On health education. The bishops know better...

The entire letter, signed by three bishops, is dominated by the topic of sexuality, which, according to the document's authors, is presented in a way that contradicts Polish law. - Polish law unambiguously accepts the existence of two sexes: male and female. The so-called "Health Education" introduced in schools violates all such laws, and in the long run aims to change Polish law - to an anti-family and gender-destabilizing law, the bishops remind us a few days before the presidential elections, and it's really hard to escape the question of whether this is a complete coincidence, or, however, the opposite.

The letter is part of a broader context of strained relations between the government and the episcopate. At the beginning of the year, they wrote to the faithful on the issue of religious lessons (on limiting their number, specifically), and now - on the issue of an optional subject that will enter schools from September. There are few experts, doctors, public health specialists, child psychiatrists, pediatricians, vaccinologists, but also cardiologists or oncologists, who would not lament that health education is entering schools through the "kitchen door," as an optional subject, burdened with the taint of "nullity," while the list of health challenges facing Poland as a state, Poles as a society and individuals, starting with the youngest, is getting longer and longer.

The bishops don't see this, focusing on a fraction of the core curriculum, and in addition - this is hard to deny - looking at this fraction from a very specific angle. They see what they want to see, they don't see what they should see. Do they have the right to look at it this way? Of course, it's a matter of opinion and evaluation, and therefore a sphere of freedom, although it's good practice for opinions and evaluations not to abstract too much from the facts.

Extremely critical of the letter from the Presidium of the KEP was Błażej Kmieciak, the 2020-2023 chairman of the State Commission for clarifying cases of acts against sexual freedom and morality against a minor under the age of 15. Addressing the authors of the document on social media, he wrote, among other things: "Dear brother bishops. You are not parents. You do not have children. None of you is an educator or psychologist. Why, then, do you speak so arbitrarily on a subject that is beyond your substantive competence?" asking whether the bishops would be offended if Catholics addressed a letter to them on "how to be a decent bishop."

The bishops exercise their right to express their opinions without hearing the voices directed at them: "You are not allowed! You were not allowed to close your eyes and cover up cases of pedophilia in the Church, and this is what many bishops did, until quite recently. Not all the question marks in these cases have been removed. Not all answers have unequivocally resounded.