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L e t t e r s
Indirect Guilt
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This Rock
Volume 14, Number 7
 September 2003 
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I was struck by a sentence in the answer to a question regarding the Church becoming a hypocritical joke as a result of the recent scandals ("Quick Questions," April 2003): "We must always remember that the vast majority of bishops and priests are in no way involved in these scandals."
A more accurate assessment would be that the vast majority of bishops and priests are not directly involved in the scandals. Indirectly they have provided fertile ground for such abuses by neglecting—some wittingly, others ignorantly—the teachings of the Church and courting relativism under the guise of compassion.
In my thirty-four years as a Catholic, I can count on one hand the number of priests I have heard espouse the virtues of chastity and fidelity and condemn the vices of fornication, contraception, and abortion. Following their lead (or lack thereof), we laity have been brazen in our defiance of Mother Church.
Whether guilty—even indirectly—or innocent of the specific abuses that have caused such harm, we are all called to repent and pray for God’s merciful compassion to heal the wounded Mystical Body.
Shaun Powell
Queens, New York
Disastrous Results
Excellent article by Mary Jo Anderson ("When Bishops Teach," May-June 2003). Like many, I have been extremely distressed by the lack of leadership in the Catholic Church in America. Unfortunately, leadership has been minimal from both priests and bishops for several years. I grew up in the 1970s with a parish priest who was not concerned with sin. This was common. Priests and nuns lost the traditional dress, misinterpreted the teachings of Vatican II, and tried to make the Church everything to everyone. The results have been disastrous. A large number of Catholics practice birth control, think abortion should remain legal, have divorces, and pick and choose which Church doctrines to believe. Worse, they have become apathetic when it comes to the relevance of the Church in their daily lives. I have been in arguments with nuns who feel that Pope John Paul II is too restrictive with regards to teachings. Interestingly, I read the article by James Hitchcock ("The Imperative of Courtesy," November 2002), which discusses the underhanded methods used by some bishops to push doctrine counter to official Church teaching. Seems some bishops are still trying to remake the Church in the pop-culture image.
Chris J. Koenig
Omaha, Nebraska
A Lot of Water and a Short Time
I just read "The Testimony of Rocky Halls" (July-August 2003) and am wondering why Karl Keating took up the space to write about your camping trip and display your pictures of it (as beautiful as they are). His musings on the rate of erosion sound perfectly plausible if we assume that all environmental processes have remained the same since creation (uniformitarianism). His visceral knowledge that those rock formations weren’t formed recently sounds like a Mormon testimony for the truth of their claims.
Evidence from Mount St. Helens and elsewhere demonstrate that huge canyons can be formed rapidly as a result of catastrophic conditions. The mud flow that filled up the north fork of the Toutle River in June 1982 after the Mount St. Helens eruption eroded a canyon forming a 1/40-size "scale model" of Grand Canyon in just five days.
Research on the "Channeled Scablands" of eastern Washington suggests that vast areas of land changed in only a day or two of flooding. Instead of a long time and a little water why not a lot of water and a short time?
Exploring a theory and the evidence that both supports it and contradicts it cannot cause the Church disrepute.
Rick Mudd
via the Internet
Stick to Apologetics
I am very disappointed that you have stepped into an area in which you have no expertise and have made comment on things that are so important to the spiritual lives of many ("The Testimony of Rocky Halls," July-August 2003). For you to give an unlearned opinion on this subject just reinforces the anti-faith teaching that goes on.
As a fair and balanced look at scientific fact, it would be better to teach both evolution theory and the theories of a young earth. There is enough geological evidence that can be interpreted both ways to cause grave doubt to anyone who accepts the teachings of either side at face value.
Here are just a few facts that come to my mind: You mention that it required great geological time to carve the Grand Canyon. Have you not seen the pictures of the canyons 100 feet deep that were carved in a matter of hours or even in an instant at Mount St. Helens?
Another point is moon dust. When the Apollo landing craft was designed, it was built with large landing pads on its supports because scientists using the "old earth" theories assumed that space dust would be very thick on the moon after millions of years of existence. What was found on the moon was mere inches of dust.
To be embarrassed by "young earth theories" and try to remain at some level of intellect where you feel superior is wrong, and I believe can be detrimental to the faith of many. Stick to apologetics—an area of your expertise.
Dave Buswell
via the Internet
Shocked, I Say
Karl Keating is normally my "main man," but I must say he has really upset me with his article ("The Testimony of Rocky Halls," July-August 2003). He doesn’t display knowledge of any of the changes in geology since Mount St. Helens and how that has changed drastically the view of how fast major changes take place. Also, Walt Brown, a former NASA scientist, has a whole textbook on the basic theories behind creationist science, showing how the Flood produced much of the world we see. Also, there has been much work done on the geology of the Grand Canyon, showing how it was formed by catastrophic action very quickly, not over "billions and billions" of years.
By pushing the theory of evolution and the long age of the universe, more damage is done to the foundations of belief and faith than almost any other single thing in the modern world. At a time when many scientists are turning against evolution on the basis of lack of evidence, please don’t take a position based solely on the contemporary mind. Get to know more of the "creation by design" science and further understand Genesis before you start claiming that those who are on this path of study and knowledge—and even faith—are doing damage to the faith. I am really shocked that you would take such a position.
Dan Murnane
Reading, Pennsylvania
Karl Keating replies:
1. Messrs. Mudd, Buswell, and Murnane say the Mount St. Helens explosion shows that the Grand Canyon could have been formed in a very short time, even in a matter of days. The comparison is not apt. The explosion of that volcano produced pyroclastic mud flows that filled some ravines and carved out others. This involved ash and igneous material. The Grand Canyon, by contrast, is composed mainly of sedimentary rocks (chiefly sandstone and shale). There is no evidence of equivalent pyroclastic activity.
2. The alternate explanation proposed—that the Grand Canyon was produced by tremendous amounts of runoff, again in a very short time—does not work either. Such runoff would have to run off something higher, and the plateau that forms the top of the Grand Canyon is the highest thing around, except for a handful of hills and mountains. On the south side, the plateau actually slopes away from the canyon. If runoff from the rains that produced the Flood was sufficient to carve the Grand Canyon, we would expect to find many similar canyons elsewhere in the world, especially where waters could have flowed down massive mountain ranges.
3. Steven Austin’s book Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe says the gorge may have been carved by waters released from giant lakes that once lay to the east. The lakes supposedly held waters from the Flood, and the collapse of natural dams released them. This theory could account for an east-to-west flood drainage but not for the dendritic drainage that is the Grand Canyon’s hallmark. The canyon mainly is composed of miles-long side canyons coming from the north and south. They could not have been formed by waters flowing east to west.
4. On the back cover of his book In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, Walt Brown describes himself as a mechanical engineer who served in the Air Force for 21 years. He does not say he was associated with NASA, and there is no indication that he has any formal background in astronomy, geology, or biology.
5. Mr. Murnane says I was "pushing the theory of evolution." I wish such readers would read more carefully and with more generosity. I do not—and did not—endorse evolution, and my article noted that Darwinism is now widely disputed. I also noted that one can reject evolution without subscribing to the unnecessary theory that the earth is only 6,000 years old.
Children’s Souls Not Worth the Risk
I respectfully would ask Fr. Peter Stravinskas ("Will the Real Vatican II Please Stand Up?" July-August 2003) if his comment that Catholic parents have a "duty of entrusting their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible" is a universal norm considering what has happened to Catholic education (and our society in general) since the end of Vatican II.
Very few Catholic schools are of the caliber of the schools in the early 1960s. Orthodox nuns rarely teach, and education is left to religiously undereducated lay teachers. Combine this with a society rife with divorce, premarital sex, and other immorality whose worldly doctrines will readily be modeled by students, and you have a problematic situation with Catholic schools today.
Sure, I could send my children to local Catholic schools, but I question seriously whether or not I would be harming my children by doing so. I wonder if the Vatican II fathers considered our current permissive society when they penned these ideas. I have no idea who will teach my children at the Catholic school, what they will teach them, or if the greatest influence on my kids will be the permissive mentality of our society as modeled by their fellow students. I wish I could trust the local Catholic schools, but I don’t. I don’t think my children’s souls are worth the risk.
What comprises a Catholic school? Is it the building, the fact that it is run by a parish, or a school that teaches Catholic doctrine? If the latter definition is the correct one, couldn’t a homeschooling family comprise a Catholic school?
Kenneth Bonomo
Coal City, Illinois
Homeschools Are Catholic Schools
Contrary to Fr. Stravinskas’s assertion, the passage he quotes from Gravissimum Educationis in no way discourages homeschooling—quite the contrary.
In the early sixties, the modern homeschooling movement was essentially nonexistent. The Council Fathers contrasted "Catholic schools" not with homeschools but with secular schools (such as public schools in the United States). Indeed, Catholic homeschools are "Catholic schools" in every sense of the term and thus are completely in keeping with Church teaching. Homeschooling parents do, in fact, "entrust their children to Catholic schools" while exercising their freedom "to choose according to their conscience the schools they want for their children."
Patricia Dixon
Moorestown, New Jersey
Did We Choose Wrongly?
We read the article "Will the Real Vatican II Please Stand Up?" (July-August 2003). We have a question regarding Catholic schools. The article states that Catholic parents have a duty to entrust their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever possible. Does that statement mean that if it is financially impossible the parents are relived of the duty?
We have nine children. Should we have limited the size of our family so that our children could go to Catholic schools? We did have our children in Catholic schools, and we withdrew them because they were learning things contrary to Catholicism, such as "what a beautiful religion Wicca is" and "women in [the Virgin] Mary’s time died because they didn’t have access to artificial birth control" among other things.
After reading the article, we really want our children re-enrolled in a Catholic school—a real Catholic school—but that’s financially impossible now. Please don’t tell us that we need to bring the problems with the Catholic schools to the attention of priests, principals, or bishops, because we have and nothing has changed.
Ralph and Rose Turrietta
via the Internet
Fr. Stravinskas responds:
I find it fascinating that, in a many-page article on the Second Vatican Council, a single line on homeschooling could elicit such responses. The defensive reaction, I am afraid, typifies the phenomenon, which I have recently experienced in even more dramatic form in my own magazine. For a succinct and thorough analysis of the law of the Church and homeschooling, I would suggest a review of Msgr. Clarence Hettinger’s piece in the July-August issue of The Catholic Answer.
Let me note, in the briefest form possible, the following:
1. Catholic schools have never been and never will be perfect, but the Church always has had and always will have a preferential option for them; hence, the law.
2. If the teachers in a parochial school cannot be trusted, then neither can the parish priest—which, unfortunately, could be the case in some instances. Then what? Home-sacramenting? If the faith is so important, it is worth fighting for. That means in ensuring the proper celebration of the sacred liturgy and the proper communication of the faith in the classroom.
3. Yes, sending children reared in pristine Catholic homes five yards from home does run the risk of contamination. Welcome to the real world, into which the all-pure Son of God thrust himself, which world he loves and for which he died.
4. Who is to say that children brought up in the most observant homes will not apostatize in later life? How many of the worst anti-Catholics of the past thirty years came from good Catholic families? There is no accounting for how God’s grace is received or rejected by anyone.
5. The financial question should be embarrassing to the Catholic community. How is it that the most affluent Catholic population in history cannot maintain the institutions built by their immigrant forebears? The issue is not lack of money but lack of faith. In my considered judgment, all Catholic elementary and secondary schools (not private academies) should be tuition-free, on the principle that the education of all Catholic children is the responsibility of the entire Catholic community and not merely of their parents or of the parishes that happen to sponsor such institutions. That said, I am unaware of any Catholic child ever turned away from a Catholic school for want of financial wherewithal.
It’s about time that we all—left, right, and center—take seriously what the Council said, not what we wish it had said or what we try to make it say now through spin-doctoring. In this case, the Council said clearly: Catholic parents have an obligation to use Catholic schools. Period.
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