Remember hearing about penal times when Roman Catholics were given heavy fines by the government for not going along with the state religion?

Well..

At least eight Russo-German families in Salzkotten, Germany, have suffered heavy fines and now their fathers have been sentenced to prison, because they have refused to send their elementary school-age children to mandatory sexual education classes.

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With fines having failed to force the families into compliance, government officials have now sentenced each of the families' respective fathers to spend a brief time in prison. One father has already spent seven days in jail and was released Friday.

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"This type of persecution from German government officials against the Salzkotten 8 shows how committed the German system is to punishing home school families and others who do not comply with the compulsory education laws," said IHRG President Joel Thornton, "even when they are only removing their children from a single clearly objectionable class."

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The Youth Welfare Office or Jugendamt - an institution similar to Child Protective Services - acts as the government's chief intervening instrument, and when prison and fines do not bend Christian families into compliance, they recommend that these Christians lose parental custody of their children.

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That's not England in the 1600's, that's Germany right now. Of course here in England things are different...

Parents will face fines if they remove 15-year-old children from sex education lessons as they become part of the national curriculum for the first time.

Lessons in relationships and sex will begin at five, with prescribed content for each age group.

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Mothers and fathers risk being fined and prosecuted under anti-truancy laws.

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The biggest kick in the teeth at the moment is the Catholic Education Service who said merely that they are "dissapointed". That's great. A law is passed making it illegal for me to exercise my rights as a parent and they are dissapointed.

Not as dissapointed as I am.

Three weeks ago the website administrator for Cardinal Newman's Canonisation at Birmingham Oratory sent me an email asking me to draw attention to an article on the Newman Cause website. I meant to blog about it, but unfortunately it got buried in my email and was forgotten.

Ella reminded me about it today and it occurs to me that this is quite relevant right now what with the whole government forcing sex education on fifteen year olds thing...

Without intellectual integrity, education will degenerate into social engineering. Without conscience and the Faith, in Professor MacIntyre’s words, ‘even the best university education may result in a peculiarly dangerous form of bad character, that in which the cultivation of the mind, independently of religion’ makes conscience degenerate into ‘mere self-respect’.

These twin dangers have an obvious bearing on contemporary educational dogmas, especially perhaps on the State’s vision of education in human relationships and sexuality. Both intellectually and morally the Church’s vocation in education is to oppose such distortions.

Intellectually, as MacIntyre shows, Newman’s understanding of education departs radically from the politically-motivated model currently in vogue. For Newman, MacIntyre explains, ‘the aim of … education is not to fit students for this or that particular profession or career, to equip them with theory that will later on find useful applications to this or that form of practice. It is to transform their minds, so that the student becomes a different kind of individual, one able to engage fruitfully in conversation and debate, one who has a capacity for exercising judgement, for bringing insights and arguments from a variety of disciplines to bear on particular complex issues’ (pp. 147-48). Independence of mind, rather than compliance with socio-economic expectations, is the goal of education.

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I'm not entirely sure why more isn't being made of this.

The government are at least pretending to be interested in our views on it's plans to extend sex education down to five year olds. We don't have to take time off work to get on a train and go to a meeting or speak in front of a room full of people or anything like that, we just need to visit a website and fill in a form.

The deadline is 4pm this Friday. It would be a bit on a hypocritical side to not fill in the form and then spend the next few years complaining about the new law and saying (as Joanna puts it) "Ugh! How shocking!!"

So come on guys, spend a few minutes this lunchtime or this evening to let them know what you think.

It can't be any more pointless than writing to a Bishop.

Update: Oh yes it can.

Did anybody out there manage to understand what in the world was going on with that survey? I think maybe it would make sense if I had spent the last few weeks poring over several tedious documents... maybe.

The Pontifical Council for the Family says...

Each child is a unique and unrepeatable person and must receive individualized formation. Since parents know, understand and love each of their children in their uniqueness, they are in the best position to decide what the appropriate time is for providing a variety of information, according to their children's physical and spiritual growth. No one can take this capacity for discernment away from conscientious parents.

Each child's process of maturation as a person is different. Therefore, the most intimate aspects, whether biological or emotional, should be communicated in a personalized dialogue. In their dialogue with each child, with love and trust, parents communicate something about their own self-giving which makes them capable of giving witness to aspects of the emotional dimension of sexuality that could not be transmitted in other ways.

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Individualized formation.

Parents decide the appropriate time, no one can take this capacity away.

Intimate aspects communicated in a personalized dialogue.

Does that sound even close to what happens in so called "Catholic" schools today?

We have a new Archbishop of Westminster. Lar-di-dar. I can't honestly say I give a monkeys. I've tried getting excited about it but I really can't. Maybe it's because Archbishop Vincent Nichols has been instrumental in making sure that my daughters will be shown a diagram of a penis before their ninth birthday whether I like it or not.

I consider this a serious betrayal of Catholic parents.

Rule of thumb: If it seems inappropriate to put something in a thought bubble above an Archbishop's head, then it's probably inapropriate to show it to little girls without their parents consent. Got it? Good.

That's not a picture I lifted from Google by the way, that's the actual diagram from the "All That I Am" materials that Archbishop Nichols approved. More on this from the Indomitable Jackie Parkes

I hope and pray that Archbishop Nichols proves me wrong, that he turns out to be instrumental in leading a genuine reform of the culture in the Church in England and Wales, but my guess is that he's going to do absolutely nothing except provide my own Bishop with a convenient excuse for deferring his own responsibility for Catholic education elsewhere.

Or and I just being ungenerous?