David Ancell / Friday, April 18, 2003 / Comments(0)
Yesterday, the Holy Father released Ecclesia de Eucharistia, an encyclical on the Holy Eucharist. I haven’t read it yet, but I know that it will be both timely and necessary given the confusion about the Holy Eucharist.
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David Ancell / Friday, April 18, 2003 / Comments(0)
Easter Triduum, Day 2
Now, we enter the most difficult day of the Easter Triduum. We have to fast. I am now eating the same breakfast that I did on Ash Wednesday – plain oatmeal. It makes a good penance.
I am not a big fan of the service they have on Good Friday, but I will go anyway as a penance. It just seems to drag on. The tabernacle is empty, and the church is bare. We remember the death of Christ for our salvation.
However, without this day, all would be lost. We would be condemned to die separated from God forever. Let us not lose sight of this reality.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 17, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here we are at Holy Thursday night. It has been a long time since I have understood how the world can even go on as usual during such a holy time. This is truly the high point of the year.
I went to Mass at my parish as planned. There was a beautiful transfer procession to the altar of repose in the prayer garden/courtyard that is almost finished being constructed. We kept watch with Our Lord. The Church was stripped bare. The Blessed Sacrament is gone from there and will not return until Saturday night.
It was tonight that we celebrated the institution of the Holy Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood. All four priests at my parish were there together. I just don’t know how to describe how this time of year is to me. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 17, 2003 / Comments(0)
I have come across three places this evening who proudly display signs that say something to the effect of “We will be open Easter Sunday for your shopping convenience.”
I don’t see why this is something to be proud of. I would hate to be the executive making that decision on Judgment Day. Imagine explaining why you required people to miss Mass on Easter Sunday in the name of “shopping convenience.” Do these people have a clue?
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 17, 2003 / Comments(0)
Lest someone think that I died, I’ll say that I’ve had a very busy Holy Week. My company is implementing a new computer system, and I have been in training. I’ve also had some kind of meeting every day this week. Tonight, I’m going to Mass.
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David Ancell / Sunday, April 13, 2003 / Comments(0)
Just after I graduated from pharmacy school in 1999, I went to work for a hospital in Mississippi to give me something to do before I got a license. I saw a couple of ladies who were probably employees talking, one of whom was pregnant. The pregnant one said to the other “That’s what happens when you don’t take those pills.” She started to talk about how she went through some stress and forgot some of her doses of her birth control pill. She said that she was upset at first but now she was excited. However, she plans to try to get her husband to have a vasectomy.
I was disheartened to hear this. This woman has ingrained in herself, with help from secular society, that children are a disease that you take pills to try to avoid. Pregnancy was a result of “not taking those pills” instead of the result of a loving act between her and her husband. Indeed, much of the contraceptive mentality is like this. Try telling someone that contraception is wrong, and often one of the first things you hear about is how people are going to end up having 1,232,353,656 children. It seems that a little basic biology course is in order, not to mention morality, especially chastity.
This post was inspired by this post by Jeff Miller.
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David Ancell / Sunday, April 13, 2003 / Comments(0)
Well, Jeff Miller finds a lot. Read this post.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 10, 2003 / Comments(0)
Kevin Miller issues his plea to stop the evil bill in Nevada complete with an excerpt from Evangelium Vitae.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 10, 2003 / Comments(0)
It is not too difficult to find some abuse of the belief that the Church is the Body of Christ. Of course, it is true, but it has been mistakenly equated with the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. On the extreme end are people mentioned in this article. I know of a priest who believes that we need to build churches-in-the-round because supposedly the Eucharist is about us, and we need to be able to see each other so that we can see Christ in one another. One wonders why we don’t just take turns sitting on the altar instead of having Eucharistic Adoration (to paraphrase an article in the Wanderer).
To read an accurate view and to know how to respond to such people, read this and this and this from the HMS Blog.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, April 09, 2003 / Comments(0)
Well, I guess I won’t be moving to Nevada if this bill goes into effect. From reading this article, it appears that this bill is designed to obligate the pharmacists to dispense any legal prescription.
Originally, the bill was designed to allow refusal to dispense a prescription on moral grounds, but apparently lobbyists for Planned Parenthood got this changed so that it prohibits refusal based on moral grounds. Granted, if the pharmacy doesn’t stock contraceptives and abortifacients, the bill still doesn’t force them to. Many pharmacies don’t stock them because they don’t want to deal with the issue. However, it is absolutely sickening to think that those who say they are in favor of “choice” and “freedom” do not want to grant that freedom to others.
However, even if a conscience clause is introduced into the bill, it is still totally unacceptable to require a pharmacist to dispense all legal prescriptions. The role of a pharmacist is not just to count pills but to ensure the safe and effective use of medications. We go to six years of school to do this and obtain doctoral degrees.
Believe me, there are plenty of legal prescriptions out there that have nothing to do with abortion or contraception that ought not be dispensed because they are dangerous. Sometimes, two physicians write for two different drugs that can kill a patient when taken together. Sometimes the same physician does this. I intervened in a case once where it was obvious to me that the physician had written for the wrong drug for the patient’s diagnosis. We see a completely different perspective than what the doctor sees and can put it to use. Not every doctor will admit his mistake when confronted with it, and I don’t want the fact that I dispensed something that I knew was not right on my conscience.
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