COMPULSORY SEX EDUCATION IN N. IRELAND.

Once again, the Guru pontificates! Do parents have rights! Check your facts about segregated education!

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I believe that all schools, primary and secondary, north and south, should have comprehensive, age appropriate, sex education programmes. Parents of course must be informed about the content of any such programmes. There must be a moral grounding given to any sex education programme. Schools which are under denominational patronage must also have their space to provide their moral and religious teachings on social and ethical issues. It’s very easy to say “remove all faiths from schools”, as Pat says but it is a much more complicated matter than simply saying – “get out”. The question of school governing and management needs a deeper analysis and discussion. Personally, I believe the time has arrived when the Churches need to re-evaluate their role in schools. Many questionnaires have been answered and discussions have taken place in the south re: divesting of school patronage and the findings were very interesting. The majority of respondents were not in favour of change. However, I do believe that all religious education should be done at parish level and through the homes. This will happen. Times have changed, we are a multicultural society, also a more secular one with religious affiliation dwindling, apart from particular moments and rites of passage. Sometimes I despair at the time and energy required for school board of management, chaplaincy and the hours given to sacramental preparations for one day only, after which we rarely see children or families in church until another goodbye moment!! Saying this, after 42 years in Schools, I feel very privileged to have contributed in worthwhile ways to schools and education and have encountered some wonderful teachers, parents and school boards. But in 2022 the challenges are very different and radical changes are necessary. The separation of church and state will arrive but not in the simplistic way as described above.

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Bishop Pat, yet again you hit many points on the head well here. Several very shady priests in Armagh Archdiocese who are on-the-run in all but name, had too strong a link to closet gay Catholic school teachers. It has become a sordid recruitment method for the gay underground clerical ring, where impressionable young men are used and misinformed. Both teachers and priests alike in truth are nothing but instruments of a church now suffocating in its own filth.

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Hi Pat, Rory Coyle is doing really well no more sexual relapses physically or online. Rory is a successful story and a role model for Stephen Wilson despite the darkness of a sex addiction there’s always light at the end of the tunnel to full recovery. Stephen needs to take a leap of faith. Jesus helps those who helps themselves. 🙏

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Sean O’ Neill PP did Sean Bradys dirty work when he cleaned up the Armagh Lourdes Pilgrimage mess, Michael Dwyer did not last long, for another reason. O’ Neill was well rewarded with Carraigemore in Tyrone where he reigns even yet. Lourdes Pilgimages, gravy trains. O’ Neill ( honest if not sneaky) used to leave at least 5000 in Mass stipends behind in Lourdes…it was covered in the media when the head honcho Monsigneur at that shrine was imprisioned. In every diocese they have little wily old ladies “gathering up” for them. I knew Mary Rose from Newry very well and her “portfolio.”

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I am presently reading ( as I blog from the sand) Shared Notes by Martin Hayes( esteemed traditional musician). At the outset he describes how his mother spent a year in a convent, she lasted a year. She left after she was punished for riding a bicycle without permission. She concluded that the whole thing was hypocritical and remained for the rest of her life sceptical of all authoritarian institutions. Wise woman. Speaking personally, when a beautiful man goes by on a bicycle. I say to myself “sometimes you just wish you were a bicycle .” WM

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This did actually happen and excuse “his” vulgarity but he was an extremely good man; In the early 1980’s Noel Watsons Maynooth choir were singing in a hall in Lower Long Corridor, he was getting a bit rattled with the performance at a practice and addressed a sister who was not performing, he shouted loudly down to her ” Sister, if you don’t sing up I’ll screw you with the leg of this piano.” It was an entirely different world back then. Rev Professor Noel Watson was a very very good man and insofar as I know cared for anyone who studied music under hie tutelage. I hope the quote dies not offend, if it does apologies !

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The premise of all Catholic Sex Education is premised on the principle that the procreative cannot be separated from the unitive which they insist is the natural law.
They seek neat and tidy answers to complex human realities like sex and hold out a unrealistic ideal which nobody lives by especially themselves.
Two key things about sex from an education point of view is unwanted pregnancy and always unwanted but inevitable STDs.
Condoms, Condoms, Condoms.
O wait Catholic moral theology doesn’t permit Condoms – we have a problem Houston!!

Oh and masturbation is as natural as sneezing or scratching an itch and morally neural whereas moral theology acts as if God himself is more concerned about a wank than a tank.

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Pat you are my hero x

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Sex education is taught and experienced in Maynooth. Ask the current incumbent about how they are being taught to be celibate.

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