Be Wary When the World Says, "There Are No Sexual Sins But Child Abuse and Rape"

The Holy See is under fire from the UN

When the UN, or even the whole World, maintains that there is no sexual sin but child abuse, be sure that the World is just years away from condoning child abuse. If child abuse is one of the few remaining sexual sins a person can commit, then we should be certain that even widespread opposition to child abuse hangs by an incredibly loose thread.

Why do I say this? I say this simply because the terms of reference for the sexual morality of the age are grounded in nothing objective at all but natural revulsion against a minority who abuse children. Widespread revulsion at child abusers and abuse is understandable and natural, but for how long will it last? For the time being, at least, we can all agree that child abuse is a monstrous evil against the innocent child. What we cannot all agree with is the premise that this is the only sex-related evil a person can commit. Some reading this would balk at the suggestion that child abuse could become accepted in the West, but there is no real reason why it should not be. I say this for good reason, because we live in times in which children are primed for sexual activity at a younger and younger age.

The rejection of both natural and divine law

The vast array of sexual sins and vices that were once deemed to be 'taboo' in the West have systematically and overwhelmingly been overturned, leaving the World with a distorted and blunted view of sexual ethics proposing that personal autonomy in sexual relationships is paramount and to be cherished above all else. Any criticism of sexual behaviour that deviates from what was once the accepted norm - a monogamous sexual relationship within the confines of marriage - is now quickly dismissed as evidence of 'bigotry' - or a form of imposition of an alien, repressive morality to the majority. This is grounded in a wholesale, widespread rejection of both natural and divine law supported by the mass media and now even accepted in most schools.

As Western countries, we are deceived if we believe that the rejection of both natural and divine law by adults has no consequences for children. Notwithstanding that a culture that defines the limits of sexual morality to the subjective only is in danger of becoming so permissive that children can more easily be brought into the realm of sexual excitement for adults, the single premise upon which rests the West's opposition to child abuse would appear to be the issue of 'consent'. Rape is deemed, rightly, to be an offense to the compliance of a party to a sexual encounter. Likewise, it is universally held in the West that child abuse is an evil because a child can never give 'consent' to an abusive sexual relationship in which the victim is weaker. The child, obviously, is in a position of vulnerabillity compared to the aggressor.

The Age of Consent

Yet, 'consent' is a particularly tenuous and precarious foundation upon which to build any society's sexual morality. Do we really wish to see, for the future generations, among whom are billions of children with their own hopes and dreams, a society so sexually liberal and so highly sexualised that any sexual relationship is perceived to be normal except any sexual relationship that does not involve 'consensual sex'?

Consent has become the primary issue in recent times in the UK, with some adult 'campaigners', among whose number is the 'gay-rights campaigner' Peter Tatchell, calling for a lowering of the age of consent in Britain to 14. The State has become so all-pervasive in society that those who seek to change transform society through Parliament cite evidence of underage sexual activity taking place among a highly sexualised youth as propaganda material for new laws recognising the 'sexual rights' of children. We live in an age - a brave and new age - in which sexual relationships are framed in the language of personal and autonomous rights and 'freedoms'.

The successful destruction of Christian morality has enabled those with a particularly destructive, liberal agenda to gain access to children's minds, distorting children's views of sexuality. In the UK, nearly every child is taught about sexual relationships in a way that encourages children to think of sexual activity outside of the parameters of marriage. Few children, it would seem, are 'waiting for the right' person in marriage. Children, as is evidenced by media report after media report, have been educated successfully to think of sex as recreational activity with few, if any, moral implications. In other words, at their most delicate and formative years, children are educated to treat sex as something that has no real objective morality underpinning it. Children - indeed, your children, are being 'groomed' in schools and by the World's mass media, to accept sexual relationships from a tender age as normal. They are shown often explicit material in schools, are bombarded with information about sex with nearly no moral content and are given the 'facts of life' at a younger and younger age, as the State responds to calls to educate children so that they will be equipped with the 'resources' to make an 'educated choices' about sex even though most parents would not feel their children are 'ready'.

Perhaps not entirely surprisingly, teenagers have responded to this new form of State parentage positively...so positively, indeed, that they are contracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases, engaging in casual sex with different partners, experiment with members of the same-sex and even text explicit images of one another to one another over their mobile phones.

When criticisms of the current approaches to 'sex education' are made, critics are told that it is too late to change the curriculum, that the same approach will yield benefits if more sexual education is given to children at a younger age and that they need more 'resources' on sex in order to make wise choices. Yet, the children themselves are given no objective moral education on sex that would lead them to consider guarding their virginity for the special person who they wish to unite with in a sexual relationship in marriage. Instead, their inhibitions are systematically broken down by a ubiquitous message of sexual enticement from the mass media and an education system that holds up to them an entirely confusing message about sex and human sexuality. No role models are offered to them. There is no 'normal' for them, as there were for generations before.

Children are being sexualised by an 'adult world'

So it is, then, that children are being sexualised in and by an 'adult world' that presents sex as a thing of recreation, a way of keeping fit, enjoyment, pleasure, excitement and joy, but completely divorced from its intended purpose - the ultimate expression of mutual love between married couples and for the purpose of procreation. If sex was presented to children within the traditional (and natural) framework of the sanctity and joy of marriage, citing love as the reason for the teaching, not all would respond favourably to it, but society would perhaps start to recover from an atmosphere of sexual licence that was so predominant that teenagers, already full of hormones, pump themselves with yet more hormones in a desperate effort not to have an 'unwanted pregnancy', use easily breakable condoms to 'prevent' sexually transmitted diseases and try their best to pretend that their deepest sexual longings are being fulfilled, if only by a young person who has no real understanding of the bond of sexual intimacy as an expression of love, and desires only to use the other person for his or her own sexual pleasure.

The pressure on children to have sex early and to give 'consent'

Miley Cyrus: Unusually pictured in clothes...

Teenagers and children are also presented with a stark and dangerously morally vacuous message concerning sex that leads not only to a relentless barrage of sexually explicit imagery in the mass media, as well as from sex education in schools, but also an historically unparalleled 'peer pressure' placed upon them to 'have sex' at an earlier and earlier age. Young pop stars, like Miley Cyrus, through scantily clad music, almost pornographic videos perpetuate an image of sexual availability and of sexual licence. Traditionally, children were taught to 'wait for the right person' in marriage not in order to repress them or injure them, but to care for their welfare, so that they may make a truly free choice to love and be loved by someone, when they are adult enough to make that decision, in the security and safety of married life. Yet this has been rejected nearly outright by society in which children are raised by music videos, magazines, internet and State educators. Who benefits from the new teaching on sexual ethics for children? Few, it would seem.

It does not benefit sexually active children, it does not benefit society. It does benefit abortion providers and it does benefit those who seek to corrupt the morals of children to eventually accept every kind of sexual relationship as long as it rests upon the premise of 'consent'. Yet children and teenagers, earlier and earlier, seemingly 'consent' to sex with different children of their own age even though they are properly deemed not to be 'mature enough' to have sex with adults. There is a logical, perhaps deliberate, inconsistency in the message received by children to accept sex as a 'fact of life' devoid of any objective moral principles, while pressure is placed, through media and peer pressure, to give consent to sex because sex is fun, enjoyable, pleasurable, satisfying, recreational and many other things, but no longer for set in the context of a loving marriage to the exclusion of all others.

If a 13-year-old girl gives 'consent' to sex with a 13-year-old boy, even though she is not yet 'mature' enough to make an 'adult decision' regarding the sexual relationship, what possible objection is there to the idea of a 13-year-old boy, or a 13-year-old-girl 'experimenting' sexually with an adult who is more 'experienced'. In the first case, it could be deemed there is 'consent', even by a High Court Judge who is lenient in his application of law, yet in the second it is universally declared that there can be no 'consent' to sex with an adult. Yet this is surely a fallacy. Who is an 'adult' and who is a 'child' if the age of consent is lowered, since the loss of virginity is powerfully pervasive in being perceived as a 'rite of passage' into adulthood?

Why would adults deem that a child is 'ready' for sex with another child but reject that a sexually active child would definitively reject sex with an adult? It is an area in which an entirely subjective criteria would seem to be applied. This may sound horrendous (and indeed it is), but once a child of 13, 14 is sexually active, his or her fantasy may well be a sexual relationship with an adult - for example - his or her favourite pop star or celebrity. We see, therefore that 'consent' is a barrier that can, if social reformers wish to see it occur, be overcome by sexualising children earlier and making sex with adults attractive, because, in the minds of highly sexualised teenagers and even children, this is exactly the message being given to them in the media and it will quite plausibly yield exactly that response.

Child abuse, rape and abortion

Other beneficiaries of the current high rate of sexual intercourse among children include abortion providers and makers of abortion pills and artificial contraceptives. A highly sexualised and sexually active youth yields good revenues for such companies that sell them. They, too, stand to benefit from a lowering in the age of consent and in liberal attitudes to sexually active teenagers. Do such companies and 'charities', like Marie Stopes and BPAS have children's best wishes at heart? Secondly, such facilities are incredibly helpful in enabling the abuse of minors. Young girls, if found to be pregnant by an abusive parents, carer, guardian, step-father may not desire to go to the Police if they are being abused. How much easier it is for such victims, then, to visit an abortion clinic in order to save their abuser and protect their 'future' by calling a confidential service that will remove the 'problem' and leave them free to deal with their abusive relationship without the added social horror of pregnancy in such a traumatic situation? How much easier it makes for abusers to go undetected by the authorities when abusers can coerce girls into having an abortion or into taking abortifacients, or implantable artificial contraception, in order for their crime to go unpunished by the law of the land.

Same-sex relationships, homosexuality and same-sex marriage

The new law of 2014 concerning 'same-sex marriage' will undoubtedly have huge implications for how children are taught about sexual relationships and marriage in the future. Stonewall along with other LGBT pressure groups will most likely gain unprecedented access to the minds of children through resource material and the propagation of LGBT material in schools. The net effect will do more to de-moralise children, as these campaigners, under the guise of ensuring that 'gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and 'questioning' or 'unsure' children will have their sexual expressive rights respected in the education sector, without the knowledge or permission of parents for their children to be exposed to their material.

The traditional view of marriage, too, will come under threat, as natural marriage and the formation of the natural family will be undermined by the presentation of this wholly natural state of affairs as 'one option among others'. It will not be presented as 'the better option' because that will likely be deemed by the establishment to be 'discriminatory' to children and to the LGBT community. An educational establishment now forging the social re-engineering of the nation's youth away from traditional married life, towards alternative sexually based lifestyles will most likely create more disharmony in the lives of children, opening them up towards an even more 'experimental' vision of sex and sexuality and make children more vulnerable to the advances of adults who see in children nothing but sexual objects to be used for personal sexual gratification. The proportion of the gay community who favour sexual relationships with younger men who are, in all honesty, boys, will also receive from the educational establishment a generation of children who have been well and truly groomed by LGBT resources to see in their sexuality an adventure of self-discovery, more vulnerable to the advances of adults than ever they were before.

Pornography in Schools

Through a highly sexualised and liberal adult society that takes no heed to the protection of the innocence of children, with sexually graphic images all across a vastly unrestricted and unpoliced internet, the very young, on mobiles, laptops and even home PCs can access pornography at will. The adult world's permissive attitude towards sex has become so prevalent that even children cannot easily be safely protected from it. The solution, it is now posited, is for schools - yes, schools - to teach children about pornography, so that they may make 'educated choices' and be able to distinguish between 'good pornography' and 'bad pornography'. At no time is it questioned by the authorities whether children should be exposed to pornography by adults in the setting of a classroom in what previous generations would describe as a flagrant attack upon the innocence of children and a form of abuse.

SPUC have launched a campaign opposing pornography in schools

Instead, the State, it is argued, should educate children in the use of pornography, for the sake of their 'welfare'. Adherents of this position neglect to mention that parents have no say, in this situation, in the controversial matter of whether the State should, through the educational sector, be able to show children sex taking place between 'consenting' adults in pornographic films or programmes.

Just as a highly sexualised generation of youngsters are thrown into a society that feels unable to 'dictate' to them the dangers of alcohol and the lowering of inhibitions that it entails, so will that same society be powerless to intervene in a state education system that 'educates' children in pornography. As well as the apparent promotion of sexually graphic literature in schools, there is a trend among the educational establishment to accept, in principle at the very least, the idea of adults showing children sexually graphic films in the classroom. The unintended, or perhaps intended, effect of showing children pornography and 'educating' them in it will ensure that pornography is a feature not just of a percentage of children's lives, but all children's lives, including the children of responsible parents aware of the threat of pornography on their children's understanding of sex.

It will also ensure that exposure to sex taking place between adults and footage of explicit scenes of adult sexual relationships will, most likely, become normal in State schools. Who benefits from this? Not children, for whom all pornography is an attack on their innocence, purity and welfare. Who does benefit? Certainly, among those who benefit, will be those who see in children recruits to a new understanding of sexuality that does not object to being introduced to viewing explicit adult sexual relationships at a delicate time in their moral formation. The natural barriers and inhibitions of children will, through propaganda, even through pornography, to sexual relationships with adults will quite obviously be lowered. For parents not to see that this makes their children more susceptible to abuse, or not to recognise that showing pornography to children is abuse, would suggest a naivety that borders on a wilful refusal to recognise what is planned for their children and is, through explicit literature, already happening. Among those campaigning to stop pornographic material in schools, SPUC is taking a leading role, with very little support from other charities associated with child protection. Click here to join their campaign.

Consent: A wall that can so easily be eroded

Nearly every taboo within society concerning sex and sexuality has been overcome by the social reformers who see in liberalism a utopian ideal of personal freedom that creates many victims along the way while creating an entirely dystopic future for children of a corrupt, depraved and therefore illegitimate British State 'democracy'. Nobody has ever voted for what the corruption of their children's minds. Yet that is what we now have in British schools and in British society. The hollow, diabolical lie that sexual activity has no consequences, despite all the evidence pointing to a generation of jilted youth, rife with sexual diseases, many sexual encounters with different partners, unwanted pregnancies, abortions and sexual objectification must be opposed by the Church and by those of goodwill towards Her unless we wish to see parentage of children pass entirely to a State with no regard whatsoever for the welfare and aspirations of children.  In all of this the Church would appear to be an unlikely figure of authority and leadership, but of all institutions that have learned the hard lesson, the hard way, there is much wisdom in this area that the Catholic Church can impart.

Children are in danger, over the next few years,  more than at any time since these isles were converted to Christianity, to scandalous abuse by adults despite even the best child protection procedures because the sexual hysteria of the age sends out confusing and conflicting messages to children about sex and sexuality. Consent, as the sexualisation of children becomes more intense, as society loses its moral foundations and fundamental principles in an age of unfettered personal sexual freedom, is a barrier, a wall that can so easily be brought down. Why? Because in a new age in which children are educated to think about sex and sexuality all the time, children, younger and younger, will be educated not to consider abuse acceptable, but to fail to recognise or be passively unaware when they, the poor lambs, are being abused. The great irony will be that when the Church stands up for the defence of the child, it will be howled down in derision by the very same people who were indignant at its leadership for lamentably failing to protect children. A supremely ironic, if supremely saddening day that will be, not just for the Church but for the whole World.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother to all the children of the World, pray for our country, that children will be protected not only from predatory and wicked clergy, but also the plans of those placed in authority over us who should work for the welfare, rather than the abuse of the child.