An Unhelpfully Emotive Word in a Sensitive Context

Herald Scotland
January 8, 2016

http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/14190408.display/

IF there is one issue that is guaranteed to inflame passions within the Catholic Church, it is sexual health. In late August 2004 Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the then President of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland, attacked the Scottish Executive's forthcoming sexual health strategy. The country faced one of the biggest challenges to its morality in a generation, he argued, as sexual health service providers pushed a "value-free agenda, focusing on a biological/mechanical approach to sex education." He demanded that the Executive consider alternative approaches which set sexual activity within a moral context.

Much has changed since then but the Church still keeps a close eye on the issue. Now it has rounded on part of a new Scottish Government strategy to address teenage pregnancy. A plan to locate sexual health drop-in centres near schools was not merely "sinister", it said, but redolent of an "underhand" strategy to impose a moral standpoint opposed to the Catholic schools' moral perspectives. It also argued that Catholic schools could not be required to signpost young people towards family planning services such as emergency contraception. However, it is worth mentioning that the Church supports other parts of the strategy and approves of the manner in which sex education now focuses on relationships rather than on the sexual act in isolation.

Much concern has been expressed over under-age sex leading to unwanted pregnancies and to single, teenage motherhood, with all the impact on society that that implies. But great efforts have been made to address the rate of teen pregnancies. Last summer it emerged that the Scottish rate had fallen to its lowest-ever level. In 2007 it was 57.7% per 1,000 population: in 2013 it was 37.7%. Clearly, much intelligent, thoughtful work had gone into achieving this reduction, but much more remains to be done in addressing the fact that the number of young women who become mothers is still much higher in deprived areas.

In 2004 Cardinal O'Brien referred to the need by those who worked in Catholic schools to uphold the "moral teaching, faith tradition and sacramental life of the Catholic Church", and it is of course this bedrock against which the latest statement must be judged. We have been accustomed to an unyielding line from the Church on such essentially private matters as contraception, divorce and abortion, though an intriguing study of some 12,000 Catholics in a dozen countries, carried out two years ago, found that most disagreed with the church's teachings on these issues. On contraception, almost 80% of respondents supported the use of artificial birth control.

The Catholic Church is perfectly entitled to take whatever view it wishes, and its opinions must be respected. But that use of the word "sinister" is unhelpful. Is the strategy's plan to locate drop-in centres near schools genuinely "suggestive of threatened evil", to quote the opening words of the definition in Chambers dictionary? Or "ominous" or "malign"? It all depends on your beliefs, of course, but many might feel that, given the sensitive context, such an emotive word should have given way to one more nuanced and rounded.