Joe's Answer to Jeremy Millsap's question's, week 4

From: CH 5 Pg. 110 & DeLuca3.

Seattle University, as a Catholic school, does not allow the distribution of condoms on campus. Our text explains that “we make choices every day about the capacities of others to render judgments on which we depend, ranging from the less consequential to life threatening.” DeLuca’s article also mentions that staged die-ins were used tactically by organizations such as ACT UP in order to oppose the lobbying against the availability of condoms in public schools as well as drive a symbolically unveiling message home to the Catholic Church.

a. Do you think that these choices, left in the hands of the church to decide, affect the credibility of Catholicism?
I don't feel that when these decisions are left in the hands of the catholic church to decide affects the cridibality of the church. The church has had relatively the same opinions on birth control for the past hundreds of years if the were to change their view now just to comform to the current views on birth control then I think their credibality would be compromised. The issue here is not the cridibility of the church but that of who should be diciding these issues.I don't think the church should be involved in issues like these in public schools. It should be completely up to the school department if they pass out condoms in their schools. There is a time and place for the church to interviene in our lives and this is not one of them.

b. Is something happening rhetorically when these traditions are adopted as family values? Why or why not?
When families adopt these values I think it is because the family and a long lasting believe and respect for the catholic church. Rhetorically a family can view the church has a higher power that is all knowing and to question there morals is not an option. Some people feel that if they go against anything that the church says they might as well not believe in any of it so this causes families to follow the traditions of thier church and pass it on to their chilrden to make sure they do the same.

c. How does being protected from sexual knowledge/information persuade us to think or feel about our own sexual behavior, and even our bodies?
I think when we are protected from sexual knowledge and information we are forced to make our own ideas about sexual behavior, which can be a dangerous thing for adolecent teens.
When I was in middle school I went to a catholic school and I don't remember learning much about sex in the class rooms but I do remember hearing stories about sex from older class mates in the boys bathroom. I know the information I got from a twelve year old was not accurate and not the best place to learn how two people have sexual intercourse. I more so learned the curse words for body parts than anything else. Me experience has convinced me that schools has the responsibility to teach their students about sex and their bodies before they learne the wrong things fron their friends.