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There are facts and truths that "sexual libertarians" don't want society or public opinion to know, that even they don't want to know. To sum up those facts - accumulated in different human cultures and societies - we don't need sex to live a full life and be content. To define one's identity on the basis of our sexuality alone is to reduce our human value and dignity. I am a lot more than just my genitalia, and so are you. G.S.
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My purpose in these posts is to bring together significant and, where possible, representative echoes of our best human efforts to make sense of our lives - and of our human sexuality in particular - also including the voice of Jesus Christ, the one Saviour of the world, and testimonies from his Church, such as through her teaching voice, the Magisterium. The Church has been accumulating much valuable wisdom granted her by Almighty God since her foundation at Pentecost. In this way, wherever there is darkness in our human understanding, it will serve to highlight the bright and radiant truth, which is Jesus Christ: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also." John's Gospel 14:6-7
Father Gilles Surprenant, priest & poustinik
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“Mommy, Daddy. Please, talk to me about love.”
Notes from a conference in French “S’il-vous-plaît, parlez-moi
d’amour”given at the Diocese’s offices March 29th, 2017 by Inès
Pélissié du Rausas, a mother who has written books on how parents can form their
children well at the various stages of their development in ways appropriate to
each age to understand and live well their human sexuality.
Inès advocates precocious but progressive
education of children with tenderness by their parents in contrast to the
intrusion of culture and society which, truthfully, is erroneous, violent, and
damaging, all too often ruining or at the very least hurting our children’s
innocence and ability to appreciate all the beauty, truth, and goodness of the
gift of life entrusted to them by God and their own great dignity and that of
others.
As lionesses are so ferocious in defending
their young; so too should we be as parents to defend and form our children
regarding their vocation, their calling to eternal life, which is at stake, and
the spiritual strength God offers us within Marriage and family life. While we
value traditional marriage, children are born who receive life and love in
non-traditional families or households. We probably all know some near or far,
and we love them with all our hearts.
Let us think of our own children, of the
children of others, of the poor, and of those who at first view may be thought
of as on the margins of society. As we put the well-being of our children
first, we need to rediscover or to acquire for the first time our backbone and
stand up for our children, for our family, for Marriage, for others, for the
poor, for the Church, for humanity, and for God.
With the Holy Spirit we have at hand an
infinite variety of new solutions to age old problems created when people –
motivated by so many hidden goals driving them – tamper with our children and
seek to “play around” with their innocent, vulnerable, and trusting hearts. No one must play around with our children’s
hearts!
PRESSURES AND LOBBIES
There are 3 lobbies and “outside interests”
putting considerable pressure everywhere and all the time on our children, and
particularly on what the marketing strategists call “pre-adolescents”. In
reality, there is no such thing as a pre-adolescent unless it is in the
interest of someone to target children in the “latency stage” in view of
influencing them in advance of becoming adolescents. The latency stage is what
children live from the age of 6 until puberty, when in principle all sexual
things don’t interest them or are even repugnant to them. In other words, there
are interests out there addressing our children in the latency stage as though
they were already adolescents, or potential adolescents, or children wanting to
become adolescents. These interests threaten to interrupt the safety of the
latency stage as they prematurely stimulate the imagination of children and, in
so doing, damage their innocence.
Tactic # 1.
Under
the pretext of taking the defense of freedoms / liberties and equality, such
as, for example, the fight against AIDS, all manner of misinformation and
outright lies are propagated, always with the overhanging threat of severe
reprisals upon anyone who might dare to oppose this tactic in real life and
time.
Tactic # 2.
Consider
all the frantic activity around pornography – such as with the considerable
pressure on parents to provide their young children with an I-Pad, or I-Phone,
or Laptop, or their equivalent – to sever the safety ties of young children to
their parents and make them free to “roam” and be led astray by any number of
“wolves” in sheep’s clothing presented to them in any number of creative and
cleverly disguised ways.
All pornographic voices and images
and words speak of prostitution – none of them speak of love, not of true love,
nor of divine love – but always of pleasure, greed, power, and domination.
Solicitation to draw children into various forms of prostitution of their
bodies as pleasure objects and to treat others not as persons but as pleasure
objects often takes violent forms but is always aggressive with dangerous
consequences. The person of the child is hurt,
damaged, within their very self, but they also become dangerous for others by
being conditioned to believe that they are incapable of mastering or
restraining their own impulses.
SOLUTION We
must do all we can to protect our children against these attacks and form them
to learn to avoid such animal and predatory behaviors as are portrayed and
promoted by pornography in all its forms. What is hopeful is that with children
we can always repair any damage, and they can always learn and grow. With a
child we can always love and begin afresh.
Tactic # 3.
We
have all become painfully aware of and familiar with the latest new ideology
which aggressively seeks to impose on young and vulnerable children and
adolescents and even young adults a burden to select their own gender, as if
our gender were an “à la carte” activity for human beings. Gender ideology
negates human sex and gender by replacing male and female with homosexual and
heterosexual, M & F with H & H. This new ideology seeks
to replace the individuality and complementarity of our human nature as
designed by God with pleonasm – that is, with what is the same as, with
redundancy – favoring what is the same as me, rejecting what is different from
me. It is the destruction of the richness of complementarity for the sake of
the identical.
SOLUTION We
must avoid using any other terms than those given to us by God – male and
female – and simply say that I am woman, or I am man, girl or boy. The term
“heterosexual” was coined by a German who wanted to promote homosexual activity
in the 18th/19th century. He used from the Greek
“heteros” which means different and “sexue” or in Latin “sexus” which means
separate or different. In other words, the term is redundant, saying the same
thing twice. It’s a clever trick to annihilate the final purpose of our human
sexuality – which is life and union for life and stability in Marriage and
family life – and replace it with individuals seeking after their own pleasure.
In the Creator’s plan
for our happiness, the finality of our human sexuality is union and fecundity,
life and family. These other “interests” want to promote “sex ed” – that is,
education to sexual practices that it is claimed “everyone wants” and how to
practice them providing safety and protection from sexually transmitted
infections and diseases. However, there is never any question or concern in
“sex ed” to protect the person in all that we are and can be. Such “sex ed” ignores and
tramples the meaning and beauty of the human body as well as the body’s union
to relationship, marriage, children, and family, and the truth that we all want
to be loved. All the “dirty” content damages the child’s heart by presenting a
perversion of human sexuality. The solution is to reach the child’s heart by
treating with the truth, love, beauty, and life, which is good news, and “different
from what you have seen”, what is presented out there in the world, in culture,
and in the various media of mass and social communication.
SUMMARY The
pre-adolescent or rather the child in the latency and innocent stage is “beaten
up or mugged” by publicity which treats him like an adolescent when he isn’t
one yet.
First we have to present love as beautiful before we can
treat what is dirty, false, violent, exploitative, abusive, etc. We only have
to look at video clips that turn various scenarios into pornography. Porn is to
be avoided by everyone in all of its forms, because this garbage expresses
itself in the heart and hardens it. The world of “hot” folks is actually
glacial… cold… without real love which builds the other up without exploiting
him or her.
7 to 8
years old is the age of reason which introduces a new form of stability for the
child who leaves infancy behind.
6 or 7
to 12 is the latency period during which a form of modesty awakens and
manifests itself in different ways. From now on the child wants to bathe alone,
now having a greater awareness of himself, of his body. As a result the boy
displays a kind of repugnance for everything sexual and even for marks of
affection for members of the opposite sex.
The
young girl for her part may begin to keep an intimate diary which must be
protected from her brothers.
In any
case parents must gently open their child to others during this period during
which both girls and boys are inclined to close in on themselves.
In the
west for the past 100 years puberty has been advancing and showing itself
younger; without doubt due to pollution and the increased presence of estrogen
in the environment due to the pill and other sources which end up in the waters
and the soils and, as a result, in the food chain.
THE CHILD IN THE LATENCY STAGE
Paradox # 1.
The child is really connected but very alone. He
has a great need to be loved. Parents should ask themselves, “Does my child
know that I love him?” Even in the culture we see evidence of this unavoidable
truth as, for example, in the “Harry Potter” series of novels we see from
beginning to end the conviction that “evil can do nothing against the
sacrificial love of a mother.”
Paradox # 2.
Our
children need to be absolutely loved by their parents, no matter the
conditions. In addition there is the even greater good that they are wanted and
loved by God. Let’s do what we must so that they can immerse themselves and bathe
in the love of God.
Paradox # 3.
During
this latency stage the child puts forward “me by myself” but for all that we
continue to deliberately accompany, congratulate, and surround him with our
love, perhaps a little more discretely, but just as truly and personally,
despite the new “distance”.
Paradox # 4.
External autonomy versus interior liberty – The
child now becomes more competent in getting around and doing things; but going
about taking care of his own needs by himself requires maturity, more than he is
likely to have at this age. His incomplete maturity requires a degree of
support that varies from one child to another. Parents need to observe and
realize that during this latency stage the child cannot yet be really mature or
entirely autonomous, despite his declarations, demands, or protests. Here
lies the great challenge for the parent who is too busy and tired: to recharge
his strength and energy for the good of the child in his suffering, pain, and
shadows. The challenge is all the greater for the parent still living with his
own sufferings, pain, and shadows; which he must manage privately in order to
continue providing the emotional education of the child. This emotional
education of the child becomes all the more difficult in view of the child’s
own interior states. At this level, what the parent is going through can make
him more compassionate to the states through which his child is passing, and
this same compassion can allow the parent to sufficiently forget himself to
attend to his child’s needs. In
the matter of emotional education in his human nature and sexuality, the child
has the right to see, to hear, and to know his parents’ love story, and thus,
his origins. It doesn’t matter if one of the parents and spouses is no longer
around. The remaining parent must put aside all recrimination he may feel
against his ex- spouse; because the child has both the right and the need to
know about his origins in the love that his parents had for one another, and
hence, for him their child.
EMOTIONAL AND SEXUAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
BEFORE ADOLESCENCE
The emotional and sexual education of our
children needs to happen before they enter into adolescence, and it can begin
as soon as they ask questions that remotely or closely touch all that has to do
with their origin or sexuality. This education of the child by their parent
must always be done with great tenderness and affection; for this is the most
faithful expression of the truth about love which gives life not only at the
beginning but which continues to give life all during life. Given the human and
cultural situation in which we currently live, parents need reference points in
order to effectively embark on the emotional and sexual education of their
children.
Reference point # 1.
Human
love is lived in the world of human
persons. Human beings are not things, not animals, not machines,
not toys, but persons. We, human beings, we are a living network of
body, soul, spirit, mind, and heart. So we’re not talking about a model of
animal instinct as in wild or domesticated beasts. We are not human beasts, but
rather human persons. This is why we absolutely reject all forms of
pornography, of prostitution, or of perverted sexuality which, in every case,
showcases instinctual, impulsive, and therefore, animal behaviors and
activities.
Reference point
# 2.
Your
body – is you – it is not a thing which belongs to you, but you are your body at the same
time that you are also your soul, your spirit, your mind, and your heart, which
all together form the person that you are. So what your body lives, you
live it too. That is why all behaviours which deform the human person and human
sexuality by whatever pornographic expression – such as submission to
concupiscence or instinctive behaviours such as fellatio and others – are a
violence against and a disruption of your dignity. Serial or repeated sexual
relations harden the heart which becomes incapable of truly loving or being
loved; which brings deep suffering of isolation and interior cold. Having
recourse to pornography causes the person with a hard heart no longer to
believe in real love or even in life. Such a person may either be swallowed up
in the impulse to suicide or may seek an escape in the artificial option of “no
sex” or refusing to identify with any gender: “I am neither male nor female,
neither man nor woman”.
Reference point
# 3.
Faced with all this pollution of ideas, of
propaganda, and of interior states, what do we say to our children? “I am made to love… I have a heart.”
The parent can and must soak the heart of their child in love and the child
will himself or herself recognize “garbage” assertions. In the same way that
one must wax well with many repetitions a piece of furniture made from high
quality wood to protect it from stains; so must parents “wax well” their
children’s hearts, spirits, minds, and souls. The “layers” of wax are so many
intimate moments of complicity with their child as they entertain all sorts of
assertions about love – about their parents’ love but also about God’s love –
of which he, the child, is the product and of which he continues to be the
object, and of which he is also now becoming the subject, capable of loving in
his turn in a disinterested fashion with a sacrificial love; ever seeking to
serve the good of the other, the beloved.
Creative use of language to convey the profound
beauty and meaning of our affections and human sexuality
The
mommy’s tummy, the mommy’s uterus is a sanctuary
of life and safe cradle
for the baby right next to the mommy’s heart where the baby hears his mommy’s
heart, and together they make the music of two hearts beating together.
How will
the baby come out of mommy’s tummy? The baby will come out by a little path reserved for life and for
love, reserved for the baby to live, and also reserved for love and
therefore for the daddy.
The
vagina of the mommy is made only for
life and for love.
The anus
is for something else, to let the body get rid of garbage.
The
channel for pee is also for getting rid of garbage, even if it seems to be the
same channel for two different things, it is only part of it which is shared,
but by only one thing at a time.
How did the baby get into mommy’s tummy?
Path of love # 1.
The
baby entered into mommy’s tummy by the same special path that the baby will
take to come out on his birthday. It is the little path reserved for life and
for love, for the heart.
Path of love # 2.
Daddy
and Mommy love each other and tell each other, but it isn’t enough – just like
when you are glad to see me and give me a hug – so Daddy and Mommy give each
other a special hug.
Path of love # 3.
When
the heart of the daddy and the mommy are full of love; then the daddy’s heart
is also full of love and he is able to give all his love to the mommy. The
Daddy’s rod gently lifts up and is able to enter into the mommy’s path which is
reserved for life and for love.
Path of love # 4.
Then
there is a crowning of their love… there is great joy in their united hearts
and bodies, and it is from this love that the child begins to exist in the
mommy’s tummy.
ADOLESCENTS
The education of our children sits squarely in
our right and our duty to think and to speak. Various ideologies try to
intimidate us and reduce us to silence, but it is more essentially our right
and our duty to speak with precision to our children who, for their part, have
both the right and the need to know the whole truth about their life and their
origin, their human nature, and their human sexuality. Adolescents now observe
the dichotomy among the various voices demanding their attention and
allegiance; so we must approach them with a much more precise language.
Approach # 1.
Confronted by all the voices speaking of human
sexuality, with adolescents we need to talk
all the more precisely, because they have a greater need to understand
more concretely and specifically.
Approach # 2.
We must also speak to them of the interior battle and of self mastery; that as human
persons we have a great capacity for self-control, but we must exercise it, and
that our self mastery grows with time and practice (just as sin and
irresponsibility also grow stronger), and that the love of God is the source of
our interior strength. It is God who loves us first and who draws us to love
Him, to love others, and to love ourselves.
Approach # 3.
It is good and necessary for us to elicit in the child – and eventually the adolescent – admiration for
the perfection of love. Loving is like having a good voice. To sing well one
must see and know the partition well. The lyrics and notes of the partition
are: respect for the other, fidelity to the other, tenderness towards the
other, and paying attention to the expectations of the other.
Approach # 4.
Homophilia
– at the beginning of adolescence youth find reassurance in their peers and can
feel all kinds of emotions towards their peers, but there is nothing sexual
about it. However, in our time we bear the burden of a culture which has been manipulated
for decades by those with strategic agendas to change society’s attitudes. This
culture tries to sexualize the other. Unfortunately, this sexualization of the
other makes it very difficult to engage in any ordinary, true, and
disinterested friendship without having any sexual overtones.
Approach # 5.
One must certainly not listen to voices that
advocate “trying everything” in terms of sexual activity, because we have a
“body memory” which even after a single act colors everything that follows.
That is why outside of the loving relationship of one man and one woman in a
committed, permanent, exclusive, and faithful union, such as in marriage, all
sexual activity conditions the human heart on a path of egoism and the quest
for personal pleasure; which hardens the human heart and makes true love all
the more difficult.
Approach # 6.
A youth can become aware of a “dragger” or
homosexual predator trying to impose on him or her. This youth must understand
– this is absolutely essential – that “feeling” something is not “consenting”.
The youth, like any human person, remains ever free to ask himself, “What do I
want?” and “Is this good or not?” the “No!” of which I am capable in my
conscience protects me in order to one day be able to say a beautiful “Yes!” to
the person that I will choose to love and who will love me in return.
Approach # 7.
The young adolescent woman like the young adult
woman can find herself temporarily in the condition of “homo femini” or fear of
male sexuality because of its violent portrayal in pornography. She must learn
from her parents that it isn’t really like that in a loving relationship between
human persons.
Parents,
enjoy many gratuitous moments sitting down face to face with your child. See
the relationship of befriending when the fox meets the little prince. We must
approach gently, and that takes time. For boys, it’s better by the father; but
if not, the mother must do it. For example, the mother can say to him, “Your
father and I want to tell you…”
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF CHILDREN
Original sin consists in man and woman turning away from
their relationship with God the Creator to prefer making up their own life,
their own reality, their own universe, their own definition of human life and
of good and evil. There is nothing more painful in our human condition than
this isolation from God, who is not only our origin in life and in love but
also our final destiny for eternal life and perfection of love and communion.
That is why it is essential for parents to introduce
their child to God. However, we cannot give what we do not already possess.
Still, with God, it is never too late. So, the simple realization by parents
that there is somewhere within them some sort of desire to give their children
what is best can already open within them the gateway to all that is “beyond”.
These are the opportunities in real time, in the present moment, to give their
children the “sacraments” or knowledge of God, or prayer, or spirituality, or
faith. The Holy Spirit is ever present and eager to supply our weakness and
guide us.
The heart of the Judeo-Christian Tradition is clearly
that the God who is good and loving, the Creator of the Universe, wants to have
a relationship of friendship and love with every human person. God, who is
infinitely rich, wants to give us everything, but all the obstacles that exist
are within us… the “gates” within us are not always open, or else they are not always
open wide. God our Creator shows such an extreme respect for our freedom that God
seems to us to be absent or silent. This impression is false, because as soon
as we open ourselves to God, the Holy Three in One are right here.
BAPTISM – At Baptism God the Holy Trinity engenders within the human
person a “family relationship” of adoption introducing the person – even a
newborn baby – into the heart of the relationship of communion already existing
from all eternity and which “defines” the divine being we call God and whose
nature Jesus has revealed as a “communion of divine persons in a single divine
being”. The life that exists in God in perfect love and perfect harmony begins
to “flow” or “vibrate” in us, and we begin to “live in God”. As for everything
else regarding our human life on Earth, this new life “in God” must be
cultivated, first by our parents and godparents, but gradually by the free and
motivated participation of the child himself or herself. In time, the presence
and love of God can be experienced as a “spiritual fire” within.
CONFIRMATION – Whether it is the day after its birth or at 11 / 12 years
old, at its confirmation or chrismation the child receives a new “effusion” or
“outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God” as the apostles and 100 or so other
disciples received while they were gathered around the Mother of Jesus in the
Upper Room on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is ever at work to infuse
his gifts: piety for greater respect for the works of God, especially man and
woman, girl / boy; and all the other spiritual gifts for the person and the
charisms for the good of others and the Church. Parents can / must help their
child to see himself or herself as loved by God and that they receive
themselves from God in love. Their gender – female or male / woman or man – was
given to them at their conception and will ever manifest itself and develop.
HOLY COMMUNION – as the mother gives of her blood / milk in nursing her
baby at the maternal breast, so does Jesus – risen from the dead and Son of God
– give of himself as spiritual food to communicants, giving us in Holy Communion
a veritable “transfusion” of the divine life He possesses with his Father and
the Holy Spirit. Our sharing in the divine life of love which is in God and in
which we are initiated through Baptism is in a continual process of development
and not yet “permanent” on Earth, and it will only be permanent in Heaven when
we will have accomplished our life and mission.
ANOINTING OF THE SICK – As He did in Palestine, Jesus continues to heal the sick
and wounded while forgiving sins and driving out evil spirits who at various
times torment the baptised. Sometimes physically healing and other times not, at
all times God manifests his sovereign divine will; our Creator and Redeemer
knows what we need most in view of our eternal destiny, and often what God
wants to give us may not be what we want or ask. We need to trust in God.
PENANCE – RECONCILIATION – Jesus
allows us to meet Him face to face as He did when He walked the Earth through
the representatives He gives himself and whom He sends us in the persons of his
priests (HOLY ORDERS).
MARRIAGE – To those who believe in Him and who put their trust in Him
Jesus vouches that their love will reflect his faithful and sacrificial love
for his Church, his Beloved, the body of all his assembled faithful disciples.
When couples – both the man and the woman – practice putting their faith in God
and make room for him in their personal lives and also in their couple; then
their Marriage becomes truly sacramental. Christ manifests his love for the
woman through her husband, and for the man through his wife. In their couple,
their love becomes a true reflection of the Holy Trinity.
P.S.: Genesis
portrays God’s creation of humans as man and
woman in original innocence, with an amazing capacity for authentic friendship
and selfless, self-sacrificial love. The enemy of humanity seeks to “sexualize”
our capacity for friendship in order to reduce us to slavery and deprive us of
the liberty of the children of God. Sin divided us into man or woman. Patriarchy is
domination by man. Feminism
reduces us to neither man nor woman. Gender ideology
seeks to neutralize our
innate human gender as woman or man by replacing our identity with the illusion
of a “choice”. For its part, the “gay” culture and homosexual “lobby”
prey on young children before puberty and young adolescents who are likely to
be experiencing temporary “Homophilia” as they develop, in a deliberate
strategy to impose their ideology on them precisely when they are most
vulnerable. Their objective is to have the young “fall” and identify themselves
as “gay” or “lesbian” and, reducing them to sexual activity, deny and abandon their great dignity as girl or boy, woman or man, in
accord with the gender with which they were endowed at their conception. The
good news is that Jesus Christ our Lord restores lost innocence and our
capacity for the reciprocal gift of self for which our gender as man or woman
empowers us, God’s gift to enable us to live our human life and love in the
image and likeness of God the Holy Trinity.
These notes were taken
from a conference given March 29th, 2017 at the offices of the
Archdiocese of Montreal by Inès Pélissié du Rausas with added
thoughts by me. He book containing a much more complete and detailed
explanation of her instructions to parents is entitled:
“S’il te plait, parle-moi de l’amour ! »
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My purpose in these posts is to bring together significant and, where possible, representative echoes of our best efforts as human beings to make sense of our lives in general - and of our human sexuality in particular - and to also include the voice of Jesus Christ, the one Saviour of the world, and testimonies from his Church, such as through her teaching voice, the Magisterium; given that the Church has been accumulating the wisdom granted her by Almighty God since her foundation at Pentecost. In this way, wherever there is darkness in our human understanding, it will serve to highlight the bright and radiant truth, which is Jesus Christ: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also." John's Gospel 14:6-7 G.S.
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© 2006-2023 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2023 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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