The Catholic Church in Nigeria has evolved a curriculum on sexuality education for use in homes and parishes, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
The adoption of the curriculum was the outcome of a recent workshop on sexuality education organised in Enugu by the clerics in collaboration with Community life Project, a non-governmental organisation.
The curriculum gives guidelines on how to teach sex education to married couples, adults, youths and couples preparing for marriage.
A copy which was made available to NAN stresses the need for sex education to be taken more seriously by priests and bishops to improve the understanding of the subject.
Among the topics listed are sacrament of matrimony, importance of the family, menopause, woman sexuality in married life and marital love life.
Others are HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, managing family finances, practice of christian virtues, rights of the family, love and friendship as well as many other aspects of sexuality education.
The curriculum makes it obligatory for the priests to include sex education in their preachings.
About 100 delegates drawn from the 50 dioceses of the Catholic Church in Nigeria attended the workshop.
Catholics contitute one of the major faiths in the country, and have established primary and secondary schools as well as a university.
The federal government has introduced population and family life education into secondary schools.
Earlier in an address at the workshop, the bishop of Minna diocese, Most Rev. Martin Uzoukwu, called on Nigerians to imbibe self-discipline to curb promiscuity, while parents should be role models.
Using the teaching of Jesus Christ as an example, he urged the participants to be careful as they are being looked upon to set examples.
Also speaking, Prof. Mike Azuzu, a lecturer in public and community medicine at the University of Ibadan, observed that self permissiveness had been the driving force on individual rights and freedom.
Azuzu, who spoke on "sexual revolution and its consequences on families and the society," recalled that since the French revolution of 1789 on population explosion, the world has witnessed "sexual decadence."
He pointed out that in the developing countries such as
Nigeria, where the notion of individual rights and freedoms was not deep rooted, the sexual revolution is rather driven by various socio-economic and environmental factors such as poverty, migration and urbanisation.
The effect has led to various types of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS, he said.
He reiterated the need for the church to teach abstinence and place emphasis onnatural family planning method instead of using other forms of contraception.