In recent years, Catholic parents have faced increasing challenges in their efforts to raise their children with a proper understanding of life, love, and family. While they've been diligently teaching their children traditional values at home, the schools they have relied upon for professional instruction are often teaching the opposite.
In recent years many schools, both public and private, have introduced courses in "health and sexuality" that pose a variety of problems both moral and scientific.
The problem is especially evident in the so-called "affective" instructional materials. These address the emotional, rather than intellectual, aspects of the material. This new emphasis is part of the overall shift of focus in educational circles from facts and thinking to fads and feeling. It's the Sixties mantra of "if it feels good, do it," all over again.
These challenges confront families not only in the United States, but in dozens of countries all over the world. That's because the materials used in these courses, no matter the language and the time zone, share the same content.
In the past five years, courses have been rapidly forced on grade school and high school students - even on Kindergarten children - that constitute a kind of crazy quilt of carnality. Suddenly abortion, lesbianism, sodomy, masturbation, and transgender ideology are all being taught as "science." At the same time, the "affective" component was simple: the children are told that must celebrate this variety of vulgarity so they can "feel good about themselves and their sexuality." That such courses violated the purity and innocence with which God had endowed children was the whole point.
Thanks to the lockdowns, parents have become much more involved in their children's education. The school closures gave families an unprecedented opportunity to "look over the shoulders" of their children and see for themselves the materials that schools had once preserved solely for the classroom.
Moreover, as advocates of sexual deviancy became ever more brazen and more public, parents also woke up to what was actually going on. Their children were being groomed. Some adults, including some teachers, saw sex education as the first step towards using and abusing them for their own sexual pleasure.
Parents were not alone in opposing the programs that were being forced upon their children. Authorities in various fields recognized the problem, and also the widespread desire among families to learn how to confront it. They sought recourse to the truth, the truth was so well expressed in Humanae Vitae , the Encyclical of Saint Paul VI, and the Theology of the Body , the masterful work of Saint Pope John Paul II.
That's why, in response to the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia , which challenged Catholics to confront sex education issues head-on, experts from 12 countries met at the Vatican for a two-day seminar in 2017.
The result was a project - GoodLove - that would offer families a wholesome alternative to the drumbeat of decadence that was getting ever louder and ever more evil in many mandatory school programs.
These experts came from many different fields, but they were all united in this: They all wanted to offer families around the world a program that provided parents with the means to teach their children about the goodness of our sexuality as created by God. A program that would start with "Male and Female He created them", and then go on to describe how God intended that gift to be embraced in a loving union of husband and wife.
Given its foundation in truth and Revelation, the name of the project came naturally: GoodLove.
After lengthy discussions and review of materials, these educators formed what they call the Goodlove Community. Their offerings comprise a variety of programs that have the common aim of promoting objective, coherent, and morally-sound sexual-affective formation for young people using content that reflects the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
This content is now available on a rapidly-growing website, GoodLove.org . There parents can find a trustworthy reference site for the affective sexual education of their children.
The materials are also a boon to catechists and teachers, offering them a wide array of resources that help them in their formative and pastoral activities. With these helpful aids, they can promote quality and trustworthy sexual affective education programs.
These programs offer complete courses and readings for various levels, some of them from Kindergarten through high school. In English, A Fertile Heart offers courses and modules for all school years. Grammaire de la vie offers similar materials in French. Teenstar Deutschland offers a complete curriculum in German, and Aprendiendo a Querer offers a truly indispensable program in Spanish developed by our friend, the heroic Christine de Marcellus-Vollmer.
The GoodLove community is designed to offer a center of exchange and support for families who are committed to giving young people an education for love in accordance with Catholic values x200Bx200Band anthropology. Its programs are already being used in ten countries in North and South America, Europe, and Africa.
As new resources are added, The GoodLove Foundation will be responsible for reviewing them to ensure that the sexual affective formation programs and materials conform to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and help young people to discover their authentic vocation to love.
GoodLove is such a valuable gift to families that, as it grows, it will undoubtedly become indispensable. We at PRI are happy to support GoodLove Community's efforts to defend the family, life, and love.