Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

High Intermediate

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of three semesters (or five quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

[Course Description from PUCV Syllabus]

Foundations of the Subject

The experience of sexuality today is affected by a general uncertainty. This disorientation especially contaminates and eats away at the young who, in their eagerness to overcome an outdated strictness, are easy prey to permissive naturalism. The results are easy to see: lewd promiscuity, sex without commitment, unwanted pregnancy, frustration, affective emptiness, and the ominous specter of AIDS.

This course hopes to direct students, bringing them closer to an awareness of the current problems derived from the exercise of sexuality, and to simultaneously offer them a vision of a man composed of the values and the potentialities inherent to the sexed condition and of a humanized and humanizing experience of this constitutive dimension of a person.

The development of the contents entails the collaboration of diverse invited specialists and the leadership of a professor responsible for the connection and unity of the themes, the development of certain central topics, the design of discussion groups, and the means of evaluation.

The course was conceived to have a massive nature, responding to the need to show the students a face of the university concerning this theme, to collaborate with the Commission to Prevent Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, and AIDS. These themes will be presented through the means of talks with invited professors.

The chosen form requires a classroom of ample capacity, bibliographic tools, and a small budget for fees, for which we count on the patronage of some parts of the management, such as the Administration, the DGE, and the Service for Religious Assistance.

Form of Development

The combination of the themes and the evaluations are only for those enrolled in the class, and are the duty of the responsible professor. 5 lectures will be presented by invited specialists in the form of discussions, which will be initiated with a film presenting the problem and will close with a work of theater about AIDS. There are 7 sessions open to anyone interested, publicized as a Cycle of Discussions �" “Sexuality, Youth, and Values.”

Objectives

1. To broadcast and evaluate the individual, social, and moral risks inherent in the exercise of promiscuous, uncommitted sexuality.

2. To propose the values that lead to the Christian road to sexual experience.

Contents

I. The current sexual experience: problems and development.
a. Presentation of the problem: diagnosis and motivation.
b. STDs and AIDS
c. The demographic challenge
d. Threatened sexuality

II. The Christian proposition: sexuality and values.
a. Anthropology of sexuality
b. Sexuality and paternal responsibility
c. The family as a school of humanity
d. Education for love
e. Living in pairs: theory and testimony
f. Conclusion workshop

Evaluation

Quizzes on the following readings:

1. Eduardo López Azpilarte: “La sexualidad ante una doble amenaza.” Mensaje N°418, mayo de 1993
2. Pedro Garcés: “Sexualidad, ética y familia.” 1991.
3. Luis Jensen: “Sexualidad y transmission de la vida.” Edit. Patris. 1991.

*Final exam is in an objective format and covers the contents of the course.

Bibliography

• C.S. Lewis: “Los cuatro amores.” Edit Universitaria, 1988.
• J. Pieper: “El amor.” Patmos, 1972
• T. Mifsud: “Moral de Discernimiento.” Tomo III: La sexualidad. Cide, 1986.
• S.S. Juan Pablo II: “Familiaris consortio.” 1981.
• Sagrada Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe: “Persona Humana.” 1975.
• W. Romo: “Amor y Sexualidad.” Teología y Vida, 1977.
• M. Silva: “Relaciones sexuales en la adolescencia.” Edic. U. Católica de Chile, 1991.