Condoms & Teenagers
Editorial
Ed. Note: In this issue we offer a guest editorial from John R. Quinn, Archbishop of San Francisco. It was originally written as a letter to Catholic parents with teenagers in public schools in San Francisco, but we feel it has national application and will be helpful to parents from all Christian churches.
Dear Parents of Teenagers,
I know how you love your children, and the many sacrifices you make for them. I also know how perplexed you feel at times, caught between the sometimes difficult moral claims of discipleship and society’s relentless and confused assurances to the contrary.
Caught up in society’s consumer search for a fast fix to every problem, some public schools are considering dispensing condoms like aspirin. The underlying message in this is that no one really cares what happens to the human, moral, and psychosexual development and integration of teenagers as long as they do not contract AIDS or some other disease.
I am confident that you will continue to challenge your sons and daughters to reach out to the ideals of the Gospel, which place upon us the obligation of respect for our bodies as the very temple of God’s presence and members of the body of Christ. I know that you will continue to challenge your sons and daughters, as they expect and want to challenged, to live self-respecting moral lives and to say no to every moral evil which tarnishes their human dignity, harms their bodies, minds, and souls.
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Though other sexual sins may be more dramatic in their outward effects, the inner attitude that nourishes it and the inner corrosion that it causes are no less serious.
Newman rejects the notion that the "other" world does not exist at this present moment, but begins after death: "No: it exists now, though we see it not."