I agree with Joanna Moorhead (The Tablet, 30 May) that pushy parents are often the ones who care and it's right they should be perceived so. But it depends on what they're pushy about. When the tiny minority who choose to exercise their legal right and moral duty in conscience to withdraw their child from inappropriate sex education regardless of ecclesiastical approval of the content but knowing they're backed by doctrine, it's a completely different story on how such care is perceived.
As one bishop said to me years ago about parents in his diocese exercising that right, "there are some strange people about." And now with more primary schools adopting sex ed when not legally bound to, such courageous parents are treated at best with patronising disbelief but very often utter disdain. So much for Pope Francis' cri de coeur last April about education programmes when he said "children are not guinea-pigs. "
Edmund P Adamus, Director for Marriage and Family Life, Westminster diocese
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