David Ancell / Thursday, July 22, 2004 / Comments(0)
At long last, my vacation has begun. I’m at home today doing some things to get ready, including developing my site administration tool. I’ve been reading up on some ASP.NET. I’m trying to get my site administration tools up to par before leaving so that I can blog from another computer if needed.
Anyway, enough computer stuff, I’m going tomorrow to Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Defending the Faith Conference. I’m really excited about getting to hear Cardinal Arinze speak. He will be the celebrant and homilist at Saturday’s Mass. It looks like the weather will be just like it was last year. It was so nice last year that I didn’t want to come back to hot, humid Memphis.
When I return, I have most of next week off. I made sure I was off through my birthday on Wednesday. I’ll be 29, so it means that I’m almost-gasp-thirty years old.
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David Ancell / Monday, July 19, 2004 / Comments(0)
I’ve been waiting for time to blog this article. The author writes about perspectives that will and won’t work when confronting the issue of same-sex attraction. No matter how sympathetic one may be, it will not do any good for people with the disorder (and it is a disorder) to allow them to pretend that the gay lifestyle is acceptable.
Many view Christians as people with a holier-than-thou attitude. Some Christians do have this attitude for varying reasons. Christians are also accused of not being compassionate towards homosexuals. It’s as though the most “compassionate” thing is to let people do what they want.
The truth is that any Christian who truly loves God and neighbor wants to see not destruction but repentance. Sin destroys people, both in this life and the next. Although some people have numbed themselves to it, I’ll bet that anyone living in any state of sin is aware that something is wrong. When society decides to condone their behavior, we are only giving them cause to bottle it up inside.
I think I’ve mentioned this one before, but can you imagine what life is like for a woman who feels guilt and shame over her abortion while everyone around her doesn’t want to hear it. After all, they think it was okay to do what she did. This could also apply to homosexuals who are aware something is wrong, but everyone around them condones their behavior. It stays inside, and there is nowhere to turn. These are not cases where society has made them feel guilty because the society they live in condones their actions.
By not condoning one’s sin, we are giving them the opportunity to get it out. They can change. Life can be better, and in eternity the benefits are enormous. This is how we can hate one’s sin and love the sinner.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 17, 2004 / Comments(0)
I wonder how anyone can read this article and say that Bush and the Republican party won’t do anything about abortion. I bring this up because I was told this by some Catholics who consider themselves pro-life but wish to justify their vote for Kerry. Let’s also not forget about the Mexico City policy.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 17, 2004 / Comments(0)
Mark Shea writes on our obligation to forgive an unrepentant person. I doubt that he or anyone else on the blog post that he cites has the final word, though. Jimmy Akin wrote an article asserting the opposite in This Rock some time ago. His statement was that we don’t have to forgive the unrepentant because God doesn’t. One thing to note about the Akin article is that one of the things that it argued against were those ministers who told their congregations after 9-11 that they had to just forgive and forget about it.
I tend to lean towards forgiving the unrepentant myself. If they are truly unrepentant, then your forgiveness won’t mean squat to them. It’s what it will do for you that is most important. One cannot hold biterness forever without it having quite an effect on oneself.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 17, 2004 / Comments(0)
A couple days after Christmas this past year, I posted this about the saying “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” Praised be to God that I am not alone. At the urging of Jimmy Akin, I’m blogging this article.
Manuel Zammarano has formed the Committee to Save Merry Christmas, presumably from the P.C. Gestapo. His group is boycotting Federated Department Stores because they have given in to the Gestapo on grounds of the cultural diversity of our nation. Well, given that there is no Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s in Memphis, this will be an easy boycott for me. On another note, I’m glad that they got this started early because the retailers will be started very soon.
Those who read this blog last Christmas may remember that I hate and despise any attempt at stripping references to Christ in our culture, but especially during Easter and Christmas. I can’t stand seeing people (even supposedly Catholic publications) using BCE and CE instead of BC and AD to measure the years. However, changing Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays is even more repugnant because the birth of Our Lord is the obvious reason for celebration that day. If you don’t like it, you aren’t obligated to celebrate (even though you will likely be off work). Please don’t pretend to celebrate by censoring the name of the holiday.
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David Ancell / Friday, July 16, 2004 / Comments(0)
This has already been posted in other places before, but we have to give credit to Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo who is busy cleaning his new house that he has charge of. He has removed an advocate of women’s ordination from a diocesean commission. He established a diocesean theologian to screen speakers for orthodoxy before letting them speak on Catholic property.
However, he has a tough road ahead of him. His predecessor had 29 years to do his damage, and it isn’t going to be undone in a single year. There will be people who oppose him, but we need to pray for them to be humble enough to learn what the Church teaches and why. Some will be brought to the truth; others will either fight or formalize their conversion to Protestantism.
In fact, it doesn’t help that the article that I linked to keeps referring to the Church teachings as “Vatican policies.” If this is all that they were, then there would at least be room for disagreement (but not disobedience). Rather, these are parts of the unchangeable deposit of faith. These are the teachings handed down by Christ. Pray for the people of the Diocese of Richmond to be brought to that understanding.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, July 14, 2004 / Comments(0)
Diogenes from Catholic World News gives his advice to a new bishop. This is actually an older article, but unfortunately, it contains real sensible advice. I like the suggestion to preach about Humanae Vitae if the number of baptisms doesn’t exceed the number of funerals. Another thought: has anyone ever heard of a religious order actually being thrown out of a U.S. diocese in recent years? I can imagine that some need to be thrown out of some dioceses, including mine.
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David Ancell / Tuesday, July 13, 2004 / Comments(0)
Okay, now that I am safe here, I will tell you what I was up to. My new host was showing itself to be extremely flaky. I’m suspect that I was sent a few e-mails that I never received. I e-mailed people whom I feel pretty certain would have answered me. My mail services on the web pages worked sporadically if at all. My Cold Fusion pages took forever to serve.
The last straw was when the Frassati Society and my site both went down twice in one day on a Sunday. I decided that it was time to try another host. I found one that has been in business for a number of years and appears to serve sites well. I hope it works because I am tired of the headaches. I do not want to move the site again.
The only downside of the new host is that they do not support Cold Fusion. Because of this, I had to rewrite my blog in ASP. It was actually the easiest language I have ever written in except for the database queries. My administrative panel for the blog is still in Cold Fusion, so it has to stay on my local host until I get something else written. This means that my XML feed may not get updated as much as I’d like for a while. Oh well, at least this appears to work.
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David Ancell / Sunday, July 11, 2004 / Comments(0)
I have been having some problems with the site in general, and one of the things that has become necessary is to convert the Cold Fusion in this blog to ASP. To get down to practical matters, if you have linked to a page in this blog, you can correct your link by changing the “cfm” in the URL to “asp” (the file extension), and it should work just fine. It has messed up one of my links as well.
I may be able to post the full story later.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 10, 2004 / Comments(0)
Please pray for Pete Vere in the decision that he must make. Being a canon lawyer, he conveys a definite sense of duty in supporting Marc Balestrieri in his action against John Kerry. He has been invited to join in the proceedings, but he has very legitimate concerns as to how this will affect him and his ability to support his family.
Do not sit there an accuse him of cowardice. I will delete any such accusation made in my comment box; don’t try it! His concerns are very real. He has a real duty to his family. He also knows his duty to the Church. I have no reason to believe that he is doing anything other than really trying to discern how he can help. Please pray for him in this time. He needs and deserves our support and prayers.
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