The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has become one of the few Roman Catholic dioceses in the country with formal guidelines for teaching students in church schools about aids.
The guidelines approved recently for kindergarten through 8th grade were modeled after a new aids curriculum for Minnesota’s public schools and a program developed by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
The archdiocese’s program seeks to teach children to have compassion and understanding for those who contract acquired immune deficiency syndrome, church officials said.
Because of church teachings against premarital sex and artificial methods of contraception, the program will not promote the use of condoms as a way to avoid contracting the aids virus, said Sister Donna Innes, curriculum coordinator for the archdiocese.
The archdiocese is also developing guidelines for teaching about aids in its high schools.--kg