I posted this in another thread, but I think it belongs here too.
I teach in a very well regarded Catholic secondary school in Australia - a Jesuit school (generally regarded as one of the top two Catholic schools in the country - alongside its brother school in Sydney, and one of the twenty or so top schools in general).
They stress abstinence as the best way for their students. The ideal choice. The choice they hope they’ll all make, and the choice they expect them to take. The boys are left in no doubt of what is and isn’t expected of them.
And then they get on to the practicalities. As a non-Catholic I was rather surprised the first time I encountered it, but they tell the boys all about contraception and how to use it if they decide to have sex. I’ve heard one of the Priests put it pretty simply.
“If you’re having sex before you are married, then you’re committing a sin. What I’d say to you is this - if you’re going to sin, then sin safely.”
In my role as a tutor at the school I have personal pastoral responsibility for 16 boys. I’d always urge them to wait in the strongest terms I can (partly because I believe it’s the right thing to do, partly because it’s my job to help reinforce the message of the school, and partly because I know in most cases their parents want them to wait and I try to back parents) - but I’ve also directed boys to contraception in cases where it’s clear that I’m not going to convince them abstinence is the right choice. I don’t want them having sex - but I want them getting a girl pregnant far less.