I opened the church bulletin yesterday evening (Ash Wednesday) to find a long paragraph written by the parish school principal headlined "Safe Environment Report."
Last Friday, a team from [name of school and parish] attended an Archdiocesan meeting [Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul] to commence the implementation of "safe environment" classes in Catholic schools and religious-education programs across the diocese. At the meeting, it was announced that Talking about Touching was the chosen program for Pre-K through Grade 4.
Groan. Great.
This is part of the bishops' response to the sexual abuse scandal and crisis over the past years: implementing anti-sexual abuse education for children in the schools and religious ed programs throughout the country, diocese by diocese. It doesn't seem like a bad idea. But numerous commentators have raised concerns about the content of the programs chosen. Here's an article by Dom Bettinelli, for example.
Bottom line: Any anti-abuse program that relies on the children to protect themselves is asking for trouble. Sexually explicit anti-abuse education for children at the institution ought not even to be necessary --- at best it should be redundant. Send the parents to training to teach them how to talk to their kids. Send every adult who works in a parish to training. Foster a culture of looking out for each other. Have rules that no adult is ever alone in a room with one or two or three kids. In other words, let the grownups carry the burden.
I went on reading:
Our team has reviewed this program and the others that the Archdiocese recommended and found them to be completely unacceptable. [Name of school and parish] will continue to explore a suitable means to provide our parents with the tools necessary to protect their children from the scourge of abuse in our society but it will not be through the use of Talking about Touching.
Go, Father!
Our goal is to find appropriate materials to provide our parents with a home-based alternative that supports their role as the primary educator of their child(ren) in accordance with the Church's teachings in Familiaris Consortio and Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. Each step we take in this process will be completely transparent to you through parent meetings that will be scheduled in the Spring and next Fall.
A very important part of [name of school]'s mission is to protect our students from all that can cause harm, spiritually, physically, socially, and emotionally. We will not in any way compromise this mission.
Implying quite strongly that Talking about Touching can cause harm.
If you have any questions or concerns about what the "safe environment" program is, there is a comprehensive article you can read at (link).
Hi there Dom! Nice to see you again!
All [name of school and parish] families will be notified of upcoming parent meetings as soon as they are scheduled.
Believe me, I'll be there.
I'm sure there are probably some arguments for Talking about Touching, and in the interest of balance I'd like to Google for them and post them, but I'm in a hurry to get to adoration. However, I'd like to guess them. #1: Easy to teach. Wanna bet?
I'm curious how this is going to play out. I expect that Archbishop Flynn will not prevent our parish from implementing something else, as long as the parish can show that the goals of the bishops' conference are being met. Let's hope it doesn't make the news, though. Can you imagine? Local parish refuses to implement anti-sexual-abuse program?
UPDATE. Here's the column written by the archbishop in this week's archdiocesan paper. Archbishop Flynn says the material is "age-appropriate" and that parental concern has come about because of "misinformation and untruths" about the program. He does say there are "family-based" alternatives and that parents will be able to opt out, which is heartening. He also says that "a resource booklet has been delivered to each household in the archdiocese that has children." I haven't gotten mine yet...
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