David Ancell / Tuesday, April 08, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here is an excellent post on the state of Catholic higher education and what will need to be done about it. I do think that attrition will solve a number of the problems. Those who have attempted to hijack Vatican II in favor of their own agenda are dying. However, we must have people who are well-formed in the faith to replace them. Otherwise, they will die out only to be replaced by some other problem.
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David Ancell / Tuesday, April 08, 2003 / Comments(0)
I found out about this story on two different blogs. Is it just me, or is only the Catholic Church expected by our media to host people who dissent from our teaching? The NAACP would never be called bigoted because they refused to allow the Ku Klux Klan to meet in their meeting space. Interesting that the pastor consulted “staff members and parishioners” but conveniently didn’t consult the Archbishop. He needs to be sent to a monastery to pray and do penance before he damns himself. Let’s pray for him.
He should probably also be sent back to an orthodox seminary because there is obviously a problem with his knowledge of the faith. Let’s read . . .
“I do have a personal opinion. I am grateful to Mr. George Weigel and the clarification he offered in his column on March 20 in the Catholic Herald. He said that the Holy Father’s teaching about the current war with Iraq is not to be considered binding: ‘such statements do not constitute, and cannot constitute, an exercise of the papal magisterium. They are to be carefully and respectfully considered as the prudential judgments of experienced churchmen,'” said Cooper.
“Therefore one can conclude that the United States war with Iraq is moral and justifiable. By that same standard, the question of whether or not women and married men should be allowed into Holy Orders may be handled on the same basis. It has nothing to do with morality. It has nothing to do with our doctrinal faith …. It is a tradition of the Catholic Church. But traditions have and do change.”
Fr. Cooper, the problem that you run into is that the teaching regarding the ordination of women does constitute an exercise of papal magisterium. The following statement appears in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone) but not in any statement regarding the war on Iraq:
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in vitue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.
Therefore, any protest or prayer service in favor of women’s ordination is not the movement of the Holy Spirit but of the Devil. This matter is definitively closed. The Pope has not invoked such authority concerning the war with Iraq, and therefore the two teachings cannot be equated.
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David Ancell / Monday, April 07, 2003 / Comments(0)
As soon as Lent is over, I will be buying Lord Have Mercy by Scott Hahn. I decided not to buy any books for myself during Lent, but we are almost done with this. I must admit that I’m way behind in my Scott Hahn reading, having only read Rome Sweet Home. I have a lot of trouble following his talks, but I think that I could get more out of reading since I can easily go back and reread.
If you want a laugh, read the Publisher’s Weekly review on the linked to site. It has some laughable quotes, like this one:
His love for the idealized church of the past, however, will exasperate some readers.
I’ll let you all comment since it is getting late here.
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David Ancell / Monday, April 07, 2003 / Comments(0)
I posted a reflection on today’s Gospel on Spiritual Pyromania.
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David Ancell / Saturday, April 05, 2003 / Comments(0)
I added a link to Fr. Bryce Sibley’s blog on my site. This site is hillarious. I found this nutty site on his blog. I e-mailed a picture of a rainbow-colored stole to one of our very orthodox associates at my parish to see how he reacts. I told him I found a stole for him.
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David Ancell / Saturday, April 05, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here is an interesting post on evangelizing our youth. I’m not sure if I agree with all of it, but the author offers some interesting insights. As someone who didn’t go to Catholic school, it hasn’t been my experience that faith was treated as an academic subject. Rather, the problem was that the content of the faith wasn’t really taught. There is a serious need to teach doctrine.
However, we do need to evangelize whole families, not just teens. One reason why some children don’t seem to care about their study of the faith is that their parents don’t care. Rather than learn about and teach the faith to their children, they depend on the school to do it. I’ve heard quite a bit about this from someone deeply involved in religious education. I also see this when I see parents who led their children do whatever they want within the pew at Mass.
I’ve seen the results when parents do get involved as well. In my parish, we have a mother who takes her 4-year-old to daily Mass. I sat a couple of pews in front of them and found that the 4-year-old can say many of the responses just like the rest of us. After Mass, I placed my hand in the baptismal font and made the Sign of the Cross, and she was on the lower end of the pool in the font across from me doing the same thing.
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David Ancell / Friday, April 04, 2003 / Comments(0)
I have just learned of the death of Dr. Arthur Guyton, a world-renowned physician and professor at the University of Mississippi’s medical campus. We studied from his textbook in pharmacy school back in 1995-1996. It was one of the best textbooks available. May his soul rest in peace.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 03, 2003 / Comments(0)
I call what I am about to describe both a pro-life and a pro-choice victory. You may not be able to see this all if you are not a Catholic World News subscriber. However, a Jackson, Mississippi judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping a couple of parents from forcing their teenage daughter to have an abortion. Granted, the war is not won yet, but this is a start.
I call it a life victory for obvious reasons. I call it a choice victory because the girl in this case is exercising her right to choose to have her baby. If she can delay this case long enough it will be too late for the abortion, and the child will be able to live.
We must also pray for the souls of the parents involved. They are trying to force their daughter to murder her child, a most reprehensible act. We must pray for their conversion so that they will be able to love the child and no longer seek to force an abortion on their daughter.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 03, 2003 / Comments(0)
I took a quick look on what the GIRM says on the arrangement of the Church, and I found an interesting quote:
Care should be taken that the faithful be able not only to see the priest, the deacon, and the lectors but also, with the aid of modern technical means, to hear them without difficulty.
This is interesting because I know of at least one priest who has made a big deal of how the congregation should be able to see each other and therefore see Christ in one another. The GIRM quote is therefore interesting for what it does not say. It makes no mention of the congregation being able to see each other. This is often the justification for the church-in-the-round design.
Now, there are some that may argue that the church-in-the-round makes the altar easier to see. I have not found this to be so. Try sitting in one of the outlying pews and see what you can see. The document further states that we should be able to easily come forward for Holy Communion. I have almost missed Communion because I couldn’t figure out when to get up and where to go in one of these churches. I had to signal an Extraordinary Minister who started to walk away as I approached.
Besides, the traditional arrangement, with the priest facing the same direction as the people, symbolizes our movement together towards God. I can see no other symbolism in the church-in-the-round other than a community that has closed in on itself. Such a community is dead.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 03, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here is the English translation of GIRM 2000 on the U.S. Bishop’s web site. I don’t know how good of a job they did with the translation, but at least there is one available.
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