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Cultural Rag Picking

Cultural Rag Picking

Steven Greydanus accurately describes the general moral latitude permitted to Catholics in cultural matters, but it is unbalanced in other ways:

1. Greydanus admits that “concupiscent disordering of human desires varies . . . widely from one person to another.” Then shouldn’t he just explain the Church’s guidelines and leave it to individuals (including “rigorists”) to judge what cinematic content is spiritually harmful to them? Catholics are not required to go to movies or to explore the outer fringes of morally acceptable entertainment. The “rigorist” does right, not wrong, in following his conscience even if his standards are above the minimum requirement.

2. Greydanus lumps cinematic conservatives under a “rigorist” label and charges them with being “suspicious of entertainment for its own sake and even of art and culture,” but narrow stereotypes don’t fit diverse individuals. I know people who hadn’t set foot in a theater for years until they saw The Passion of the Christ, but they regularly enjoy other forms of art and entertainment. Many choose other cultural fare over secular movies because they are far more entertained when they are not feeling morally assaulted.

3. Greydanus has focused on a gnat (his personal irritation with “rigorists”) and largely ignored a ravenous dinosaur (immorality in secular media) that aims to devour Christian culture. With many Catholics conforming to sinful secular standards, is it a high priority to encourage “rigorists” to lower theirs? Why not focus on building a Catholic counterculture instead of scavenging for bits of salvage from the secular rubbish heap now passing for culture in the U.S.? 

Deloris Gross 
Turtle Lake, Wisconsin


 

Do the Math

 

In Jimmy Akin’s article “Ratzinger’s Proportionate Reasons” (November 2004), he lists 9 million abortions for a two-term presidency. At 1.5 million abortions per year, 6 million per four years, the figure for eight years should be 12 million abortions. Akin does an excellent job of showing that “abortion is the preeminent moral issue of our time.” 

Sheila Kippley 
via e-mail


 

What Book Did Dunlap Read?

 

There must have been two books written by George Weigel with the same title. The one read by your reviewer, Jay Dunlap (Reviews, November 2004), requires a Ph.D., fails to “touch the reader’s soul” in most of the book’s letters, neglects to capture the “deepest essence [of the Catholic faith]” and is “too intellectual.”

The Letters to a Young Catholic that I read, on the other hand, was given to me as a father’s day present by my daughter after she had read it. (She’s in college with no Ph.D. on the horizon.)

The first letter provides a poignant and compelling statement of Catholicism as an antidote to nihilism, “the nihilism that enjoys itself on the way to oblivion, convinced that all of this—the world, us, relationships, sex, beauty, history—is really just a cosmic joke. Against the nihilist claim that nothing is really of consequence, Catholicism insists that everything is of consequence, because everything has been redeemed by Christ” (13). Letter five makes the compelling claim that “it’s not an accident that the Catholic Church is flourishing where the Second Vatican Council is understood to be a bracing affirmation of Christian orthodoxy . . . that religious orders and seminaries that take seriously the distinctive mission, way of life, and dress of religious life and the priesthood are growing, while self-consciously liberal religious orders and seminaries are dying . . . that the fastest growing lay renewal movements are those that take the hardest demands of Catholic life most seriously” (75).

These passages, like numerous others, are not too “intellectual”; indeed, they speak directly to and provide context for the Catholic faith in a manner that responds to the MTV perspective of life provided to so many of our young people by popular culture. 

Craig Martin 
Kalamazoo, Michigan


 

Correction

 

I am grateful to This Rock for giving me the opportunity to clarify the confusion over the review of Prove It! The Catholic Teen Bible and point out the needed corrections. The cause of the confusion stems from having done two versions of the review. The first was based on galleys, which we (i.e., This Rock and I) were led to believe were complete, but were, in fact, missing some important sections. The second, revised review was done after seeing the finished book, and this was the version that was intended to make it into print.

Somehow a mix of the two reviews ended up in the magazine. My experience with the staff of This Rock has proven to me their integrity and dedication, so there is no doubt in my mind that this was a simple, though regrettable, mistake.

Specifically, the whole paragraph calling for a section dealing with “the Bible itself—where it came from,” etc.—I deleted from the second review and should not have appeared in print. The completed Teen Bible includes the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, which covers all the points mentioned in that paragraph. In addition, the fact that this Constitution was contained in the Bible was mentioned in the final version but not in the published review.

Where the main sections of Amy Welborn’s commentary are listed (God, Jesus, etc.), a section on “You” should have been included. Also missing from the published review but included in the final version was a paragraph highlighting the “The Map.” It reads: “A final section called ‘The Map’ is a useful compendium of basic Catholic prayers and practices, including a list of the Ten Commandments, the Pope’s stations of the cross, instruction on praying the rosary, and more. Welborn’s descriptions of the seven deadly sins are sure to resonate with teens. ‘Anger: I hope bad stuff happens to you (Mt. 5:22).’”

While no one wants to see such mistakes occur, and the aim is always to be fair and accurate, there’s no denying that they do provide opportunities to grow in virtue—humility, trust, patience, forgiveness (sincere apologies to Amy)—and to remember Romans 8:28: “In everything God works for good with those who love him.” 

Mary Beth Kremski 
Forty Fort, Pennsylvania

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