David Ancell / Monday, July 07, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here is an interesting op-ed on faith-based initiatives and how federal funding shouldn’t stop them from requiring people to share their faith in order to be hired. After all, it wouldn’t be a faith-based initiative if they were required to hire athiests.
Besides, as the author mentioned, by the same priniciple Planned Parenthood may be required to staff its clinics with pro-life Catholics.
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David Ancell / Sunday, July 06, 2003 / Comments(0)
I have safely arrived back in Memphis. Thanks be to God.
Oh, and Happy Blogiversary to me. It is now one year from the date of my first post. Well, I must be off in just a few minutes.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 05, 2003 / Comments(0)
You may remember the post about Catholic Update over a week ago. Well, I just went to Mass at my home parish, and included with the bulletin was, you guessed it, this Catholic Update on the GIRM. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the last one I blogged about, but it does have its weaknesses.
For one thing, it still insists that the Mass is the action of the whole assembly. Did it ever occur to this author, who is a priest, that the Mass can be celebrated without a congregation? The author places the changed in the context of the perspectives of different committees rather than a tightening up that is occurring because of abuses that have taken place. However, the biggest weakness is the following:
The General Instruction also encourages silence before Mass begins, which may seem at odds with the need to foster hospitality at worship and to connect with those who are assembling to worship together. Both values can be preserved if hospitality is encouraged as people gather, with a few moments set aside before the opening hymn during which people are invited to enter into reflection as the liturgy begins.
Uh . . . . NO!! When you enter the Church, you are to be silent so that you don’t disturb the prayers of others and so you show proper respect to Our Lord. This way, you are hospitable in a way that is proper to the place that you are in. Just as it would seem really strange to go over to a friend’s house and find that everyone is silent, it is also strange to be having conversations with each other when you are in God’s house, a house of prayer. It absolutely does not suffice to have a few moments of silence right before Mass.
As stated before, this isn’t nearly as bad as the heretical teaching on the Eucharist. However, it is in places misleading and still tends towards a more sociological approach to the Mass. Nowhere does it mention that the Mass is a sacrifice.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 05, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here I am blogging from my dad’s computer in Sikeston, Missouri. We went out for 4th of July instead of the usual cookout because my parents didn’t know if their home renovation would be finished or not. My 14-year-old cousin whom I sponsored in Confirmation was here. He said something very interesting:
He told me that he didn’t like the fact that their youth minister made them sing that “high-pitched praise and worship stuff.” He said it would have been fine if they had just sung “church music.” He was talking about the praise and worship service that they had during his Confirmation classes.
What does this say for those who insist that they are playing their pop music for the teenagers? Well, obviously, there are some out there that do not like it. This same music is used at Mass for the high school students at St. Benedict school, and no one ever sings it. I know that my cousin doesn’t speak for everyone, but maybe it’s time to try some more traditional hymns.
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David Ancell / Friday, July 04, 2003 / Comments(0)
Dom Bettinelli has a good point here. If Fr. Richard McBrien expresses dismay that a bishop is unquestionably loyal to the Holy Father, then that’s all the more reason to believe he will be a good bishop. Let’s pray that Fr. McBrien converts before he dies.
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David Ancell / Friday, July 04, 2003 / Comments(0)
This article from Catholic World News just makes me wretch to think about it. Basically, the French President Jacques Chirac has decided that all people of France have a duty to work towards secularism, and any aspect of a religion that stands in the way should be compromised. He claims that there are no laws superior to the laws of France. If this isn’t the work of the Devil, I don’t know what is. I agree with the commenter that “freedom of religion” is beginning to mean freedom to believe as you choose as long as you don’t act like you really believe it.
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David Ancell / Friday, July 04, 2003 / Comments(0)
In case I miss it, Sunday is the first anniversary of my blog. On July 6, 2002, I posted this post to Blogger. Fortunately, I am now on much-better Moveable Type.
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David Ancell / Friday, July 04, 2003 / Comments(0)
I’m going to my parents’ house for the weekend, but I may still blog from my dad’s computer.
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David Ancell / Thursday, July 03, 2003 / Comments(0)
I think that this op-ed by Maureen Dowd is proof that one need not have something to say in order to write for a major newspaper. Well, I will have Ms. Dowd and others know that, as a resident of Tennessee, I voted for Bill Frist. I don’t think that the fact that he dissected cats in his younger years makes him unqualified to oppose gay marriage. Neither does the fact that his policies are not consistently conservative. I would have a hard time supporting a hard-line conservative who didn’t use his head almost as much as I would a liberal who didn’t use his head. The fact is that we need to do what is right, not what conforms to an ideology.
Dowd even goes so far as to criticize a politician for naming marriage as a sacrament, saying that government leaders shouldn’t be making such statements. However, the fact that marriage is a sacrament is completely independent of who says it is. When he says this, he is only stating a fact that will remain true no matter what NY Times columnist, politician, clergyman, or other person says.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, July 02, 2003 / Comments(0)
I know the link isn’t working as of this writing, but when it does, you need to see this post on “liturgical dancing” by Fr. Rob Johansen. He mentions that we should put all liturgical innovations to the “15 Year Old Boy Test” because most such people have very well-tuned B.S. detectors. Given that I have a cousin who will be 15 in December, maybe I’ll get to test this out. However, I’m really using this as an excuse to tell the story of my B.S. detector.
I was baptized as a 15-year-old boy. To be honest, in many ways I was pretty stupid. I actually enjoyed those “religion” classes that taught little about the Catholic faith because I felt that, if it was sponsored by the parish, it must be something we need to do (I told you I was stupid.). I came of my own free will. This persisted through Confirmation classes. The next year, we got our weekly update on the Church teachings, but the teachings were largely mocked rather than taught as true. This did bother me.
However, during those high school days, there wasn’t much B.S. to detect, just stuff that was without content. When I went to college at the University of Mississippi (aka Ole Miss), I saw things that ought to have sent me on a hunt to find the bulls. I felt that something was wrong, but I suppressed my detector when it went off. Here are some things that happened:
By this time, I think I was already known as a crank due to some other things that I talked about. Somehow, I was miraculously elected to the parish pastoral concil after the survey. The tenure consisted mostly of discussions on racism that never bothered to identify any specific problems in our area. A friend of mine identified it as a filibuster.
All this time, I suppressed my B.S. detector at least somewhat, but it was there. Others knew it more than I did. I finally learned that my intuitions were not too far from the truth after all. Now, though, I fear that I have gone to the other extreme. I am still regarded in some circles as a crank. However, I am glad that my B.S. detector hasn’t completely died. I know many in the Church who have none at all.
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