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Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.buy Buspar generic https://onlinebuynoprescriptionrx.com over the counter —Inspector Mortimer, in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori
What does our mania for bottled water have to do with memento mori? More than a little, I think. Stay with me, please, while I work this out. A bottle of one’s own is a token of our times. We are all hydrophiliacs now. It used to be that bottled water was the sensible alternative to tap in tourist meccas with precarious hygiene. Continue Reading

Among the many thoughtful letters that came in response to the previous post, one in particular articulated thoughts that you yourselves might have. The one below comes from a man familiar with the founding of an Anglican Mission for Aborigines in North Queensland.buy ventolin generic https://rxxbuynoprescriptiononline.com/ventolin.html over the counter Herewith:
Dear Maureen: I have often wanted to reply to your articles, but until I read the one on why you do not allow comments at the bottom of your articles on First Things, I had never noticed your email address .
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At this point, it seems opportune to recall all the primitive religions, the Animist type of religion, which puts first emphasis on the worship of their ancestors. It seems that those who practice it are particularly close to Christianity. Among them the missionaries of the Church more easily find a common language. —John Paul II, Passing the Threshold of Hope
To serve the loa [spirits], you have to be a Catholic. —Haitian peasant
The future of the Church in Europe is bleak. Continue Reading

Instead of the sorry and unbecoming spectacle of the priest racing with death to the bedside of the sick, the Church prescribes a devout and dignified procession from church to home, with the minister assisted by clergy and acolytes and accompanied by devout layfolk . . . .
—Rubrics of the 1962 Rituale Romanum Liturgies change for the sake of the living. Protocols adjust to the shifting tenor and tempo of the centuries. But the hour of death is ever the same. Continue Reading

Whatever happened to Extreme Unction? Who are the baleful liturgists who drove a stake through the sacrament and nailed it to the ground? No need to answer that. I know who they are. They are the same ruinous bien pensants who confused the Zeitgeist of the 1960s and ‘70s with the cooing of the Holy Spirit. Let God forgive them; I cannot. Unction for those in extremis was stripped of its exclusive purpose and ritual dignity in the wake of Vatican II. Continue Reading