The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) has recently published its draft programme for the Junior Certificate Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) curriculum, which includes Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE).

We have major concerns about what it proposes regarding pornography, consent and gender identity.

Specifically, we ask if the programme means schools will have to teach Junior Certificate pupils that:

– Pornography can have positive as well as negative aspects (which is what some Irish experts consulted by the State have said)?

–  Consent alone is enough to make a sexual act moral, and there is no need for a couple to either be married or in a committed relationship?

– A person’s ‘gender identity’ has no real relationship to their biological sex and anyone who wants to identify as ‘male’ or ‘female’ (or some other gender) can do so?

Read more here

Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable.

~ Pope Benedict XVI