Sexuality

importance to this study of sexuality education for Catholic adolescents is the teaching of the Catholic Church, which contextualizes the findings and establishes their importance for Catholic education. A summary of that teaching and its development is essential to the interpretation and implementation of the findings of this study and its recommendations. Church teaching about sexuality divides into two broad time frames, pre- and post-Vatican II. The pre-Vatican II approach to sexuality, under the negative and ubiquitous influence of Augustine of Hippo, was ambiguous. On the one hand, sexuality was judged good because it was created by God. On the other hand, sexuality was judged to be disordered by concupiscence derived from original sin. Sex easily escapes rational control and becomes simply lust. If a man or a woman must use others for personal sexual pleasure, therefore, it must be only in the context of marriage and to fulfill the primary end of marriage, procreation (Kosnik, Carroll, Cunningham, Modras, & Schulte, 1977; Whitehead & Whitehead, 1989). The Code of Canon Law prescribed, therefore, in 1917: "The primary end of marriage is the procreation and nurture of children; its secondary end is mutual help and the remedying of concupiscence" (Canon Law Society, Can 1013, [section]1).

Pre-Vatican II Catholic teaching on sexuality can be summarized in two magisterial statements. First, "sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, #2360) and, therefore, every moral sexual, and especially genital, act must be within the framework of marriage (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1976). Sexual sin includes every sexual act not within the legitimate framework of marriage: lust, masturbation, pre-marital intercourse (fornication), extra-marital intercourse (adultery), pornography, prostitution, rape (Catechism, 1994, #2351-2356). Second, within marriage, "each and every marriage act must remain...