The document reminds us that “educating sexuality and affectivity means learning ‘with perseverance and coherence what the meaning of the body is’ (AL, 151) in all the original truth of masculinity and femininity” (n.35), seeking to develop a true and fully personal sexual culture (n.38), that is, to educate for love.

After giving a historical, philosophical, theological and psychological panorama on the subject of gender and its relationship with sexuality education, the Congregation for Catholic Education places the family as the “main primary pedagogical space for the formation of the child” in the field of affectivity (n.37). And it is logical that it does so if we consider that affective-sexual education is education for love, and that the family is the basic natural community where love is lived precisely.

But the document goes further, also pointing out that the child has the right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother, a condition for achieving emotional maturity (n.38), something that is defended even by theories such as psychoanalysis (n.27). . On both sides, the family is at the center and is the first axis on which this education has to pivot.

With regard to the school, the document highlights its subsidiary role with respect to parents (n.46). The school is defined as a community, a space for growth, dialogue and tolerance (n.40), especially if it is Catholic, since in this case it is centered, by definition, on the person, with Christ as its axis: his mission is to help overcome individualism in the light of faith (n.49).
The document also invites us to extend collaboration to “offer innovative and creative tools to consolidate the comprehensive education of the person from childhood in the face of partial and distorted views” (n.51): schools must be able to “maintain their own vision of human sexuality based on the freedom of families to be able to base the education of their children on an integral anthropology, capable of harmonizing all the dimensions that constitute their physical, mental and spiritual identity” (n. 55).