David Ancell's Virtual Home

Speaking of renewal . . . . check out this article. I found it linked to on Amy Welborn’s blog spot, but she had a different take on it than I do.

I have a friend who is a seminarian for the Diocese of Memphis at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, MO. I had the opportunity to talk to him about the scandals. He said that there is a lot of resolve among those studying in his seminary to preach the truth and live holy lives. Hopefully, this is the case all around the world.

Of course, there’s another important renewal that I hope will start . . . . my own. I hope that each of you are beginning your own renewal as well. If “We Are Church”, then we all need reform. I wonder if many dissent from Church teachings because they’ve never seen the joy of living them out. I know that I held some indifference to Church teachings until I came to Memphis and met people, including people my own age, who believed the Church’s teachings.

Do you ever feel that you’ve done the Lord’s will only to feel hurt or regret of some kind? Does following Christ’s commandments seem oppressive? Such moments must have occurred often throughout the history of Christendom. Maybe it’s because we didn’t do God’s will, but what if we did?

No matter how bad we feel, we must remember that God knows what is best for us. God wants what is best for us. After all, we don’t know what would have happened if we had turned the other way. Things probably would have been worse. At least in the long run, our ultimate happiness is secure by following God’s will.

Oh, so easy this is to write, but how hard it is to live!

Here’s the New York Times on canonical issues with the “zero tolerance” policy towards “pedophile priests”. I think the paragraph quoted below says it all:

The canon lawyers’ most frequent criticisms of the American bishops’ policy are that it denies due process to accused priests, ignores the statute of limitations in canon law, defines sexual abuse too broadly, and imposes the same harsh punishment – permanent removal from ministry – on every offender, regardless of the severity of the crime.

As I’ve said before, I hope the Vatican bounces this like a basketball. Then, I hope that better plans are drawn up. I hope we will have plans, not only to combat the scandal, but to renew the Church. It may take years for renewal to begin; it will take more years for a full renewal to take place, but I’m not going to lose hope.

Just a notice . . . once Monday rolls around, it’ll be light blogging for me, if there is any blogging. I may have something to say later in the week, but I may be too darn tired. No, I’m not in Steubenville. I haven’t achieved “somebody” blogger status yet. My business will be job related. Let’s just say I have a lot of work to do.

If you were looking for my blog tonight, I’m afraid I’ve not much to say. My brain is crispy fried. I had to do some work in Nashville today. I left here at 5 AM, and arrived at my destination at about 8:15 AM. I got home about an hour ago (about 10:45 PM).

So what is this all about? I’m grateful to the Lord for protecting me and getting me home safely. I just wish I had had more confidence in him during the trip. Well, one day I’ll get it. I’m not much on the get up early and then stay up late the same day routine. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this.

Well, maybe I’ll muster the energy to give you just a little food for thought. I desire very much to have priests and bishops in our Church who boldly preach the Gospel, including the difficult teachings. That boldness can also be used to proclaim God’s love. While we hope that the terrorists are stopped, God’s love demands that we hope for their salvation. At the same time, God in his love will forgive your sins if you come back to him.

To really understand God’s love, we must have an appreciation for the horror of sin. Then we can know how much God loves us, that he forgave our sin. Let’s not forget that the cross wasn’t pretty.

I went to noon Mass today in a nearby parish. The priest gave a great homily on how we as a society have lost our ability to see evil. He needs to give that homily to the NEA. As I have stated earlier, one would think 9/11 would be enough to convince them of the existence of evil, but I guess not. When we can’t see evil, it’s bound to continue.

Today is the anniversary of the worst evil that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I was in the gym of my apartment complex when I saw it on the television. It changed my workplace that day as we couldn’t ship our drug due to the cancellation of flights. However, this was extremely trival compared to what the people of New York experienced.

What caused this? I do not know. Many, whether intentionaly or not, have used the disaster to further their ideas. They told us that this was caused by anything from “American intolerance” to “American tolerance for [insert evil here] that caused us to lose God’s protective hand.”

How did this affect people’s faith? I don’t know this either. There was a surge in attendance at the noon Mass in my church that day. There was a lot of emotion, but I’m afraid that once the emotion wore off, many people returned to their former lives. However, if even one soul was saved because of this, then God brought a great good out of a terrible evil.

All I can offer now is prayer and penance. Pray for the victims and their familes. Pray and do penance for the terrorists, for the conversion of the living and the souls of the dead. Christian charity requires that we desire no one’s damnation. Pray for all travelers for their safety.

Gregory Popcak blogged a good one. Unfortunately, the link appears to point to the wrong article, but read his excerpt here. Apparently, teenagers have begun to sue McDonald’s because they have health problems from eating their food.

I guess it shows that we are really over-lawyered in today’s society. What’s next? Will someone who is late for work sue the person who drove in front of him/her for driving too slow? We already have parents suing teachers for their child’s poor performance in a class. Maybe the teachers should start suing the students for making bad grades. Better yet, maybe we orthodox Catholics could sue dissidents for misrepresenting the Catholic faith.

Yesterday and today we’ve had some pretty interesting Scripture readings about how we are to respond to evil. Sunday, we had Ezekiel 33:7-9 and Matthew 18:15-20. Today at daily Mass, we had 1 Corinthians 5:1-8. All of them speak in their own way about our duty to speak against evil. The Gospel of Matthew says to first approach the matter privately, then bring a friend, and only after that hasn’t worked do you bring the whole Church.

One of my greatest struggles is trying to reconcile this and the teaching of Jesus against the judging of others. It seems that all I see are extremes. Some people are so critical that they probably think that “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” is corrupting the minds of young people because it’ll make them think that farm is spelled “e-i-e-i-o.” I wonder what good they think they are doing. Others act as though the only sin is to say that something is a sin. The irony is that in saying that it’s wrong to judge others, they judge all of those people whom they perceive to be judging others.

What is the proper attitude towards sin? For example, how should we respond if we see someone having spent all of Mass out in the narthex talking to someone else? Bring this up, and invariably someone will shrug you off and tell you that you are being judgmental. However, this person didn’t satisfy his/her Mass obligation, and this person’s soul may be in danger because of it. We don’t appreciate seeing someone treat our family and friends with disrespect after being invited over to their houses. Why shouldn’t we be concerned when we see our beloved Lord taken so lightly?

On the other hand, some of those who preach against sin act as though they are looking forward to seeing the sinners burn in Hell. Why not exercise some fraternal correction? Speak up, and try to help the person like Jesus said to do in the aforementioned Gospel.

I want to fight against sin, both in my own life and in others. Jesus did say that once we’ve removed the log from our own eye, we can see clearly to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. I pray that God will grant me the prudence to know how to go about it.

It’s late on a Sunday night, and I’m here pounding at the keyboard. Several thoughts are in my mind. Actually, some of this is always present. Forgive me if I’m hard to follow tonight.

As long as I have been Catholic, I knew there was some really strange disparity between what I read in solid materials and what was actually preached in the churches I went to. It seems like there was a lot of this “nice” Catholicism being taught. It felt pretty good, but something didn’t seem right. Eventually, I began to lament the fact that actual Church teaching was hard to come by. I rarely noticed some kind of blatant lies, but I rarely noticed substantial teaching.

I’m thinking about a thought that came to mind in a conversation that I had yesterday. We talked about a television talk show that was “nice.” In other words, it wasn’t the “I sleep with anything that has a pulse and at least one leg” mentality. However, it was a new age, secular humanistic kind of thing.

So what am I getting yet? I have this fear that it’s the “nice” stuff, rather than the blatant immorality, that is the work of the Devil. The Devil is smarter than most of us want to give him credit for. Besides that, the Devil is a gentleman. He tries to make us think evil is good. He knows that there are some people out there who don’t enjoy stuff that is obvious filth. However, many of those people will buy subtle, “nice” sounding ideas that actually lead us away from the Gospel.

Do you know people who think it is nearly impossible to go to Hell? Do you know people who make light of sin because of God’s mercy? Surely, you know people who have a rather rigid interpretation of Jesus’ words about judging others that they think it is wrong to speak strongly against evil deeds. These are all examples of potentially diabolical ideas. May the Holy Spirit grant us true wisdom.