David Ancell / Monday, April 17, 2006 / Comments(0)
After the forty days of Lent come the fifty days of Easter. After we prepare by remembering the death of Our Lord, let us not forget that he has been raised from the dead, and, he will never die again. Every day this week is celebrated as a solemnity in honor of the Resurrection. We will celebrate up until June in the Easter season. While many look at the importance of Christmas, let us not forget that Christmas would not be worth even walking across the street for if not for Easter.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 13, 2006 / Comments(0)
Interesting . . . very interesting . . . McDonald’s is experimenting with a centralized call center in its drive through windows. Well, lots of places use call centers, I’m sure. However, I can hardly understand how this is going to help McDonald’s unless they can have fewer people in the call center than in their individual stores. Then, if they get too few people, people will be waiting at the drive-through in a similar fashion to those waiting on hold at a call center. Can you imagine this at a drive-through “All representatives are busy. Please hold, and your order will be taken in the order of arrival.” I might just drive off.
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David Ancell / Monday, April 10, 2006 / Comments(0)
After months of delay, the USCCB has finally published the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I have long awaited this. Unfortunately, the hardcover version has been delayed. I went ahead and bought a paperback so that I’d have it.
My first impression from the parts I’ve read is that this is an excellent resource. It isn’t particularly in-depth due to its smaller size, but I’ve found the concise answers to the questions to be very understandable. For some reason, I tend to find the question-and-answer format to be ideal for finding clear, easy to grasp information. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about the Catholic Faith, especially those who might have found the full Cathechism intimidating.
Oh, and I see that the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults is about to be published as well. I’m waiting to see what this is like.
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David Ancell / Sunday, April 09, 2006 / Comments(0)
This morning, when I got my e-mail, I read in the New York Times online that a “Gospel of Judas” has surfaced. I guess there’s always the possibility of fraud, but it does seem to be an old manuscript. However, from the article, it appears that the contents are yet another form of Gnosticism. Supposedly Jesus asked Judas to betray him so that he could get out of this body he had. The manuscript says that Judas will “exceed” the other apostles by doing so. No doubt that anyone who is familiar with Gnosticism will recognize this as the Gnostic belief that the body is bad and the spirit is good.
I find this op-ed by Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton, to be even more confusing. She claims that this manuscript “opens up new perspectives” on the Gospel stories. However, Gnosticism is hardly a new perspective. The “secret revelation” to Judas (which he must have written very quickly, just before he hanged himself) is nothing more than another take on the idea that we need to get our good spirit out of this bad body.
Further, Pagels claims that the discovery of the Gnostic gospels are “exploding the myth of a monolithic Christianity and showing how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement really was.” Well, I hate to rain on her parade, but I already knew that there were people claiming to be Christians who had these kinds of beliefs. The fact that people had different beliefs like this does not make those beliefs legitimate. Sure, the people who used these “gospels” thought that they had the advanced, private teaching of Jesus Christ, but the fact that they believed they had it does not mean that they in fact did.
The Gnostics believed that it was their secret knowledge that was bringing whatever they regarded as salvation. Naturally, their writings would claim that they contained the “secret teaching” of Jesus Christ. Interestingly enough, this “secret teaching” that suggests the Gnostic principle that we need to escape our bodies is in direct contradiction to what Jesus taught. In the Gospel of John, we see that Jesus explicitly mentions the resurrection of the body. The Gnostics would view this as wrong in light of their beliefs.
So, what’s the bottom line here? Pagels, in an effort to open her mind to these “new perspectives in Christianty,” doesn’t take into account that the reason that St. Irenaeus dencounced the Gnostic writings was that they were wrong. Any movement that spread like Christianity is prone to have someone out there spreading misleading information. Further, the study of Christianity is not just some historical-critical “scholarly” pursuit, but the understanding of God’s loving revelation to us. Christ promised to guard his Church, and he will do so.
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David Ancell / Sunday, April 09, 2006 / Comments(0)
I got an e-mail yesterday telling me about these businessmen who put the “choose life” license plates on their company vehicles. It’s nice to know that there are people willing to stand like this even in their business.
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David Ancell / Friday, April 07, 2006 / Comments(0)
Just a little while ago, I read this gem from a sermon by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household. It gave me a reality check. Basically, he’s saying that our commitment is often a kind of “fair weather” or “half-hearted” commitment. In other words, as soon as it is inconvenient for us to live out the faith, we tend to falter. Have I ever failed to do something, citing the fact that it is too difficult as an excuse? You bet I have.
I need to recognize the part I played in Christ’s sufferings. If he was willing to suffer for love of me, shouldn’t I be willing to suffer for love of him. After all, if I trust him, I know that he will not be outdone in generosity.
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David Ancell / Thursday, April 06, 2006 / Comments(0)
Sorry that I have not been writing regularly lately. I hope to be able to do this more often. I actually had some great thoughts that I wanted to record last night, but I seem to have forgotten all of them. My brain is only semi-functional thanks to the time change.
I am working on my Palm Sunday podcast. I bought a new microphone that I hope will make me sound better. I’m taking a new approach this time. Instead of writing and outline and then speaking, I’m speaking a bit at a time and then editing as needed. We’ll see how the final product comes out when I post it.
It’s odd to me how I’ve started now with suffering-related topics. I used to shy away from those. Then again, I did say in the beginning that I’m speaking to myself as much as to anyone else.
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David Ancell / Tuesday, March 21, 2006 / Comments(0)
I’ve heard of some crazy things people do while driving, but this takes the cake. Apparently, he was playing at ever stop and at stop lights and possibly while driving. This was quite a feat, but apparently his boss wasn’t impressed. He was fired.
The strange part is that “terrified passengers” heard the screams of characters he was beating up. I’m wondering how that could be. The PSP isn’t that loud. Oh well, he definitely was not in the right line of work to be doing that.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, March 15, 2006 / Comments(0)
I have just finished putting my podcast page on my web site. You can get it here:
The David Ancell Podcast
For those of you who really want to know how it was done, I used Cold Fusion to parse the RSS feed file, and it formats the XML right onto the page. I think it’s pretty cool. My next step is to add some graphics to the site and create some “cover art” for this podcast for display in iTunes. I also want to get the most recent show on my main page. By the way, you can subscribe to my podcast using iTunes by clicking the link below.
Click here to subscribe.
Enjoy!
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David Ancell / Tuesday, March 14, 2006 / Comments(0)
It seems as though McAfee VirusScan accidentally detected the Excel virus. Apparently, an error in the code caused it to perceive Microsoft Excel as a W95/CTX virus. So, if you had been working in Excel and suddenly found that, after a scan, you no longer have it, this might be why.
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