Educational Guidance in Human Love: Outlines for Sex Education
101. Homosexuality, which impedes the person’s acquisition of sexual maturity, whether from the individual point of view, or the inter-personal, is a problem which must be faced in all objectivity by the pupil and the educator when the case presents itself.
“Pastorally, these homosexuals must be received with understanding and supported in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their social maladaption, their culpability will be judged with prudence; but no pastoral method can be used which, holding that these acts conform to the condition of these persons, accord them a moral justification.” According to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts deprived of their essential and indispensable rule “.(62)
102. It will be the duty of the family and the teacher to seek first of all to identify the factors which drive towards homosexuality: to see if it is a question of physiological or psycho logical factors; if it be the result of a false education or of the lack of normal sexual evolution; if it comes from a contracted habit or from bad example;(63) or from other factors. More particularly, in seeking the causes of this disorder, the family and the teacher will have to take account of the elements of judgement proposed by the ecclesiastical Magisterium, and be served by the contribution which various disciplines can offer. One must, in fact, investigate elements of diverse order: lack of affection, immaturity, obsessive impulses, seduction, social isolation and other types of frustration, depravation in dress, license in shows and publications. In greater profundity lies the innate frailty of man and woman, the consequence of original sin; it can run to the loss of the sense of God and of man and woman, and have its repercussions in the sphere of sexuality.(64)
103. The causes having been sought and understood, the family and the teacher will offer an efficacious help in the process of integral growth: welcoming with understanding, creating a climate of hope, encouraging the emancipation of the individual and his or her growth in self control, promoting an authentic moral force towards conversion to the love of God and neighbor, suggesting – if necessary – medical-psychological assistance from persons attentive to and respectful of the teaching of the Church.
