Every day this week, through Friday, I am featuring a man I call the Brazilian Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Fr. Paulo Ricardo Azevedo, Jr. A powerful Catholic priest, who does, indeed, speak similarly to Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This week, you will read excerpts of a talk he gave several weeks ago on how to teach the youth about sex. I am sure you will find the talk powerful.
My dear brothers and sisters, we continue our prayer retreat dedicated to families. In this first talk, I would like to speak in respect to a theme, that is quite polemic and quite necessary too for our actual families. How do we educate our youth for living their sexuality? It is a theme that brings a lot of discussion, because it is clear that sexuality that we Christians, that we Catholics think is completely different than what the world lives.

When you try to teach your children of sexuality, they already learned ideas from school, because unfortunately, we pay for those teachers—be they of a particular place with our money, or of a public school with our taxes—to pervert the minds of our children to destroy the education that we give in our homes. Perhaps the point is that the way is not to trust in school but unfortunately, I need to say the rule is not to trust school because school is going to teach some error.

Because unfortunately this, it may be that I am raising a problem, possibly there may be teachers present, or teachers who are watching this program and perhaps these people are offended but you are going to say, “Why?” Because we have to consider that school teaches what is bad, and not only school. The means of communication generally do as well. They also teach what is bad to our children in relation to sexuality. Why? Because our society in general is living a climate of atheism in this material. It may be sexual morality of society at large is built upon atheism.

It is important to unmask this. We must unmask it first that we may know and afterwards unmask it that your children may know, that your children may know why there is a division. Therefore, it is not possible to educate our children in the Christian way of sexuality without clearly and definitively breaking with the actual society. I say more, it is not so much the thought of the society in general, but that of the Class Falante (Clás-sy Fa-lán-chy) [communicator class.] [Fr. Paulo uses a term called the Class Falante (Clás-sy Fa-lán-chy) which means the speaking class, a better translation may be communicator class.]

I want to say this, explaining to you: Unfortunately, I want to say the thoughts of the majority of a group of those who communicate is called the class falante: they are teachers, journalists, psychologists, lawyers, politicians, they are the class falante, those who are filled with opinion. In Brazil there exists an abyss between the class falante and the Brazilian people.

If you were to interview the people, you would find that the Brazilian people have a sexual morality more conservative than the class falante. There is an abyss. What happens is that the conservative majority is the silent majority. This is a statistic not done my me. This statistic made by the newspaper Folha and other publications. The majority of Brazilian youth are conservative in many positions.

[It is said] that the Brazilian youth live a life of casual sex. If you ask them if this is correct and the majority will say that is wrong. Their behavior is one thing, their thoughts are a different issue. The majority of youth when you ask them, if free sex is correct. They say: “I do it, but I know it is wrong.” That is the conservative position. The youth for their part are against the legalization of drugs. . .

The position, the thoughts of the Brazilian youth are in favor of the family. Ninety percent, ninety four percent of Brazilians are against abortion. Maybe after a moment of anguish and weakness they may commit the sin of abortion, but some five hundred responded that the general opinion is conservative in moral matters.

But this opinion of the Brazilians is not the opinion of the class falante. Or it may be that the majority are silent. Our country is governed by the class falante. It is governed by politicians who transmit their opinion, through the journalists who transmit their opinion, through the teachers who transmit their opinion, lawyers, psychologists, therapists of all types. They are speaking, their teachers speak. They speak and what do they speak? Not what the Brazilian people think. It is much more liberal than the thoughts of the general population of Brazil. They want to inculturate the heads of our children, they want to inculturate the heads of our youth into their ideas. They want to create a mind of the youth. Thank God they are not having much success. But if we the Christian majority, if we continue to say nothing they will have more and more success. Do you understand?

We need to speak! We need to have the courage to break this silence and to proclaim that we too are Brazilians. We too are citizens.