Sometimes you will hear Protestants say that "if only the Catholics knew the truth, they would no longer remain in the Church." I believe that if you were interested or "called" to minister to Protestants who had studied Greek it would be to your advantage to study it also. I have heard one of the famous converts (can't remember which now) say [that some Protestants] argue about whether Jesus was talking about a big rock or a little rock when he was calling Simon Peter the rock upon which he would build his Church. He discussed what it was in Greek and made the point that this was important. So I believe that for evangelization purposes it would be important. Also, in another group, someone mentioned that it makes learning Russian easier. The icons of Our Mother of Perpetual Help (my favorite!) have Greek letters at the top. (or so I was told) And then anytime you learn a new language you make it easier to learn another. Contributed by Dorothy O'Neil Homer, Aristophanes and Demosthenes spring to mind... But even if one never gets as far as being able to read Homer in the original, Greek is just as useful to a speaker of English, and a scholar, as Latin. Many of our words (especially in scientific spheres) come from Greek. Also, knowledge of elementary Greek means when your children decide to take an English course at university they won't be lost when the books by respected critics of old use Greek (with no translations in the footnotes, because every educated person was assumed to know Greek, and they never foresaw the time when scholars would not know even Latin, much less Greek). And also, it is very valuable to be able to read the NT in the original--for the same reasons as it is valuable to read Virgil in Latin, or Herman Hesse in German. Of course, if you study Greek to that purpose, then you ought to also study Hebrew. And naturally, once you have Greek, you can read the Septuagint too--an important source for Jerome's translations. ... I can't believe I forgot to mention Aristotle. I knew some Thomistic philosophers who called him "St. Aristotle"! In my department (Classical Studies) at university we had a poster made, that said: "Be Really Educated: Learn Latin." My Greek professor added this to his own on his office door: "Be an Educated Roman: Learn Greek." As for studying both, I would begin with Latin, and once you had reached a fairly comfortable level (being able to translate easy original texts like Caesar or the Missal/Breviary) I would begin Greek. Greek is more complex grammatically than Latin. Kolbe Academy has both at the same time, but I think that would be too much for most children. Some very language-oriented children might be able to learn both at the same time, or start Latin one year and Greek the next. A programme like English From the Roots Up is a good starting point for both Greek and Latin study. Maybe once you decided to add Greek, you can begin by teaching the alphabet using the now familiar roots, written in the Greek alphabet. For many children, the new alphabet is a real stumbling block, so getting that down first will help. No one should have any trouble with several languages so long as you stick to roots and vocabulary alone. Contributed by Désirée Caron