, J.J., Catarinich, M. Atlas of the Ovulation
Method. Third Edition. The Advocate Press, Melbourne, Australia, 1977.
8.
Klaus, H. Natural Family Planning
37:128, 1982.
9.
Waehner, T.S. Interpretation of Spontaneous Drawings and Painting.
Genetic Psychology Monographs 33:3-67, 1946.
10.
Kott, E., Rierdan, J., Silverstone, E.: Changes in Representation of
Body Image as a Function of Menarcheal Status. Developnental Psychology
14:635, 1978.
-------- ----
11.
Loevinger, J., Wessler, R. Measuring Ego Development.
Jossey Bass, Inc., San Francisco, 1970.
12.
Klaus, H. "Natural Family Planning: Contribution to Fertility Awareness
of Body/Person Integration." Social Thought 5:35, Winter 1979
— A Review.
Obstet.-Gynecol. Survey
Vols. 1 and 2
TABLE
ADOLESCENT FERTILITY AWARENESS/NFP STUDY
Report of work in progress **
Number enrolled to date:
207
No. Canpiete:
59
Use cycles:
1177
No. in Process:
148
Use cycles:
1339
AGE
(at entry):
15 to 17
SEXUALLY ACTIVE
Study Group
Special Group
(no parental permit)
At entry:
16 (12%)
7 (30%)
At exit:
8 (6%)
7 (30%)
PREGNANCIES
Method Failures:
0
Informed Choice:
0
Extended Use Effectiveness:
Overall Pearl Rate:
**
1 pregnancy begun 3 months after discontinuation
from program.
0.85
Figures as of September 30, 1983
ZELNICK & KANTNER’S STUDY
Age
Sexually Active
Pregnancies/1000 wm. yr.
15
22.5%
30.2
17
48.5%
22.0
18
56.9%
13
Expected rates for sexual activity are taken from Melvin Zelnik arri John F.
Kantner, ’’Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use and Pregnancy and Metropolitan-
Area Teenagers:
1971-1979, ’’Family Planning Perspectives 12:5: Sept/Oct 1980.
Expected pregnancy rates are taken from Laurie Schwab Zabin, John F. Kantner
and Melvin Zelnik, "The Risk of Adolescent Pregnancy in the First flfonths of
Intercourse,’’ Family Planning Perspectives 11:4:215, 1979
"FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR LOVE" ST. AUGUSTINE
Evelyn L. Billings, M.D.
Love is the rightful destiny of every human being and its
rightful companion on the road through life.
If what is right-
fully his is given to him, the Creator’s plan for him will have
the best chance of being fulfilled and he will surely make his way
to Heaven, where there is a place prepared.
Every child is lovingly
conceived by an Almighty, all loving God, in his own image and for
himself.
His plan is for the parents. no less than for the child,
to travel through life accompanied and sustained by the love that
will ensure the heavenly goal.
On this journey. parents,, children.
neighbors and strangers meet for a while and travel together, each
at a different stage of development or fulfillment of an individual
destiny, but each influenced and dependent on each other.
We can think of this as something like a graden where we can
see everything together - seedlings, unopened buds and full-blown
flowers already dropping their perfumed petals, performing as des
ignated at different stages of development, each stage having its
own place and importance and each having an interdependence on
previous stages and other plants and an overall dependence on the
gardener, who cultivates the garden, feeding, pruning, planting and
No flower blooms in isolation.
Nothing is independent.
We know the Gardener well enough.
We know that His nurture
picking.
of us is His Holy Spirit which is Love, and that He expects from us
a harvest of flowers.
But it is because of the divine nurturing love that we are set
apart from plants which respond to seasons and animals which follow
instincts.
1
Human love is an interdependent and therefore vulnerable
relationship.
It is demanding of effort and even suffering in
order to survive.
spoiling.
The way was made clear in God's response to man's
God so loved the world that He gave His only son, and the
son so loved the world. He died in human sorrow, physical anguish.
and great human love.
God made Himself available in His Incarnation
to be abused because He wanted from men a perfect love.
"You must
be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect H Jesus told His people.
It is only perfect love that can lay itself open totally to be used
shamefully.
Of love G. K. Chesterton said:
"Love means to love
that which is unlovable, or it's no virtue at all."
Divine love
shows us how human love should be and provides the sustenance necessary for its preservation.
The divine part of love is not fragile.
The human part is fragile.
For survival human love depends on both
indestructible divine love and also on fragile human love.
So much has been spoken and written about love.
It is on
everybody's lips at one time and another, in one form or another.
It has never become stale in its purest form and is the greatest
natural desire of every human soul.
Even though the world with its
satanic circumstances has done much to spoil and twist its truth
and beauty, love is the one thing that everyone understands instinc
tively because it is essential to happiness and life.
It is of this interdependence of love that I wish to speak.
because that is why we are here today.
We have recognized it as our
most solemn duty as well as our joy and our innate urge to give our
love to our children and to teach them how to love.
How fortunate
is the child who is conceived with love and acceptance by his
2
biological parents, by a biological union which used to be called
and ought to be "an act of love."
How fortunate the parents who
accept the challenge of caring for and who are able to love the
child.
They cannot possibly know in advance how the child will draw
goodness from them.
How important it is for young people to see that the attrac
tion they have for each other which they call love is just the
beginnings of love and so only a part of love.
It will only become
true love when it is prepared to acknowledge that the consequences
of the union of bodies in the physical component of love may intiate
another human life which needs human love, that within true love
there is a need. a demand.
They must ask themselves if their ears
are ready for this cry of survival. for the incessant demand for
their love.
To silence this needful cry will be a denial of their
own thirst deep down in the soul, because this love will be incomplete.
Love demands completion.
Like the few loaves and fishes
that fed so many and the never failing jug of oil in the famished
land of Old Testament times, love responds to need and must be
given in order to survive.
If there is no human loving response.
famine and hunger prevail and love itself dries up and dies.
Death
of human love is possible and represents the ultimate human sadness
and the worst frustration known to man.
Because youth is headstrong and carefree, often misguided by
the fantasies of the world around them, they are often persuaded to
think of love as purely superficial and physical. and here boys and
girls have tended to become alike in their thinking of late.
It is
still the case. however, that a young woman generally takes these
romantic episodes more seriously - romantically it is true, but
3
somehow trustingly as well.
Christ bearer.
She knows she is the Christopher - the
She knows it because she is - however it is expressed.
When the affair is over, it is not only the end of the affair but
the end of total trust.
A desolation creeps into the heart, and
next time, there is not the same trust. the same wholeness in the
giving.
The boy is not there with his loaves and fishes or the
woman with her jug of oil.
of separation is born.
The gift is withheld.
The philosophy
Contraception becomes the order of the day.
It is when the willingness to give life is denied that the oppor
tunity to be fully humanly loved is denied.
Being denied, frustrated
and stifled is not acceptable to human beings, least of all to young
ones.
We must teach them the reality - to extract reality from
imaginings and show them the beauty of the practicalities of both
divine and human love.
Physical pleasure is part of Providence.
child.
So is love for the
It is only by acceptance of human and divine love that
these two acts of Providence are seen to be in happy bondage.
When
separated, Satanic laughter and physical pain are the payments.
And what of the child?
How many young people see their elders as
spoil-sports and the Church as rigid and unfeeling?
Many feel as
did the poet Francis Thompson:
"For, though I knew his love who
followed, Yet was I sore adread.
Lest, having him. I must have
nought beside."
It is because woman is entrusted with motherhood. that a great
deal is required of her.
The lofty calling that is hers must be
recognized by those of us who have the welfare of adolescents at
heart, so that young women will come to see their own self-worth,
4
and so that respect and reverence for women and the union of love
and body will be engendered and developed in the young men.
A list of prohibitions serves very little good purpose unless
inspired by the real wonder of the man-woman-child-creator unity
of our fundamental belief - a belief which is not a monopoly of
catholics or Christians but of everyone.
It is simply an acknowledge
ment of the natural law.
Thus we can talk to everybody.
What we have to say will
inspire and find acceptance in every human heart and mind that is
not totally despoiled and we can never make that judgment.
So we who are Christian never give up.
Having our own source
of strength, knowing where to go for constant replenishment -
the
Cross and Eucharist, we can teach practicalities confidently.
When
so inspired, the "facts of life" - so often received with levity
and
derision now presented freshly and with authority and kindness,
will find acceptance because truth and kindness are always recognizable, especially by the young. Christ has bidden
us to seek, to
ask. to knock in order to have, and he has told
us as well that
"In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers
of
mine, you did it to me." Mother Teresa has shown us how the
sus
tenance of Christ for us, and the practicalities of the
cup of cold
water in His name come together in a wonderful example of the inter
dependence of divine and human love.
Human love must be risked, but once betrayed, is reluctant
to be risked again.
been hurt.
Many of the young people we will talk to have
Their solace, as is ours, is that divine love which,
though often betrayed, will never betray.
5
Because human love is vulnerable. there are those who would
stifle it within themselves, fearing the possibility of being re-
bu'fed, belittled or frozen.
To deny love is to remove both the
purpose and the means of living in the expanded form that we were
intended to enjoy in this world.
Or to confine one's love to God
and refuse to get involved or trust one's neighbors is to live in
confusion and disharmony with oneself.
The neighbor, the patient,
the client, the parents, the husband, wife, child are all objects
of our love and our visible demand from God to pour out love to Him.
They are essential to our destiny in love - the human part of the
interdependence of divine and human love.
without the other.
There is no having one
When Francis Thompson said "Lest having him, I
must have nought beside" the "nought" is seen as something purely
self-directed - pleasure and gain for self.
Learning that self
gratification lies in the making happy of the beloved, removes the
choice between good and greed.
It becomes all good and the frustra
tion has vanished into this wonderful reality discovered in the joy
of the other.
Teaching this well to children will result in happy
marriages later on.
A little child, more so an adolescent who is unsure of himself
and looking for satisfaction and happiness for himself, will some
times be gloomy - often even.
The best way to help him to dispel
the gloom is to get him to do something good for someone else.
Carried into adult life and marriage, this recommendation is invalu
able .
What trouble we see as NFP teachers when things become one
sided, when demands are not balanced by appreciation, or the gifts
of love and self are received only as due.
Constant reminders are
necessary, and pride seizes up the smooth running marriage.
6
Bottling
True love can talk,
up injuries. fancied or real, is destructive.
and talk we must and early in the piece.
Before we can teach this
to our children, we must become expert in it ourselves.
Many of us,
many miles ahead of our children on the journey, are still having
trouble with exposing the truth by talking.
"Let not the sun set
on your anger or else you will give the devil a boothold" is some
times a hard saying, yet we cannot advise this until we have taken
the good advice.
We know only too well that many assaults are being made on the
marriage bond.
Today’s living offers many distractions.
In the
Gospels we read that if our eye offends us, to pluck it out, or that
if we are choked by riches, to get rid of them.
We know that even
things like discouragement, lack of appreciation, shock or even
sorrow may cause an individual to want to "go it alone."
is one of the most potent devices of the devil.
Self pity
Its other name is
separation.
It has been said that we should live each day as though it
is our last.
Rather should we say we should live each day as though
it is the last day in the life of the beloved.
This essentially
means that we should develop a loving communication in our marriages.
We should not presume always that it "goes without saying."
Loving
ears never mind hearing it all again.
Loving hearts can accept criticism given lovingly.
How easy
it should be to accept criticism from our beloved ones, but is it?
How do we offer criticism?
We must analyse that, if we are to teach
the young, particularly when our subject is education in sexuality.
The most desirable a certain line of behavior is, especially when
7
it has been offered persuasively as good, acceptable and natural
by some others. the more resistance of the criticism there is.
because there is greater frustration in its denial.
We are dealing
with tender and growing minds and bodies - not mature ones.
Their
response will be great if they can be led to see for themselves the
wonder of the object of their love, more so if they see those who
teach them are lovable.
The roles of parents, teachers, neighbors doesn't differ very
much.
We have to "make it right".
That must begin with ourselves.
We have to recognize in the children that naughtiness comes from
unhappiness.
faction.
Unhappiness very often comes from personal dissatis
If this is so we can sense that this child is caught up
in a vicious circle.
Maybe love is dying in his home or he is
suffering disappointment and disillusionment because the objects
of his love are not loving towards each other.
Perhaps the biolo
gical union which brought him into existence was not an act of love.
And perhaps here we can recognize that as part of God’s loving plan
for him, we have been chosen to come into his life.
clearly now how interdependence works.
We can see very
We cannot help that child
unless we have tried to perfect ourselves.
We cannot slake his thirst
unless we have asked, knocked and sought.
We cannot do this unless
we have made ourselves totally vulnerable in our own marriages.
Thus w© can see how we are dependent to a great extent on the frail
and unhappy - the least in God’s kingdom. those who demand good of
us.
There is a very old picture hanging in the Vatican Museum by
the painter Giotto where he depicts a beggar at the rich man’s door
asking for food.
It is the beggar who wears the nimbus.
them we will experience the outpouring of divine love.
8
In helping
L,
We will not see the end of many of the things we do or ask of
the children.
responds to demand.
ings in love.
Love
We must ask as we ask each other in marriage.
Let it be our aim to set in motion many beginn-
Let us remove from their paths as many obstacles as
we can and replace them with truth and wisdom.
with such goodness as we have ourselves.
entitled to hope.
Let us inspire them
If we do this we are
Because we are human, created in the image of God,
lovingly for Himself, because we believe that it is God's will that
we should all reach our destined end, we should have a firm and
serene hope that not only will we be able to give these children a
true sense of their own worth, but that also they will take back to
their wounded families the influence of that happiness.
We can hope
that seeing and hearing us they will be inspired to make a good
choice and a good marriage and we in turn will have been helped along
the way by the effort we have made to use our human gifts.
If we
look for them, we can see in the people around us many good results
from beginnings made by other people long ago, by people who did
not see the end of their good work.
It is not too much for our human intelligence to acknowledge
that the tiny cell which is a fertilized human ovum that we can see,
is filled with a mysterious biological impetus which, given the
right circumstances will reach a biological goal
being.
That is a matter of fact.
an adult human
Nor is it too much for our
intelligence to acknowledge that the love which we can all recognize
just as surely as the cell has also a mysterious impetus which given
the right circumstances will reach maturity.
9
That too is fact.
We know that not only is love a continuous thread because it
is the Spirit of God recognizable by us at every point in our lives.
but we know that human life is also a continuum.
It is a scientific
fact that the genetic material of our own germ cells is rearranged
in one generation to ensure human individuality in the next.
makes us custodians of life.
This
It should not be too much for our
intelligence to acknowledge that there could be no natural break in
the continuity between body and love since we believe that the spirit
of love created the genes and their continuity.
This makes us cus-
todians of love.
Since Eden, God ordained that instead of creating man like
Adam, his cataclysmic beginning would be physically small, and
dependent, yet so demanding of love that he would be impelled to
realize his stupendous destiny in heaven.
man!
What a going concern!
Such is the vitality of
Stepping in anywhere to redirect, set
things right, and protect the bond between body and love. is some
thing we know will be assured of success because it was meant to
be successful.
This is where our hope lies.
It is not a mysterious and overwhelming moment when we realize
that at the beginning of every human life the indestructible Spirit
of Love asks for an act of human will - asks fragile man that this
should be an act of love?
Are we not seeing the drawing together
of all the mysteries of love and life, when man. eternally born with
hunger, not with food, is asked to participate in creation, and
accept his mandate as custodian of body and love, to answer the demand
to give life, to feed the hungry, and so be fed in an interdependence
of love?
10
Carefully, truthfully, patiently and persistently, this is
the message to be delivered to the children.
We may not find it
as difficult as we think.
We may find that they are nearer to the
realization than we are.
Perhaps in the trying, we will find for
ourselves some of the likeness to the little children that Our Lord
tells us is necessary for entrance into His Kingdom.
Perhaps, like
the cell of man's beginning and the love which gives it power, any
small gift we make may also be another cataclysmic beginning.
11
FACULTY
Australia
EVELYN BILLINGS, M.B.,B.S.,
D.C.H. (LOND.)
Co-founder of the Ovulation Method of Natural
Birth Regulation
President Natural Family Planning Council of Victoria
Senior Consultant, Natural Family Planning Clinic,
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne
Senior Demonstrator in Histology and Embriology,
Department of Anatomy. University of Melbourne
Author, The Billings Method, Published by Random
House
Australia
JOHN J. BILLINGS, K.C.S.G.,
M.D., F.R.A.C.P., F.R.C.P.,
(LOND.)
Head, Department of Neurology, St. Vincent's
Hospital, Melbourne
Physician in Charge, Medical Clinic, Royal Victorian
Eye and Ear Hospital
Senior Consultant. Natural Family Planning Clinic,
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne
Dean, Clinical School, St. Vincent's Hospital.
University of Melbourne. Faculty of Medicine
LINDY (MRS. HALE) BOGGS, M.C.
Louisiana
Member, U.S. House of Representatives, 2nd District,
Louisiana
House
Appropriations
Holds several Honorary degrees for Civic, Cultural,
Philanthropic and Political Accomplishments
JOAN BRENNAN
Canada
President. Natural Family Planning Association.
Ontario
Experienced Teacher of Fertility Awareness to
Adolescents in School Setting
KAY EK
Minnesota
Director. Natural Family Planning. Diocese of
St. Cloud
Member. Board of Directors. Human Life and
Natural Family Planning Foundation
Director, .WOOMB-USA Teaching and Training
Program
Co-founder of The Ovulation Method of Natural
Birth Regulation and Author of The Ovulation
Method
1977,
Founder, Head Start Program
MERRILYN CURRY
Specialist in Pediatrics
Member since
Committee
ROBERT E. COOKE, M.D.
Washington. DC
Chairman, Scientific Committee. Joseph P. Kennedy.
Jr. Foundation
Wisconsin
Immediate past President. Milwaukee Archdiocesan
Council of Catholic Women
Member. Board of Directors, WOOMB-USA
TOM EK
Minnesota
High School Senior, Cathedral High School, St.
Cloud
Vice President. Student Council
Member Varsity Football, Baseball & Cross Country
Skiing Teams
Member, Yearbook Staff
MAGGIE FLOOD
Texas
High School Senior, Ray High School, Corpus
Christi;
Member. Executive Board. Student Council
Member, Honor Society, Varsity Tennis Team.
Writers' Club
Texas
H. ROSS GARZA, B.A.,M.D.,
F.A.C.O.G.
Diplomat. American Board of Obstetrics and
Gynecology
MARGE HARRIGAN, R.N .B.A.
Texas
N.F.P. Educator, Natural Family Planning Project.
South Texas Family Planning and Health Corporation
Associated with Natural Family Planning of South
Texas. Diocese of Corpus Christi
Former President, Milwaukee County Medical
Auxiliary
Member. Board of Directors. WOOMB-USA
President, St. Joseph's Hospital Auxiliary. Milwaukee
Director. WOOMB-USA Parent and Adolescent
Program
JOHN BRENNAN, M.D.,
F.A.C.O.G.
Wisconsin
KEVIN HUME, M.D.
Australia
Obstetrician and Gynecologist, St. Vincent’s Hospital,
Milwaukee
Fellow, Royal Australian College of General
Practitioners
Member, Executive Board, WOOMB International
Director. Waverly Natural Family Planning Center.
Sydney
DONALD R. CONROY, PH.D.
Minnesota
Therapist, Private Practice in Individual and Marriage
and Family Therapy for past 27 years with emphasis
on Family Therapy for last 5 years
Vice-President, Ovulation Method Research and
Reference Centre of Australia
Member, Board. WOOMB International
HANNA KLAUS, M.D.,
F.A.C.O.G.
Washington DC
Texas
Certified teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method
Associate Clinical Professor. Obstetrics-Gynecology.
George Washington University Medical Center
Director. Natural
Washington
MARIA PINON, R.N.
Family
Planning
Center.
Has Contributed Many Articles to Professional
Journals
MARGARET MCCAULEY
Missouri
Member. Board of Directors. WOOMB-USA
Founder. Aware. St. Louis
Author. “Today's Daughters"
Illinois
Editor. ChiId And_Faim_ily_Quarterly
Visiting Professor. Community and Preventive
Medicine. New York Medical College
REV. BRUCE RITTER, O.F.M.
New York
Founder and Executive Director of Covenant House
and Under 21. homes for runaway teenagers in
New York. Houston. Canada. Guatemala
RUTH TAYLOR, M.D., M.P.H.,
F.I.A.C.
Editor. "Integrity"
CORRINE MCGUIGAN, PH.D.
HERBERT RATNER, M.D.
Kansas
Cytopathologist. St. Francis Regional Medical Center
New York
Assistant Professor. Division of Human Services
and Counseling. St. John's University. New York
Senior partner. Designs for Human Development.
Inc.
Graduate Studies in Education at Harvard University
Extensive Experience in Speaking. Lecturing and
Conducting Workshops for Educational Programs
throughout the Country
Elected to Editorial Board, The Journal of Educational
and Psychological Research, 1982-85
Director. Natural Family Planning. St. Francis
Hospital. Wichita
MARY THORMANN, ED.D.
Washington DC
Professor and Director. Graduate Programs in
Education and Human Resource Development.
Marymount College of Virginia
Founder and First Director of Gerard Majella Child
Center. Marymount
Designer of Training Programs for Adult Learners
and Programs for Pre-School Gifted Children
ANNE G. TRUFANT, MSW
Louisiana
Texas
Volunteer. Problem Pregnancy Center. Baton Rouge
Contributing Editor. Texas Monthly Magazine
Author, Thundering Sneakers, Published by
Doubleday
Experienced Social Worker. School Board of Baton
Rouge and Counseling Center at Louisiana State
University
PRUDENCE MACKINTOSH
MICHAEL MEANEY, PH D.
Texas
Doctor in Philosophy from Institut Catholique
de Paris
Has taught at Ville Nova University. Notre Dame
University
Preparing a Manuscript on The Gospel as Good
News for all of Human Life
Oregon
CHARLES W. NORRIS, M.D.,
F.A.C.O.G.
Graduate. Georgetown University School of Medicine
Practicing Obstetrician - Gynecologist. Portland
Co-Author, Know Your Body, Published by Our
Sunday Visitor
ANN O’DONNELL, R.N.
Missouri
Camper/Counselor. 13 Years. Summer Camps
DAVID TRUFANT
Louisiana
Photographer
Youth Director with 7th and Sth Grades. 3 Years.
Trinity Espicopal Church. New Orleans
Camper/Counselor. 13 Years. Summer Camps
FR. WILLIAM D. VIRTUE
Illinois
Pastor. Sacred Heart Parish.Joliet
Masters of Divinity.De Andreis Institute of Theology
Active with Youth Groups and Natural Family Planning
in Joilet
Conducted Teen Seminar on Fertility Awareness at
Human Life Center. Collegeville. MN.
Past President. Aware. St. Louis
Coordinating Committee. Observance of International
Women's Year
Former Executive Vice President. National Right to
Life Committee
Co-Author. Stolen Church. Published by Our Sunday
Visitor
MARGARET WHITE, J.P.
England
Magistrate and Pediatrician
University Lecturer
FERNANDO PINON, M.A.
Youth Director. 21/z Years, Hendersonville. North
Carolina
Texas
Holds Masters Degree in Political Science
Editor & Director, El Visitante Dominical. the only
National Spanish Catholic newspaper in the U.S.
Author, Dynamics Of Ethnic Politics. Published by
Vantage
Trustee. Foundation of Education and Research
in Childbirth
Former President. Mother's Union. The Anglican
Wife's Association
International lecturer on The Family. Sex Education.
The Pill. Planned Parenthood
MERCEDES WILSON, D.H..O.L.J.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
1 .ouisiaiM
Executive Director. World Organization Ovulation
Method - Billings. U.S.A.
Marge Harrigan and
Sula Hurley, Chairpersons
Author. The Ovulation Method Of Birth Regulatipn.
Published by Van Nostrand
Charles & Beth Balsam
Joan Brennan
Kay Ek
Hanna Klaus
Margaret McCauley
Special Representative. WOOMB International
Executive Director. Billings Ovulation Method Centers
of Louisiana. Inc.
Officer. Order of St. Lazarus
Charles Norris
Ann O'Donnell
Ruth Taylor
Mary Thormann
Mercedes Wilson
PROGRAM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1983
4:00 7:00 P.M.
Registration (La Quinta Royale)
MODERATOR - MERCEDES WILSON
EVENING SESSION
7:00
Dinner and Welcome
Bishop Thomas J. Drury, D.D., LL.D., Corpus Christi
8:00
“Facing Up To Peer Pressure”
Maggie Flood & Tom Ek
8:30
"When Love Is Lacking”
Er. Bruce Ritter
9:00
"Learning To Love”
Drs. John & Evelyn Billings
9:45
“Adolescent Sexuality: The Assumptions - Are They Valid?
The Importance Of Adequate Research”
Dr. Robert E. Cooke (Videotape)
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1983
MORNING SESSION
MODERATORS - JOAN AND JOHN BRENNAN
8:30
Coffee. Juice and Rolls
9:00
“The Adolescent’s Right To The Whole Truth”
Dr. Margaret White
9:30
"Adolescent Psychological Development and Its Interaction with Adult
Stages of Development: Implications for Responsibilities in Parenthood”
Dr. Mary Thormann
10:00
“Communications Skills: Parent to Parent; Parent to Adolescent”
Dr. Donald Conroy
10:30
Break
Ki/fuc/cd^c - C.uniniunicatioH - Rcs/u/Hsib/l/ty
Continuation of Program
10:45
"Life and Love. Sex and Death - What 1 Learned from the
Kindergarten Carpool”
Prudence Mackintosh
11:15
"The Family: The Safeguard of the Adolescent”
Dr. Herbert Ratner
12:00-2:00 Bay Cruise and Lunch - $6.00 (Optional)
AFTERNOON SESSION
MODERATOR - ANN O’DONNELL
2:00
"The Billings Method: The Scientific Basis and Its Relevance to Adolescents”
Drs. John and Evelyn Billings
3:00
“The Value of Fertility”
Dr. Kevin Hume
3:30
Break
3:45
"Knowledge is Power”
Ovulation Method Teachers
Awareness to Adolescents
Mercedes Wilson and Dr. John Brennan with students
4:45
"The Psychology of Abstinence” - Panel Discussion With Young Men
Merrilyn Curry
5:15
"Examples Of Some Existing Adolescent Programs”
Dr. Ruth Taylor - Parent to Parent
Dr. Kevin Hume - Sixth Grade Girls and their Mothers
Dr. Hanna Klaus - Adolescents
Dr. Charles Norris - Fertility Awareness
6:15-8:00
Dinner
EVENING SESSION
8:00
Present
Fertility
MODERATOR - DR. HERBERT RATNER
“The Need for Basic Moral Standards in Government - Funded Programs”
Rep. Lindy (Mrs. Hale) Boggs
Knowledge - Communication - Responsibility
Continuation of Program
8:30
“Panel of Today’s Speakers With Audience Participation”
Entire faculty will be available until 10:00 P.M. to answer questions
of participants
Drs. John & Evelyn Billings
Dr. John Brennan
Dr. Donald Conroy
Merrilyn Curry
Dr. Kevin Hume
Dr. Hanna Klaus
10:00
Dr. Charles Norris
Dr. Herbert Ratner
Dr. Ruth Taylor
Dr. Mary Thormann
Dr. Margaret White
Mercedes Wilson
Gathering for Adolescents - Plans to be Announced
SUNDAY, JANUARY 16, 1983
MORNING SESSION
MODERATOR - H. ROSS. GARZA
8:30
Coffee, Juice and Rolls
9:00
“Strategies for Effective Instruction”
Dr. Corrine McGuigan
9:30
“Good News About Adolescent Sexuality”
Dr. Michael Meaney
10:00
“Rite of Passage”
Margaret McCauley
10:15
“Adolescent Sexuality: A Hispanic Culture Perspective”
Maria Hilda & Fernando Pinon
10:45
Break
11:00
“Involving Adolescents”-Adolescents’ Concerns, Panel of Teens
Rev. William Virtue
11:45
“Judeo-Christian Responsibility: To Light the Path for Teens”
Bishop John J. Sullivan, D.D., Diocese Kansas City - St. Joseph
12:00
Lunch
Knowledge - Communication - Responsibility
Continuation of Program
AFTERNOON SESSION
MODERATOR - KAY EK
1:00
“Teenagers Ask Physicians”
All Physicians on the faculty will be available to answer questions from
adolescents
1:30
“Beyond Knowledge” - A Young Married Couple's Experience in working
with Adolescents
Anne and David Trufant
2:00
“WOOMB'S Commitment to Young People"
Drs. John and Evelyn Billings
Dr. Kevin Hume
t
The remainder of the afternoon will be open to participants to see
additional demonstrations not presented in the program as well as
videotape available in the Research Theater
Bus trip to Padre Island will also be available
“The future of humanity passes by way
of the family.”
John Paul // - T/n Role oj the ('hrioiau b'uniily
in the .Wotlern Wurltl (Ea miliaris Consortin)
I
ii
Dr. John Billings
Knowledge - Communication - Responsibility
Dr. Evelyn Billings
v
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