Unearned Luck

I remember a cousin of mine who was slaving through Latin at her Catholic high school in Fort Wayne, IN, telling me a rhyme: Latin is a dead language, Dead as it can be First, it killed the Romans. Now, it's killing me. We laughed, and since I wasn't taking Latin at my Catholic high school in Indianapolis, I agreed with her about the futility of the classes she was taking. In light of the disunity within the Catholic Church, though, we were wrong.  Like many things in the Church in the United States today, the reason for Latin is not explained to anyone. Language is an important way of keeping people united.  Canada and Belgium, countries with more than one official language, have been fighting for many years to keep their countries together as linguistic groups have been fighting against each other for independence.  For the Church, Latin serves a similar function.  Since the Church is universal and most people can't speak many foreign languages, if any a...

Most groups seem to do whatever they can to create cohesiveness and unity among its members.  From secret handshakes to technical terms understood only by those who practice the profession, doctors, physicists, plumbers, and Moose all have ways of staying together. One of the most impressive examples of this to me was the way in which the existing Jewish community in Indianapolis in and around 1860 helped other Jewish immigrants to the city regardless of where those immigrants began their journeys.  Again, the Jews living in Indianapolis did not care in the least whether the immigrant was from Spain, Hungary, or Palestine.  He was a Jew and they were going to help him become established in his new home.  The wonderful part of this story is that the Jewish community in Indianapolis is still doing this kind of work for both Jews coming to Indianapolis as well as Jews moving to Israel. Catholics, on the other hand, seem to be doing all they can to divide themselves ...