It looks like the “safe touch sex education” programs in Minneapolis-St. Paul are a wee bit more flexible than those in Boston. The bearing blog describes that at his parish they have decided not to use Talking about Touching in their parish, an option provided by the archdiocese, and will instead use a more appropriate program. The archdiocese is offering family-based training, which I assume means training the parents and letting them teach their kids. This seems to be a decent compromise.
Still, no one has yet offered a good response to my question: Why should the Church be running these child-abuse programs?
Why is it the Church’s duty to run sex abuse prevention programs for children? Now, I can agree that the archdiocese has a duty to make sure that it has oversight of priests and employees to prevent them from abusing kids, but under what law or principle does the Church have an obligation to educate kids about sex abuse? The Church doesn’t have that authority. Only parents have that authority. Now if there were an optional program offered for parents who could sign up to receive training that they could pass on to their kids that would be fine. But forcing the Archdiocese to force “touching safety” programs on kids is unconscionable and a violation of our rights. Why not require the Church to teach, say, gun safety? Kids need to be safe around guns. Oh, is it because some bishops were negligent and allowed abuse to occur in Church? So why does that mean that the Church must take on the role of “safe environment sex education” programs? It should just mean the Church has to make sure it doesn’t put abusers among kids.
Technorati Tags: Catholic, Minneapolis, sex-abuse
