Father Vermeersch gives us this excellent principle to work on: "Natural ignorance is not necessarily to be dispelled, nor is artificial ignorance necessarily to be fostered; the explanation of sexual matters which we approve of is not that which in-creases, but that which diminishes worry in these matters."⁷

So the Church's traditional method of sex-instruction is this: to give the facts of life when necessary and as far as necessary, and to give training in modesty and purity from earliest childhood.

Two stages of knowledge
Good Catholic parents do not find much difficulty in the formation of good habits in their children. That is why I used the word "traditional" just above-they have always done it. It is in the need to give their children information, a need growing very urgent now-a-days, that they find their difficulty. Therefore, we will speak of two stages of knowledge:
             1. A knowledge of the mother's part.
             2. A knowledge of the father's part.
Let us talk about each separately.

1. A knowledge of the mother's part
By this I mean a knowledge of the facts connected with childbirth.

The proverb, "Well begun is half done", certainly applies to sex-instruction. If parents would only begin to answer the questions of their children truthfully, right from the beginning, half the difficulty would disappear. If you do this, your children never lose confidence in you. They will continue to question you as they grow older; therefore, they will provide you with opportunities to give them the further knowledge that they need, all quite gradually and naturally, without the need for "talks".

No matter how young they may be when they begin to ask questions, never tell them silly stories about the stork ....
"Train the minds of your children. Do not give them wrong

⁷ De Castitate, § 191