Main Points
Human Sexuality, Self-Giving Love, Married Love, Sexual Complementarity, and Chastity.
Description
The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education Within the Family (1995), issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family, offers pastoral guidelines to assist parents in educating their children about human sexuality within a rich Christian anthropology, drawing on Scripture, Tradition, and scientific insights. Its main themes portray sexuality as a divine gift—a fundamental component of the person that integrates body and spirit in self-giving love, marked by the complementarity of man and woman, and oriented toward vocations like marriage or consecrated virginity/celibacy. Theologically significant, the document counters modern cultural reductions of sexuality to biology or selfish pleasure by affirming it as a sacred mystery reflecting God's fruitful love, affected by original sin yet redeemed through chastity, thus fostering a "civilization of love" over a "civilization of use."
