Catholic adolescents may be more oblivious than opposed to the church's teachings on human sexuality because they are formed more by the culture than by the church, according to several educators commenting on a recent federal study reporting the frequency of premarital sex.

At least 1 in 4 teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease, according to the report released in March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. April is STD Awareness Month, an annual observance to raise public awareness about the impact of sexually transmitted diseases on the lives of Americans.

While cautioning against imputing the same 1 in 4 statistics to young Catholics, Jesuit Father Thomas Rausch said they "take their values from society, the culture in which they are living, and not from the church."

"It is certainly true that Catholic moral teaching is often dismissed by many young adult Catholics," said Father Rausch, T. Marie Chilton professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He pointed to studies which indicate young Catholics lag behind evangelicals and Protestants in terms of practice and knowledge of their religion.

Among the reasons are a lack of involvement in the life of the church with their parents and lack of emphasis on youth ministry, he said.

In November 2007, the U.S. bishops approved guidelines for the instruction of human sexuality for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. In addition to focusing on elements of the church's teaching on chastity, they point out the specific roles of pastors, parents and teachers in training young people to follow church teaching on sexuality.

"If parents are the first and primary teachers of their children, then their faith is not being communicated," said John S. Grabowski, associate professor and director of moral theology and ethics at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

"It is a failure on the part of parents to pass on the faith and moral dimensions to their children to protect them from the culture," he said.

While some have taken the CDC report as evidence of the ineffectiveness of abstinence education, Grabowski holds the contrary view that it is an indictment of the contraception mentality.

"There is a massive failure of public sexual education in this country," he said. "The promise was the sex education taught in public schools was going to reduce pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. That hasn't happened despite the promises of proponents."

Grabowski emphasized the primary role of parents as educators, with pastors, catechists and teachers complementing the message taught at home.

"Some parents do a good job, but a lot are bearing the wounds of a larger culture and lack of understanding," he said. "Basically the kids are being formed by MTV, video games and the Internet, which seem to present a different view than the church advocates to say the least.

"If parents and teachers are not teaching, the kids are being taught by the culture, by aggressively pagan sources," Grabowski added.

There are resources young people respond to, he said, pointing to Pope John Paul II's "theology of the body" teachings.

"They see a vision of sexuality deeper and more challenging than any shallow view the culture puts forward," Grabowski said.

Sex education "can't compartmentalize head, heart and soul" by separating the intellectual, emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects, said a longtime Catholic high school chaplain.

"This is not a one-day lesson, but must be reinforced through every discipline," said Father Michael J. Batterberry, chaplain at John F. Kennedy High School in Burien, Wash. "It is not just saying 'no'; we have to have a reason why it is wrong."

"If a person is to live a good, moral Christian life, and if school, church, family and parents are all on the same page, the chance of that happening is very good," Father Batterberry said.

"If what they hear in school is supporting what they hear at home, it is not just the parents saying it, but an authority figure they respect saying the same thing," he said.

Students today are living in a more complex society than those of 20 years ago, Father Batterberry said.

"The Internet opened a world of information they don't necessarily have to have. Young people today are being exposed to topics they are not able to respond to maturely," he said.

---CNS