Parents must wake up!
By John Smeaton | 9 September 2026
A “relationships and sex education” (RSE) programme, tailored carefully to meet the British Government’s ideological agenda, is being taught in more than 80% of Catholic schools in England and Wales, both primary and secondary. The RSE programme Life to the Full has the backing of every single diocese in England and Wales.
What’s happening in Catholic schools is arguably a worse evil than abortion. As Our Blessed Lord said:
“And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28)
Bishops are answerable to God for how they govern their dioceses, but it’s parents who are chiefly responsible for protecting their children from the spiritual, material and physical harm which RSE lessons at school may be doing to their children.
Canon law states:
“Since they have given life to their children, parents have a most grave obligation and possess the right to educate them. Therefore, it is for Christian parents particularly to take care of the Christian education of their children according to the doctrine handed on by the Church.” (Canon 226, §2)
But what on earth can conscientious parents do to fulfil their “most grave obligation”? To whom do they turn? The difficulties confronting them are immense to the point of being overwhelming.
For example, 13–14 year-olds are being presented with different methods of contraception as ways to avoid having a baby. Parents complaining to the headteacher might well be told that everything is being taught in the context of Catholic doctrine on marriage and the regulation of birth, or that there is no need to worry because Life to the Full is approved by the local diocese and by the Catholic Education Service.
Catholic parents have a natural reverence for ecclesiastical authorities, upon whom their families depend for the sacraments, and for schools, which often enjoy an excellent reputation for their academic and disciplinary record of achievement. The selfless service of countless Catholic priests in parishes throughout England and Wales is also rightly held in high regard.
Conscientious Catholic parents know that they are living in a society hell-bent on ways of life which run completely contrary to church doctrine — on abortion, cohabitation, same-sex “marriage” and other key issues. They look trustingly to the school to help them in passing on to their children moral values which are rooted in the rock-solid teaching of Jesus Christ and of the Church He founded. Surely it’s possible for them to rely on the local Catholic school, where their parish priest is on the board of governors? Have their children somehow got it wrong about what they saw and heard in the classroom? Should the local bishop’s approval of the RSE programme in their child’s school be sufficient to reassure parents?
Tragically, the answer to this last question in particular is emphatically “No”. Parents cannot place their confidence in Life to the Full, the Relationships and Sex Education approved in every diocese of England and Wales and likely to be in use in the school.
However apparently impossible the situation may be for Catholic families, the first duty of parents is to find out what’s going on.
For example, throughout Life to the Full children are given information on how to access abortion, contraception and advice on the sexual lifestyle of their choice without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
With the introduction of compulsory Relationships and Sex Education in September 2020, one of the British government’s statutory requirements was that, before the end of secondary school, children are taught “How to counter misinformation, including signposting towards medically accurate information and further advice, and where to access confidential sexual and reproductive health advice and treatment”.1
“Confidential sexual and reproductive health advice and treatment” is the technical terminology used by the World Health Organization and by the British Government to refer to the provision of abortion on demand, contraception, as well as to advice on pursuing the sexual lifestyle of one’s choice, in complete confidence, and including to children under the age of consent.
The bishop-backed Life to the Full programme, throughout the school years, repeatedly signposts towards Childline, a registered charity, which provides confidential advice on, among other things, accessing abortion and contraception to children in primary school right through to the senior years of secondary school.
Childline is run by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and is strongly committed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) agenda, and to providing children with access to abortion and contraception without parents’ knowledge or consent.
On all these issues, children going on to the Childline website are assured, “Confidentiality means not telling anyone the things you’ve told us. And it means you can trust we’ll keep things private.”
Within a few clicks on the Childline website, any underage girl who may be considering abortion is informed, “You don’t have to talk to your parents but your doctor will encourage you to”, and on the same page, the website purports to tell children what abortion involves, without in any way pointing out the reality of the unborn child’s development, that abortion kills the developing child in the womb or that an abortion can have serious adverse effects on a mother’s physical and mental health.
Over the past century, there has been a complete collapse on the part of the bishops of England and Wales in upholding the doctrine of the Church on the education and formation of children:
In Low Week in 1929 (1st–7th April), prior to a general election, the bishops of England and Wales issued a statement for Catholic voters prior to the general election “to remind all Catholic voters of the … principles which underlie the Catholic attitude on Education” which concluded:
“Whatever authority [the teacher] may possess to teach and control children, and to claim their respect and obedience, comes to him from God, through the parents, and not through the State, except in so far as the State is acting on behalf of the parents.”
Shockingly, nearly 100 years later, in 2019, the Catholic Education Service (CES), on behalf of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, welcomed the Government’s draft statutory guidance on Relationships and Education for schools requiring that children be given information on how to access abortion and contraception and other “sexual health advice” without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The bishops’ welcome, via the CES, was announced on the very same day that the Government’s guidance was published.
On 20 July 1941, at the height Hitler’s power, Archbishop Clemens August von Galen delivered one of three historic sermons, in the Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche) in Münster, denouncing the injustices “crying out to heaven” on the part of the Reich. In words which will reverberate down the centuries, the archbishop urged parents not to neglect their “most sacred duty” to resist the “false teachings and morals” to which the German youth were being subjected. He instructed them to keep their minds firmly on the eternal goal of their educational efforts as parents, to show their children “the way to heaven” and to confirm in their children “the holy will never to stray from the path that leads to God”.
To parents reading this article — and those which follow — I commend to you Archbishop von Galen’s admonition to the parents in his diocese:
“Christian parents, you must keep an eye on all these things, or else you will be neglecting your most sacred duty; you will not be able to be justified before your conscience and before Him who entrusted those children to you so that you would show them the way to heaven!”
Catholic parents in England and Wales must wake up. Understanding the gravity of the situation is the first step to taking prudent, but urgently necessary, action.
Notes
- Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education Statutory guidance for governing bodies, proprietors, head teachers, principals, senior leadership teams, teachers (2019), page 29. ↩︎