Living a chaste life goes much deeper than choosing to abstain from sex. That’s the message that Elizabeth Reha, family life director for the Diocese of Little Rock, has been trying to impart to young Catholics and their parents for more than 14 years.
Reha coordinates annual chastity programs through the diocese, emphasizing God’s gifts of fertility, sexuality and chastity.
“We try to spend some time talking about chastity, impressing upon them the importance of it,” Reha said. “It’s not just about not having sex. It’s about taking care of ourselves.”
Reha contends that while abstinence may focus on what a person can or can’t have, chastity is about what persons can do and have — a lifestyle, which brings respect and romance without regret.
The challenge to be chaste couldn’t be greater in our increasingly secularized society, where American media is saturated with sexual themes and the Internet tempts young and old alike with explicit messages, she said.
“This is an issue, which we’ve had to think about in recent years. We try to increase parental awareness of what our children are being subjected to,” Reha said. “The other issue is that sometimes parents allow the school system to be the educator of sex (instead of Catholic teaching.)”
The programs are separated by gender. The female program is geared toward girls 10 to 13 and their mothers, while the male program targets boys ages 11 to 14 and their fathers. (Another family member or guardian may substitute in the parental role.) The Mother-Daughter Chastity Program is held in the spring and the Father-Son Chastity Program is held in late fall. Both programs take place at St. John Center in Little Rock.
Each program takes a three-pronged approach — biological, psychological and spiritual — to teaching young men and women about chastity and sexuality, Reha said.
Peggy Engelhoven, a parishioner at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Marche, attended the mother-daughter program with her daughter two years ago.
“Sex sells, even if it isn’t selling the right message,” she said, “but it all begins in the home. You can always turn off the television.”
Deacon Dan Hennessey, of St. Edward Church in Little Rock, has not only moderated the father-son program for more than a decade, he also participated as a parent with his now 20-year-old son, Daniel. He is planning to attend the event again in December with 12-year-old son Jason.
Hennessey said chastity isn’t just a concept meant for females.
“We talk about how being chaste applies to every man and woman, every boy and girl, at all stages of life,” he said.
In addition, “we’re here to create questions and open lines of communication,” he said. “It gives fathers the courage to approach this subject with their sons … We want sons to know we can be their source for answers, rather than the locker room or an older brother, and dads need to hear that message, too.”
Looking back, Daniel Hennessey, a junior at the University of Notre Dame, admits he didn’t really want to go, “but at the end of it, I realized it really wasn’t that bad.”
“I don’t remember them harping on ’don’t do this, don’t do that,’” he said. “But breaking off into groups and helping us with questions for our dads was productive and helped with overall communications.”
Daniel Hennessey said he would advise youth “not to blow it off. Just give it a chance, even though they are probably feeling the same way I was feeling. It was a good thing in the end.”
Dr. Matt Jaeger, a pediatrician at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock presented the biological component of the program for the first time in 2006. He is a member of Christ the King Church.
He said the message doesn’t have to be delivered in a cumbersome manner.
“I try to lighten it up a bit,” he said. “My goal is to introduce medical terminology and anatomy in such a way that it isn’t uncomfortable to talk about.”
Jaeger said he used humorous slides with slang terms he knew his audience would be familiar with before going into the appropriate medical terms for various body parts.
The icebreaker worked, he said, because laughter set the stage for open dialogue about the changes young men and women go through.
Parent Kim Duke of St. Jude Church in Clinton attended with her daughter, Mary, in 2005. She agreed that learning to communicate was the best part of the program.
The program, Duke said, also reinforced to her daughter that she was justified in dressing a bit more modestly, a philosophy that perhaps is best summed up with the phrase, “we teach others how to treat us by how we treat ourselves.”
That the body is not just an object of pleasure or a machine for manipulation is the revolutionary thought behind much of what Pope John Paul II said in his “Theology of the Body” and other works. The pope encouraged a true reverence for the gift of sexuality and challenged Catholics to live in a way worthy of our dignity as human beings.
“We talk not only about the biological changes they are about to go through, but also the psychological and spiritual side of growing up … We talk about the gift of ourselves which we eventually will share with a spouse,” Reha said. “That is, of course, a component lacking in what the public educational system teaches.”
The next father-son program will be Dec. 9 and the next mother-daughter event will be March 9, 2008. The programs are designed for about 30 families each. The cost is $25 per family. To register, download a form off the diocesan Web site at www.dolr.org or contact the Family Life Office at (501) 664-0340.
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