News and Notes from the
World of Al Menconi

By Andrew Byers October 8, 2013 Andrew Byers is a Ph.D. student at Durham University, where he serves as the chaplain for St. Mary's College.   Why we need to unlearn the lessons from our mainstream media sex education. We all remember those awkward “talks” with our parents or those sixth grade reproductive health lectures, but in reality, our primary source for sex ed is not our mom, dad, a local health provider, or our middle school science teacher. Admittedly, few of us want to hear about sex from our moms, and those sixth grade sexual reproduction lectures were just too weird. So where have we regularly turned to sate our wide-eyed curiosity? Besides listening in envious shock at the daring escapades of our bolder (and perhaps slightly exaggerating) friends, we've turned to a source less awkward than parents and science teachers: Screens. The expectations of what sex is supposed to look like and sound like are established in our soci

Just read the quote below and it made me cry for parents and teens in America.  This is why I'm in ministry.  I never thought of this effect on our children before.  - Al Menconi "...my friend, Susie, made an interesting point. She confirmed that just like my daughters, hers were totally consumed with their iPhone  update for several hours—first downloading the new software, then excitedly talking about it, sharing screen shots, and finally, we supposed, tweeting about it. 'It concerns me that their world seems to be all about 'what's new and improved,' Susie lamented. I nodded in agreement, but wasn't troubled until she said, 'I'm worried that our kids have lost the ability to remain enthusiastic about anything for any length of time—specifically their future spouses.' She paused. 'I feel like they're being raised in a world where it's common—no, expected—to continually 'trade up.'" — Katie D. Anderson , writing f

By  Heather Kelly,  CNN updated 10:04 PM EDT, Fri August 30, 2013  (CNN) -- Carly and her mom are friends on Facebook, but that doesn't mean they share everything. The 17-year-old from Marin County, California, has refined her Facebook privacy settings so that her mother can't see all the posts that fill her Timeline. Her father, meanwhile, never checks the social network. "Right now, my mom can only see things that I post. She can't see anything I'm tagged in or anything that my friends say to me on my profile," said Carly, a high school senior who asked to be identified only by her first name. "She doesn't know that, though. I'm like, 80% sure that every other teenager has done that too." With teenagers and their parents (grandparents, even) increasingly active on social networks, both generations are joined in a delicate dance over privacy, safety and freedom of expression online. Interviews with a handful of teens