There is a quiet but hugely significant struggle going on to capture the hearts and minds of Irish young people. It is about sex, and sex education, and what the changing nature of both mean for the kind of society we are living in on the eve of the third millennium.
On the one side are the traditional Catholics, not as small or homogeneous a group as is sometimes supposed, who are unhappy about the new education about sexuality and relationships being introduced in our schools. They want to protect the family; maintain moral standards; safeguard the innocence of children for as long as possible, and take a stand against the ever-encroaching tide of permissiveness with all its attendant ills and social disorders.
On the other side are the liberals, not as confident or large or homogeneous a group as is sometimes supposed, who want to bring to an end the once all-powerful ancien regime of repressive Catholicism. They want to eliminate the sexual silence and taboos of the past, and the fear, shame and guilt which surrounded sex.
They are seeking to leave behind the old Catholic virtues of modesty and chastity and create a new sense of self in Irish young people which is independent, confident and expressive. They want people to make up their own minds about what is good and bad, right and wrong. They want people to get to know themselves through understanding and fulfilling their desires, through knowing their pleasures and, appropriately, indulging in them. They see sex as something positive and beneficial.
Interestingly, this thesis of a struggle between two world views centred on the way our children are taught about their sexuality is one shared by both conservative and liberal thinkers.
Gerard Casey, the UCD philosophy lecturer who is the most articulate campaigner against the Department of Education's Relationships and Sexuality Education programme, talks about RSE being part of "a cultural war in progress in Ireland now between the secularist view and the Christian visions of the human person and human development".
He says the ideology of RSE is an individualism which "places God at the outer fringe rather than at the centre of life" with all the emphasis on "self". He regards organised opposition to RSE as a vital struggle by Catholics against an ever-expanding secular State.
The two traditional and liberal categories outlined above are those used by his fellow UCD lecturer, sociologist Tom Inglis, in a new book, Lessons in Irish Sexuality, due to be published next week.
Inglis approves of RSE. However he agrees that - together with the earlier Stay Safe programme against child sex abuse - it constitutes the most significant challenge yet to the Catholic Church's 150-year monopoly position as the arbiter of Irish sexuality, morality and education.
"RSE can be seen as part of a slow, steady but ongoing struggle by the State to take the ownership and control away from the churches, particularly the Catholic Church, and to assume authority for shaping the minds, hearts and bodies of Irish children," he writes.
The State's view, supported by progressives and liberals, is that "young people need to be rescued from the traditional teachings of the Church which are deemed to be inadequate to meet the realities of modern social life. In other words, it is no longer practical or desirable to keep young people pure, chaste and innocent".
The traditional Catholic view of sexuality - and Inglis emphasises that there are other Catholic views - emphasised the evils of lust and passion as the occasions of sin, and the need to control extramarital sex as a potential threat to the health and welfare of both individual and society. Its legacy was shyness, awkwardness and embarrassment with the opposite sex, and secrecy, guilt and shame about sexual activity.
"Such learnt dispositions cannot be overturned in a few years," writes Inglis. "The RSE programme is an attempt to overcome this through developing selfawareness, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-expression and self-control. It is, so to speak, about the creation of a new form of self: people who feel good about themselves, who are confident about their body and their sexuality, and who understand the consequences of, and take responsibility for, their behaviour."
The legacy of ignorance caused by the long years of Catholic puritanism are with us still. A 1996 national survey found that more than half the female population - overwhelmingly the older women - had not received sex education, and of these almost seven in 10 "agreed that a woman could not get pregnant during first intercourse".
Comparisons with the younger generation are dramatic. The 1997 Durex Irish Health Monitor Survey found 54 per cent of those aged 17 to 20 said they had had sex with more than one partner. Half those surveyed in this age group said they had sex before they were 16 years old.
The shy, awkward Irish boys and girls of the past, "uncertain of themselves and their sexuality, are gradually being replaced by bright, confident, outgoing people, able to proclaim their desires, demonstrate emotion, and anxious and willing not just to display their bodies and sexuality, but to engage in sex".
However, all is not yet rosy in the new Irish sexual garden. We are living in "unsettled times", with individuals moving back and forth between the certainty of handed-down Catholic values and the confusion of free-market liberal sexual attitudes. The latter have been powerfully espoused by the media, which has moved from the virtual sexual silence of the 1960s to the saturation of the 1990s.
Irish people are ambivalent about sex, says Inglis - "they want the best of both worlds". Young people have to learn to deal with this ambivalence. Learning to be "sexually street-wise" means realising that there are two sides to every street: the Catholic side of chastity and modesty, and the liberal side of sexual experience. A parallel ambivalence comes from living in a "contraceptive culture", so that parents and teachers do not know whether to teach "chastity or safe sex". In this confused climate, RSE may be the only sensible way forward. It aims to "help young people to stay safe, happy and comfortable in the middle of the road, somewhere between chastity and sexual activity. In concentrating on developing self-esteem, the programme tries to teach children to be confident, mature and responsible in their social relationships. The message, in other words, is that when it comes to travelling the road of sexuality, they are in the driving seat of a car which can bring as much pain as pleasure and happiness."
THE most fundamental contradiction which RSE has to overcome, he suggests, is the difficulty older teachers in general, and priests and nuns in particular, will have in helping their pupils become "fully mature, sexually active, pleasure-seeking, morally responsible adults if they have never been that way themselves".
This is part of the wider contradiction of the persistence of a Catholic school system, reflecting traditional Catholic beliefs, in a post-modern, secular society. The huge preponderance of Catholic schools ensured that RSE could only be introduced in a manner consistent with those beliefs, even if in many schools this ruled out its implementation in any meaningful way.
In an increasingly liberal and individualistic world, argues Inglis, there is no one truth about sex and sexuality. There are only the very different truths - of the Catholics who want to protect children's innocence; the State which wants young people to be sensible and responsible; and the liberals who want them to have sexually rewarding lives. Such multiple contradictions make an RSE programme more necessary than ever.
Lessons in Irish Sexuality, by Tom Inglis. University College Dublin Press, £11.95