> except for reproductive science!

People claim this with little evidence. At my conservative Catholic school we discussed contraception in great detail. More than my public school classmates. We learned about all the available options, how they worked at the chemical level, and why they were morally unacceptable. In fact, we had a whole full-semester class on this and on abortion. We learned about the various drugs used to induce abortion. The various methods of abortion. Our first sex ed curriculum was in the fourth grade. And yes, this was a very conservative catholic elementary school, with a very strict orthodox Irish nun for principal.

The real complaint here isn't that Catholic schools don't teach contraception, abortion, etc. It's that they teach that they are immoral. The morality of contraception and abortion is not a scientific argument.

Another complaint I hear about 'conservative' sex ed, is that they don't talk about sex as fun, but I literally never experienced this at my catholic school. We had our married teachers be incredibly candid about pleasure. In my all boys high school, I remember one in particular pointing out that sex without a condom felt way better. And guess what... he was right... thanks Mr Tory.

The last thing I'll say is my own experience as a newlywed. My wife when we first married had irregular cycles. She went to public school. She accepted this as normal (which it is certainly, but not the way she was having them.... 100 day long cycles followed by 20 day ones). I went to all boys Catholic school, where we learned about natural family planning. By the time we married as 21 year olds, I knew that the church taught a system of menstrual tracking that could be used to avoid or achieve pregnancy and fix cycle issues.

I encouraged us to sign up for an NFP class. My wife wanted to use the pill. I told her that based on her history of migraine, the pill may cause blood clots and lower libido (which newly wed wants that...). Anyway, she went on the pill and had all the typical reactions one would expect. She decided in frustration to take an NFP class.

Anyway, we did that, and my wife learned so much about her cycle. She said she wished she had learned it in school. Guess what? The girls at our all girl sister school did learn about it. Via NFP tracking, she learned her cycles were likely off due to her thyroid. A trip to the doctor later, she had normal cycles. Then we had a series of miscarriages, including some late ones. We visited a Catholic doctor who took her full history and looked at her menstrual charts. She immediately saw some more discrepancies that indicated some hormone things, but she also noted that her migraines could be a blood clotting problem, especially given her reaction to the pill. Anyway, some tests later, and some blood thinners and some supplemental progesterone, we had our first child after seven miscarriages. Now, after successful pregnancies, we know that it's likely a blood clotting problem. Man... if only she had learned that a bad reaction to the pill and a history of migraines is often indicative of blood clotting problems, she would have avoided all that unnecessary suffering. Thank goodness we learned about it in Catholic school.

That is to say, I credit my own Catholic high school education for being able to see what was obviously ailing my wife and she and I both wish she had had access to the same education in high school. It would have saved her a lot of unnecessary inconvenience over having an irregular cycle, and us a lot of grief over having lost those babies. Frankly, our experience of the science taught by the church, turned us from lukewarm Catholics (I had learned a lot of facts but disagreed with the church over its moral teachings) into pretty traditional ones.