An Open Letter to Ten Ten
12 January 2025
Dear Mr Isaacs,
Thank you for your statement and comprehensive report responding to Voice of the Family’s Analysis of Ten Ten’s Life to the Full programme, and for undertaking to hold an online discussion with priests, teachers, governors and others involved in Catholic education on 21 January 2025, which we hope will be well attended and fruitful. We are very encouraged by your proactive response to the concerns we have raised about Ten Ten’s approach to Relationships and Sex Education in Catholic schools.
After careful consideration of your statement and report, Voice of the Family’s position regarding Ten Ten’s Life to the Full programme remains unchanged. We stand by every statement made in our analysis, nor do we consider your report to disprove or even to respond adequately to any of our concerns. Despite the handful of concessions you have made, we maintain that the objective violations of Catholic teaching which we have identified in your programme cannot be justified by your counterarguments, which largely appeal to nominally Christian sensibility, specious pedagogy and the guidance of the Department for Education and of the Catholic Education Service. Throughout your report, you have also resorted to flat contradiction and a general criticism of the tone of our analysis, rather than its substance.
We therefore find it necessary to lay out the principles on which our position is based, with the intention of following up in due course with a more detailed examination of your statement and report. We should mention that we do not think it urgent to complete this in advance of your online discussion on 21 January, since our primary concern is to inform parents, whom you do not invite to participate. We also wish to emphasise that we do not despair of reaching an agreement with you, as unlikely as this might seem at present. In fact, we are confident of coming to a general agreement with all faithful Catholics, who are bound by the same principles, whether they realise it or not. Finally, we should acknowledge that Ten Ten is neither the author nor the most responsible partisan of the errors that are currently being spread in Catholic schools, nor do we suppose that there are not other, less scrupulous parties who would be more than willing to assume Ten Ten’s privileged position with the Catholic Education Service and with dioceses throughout England and Wales with no regard whatsoever for authentic Catholic teaching or the genuine well-being of children. But the fact remains that the Life to the Full programme cannot be fixed by piecemeal changes because its whole approach is opposed to Catholic faith and morals, which, contrary to being “hard to understand, let alone accept” for young people, as you suppose, are entirely comprehensible and acceptable given adequate instruction and the grace of God.
As the great American educator, John Senior, observes in his book, The Restoration of Christian Culture (IHS Press, 2008), “Controversies in Education, as in anything else, are consequences of deeper divisions in philosophy and ultimately in religion.” (p107). The central error of the Life to the Full programme is theological, consisting of a naturalism which denies (or at least remains silent about) the supernatural destiny of every human person and the absolute necessity of divine grace for achieving this end, promoting instead a purely natural idea of human health, happiness and the ultimate purpose of our existence, achievable through purely natural means. This error is even at the heart of your report and implicit in its title, “Changing Hearts and Minds with Creative Catholic Content”, as we will explain.
As Catholics, we are bound to believe that sanctifying grace, the supernatural life of the soul, was lost through original sin, restored through the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and made available to us principally through the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, which are the principal conduits of grace and the ordinary means which God offers for our salvation. The fact that we cannot attain or persevere in the life of grace without His help is indicated by our Lord in the Gospel when He says, “without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5) and “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life” (Jn 6:64). It is also what is indicated in the words from which Ten Ten takes its name: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.” (Jn 10:10). That these words represent a stark warning as well as an assurance does not need to be spelled out.
Our death, judgement and whether we spend eternity in heaven or in hell depends on whether we live and die in a state of grace or of mortal sin. Sanctifying grace, along with the supernatural gift of faith, is received at Baptism, developed continually by Holy Communion, and, if ever we have the misfortune (as almost all of us do) of losing sanctifying grace entirely by committing a mortal sin, and thus destroying all supernatural charity in our soul, Our Lord has instituted the sacrament of Penance to restore us to a state of grace.
Imperfect contrition (or attrition) and purpose of amendment are sufficient to remit mortal sin in Confession. The remission of mortal sin without the sacrament, however, requires an extraordinary grace of perfect contrition, arising from supernatural charity towards God, which “bestows the grace of justification on the mortal sinner even before the actual reception of the Sacrament of Penance. (Sent. fidei proxima.)” But “only when it is associated with the desire for the Sacrament (votum sacramenti). (De fide.)” (Dr Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 4, 3, 4, §10, 2a and b).
Moreover, Catholic theology holds that, “in the state of fallen nature, it is morally impossible for us, without Supernatural Revelation, to know easily, with absolute certainty and without admixture of error, all religious and moral truths of the natural order” and “without restoring grace (gratia sanans) to fulfil the entire moral law and to overcome all serious temptations for any considerable period of time. (Sent. certa.)” (Ibid, 4, 1, §9, 2a and b). In other words, past the age of reason — approximately eight years old — it is morally impossible for most people to avoid mortal sin for a long time without adequate instruction in, and assent to, the truths of the Catholic faith, and recourse to the sacraments. This is why First Confession and First Holy Communion are ordinarily made at this age and why all Catholics are bound under mortal sin to receive Communion (and, as far as is necessary to receive It in a state of grace, to go to Confession) at least once a year and preferably much more frequently.
For this reason, first among the “fixed points of reference both pastorally and theologically”, which you mention in your report, is that Catholic parents, priests, bishops, and all those delegated to fulfil the duties of Christian education transmit to the children entrusted to their care an adequate knowledge of the means and obstacles to their salvation, that is, to attaining heaven and avoiding hell.
In John Senior’s view, authentic Catholic education reached its apotheosis with St Ignatius of Loyola, who, he says, “founded the best system of Christian schools and colleges in history, for which he set down this as the First Principle and Foundation:
“‘Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord and by this means to save his soul.’
Senior continues: “This First Principle and Foundation sets up a new economy by which to measure schools, curricula, subjects, teachers and students; if you accept it, not just something but everything will change. Anything less is futile and worse than fruitless because if God exists, reveals and saves, those who refuse His means not only fail to reach the end but will enjoy the bitter fruit forever of their malice.” (Ibid, p120).
You write at the outset of the statement accompanying your report that “Life to the Full is not a catechetical or sacramental programme aimed purely at Catholic children”. And in the report itself, you write, “We also made the prudent decision not to use the theologically correct language of the Catechism (‘grave depravity’, ‘objectively disordered’ etc) because as resource providers we decided that this would be neither engaging nor pastorally appropriate. These are the sensitive decisions that we take great care in making, in conversation with our stakeholders, and we stand firmly by these decisions.” Finally, in the conclusion of your report, you write, “We believe our presentation of Catholic teaching around sex and relationships is not about simply stating Church teaching about which acts are right or wrong but should instead seek to change hearts and minds.”
Indeed, Catholic education cannot be limited to the Church’s dogmatic and moral teaching, since this is not in itself sufficient to fulfil the familial and civil duties for which children must be prepared. But whilst it is true that Catholic education must be more than this, it would be iniquitous to declare that it can be less than this.
The minimum instruction necessary for salvation is the measure of the adequacy of Catholic education. It is also the principle by which Ten Ten’s work must be judged, if it is to be true to its name (at least, in the sense that you intend), particularly when you and your colleagues freely undertake to teach a subject which is per se a remote occasion of the sins most apt to destroy supernatural life in young people.
Despite the considerable time, money and even talent you have spent on developing this programme, you manage not to give any proportionate warning of this grave danger to souls (which need not be insensitive or imprudent), nor indeed any clear sign that you perceive this danger yourselves, other than the care you have taken to avoid all mention of it, whereas if you do perceive it, you are surely constrained by faith, hope and charity to make this grace available to your young audience. Your failure to do so might not be so dangerous to souls if your content were at least consistent with Catholic teaching, and if it could be assumed that children were receiving the minimum necessary instruction elsewhere. But as our analysis shows, and your report confirms, you prevaricate constantly, nor do you assume any instruction whatsoever on the part of the children; what you do assume — not unfairly — is general ignorance, indifference and even positive hostility toward the Catholic faith, whilst appearing to go to great trouble to ensure that this ignorance, indifference and hostility remains essentially undisturbed and unchallenged.
Your defence of your policy indicates a conscious decision to act under a much graver ignorance: to quote John Senior, “ignorance on purpose, not simply an absence but, as St Thomas says, to act under a deliberate nonconsideration of the rule which you know perfectly well. In the treatise De Malo, he says:
“‘Thus it is that the artisan does not sin in the fact that he is not always holding the rule in his hand, but in the fact that while not holding the rule in his hand he proceeds to cut the wood.’” (Ibid, p118).
As a result of your policy, not only is it impossible for a child who lacks the minimum necessary instruction necessary to save his or her soul to glean any part of it from your programme, but it is equally impossible for any child who has received adequate instruction to come out of the programme unharmed by it. The error is not in trying “to meet children and young people where they are at”, as you say, but in bringing them down to a false naturalistic understanding of the Catholic faith, whether or not that is where they are already, and then leaving them there to “decide for themselves”, as if it were possible for them to understand and assent to what you have, as a matter of policy, withheld from them, and as if by assenting to what you do offer them, they would be corresponding to grace for the salvation of their souls.
The final result of your policy is that children will not merely find it “hard to understand, let alone accept” Catholic teaching but morally impossible to do so. Many children, on the other hand, will find it all too easy to despise and reject what you attempt to pass off as Catholic teaching; and rightly so, since you are not in fact “changing hearts and minds with creative Catholic content” but developing and distributing destructive naturalistic content which is incapable of changing hearts and minds as only God’s grace can.
We urge you to consider whether it would not be better to tell children the truth of the Catholic faith, at no greater risk of being despised. Would this not at least be a work of grace and an occasion of grace for children, whatever their disposition? Even if they reject it now, might God not offer it to them again after naturalism and the prevailing culture of death inevitably fail to make them happy? And is it not the primary duty of Catholic educators (including “resource providers” like yourselves) to make this grace available to children?
To quote John Senior once again:
“I am not denying unbelievers the right to have their schools, but it is an absurd interpretation of justice that Christians should exclude themselves from their own schools on the grounds of being fair to unbelievers, as if those who can see should pluck out their eyes to give the blind equality. Secular education is not only incomplete but contrary to both God and nature; it is sacrilegious and unscientific.” (p120–121).
While these words might seem overly strong, they are a reflection of Catholic social teaching, as elucidated by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on Christian Education:
“For it is true, as Leo XIII has wisely pointed out, that without proper religious and moral instruction “every form of intellectual culture will be injurious; for young people not accustomed to respect God, will be unable to bear the restraint of a virtuous life, and never having learned to deny themselves anything, they will easily be incited to disturb the public order.” (Divini illius magistri, 24).
The same encyclical condemns the kind of naturalistic approach taken by Ten Ten in the Life to the Full programme, both in general and in the specific context of sex education:
“Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism which in any way excludes or weakens supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound. Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher’s authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education.
…
“Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.” (Ibid, 60 and 65).
Naturalism is by no means the only error of the Life to the Full programme, as we will explain in future publications, but it is by far its gravest error and, we dare say, the cause of the bewilderment you have expressed about our criticisms.
We would like to reiterate that Ten Ten is not supereminently responsible for the errors in the Life to Full programme, which are long-standing, widespread and symptomatic of a general failure of Catholic bishops, as successors of the apostles, to fulfil Our Lord’s great commission of “baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you …” We are not wholly unsympathetic that you and your colleagues have assumed this grave responsibility with the encouragement and approbation of bishops, who have preeminence in this mission and therefore ultimate responsibility. But even supposing you are acting in good faith, the objective harm that your programme is doing to children — and through them, to families, to the Church and to civil society — makes it impossible for us to remain silent.
We are also compelled to our position by the preeminence of parents in the education of children. It is parents whom we aim to inform and in whose interests we have distributed our analysis widely to priests, for whose (unanimously positive) responses so far we are extremely grateful. It is parents, who, as Pius XI loudly proclaimed, “in agitating for Catholic schools for their children, are not mixing in party politics, but are engaged in a religious enterprise demanded by conscience” (ibid, 85). It is parents who are now raising future successors of the apostles, as well as the priests, religious and laity who will be their helpers and consolers in the work of reform which lies ahead. It is parents therefore who are preeminent in the restoration of Catholic education.
John Senior, whose book, The Restoration of Christian Culture, we have cited throughout this letter, is notable for establishing a short-lived “Integrated Humanities Program” at the University of Kansas in the 1970s, which, like Life to the Full, was “not a catechetical or sacramental programme aimed purely at Catholic[s]”; nor was it even a Catholic programme, as Life to the Full officially (though not effectively) is. Rather, the “Integrated Humanities Program” was purely literary and remedial, introducing students to some of the things they should have read at school but most likely did not. And yet, this programme yielded so many conversions to the Catholic faith and vocations to the priesthood and religious life that it became a scandal to the secular faculty, as well to non-Catholic parents, and was shut down.
Does this not show that, according to the famous words of St Thomas Aquinas, “Grace perfects and does not destroy nature” and that it is possible to engage in the richest form of pedagogy without obstructing grace? We invite you to consider the invaluable protection that bishops could give to such a programme, if only it were offered in Catholic schools, and the absolute good that it would represent not only to children but to families, to society and to the Church. We leave you with John Senior’s conclusion:
“What are the chances of reform? Why, schools and universities will reconstruct from the rubble anytime, anywhere anyone starts again from the right beginning. What is true is true semper ubique idem. We get the government and the education we deserve, and we shall get effective leadership when we really call for it, which means when as a nation and locally in neighborhoods and in the home, we have sight of the goal. You can’t reform the means until you know the end that is finally the religious question. Unless the nation, starting with neighborhoods, homes and hearts, returns to its Christian origin and end, it will disintegrate. For leadership in every walk of life, we simply must have saints, who are ordinary men and women driven to heroic virtue by the love of God. And we shall find them when we want to; there might be some reading these very words and wondering if it were someone else, some St Cecilia or St Francis, unknown perhaps as yet to themselves, their great vocations hidden in their own hearts like gold in a deep vein. Restorations never start at the collapsing top but always in the dull low places of simple hearts, not in the roaring of the wind but in the whistling of the air.” (p122).
“There may be someone reading these words right now who, like St Margaret Mary or St Catherine Labouré — unknown as yet to herself — is the focal point of a great historical change. All over the world at this very hour, Mary and her angels are moving among the human race. If we consecrate our hearts to hers we shall be among those who make a difference.
“Mary’s love is first of all directed to her priests, who are of first importance because in a sense the Eucharist is the Church itself, and the priest its indispensable instrument; but secondarily her love includes religious and laity who assist at the Sacrifice; and even the least among us, troubled by sins and failures, will share this splendid moment in the history of the Church because not only His sheep but her goats are called [cf. Cant 1:7] …” (pp 141–142).
With our heartfelt prayers for you and your colleagues,
Peter Newman, Editor
John Smeaton, Chairman
Voice of the Family
Feast of the Holy Family
Sunday 12 January 2024