Elena Barbera has produced a film about how the American educational system is sexualizing children in their care.  Here is her film, your Irascible Correspondent will comment once you’ve had a chance to watch it.

This is truly a huge problem and it needs to be addressed.  First, let’s define our terms.  To groom someone is to prepare that person’s mind to accept ideas, attitudes and behaviors that would be questioned or rejected out of hand were they baldly presented.  This includes not only sexual topics, but political, religious and so on.  As Barbera  says in the film, it is seduction.

Next, let’s look at some of the objections raised by those who dislike the process and outcomes but object to the method used to oppose the agenda.  Karlyn Borysenko, whose material I generally agree with, says that by focusing on the books you are drawing kid’s attention to them and making them more interesting to kids, who are naturally curious and prone to searching out forbidden fruit.  She takes a wider view, that all this is done in the context of destroying bourgeois norms in order to advance Socialism.  I believe her thesis is correct, but she errs in opposing the banning of the books; the books are just one channel through which the poison is introduced into young minds; of course they must be removed.

In my opinion Barbera’s program has two rather glaring lacunae.  The first is that America has been being groomed for over 50 years.  Particularly I note the moral and ethical deterioration of culture as presented on mainstream television.  TV has been a leader in the corruption of morals, not only in this country, but all across the world.  Because it was done so gradually the audience became desensitized and accepted as normal ever more transgressive ideas and attitudes.  It was easy to discredit and dismiss anyone who objected as some kind of prude or crank, just as she is being dismissed now.

The second thing that is missing is a positive (I like vs. I don’t like) vision of the human person.  There is no presentation of what a healthy life of virtue, or a deeper understanding of what a person is and what ideal human relations would look like.  Perhaps she is reluctant to put forward the norms her Christian world view entails for fear of alienating her allies.  By failing in this she uncritically accepts the vision of human nature presented in the culture today after decades of moral decay.  In your Irascible Correspondent’s view that undermines her whole enterprise.

In order to succeed the entire philosophical and theological underpinning of modern cultural norms must be challenged.  Granted that we cannot turn back the clock.  Never the less a powerful and attractive vision of the virtuous life can be and must be articulated if enough people are to be energized to choose a better life for themselves, their children and our civilization.  I make bold to suggest that Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body is just such program.