From Father Joseph Thompson re Goodden column. (Letter to the Editor).

People like to read between the lines, and it is a happy faculty in a writer if he can enable them to do so. That faculty becomes a menace, however, if what the writer is inviting them to read between the lines are untruths. Lies are much more likely to escape the reader's notice if they are expressed by innuendo.

I see Herman Goodden as possessing this writing skill, but prone also I think, unconsciously, to employ it to this bad end. For example: when he says (C.I, Sept. 2002) "sex-ed has not made sexually active teens any more responsible in the use of contraceptives," he forgets that contraception is intrinsically evil and can never be "responsible."

Similarly, saying that very young children are "bombarded" with prurient drivel before puberty even equips them to relieve "their sexual urges" implies subtly, but well, that masturbation is morally permissible. Teenage boys don't even have to buy their own condoms anymore, as if the immorality would be less if they did.

This is the one eternal principle of education, to be sure enough that a thing is true that you dare to tell it to a child, or anyone else!

Toronto, ON