O Brussels, thou hast become a gushing fount of stupidity!
European Union privacy regulations now forbid hospital chaplains to be told the religion of a patient. (Merci, messieurs.) However, British ingenuity has stepped in: a Catholic women's association has invented a laminated ID card for Catholics to carry in case they should be sent to a hospital unable to speak.
In a praiseworthy feature, the card makes a point of rejecting euthanasia by dehydration: "I would like my nursing care to include fluids - however administered."
Here your info only gets to the chaplains if you list your religion as RC, not Catholic, Roman Catholic etc.
Ahh, the beauty of beauracracy
Maybe the EU should be renamed "The People's Republic of Europe". Tony Blair, keep the U.K. out of that mess!
A few years ago, an American friend gave me a copy of the second volume of "Modern Saints"(TAN Books, Rockford, Illinois, 1990) by Anne Ball (like myself a Catholic convert). Not until recently ( wthin the past few weeks) did I read it in its entirety.The results were phenomenal. Realizing that contrary to popular mythology, the Catholic Church calls all its members to holiness (not just priests or religious of both sexes), and that "ordinary Catholics" (ie. irrrespective of social standing) can if they so desire have the capacity for "sainthood" (whether or not they are formally canonized by the Church), I have made the decision to deepen my practise of the faith by fasting and praying
on Wednesdays and Fridays as Our Lady told the children at Medjugorge in 1981, saying the Rosary every Saturday,((a practise I had previously abandoned) and looking around for books to deepen further my understanding of the faith.
If someone could help me find a copy of the follwoing books by Joan Carroll Cruz "Secular Saints: 250 Beatified and Canonized Lay Men, Women and Children" and "The Incorruptibles", I would be so grateful and would mention them in my prayers
(I realise that they may be out of print, but where there's a will there's a way)
With All Greetings to My Brothers and Sisters in Christ
Terry Washington