Study Guide
The Truth & Meaning of Human Sexuality
Guidelines for Education Within the Family
In December of 1995 the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family published The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality – Guidelines for Education Within the Family.
The goal of Truth and Meaning is to support parents and their rights and responsibilities in providing education in chastity and sexuality for their children. It reinforces the Church’s longstanding belief and teaching regarding the indispensable educational role of parents in the sensitive matter of education in sexuality.
Not all families are fully aware of this right and duty that is their own and irreplaceable, under normal circumstances.
Families sometimes leave this task to silence, to the indirect but often unhealthy influence of chance, the internet, media or to the school. Because of the objective difficulty the delicate subject entails, or out of a kind of neglect passed on from the preceding generation, parents have allowed the school to assume this task.
“There is certainly nothing new in observing the serious stage we have reached in the area of sexuality. It is enough to open our eyes and look around. Every day the mass media bear witness to the deep wounds inflicted on individuals and society when people live human sexuality apart from the truth…” Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo
Families that absorb and live the principles of this document will better understand the spirituality and holiness of the human body and of marital conjugal union. In recovering this concept they will be a light to others and become leaven in a society which has surely lost its moorings to the virtue of sexual purity.
Some Important Principles
The Child Has a Right To Personal Chastity
The document made a clear distinction between the presentation of sexual details which are always to be communicated by the parent to the child or young person, individually, in private, in the home, and the supportive but subsidiary role of the school in teaching the moral applications surrounding the 6th and 9th Commandments as they apply to persons and the surrounding culture.
In fact, TMHS emphatically states that the child has a right to receive information regarding the intimate aspects of sexual information, whether biological or affective, in the home and compliant with his or her desire to be chaste and to be formed in chastity.
“…but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Matt 18:6
Since each child or young person must be able to live his or her own sexuality in conformity with Christian principles, and hence to be able to exercise the virtue of chastity, no educator – not even parents – can interfere with this right to chastity.
TMHS 118 cf. Matt 18: 4-7
This right is further qualified by a child’s stage of development, his or her capacity to integrate moral truth with sexual information, and by respect for his or her modesty, sense of privacy, innocence and tranquility. TMHS 119
The Child is like a Rose…
We might compare the child to a rosebud forming on a bush, immature and tightly enclosed within its protective sepals. Gradually it grows larger, taking up through its roots, the nutrition and hydration in the soil below
and absorbing the warmth and light of the sun from above.
If the rosebud in this early stage is violated, pierced or its sepals pulled back or
torn away, it will never open properly.
It will never display the lush
beauty and fragrance
that was to be its destiny.
It will be stunted and misshapen, even perhaps
die and fall from the stem.
The child's education in matters of sexuality must be like that,
a gradual revelation and growth in knowledge,
blending the earthly formation of a happy, holy family life
and reverent respectful conversation with a loving parent,
with the Divine formation gained from knowing a loving God
Who created all things — including the human body and
the conjugal union of marriage — in His image
as things good, true,
beautiful and pure.
TMHS is the Pearl of Great Price…
It states the Church needs to help parents reclaim their task, which is original and primary, irreplaceable and inalienable, by providing solid formation materials for them in conformity with the principles put forth in the document.
TMHS strives to give parents confidence in their own capabilities and to help them carry out their own inalienable task in the midst of firmly entrenched school programs of classroom sex education.
This document and its vision for the family is one of HOPE, where children and parents together share a life seeking virtue and holiness, essential in forming the foundation of a healthy, vigorous and productive society.
These are the families who are LIGHT in the world, innocent and straightforward children of God, beyond reproach in the midst of a twisted and depraved generation...shining like stars in the sky while holding fast to the Word of Life. Philippians 2:15
The Immaculata
There is a great need in our world, to recover understanding and esteem for the holiness of the human body, for holy marriage and holy conjugal union. Only then will we be able to understand and esteem the holiness of the celibate priesthood and consecrated virginity.
But in this day and age when we have suffered such violation of our own purity and witnessed the destruction of sexual purity in others, how can this even be possible? How can we ever recover this attitude?
Only by the power and through the intercession of the Immaculata, the Blessed Virgin Mary for she says: “I will give you a new purity…”
...But mine is also an Immaculate Heart, that is to say, a motherly heart that has never been tarnished by any shadow, by any sin, limpid as a spring, clear as light. The priests of my Movement must restore purity in souls and fight firmly against the Demon of Lust in all its manifestations.
To those who have fallen I will give a new purity; I will call them to a second and more beautiful innocence of repentance and love.
I want it to be the Movement of my priests which will bring back the fragrance of purity to the world: for it is only on the billow of this perfume that my Son Jesus will once again become the King of hearts and of souls.
To the Priests Our Lady’s Beloved Sons - 21
Prayer -
Holy Mary, Mother of God, receive us into your most pure womb where, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you conceived and carried for nine months, the Holy Child Jesus. Let us be born again of you, in the Holy Spirit, in the simplicity, innocence and purity of little children and teach us esteem for the holiness of the human body, for holy marriage and holy conjugal union. Against the darkness of error and sin, we want to bring the candle of your light everywhere we go and to everyone we meet. Amen.
There was a time when you were darkness but now you are light in the Lord. Live then as children of light. Light produces every kind of goodness, righteousness and truth. Ephesians 5:8
The Human Body and the Holiness of all Human Activity
It is well worth recalling that the human body is given incredible dignity due to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ Who took a human body to His divine Person. This dignity is further deepened because in Holy Communion we receive the living glorified Person of Jesus Christ: His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, comes into our body.
Additionally, in Baptism, the human body receives the divine life of God and the Holy Spirit. Thus we say that our bodies “are a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Flowing from that truth, therefore ALL human activity is elevated to a participation in the divine nature of Christ. It has such great and infinite worth because it is done in Christ. Conversely that is why sin is such a tragedy because it scourges and defaces this Divine Image in us.
Fr. John Hardon wrote: “St. Thomas Aquinas believed that man is more than a composite of body and soul, that he is nothing less than elevated to a supernatural order which participates, as far as a creature can, in the very nature of God. Accordingly, a person in the state of grace, or divine friendship, possesses certain enduring powers, the infused virtues and gifts, that raise him to an orbit of existence as far above nature as heaven is above earth, and that give him abilities of thought and operation that are literally born, not of the will of flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Father Hardon Archives - The Meaning of Virtue in St. Thomas Aquinas - The Real Presence Association
CONJUGAL LOVE IS A MYSTERY
God is a Transcendent Mystery and a Trinity of Persons and holy conjugal love is a reflection of, and a participation in that Mystery and Trinitarian relationship.
Saint Paul spoke the truth about marriage and conjugal love relating to Christ as Bridegroom and the Church as Bride when he said that this relationship is a great mystery. In holy matrimony, the communion of two persons husband and wife, becomes a created reality on earth that mirrors the uncreated Communion of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah's vision sheds light on this Mystery and how it is to be reverenced. He witnessed the Seraphim Angels in contemplation of the Communion of Persons in the Mystery of the Trinity. He saw them suspended aloft, while veiling their faces and their feet and crying out to one another: Holy Holy Holy!
This concept of holy Mystery must be recovered with regard to sexuality if the real truth about it is to be restored in our culture.
We veil things that are holy.
The veil in the Temple shrouded the Holy of Holies where God dwelt.
The bride veils her face until she is presented to her husband in marriage.
In the same manner, sex must go back under the veil, in order to both reveal and protect its true meaning.
I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of His garment filling the Temple.
Seraphim were stationed above, each of them had six wings:
with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet,
and with two they hovered aloft.
‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts!’ they cried, one to the other.
‘All the earth is filled with His glory!’
Is. 6:1-3
How to Use This Study Guide
Parents and others will find the Study Guide helpful for their own individual use as well as for parish based parental or adult education classes.
Various settings can include the use of a facilitator and group discussion.
The material can be utilized online, or sections downloaded in sequence and printed, for ease in making notes or comments to aid in discussion.
The document is broken into sections, each followed by a number of questions to aid in the assimilation and understanding of the concepts being presented.
It is highly recommended that the user begin by reading first, the Announcement Letter by Cardinal Trujillo. (pp. v-ix)