The Talk

Setting the Tone

1. We’ve talked a bit about puberty already and “the talk” and we like to keep it light and a little funny so it’s not scary, but there are some serious parts of it.
2. Puberty is your body’s way of preparing to be an adult and do adult things.
3. One of the main adult things is starting a family. You need to get stronger and more manly so you can protect and serve your family.

Family as an Icon of the Trinity

1. We’ve talked about the Holy Trinity before. One God in three Persons.
2. The Trinity is the Father and Son giving themselves to one another in love. From the love of these two persons comes another person, the Holy Spirit.
3. So God is a diversity — meaning more than one person — who become a unity in their love, and from that love comes diversity again.
4. The family is an image of that. Two people, a husband and wife, become one in marriage. From their unity come children: diversity.
5. Check for understanding.

Self-Gift

1. When you’re sick, we give ourselves to you to serve you. I mean that we take care of you, we get you medicine and food, that takes energy and money and patience on our part. That is a self-gift. Love gives itself.
2. Everyone is called by God to give themselves in love to everyone they meet. We should be kind to others.
3. But each of us also has a vocation to love in a special way. Priests and nuns love God and the Church so completely that they dont get married. They can focus all their attention on the needs of the Church.
4. Most people are called to get married, though.

Marriage

1. When a man and woman become husband and wife, they promise to give themselves to one another, because they love one another.
2. That gift has to be free, faithful, fruitful, and total.
3. Free means it can’t be forced. You can’t force someone to love you, right?
4. Faithful means you can’t cheat on your wife. No adultery.
5. Fruitful means you have to be open to children God sends you.
6. Total means you have to give your whole self.

Puberty’s Big Purpose

1. What puberty is really about is preparing your body for those last two things: total and fruitful love.
2. Marriage is a sacrament. Sacraments are efficacious signs of God’s grace. That means they signify something, they mean something, but they also do what they signify. Baptism signifies a washing. You get your body washed with water. But your also get your soul washed, because baptism does what it signifies. Get it?
3. All the sacraments give us grace through something physical, like water or oil or the laying on of hands.
4. Marriage also has a physical component.
5. Puberty prepares your body for the physical aspect of marriage.
6. The physical aspect of marriage makes a husband and wife into one, and from that unity comes diversity. It’s an image of the Holy Trinity.
7. You already know about how children are made of half “mommy stuff” and half “daddy stuff.” We need to talk about that.

Female Reproductive System

1. Women make eggs, also called ova.
2. There are about 70,000 ova in a woman’s body and they’re in there even before she is born.
3. The ova are stored in an organ called an ovary. Women have two.
4. The ovaries release one ovum every month. They usually alternate. Mature, released ova are about the size of a poppy seed.
5. That ovum travels down another organ, called the fallopian tube and into the uterus.
6. *If* the ovum gets fertilized — which we’ll cover in a bit — it has half mommy stuff and half daddy stuff, which give it its own full set of DNA: a completely new human being in a single cell. The woman is now a mommy and she doesn’t even know it yet.
7. That cell starts growing very quickly by multiplying.
8. The cell lands in the uterus and burrows into the wall, called the endometrium.
9. It forms a placenta and an amniotic sac and the baby grows.
10. Nine months later, the baby exits the mother’s body — through a hole in the bottom of the uterus called the cervix, then though the birth canal, also called the vagina, and out through a set of flaps, called a vulva.
11. Check for questions.

Sperm

1. We talked about the egg getting fertilized.
2. The egg gets fertilized by another type of cell, which comes from the man. This cell is called a sperm cell.
3. The sperm cell is sort of funny. It has a head and a tail, like a tadpole, and it’s microscopic.
4. Unlike the woman, who releases one ovum at a time, a man releases about 100 million sperm cells at a time.
5. Check for questions.

Sexual Intercourse

1. When a man and woman love each other and become husband and wife, they are naturally drawn to one another. They want to kiss and hug and touch each other. They might kiss in more passionate ways, like putting their tongues inside each other’s mouths. (French kissing.) They want to hold each other very close. The closeness they want is called intimacy.
2. Sometimes, a husband and wife hold each other closer than anyone else possibly can.
   When they are in love and holding each other and loving each other — what is called “making out” — things begin to happen that are directed toward this total and fruitful self-gift of love we talked about.
3. God designed the human body to get very excited about romantic love. Your body fills with hormones. Your whole body feels jittery and awake like you’ve had too much coffee. Your hair starts to stand up on your arms. Their nipples get hard. This is called arousal.
4. Because they love one another, they want nothing between them, and there is a natural desire to be themselves, not hidden from each other. Arousal makes the man and woman want to be naked.
5. For a man, the main thing that happens with arousal is that his penis fills up with blood. It gets long, thick, warm, and hard. This is called an erection.
6. Because the husband and wife want to be as close as possible and because they are naked, the husband slides his penis into his wife’s vagina. He is now a few inches inside her, as close as possible.
7. For the woman, arousal has made her vulva swell and open up and her vagina wet and slippery.
8. This is the physical aspect of the sacrament of marriage: they give their bodies to each other. This is called sexual intercourse, because it is the intercourse, — the communication — of the sexes, male and female. It’s usually called “sex” for short.
9. It’s worth saying that God, because He loves us, made sex feel extremely good.
10. Once a husband has entered his wife, he will continue rubbing his penis back and forth in her vagina, speeding up until his penis releases his sperm in a mixture of white liquid called semen. This is called an ejaculation.
11. For the man, ejaculation is also called orgasm or climax. It is the most pleasurable part of sex for a man. A woman may reach her own orgasm or climax before of after her husband.
12. This is the most pleasurable part of sex for her.
13. The sexual act or marital act is thus total and fruitful. Husband and wife have given themselves to each other totally and their act has the possibility of conceiving a child.
14. Check for questions.

Loose Ends

1. Once the sperm are inside the woman’s vagina, they travel through the cervix, up into the uterus, and usually meet the ovum in the fallopian tubes.
2. Ova are only around for a few days of each month. If an ovum is not fertilized, the uterus will shed its lining in a process called menstruation. A woman will then bleed out the uterine lining for several days each month. This is called her period.
3. Be very kind to women during their periods. Their emotions get a little whacky and it can hurt, sometimes a lot.
4. Because a child may be conceived, sex also tells husband and wife that they are together for life. Having a child with someone means being in their life forever.
5. Although it is possible to have sex outside of marriage, it is a grave sin for this reason: it is a lie to suggest with your body that you will be there for someone’s whole life when you aren’t committed to them in marriage and it is reckless to possibly bring children to life when you haven’t made a family yet through marriage.

Male Reproductive System

1. You’re pretty familiar now with the sexual act, but we need to cover a bit more of the anatomy.
2. The male reproductive system, from the outside, is composed of the penis and the scrotum, which is the sack that hangs from it.
3. Inside the scrotum are two balls, called testicles or testes, which produce sperm.
4. Sperm travels into the penis through a tube called the vas differens. Along the way, it is mixed with semen, a white, sticky liquid that helps it swim inside the vagina.

Virtues and Sins

1. Chastity is the virtue of keeping your mind and body pure. Remember that your sexuality is an image of God and ultimately designed to point you toward him. Don’t misuse your sexuality for selfishness or pleasure.
2. Some things you need to be aware of: pornography, masturbation, impure thoughts, premarital sex. These are all grave sins.
3. Practice custody of the eyes.
4. Do not get into bad habits. If you do any of these even once, you increase the chances you will do it again.
5. If you have questions, ask me. I will not make you feel ashamed of your sexuality.
6. If you commit one of these sins, ask me to take you to confession. I will never make you feel ashamed of sins you want to confess.