'New Creation'
Part of Culture's Assault On Children

It is certainly remarkable how the Wm.C.Brown Co. publishers of NEW CREATION have continued to defend their wretched sex education program as being in conformity with "Church guidelines."

As [the] president of Wm. C. Brown's Religious Education Division has written:

"I have worked closely with competent Church authorities who have had competent theologians and religious education professionals review NEW CREATION ... The truth is that NEW CREATION has been well received both in this country and abroad because it is faithful to the Church's guidelines regarding human sexuality education."

This judgment could not be more mistaken. The NEW CREATION sex education program contradicts every norm of "proper and prudent sexual education" insisted upon by the Church. With its texts' fixation on penis and vagina and sexual intercourse (as early as the first and second grades) and graphic illustrations of women's pelvic area, NEW CREATION prepares its assault on the child's psyche. The professional experts of the NEW CREATION series apparently exclude the possibility of any real psychological trauma resulting from this violent shredding of the latency period protecting the emotional stability of young children.

Of course, the Vatican document "Educational Guidance in Human Love" (which is normative for authentic Catholic educators) reveals quite another mentality:

"Some school textbooks on sexuality by reason of their naturalist character, are harmful to the child and adolescent. Graphic and audio-visual materials are more harmful when they crudely present sexual realities for which the pupil is not prepared, and thus create traumatic impressions or raise an unhealthy curiosity which leads to evil. Let teachers think seriously of the grave harm that an irresponsible attitude in such delicate matters can cause in pupils." (No. 76)

It is not unreasonable to ask: If, indeed, psychological or spiritual damage is done young students exposed to NEW CREATION, who will accept the accountability for causing such? the publishers of such material? its theological and educational consultants? those responsible for the Imprimatur? or the teachers in the classroom actually engaged in the psychic rape of innocent young children?

Recently, Professor Neil Postman, professor of Media Ecology, New York University, had some interesting comments on the present social scene:

Our concept of childhood is rapidly slipping from our grasp. Our children live in a society whose psychological and social contexts do not stress the differences between adults and children. As the adult world opens itself in every conceivable way to children, they will inevitably emulate adult criminal activity. They will also participate in such activity as victims. Paralleling the assault on social order by children is the assault by adults on children.

He proceeds to note that the dramatic increase in child abuse in our society is due to the fact that "the special status, image and aura of the child has been drastically diminished." Many adults now have a different conception of what sort of a person a child is. To them, children are miniature adults. Too many educators have helped justify "the loss of childhood" and have been busily engaged in providing a "philosophy" for the "dissolution of childhood" especially with regard to sexual matters.

What Professor Postman has observed with respect to much "modern education" is particularly true of the sex educators active in both parochial and public schools. They are the "enemy of childhood" par excellence, constantly projecting their own adult hang-ups and inadequacies (and intellectual and emotional difficulties regarding sexuality) on hapless children in our classrooms.

This sorry fact is remarkably exemplified in the ideological thrust evident in the NEW CREATION series. Is it not incredible that its reading list should be saturated with secular humanist books and authors who represent the very dregs of the Sexual Revolution in our time? Sol Gordon, Eric W. Johnson, Wardell Pomeroy, Alan Guttmacher, William A. Block, and Judy Blume are not friends of Catholic sexual morality! [Also] Andrew Greeley, Eugene Kennedy and Nancy Hennessey Cooney have distinguished themselves for their books and articles making a mockery of the virtues of chastity and modesty.

When Bishop Leo T. Maher of San Diego ordered NEW CREATION not to be used in El Cajon parochial schools, he rightly observed that its "reading list contained all sorts of books that espoused the Planned Parenthood philosophy, the very thing that I've been so much against." If any organization can be regarded as the pathological enemy of children, it is Planned Parenthood. No organization has been more influential in leading the nation into the spiritual wasteland of contraception and abortion. Is it not a reflection of deep disorders in the Church that the NEW CREATION sex education program with its sexual graphics, defective morality, and Planned Parenthood imprint — should also bear the Imprimatur of Holy Church ?