Some years ago there was a very successful British comedy with the arresting title No Sex Please We’re British. The title was a play on the legendry shyness of the subject in 19th Century Victorian England. The reality of course was otherwise and that is the point of the title. (Fr Michael Kelly SJ, UCA News)
For many Asian families it is still taboo to discuss sex in public or even in private and many local Catholic Churches around the Continent have worked hard to introduce sex education courses with a Catholic perspective for young people to supplement the content of existing teaching materials.
When they do, they are well thought out and focus on teenagers´ physiological and psychological changes as a starting point in developing a proper attitude to sex.
Discussing sex and its illegal exercise is rattling the Church worldwide. And Churches in Asia are not immune to this. Recent months have seen a spate of events of sexual abuse come to the surface across Asia, bringing on the exercise or hastening the development of sexual abuse protocols.
Bishops in India (whose protocol is nearing completion) and the Philippines (where an “in principle” protocol has been operating for some years) have gone some way to addressing the issues involved. But if international experience is anything to go by –- and repeatedly it has been shown to be the case – these tentative steps need to be bolstered.
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