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Chastity educator rips Growing in Love

The Catholic sex education program, Growing in Love, has received yet another scathing criticism, following the banning of one of its texts in the New Orleans ArchdiQcese and widespread parental opposition in the diocese of Syracuse, N.Y. (See articles in Defend Life, Mar.-Apr., 2003.)

The Lent-Easter, 2003, edi­tion of Voices magazine carried a critique of the program by Margaret Whitehead, a Director of Religious Education in the Arlington, Va., diocese.

Following an exhaustive study of Growing in Love, which is one of the sex education programs approved for use in schools in the Baltimore Archdiocese, Mrs. Whitehead concluded: "The Harcourt Growing in Love program is not suitable for Catholic children, contrary to the claims made for it.

"Rather than being part of the solution to the sex-saturated society of today from which it purports to save Catholic children, it is part of the problem.

"Parents, pastors and teachers concerned for the well-being of their children have ample grounds to challenge the introduction or use of this program in any educational setting that purports to be Catholic."

Growing in Love, a program for Catholic grade schools, was published by Harcourt Religion publishers in 2000.

One of the program's chief authors, James DeBoy, is a former director of the Baltimore Archdiocese's Division of Leadership Development.

Mrs. Whitehead, who received her Master's Degree in Religious Studies from the Archdiocesan Catechetical Institute in New York, has been involved in chastity education' for more than two decades.

She is former president of the Educational Guidance Institute, which conducted chastity and abstinence programs in both public and Catholic set­tings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.