text: The Church teaches that we must cooperate with God's grace to restore our justification we have lost through mortal sin after Baptism. Dismas's acknowledgement of his own guilt and his plea to Our Lord to remember him was evidence of this cooperation; a good work, no?
  I do not consider Catholic teaching to be the product of "old men in Rome." I believe it is the teaching of Our Lord passed down to us through His Church. I think that could be described as Faith rather than intellectual dishonesty.