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L e t t e r s
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
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This Rock
Volume 16, Number 9
 November 2005 
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Having just received the latest issue of This Rock, I made a beeline for the piece on Hispanic Catholics by Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda ("The Coming Hispanic Majority," September 2005). I thoroughly enjoyed the piece but did find two serious lacunae.
This first is that most "Anglos" who work with Hispanics presume that the sacred liturgy has to be all mariachi and "touchy-feely"; that is not the case and, as a matter of fact, helps facilitate their exit from Catholicism by easing them into Pentecostalism.
The second missing piece to the puzzle is the failure to mention the importance of Catholic schools. This oversight is not surprising, as it seems to be a simple given of Hispanic ministry that these children will, for the most part, be attending government schools. Yet, if the history of Catholicism in the United States has anything to teach us, it is precisely that generation upon generation of immigrant children made their way into the mainstream of American society and kept faith with the Catholic Church due, almost exclusively, to the Catholic school system.
Of course, Catholic schools cost more today than they did seventy-five years ago, and an unfortunate postulate nowadays is that if parents can’t afford the tuition, they should be content to subject their children to the godless government institutions. If the Church is serious about wanting Hispanics within its bosom, it needs to put its money where its mouth is. And Hispanic Catholics who have "made it" need to be challenged to do the same on behalf of their ethnic fellows who have yet to "make it."
Good liturgy and good education have always been the two fundamental keys to evangelization and to maintenance of membership. They still are.
Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas
Editor, The Catholic Response
Dissenting from Dissent
I would like to thank Ronald J. Rychlak for his informative and well-written article "Dealing with Dissent : Fr. Richard McBrien" (July-August 2005). I recently purchased one of McBrien’s books, and my niece, a senior in a Catholic high school, was with me. She mentioned that her teacher uses the same book for class. When I read Rychlak’s article, I threw out the book right away and didn’t even bother reading it. I sent my niece a copy of the article to give to her teacher.
Anne
Vancouver, British Columbia
Hope for the Faith
Just a quick note to congratulate you on the July-August This Rock with the beautiful article about the Pope and what he has to face (" Andiamo Avanti") and the article "Feminine Genius," but all of the other articles as well. This is one of the best issues I’ve read.
I just can’t help marveling how and where the Lord has lead Karl Keating in setting up Catholic Answers, which I have followed almost from the beginning, since before This Rock began. I hear so often in convert stories how much his book Catholicism and Fundamentalism has helped them. And I remember the debate with Bart Brewer in Bart’s church where Karl was limited to forty-five minutes (as arranged) but Bart was allowed ninety minutes. So Karl demanded that he be allowed to reply to all the queries until they ended, and they ended at some very late hour.
There’s hope for the faith!
As I said to Karl, what a blessing Jason and Crystalina Evert are. And I was absolutely fascinated by Tim Staples’s "Jimmy Swaggart Made Me Catholic!" story. It will help me keep my homilies alive!
Fr. Adrian Head
Quorn, South Australia
Defining Desire
I’m confused about the statement made in the September 2005 issue of This Rock concerning "desire" in the article "Are We Dunghills or Fertile Soil?" by Mike Sullivan. My confusion centers around the statements on page 28: When desire to do something wrong springs up within us—often without our consent—we have an opportunity to either give in or build virtue by reining in the flesh with the will. The desire to commit a sin is not sinful in itself. The sin comes when we give our consent to the evil desire. I wonder if the word desire in these sentences should be substituted with the word thought. It seems to me that consenting to the thought is desire, which is sinful, based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:27–30:You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." Buy I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Isn’t looking with lust the consenting action that changes the thought of adultery into the desire of adultery? Doesn’t this make the thought (which may be sinless) into the desire (which is sinful, as Jesus taught)?
Bob Bartolowits
Allison Park, Pennsylvania
Editor’s reply:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church categorizes "desire" as a principal passion or feeling that, without engagement of reason and will, remains morally neutral (CCC 1772–3). In other words, without conscious reasoning and willful consent, disordered desire is simply temptation or inclination to sin but not actually sin itself. It is in this context that Sullivan used the term. Conversely, Jesus’ example in Matthew 5:27–28 indicates not only the occasion of disordered desire (lust) but also engagement of reason and will; the phrase "looks at a woman lustfully" implies that the sinner is consciously and intentionally entertaining his lustful desires, which is clearly sinful.
What Gives?
Carl Olson’s article "What’s in a Name?" (October 2005) says, "Then it follows that man’s actions cannot possess any objective value relating to grace or the meriting of eternal life." I thought eternal life was a gift. Have I made a wrong turn? What gives?
Patrick J. McCabe
via e-mail
Editor’s reply:
Carl Olson replies: Yes, eternal life is a gift. But that precious gift—which we cannot create for ourselves—must be accepted, and that acceptance is an action. If man’s actions have no value, then there could be no sin, no judgment, and no hell. Nor could there be holiness, sainthood, and heaven. So man has the freedom to choose to cooperate with God’s grace or reject it. This is nicely summarized in the Catechism, which states:Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. To human beings God grants the ability to cooperate freely with his plans (CCC 323, cf. 307). This is elucidated further in a later paragraph:The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom (CCC 2022). So: God gives; we respond (by his grace and our free will)—and that response is an action with objective, eternal value.
Stole-en Innocence
Thanks for the very well-written article on deacons ("The Role of Deacons: Then and Now," October 2005). I’ve come to expect no less from Tim Drake. One minor problem, though, with the photo on page 15: The diaconal stole is worn on the left shoulder, not the right, so the photo must have gotten "flipped" somewhere in the editing process.
I still have my first issue from February 1990. Keep This Rock coming, as it is one of the few things that I read cover to cover.
Deacon Steve Schwartz
Chico, California
Kinsey’s Corruptions
The article "Sex, Lies and Videotape" (September 2005) was great. I read it several times, and it probably deserves another reading to fully sink in.
I suspect that its true import might be missed by younger readers simply because the evils brought about by the Kinsey-originated revolution in sexual behavior are now so commonplace that they are taken for granted. The current degenerated state of society is taken as normal because it seems to have always been with us.
But this article helps us understand how and why this came about.
People often think that when it comes to sex, all eras are equal; it’s just that some eras hid their behaviors better.
Not true. The frauds, lies, false statistics, and "scientific data" that Kinsey obtained from pedophiles and criminals subtly worked its way into American and Western culture, affecting several generations’ views of normality.
By making the abnormal and perverted seem to be normal, Kinsey actually brought about a change in the culture. Behaviors that were previously criminal or reprobated are now legal and accepted, because "everybody does it—didn’t Kinsey prove that?"
Well, that was the point. The builders of the Kinseyian revolution wanted everybody to do it. Because they wanted acceptance of their own perversions.
The effects on society have been devastating.
Jim Goethe
Wichita, Kansas
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