Last year, I started my video experiment. I bought a camera, filmed a road trip, and thought it was a pretty cool medium. When I realized that what I was doing was no longer a cool hobby but rather the next step in my communications ministry, I threw together a welcome video to set the tone for the channel. It was fun and a little corny, but it got the job done. I was happy with what I had made on such short notice and with almost no video background, and it worked.
After a year, things have changed. That quirky little video we filmed outside of the Church one day wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. The cheesy jokes about Jedi and Medieval Festivals weren’t doing it for me anymore. I wanted something that better reflected where I was now, a year later, and what I hoped to accomplish in the future. I didn’t want a welcome video, I wanted a trailer.
And so, with time on my hands before things get crazy at the parish, that’s what I did.
For those of you who followed me this summer here on the blog or over on my Facebook page, it should not come at any surprise that my time in Mexico will have a lasting effect on me. How could it not? While I certainly wish I could have spent less time learning Spanish and more time using it with the migrants at La72, I can still say that I left having met some extraordinary people, heard some moving stories, and with a changed perspective that will no doubt effect my life as a Franciscan. Naturally, I couldn’t share everything in one video, but here’s a brief glimpse of what the trip meant to me and how this next year will be unlike any other as a friar.
The “debate” between religion and science is not new. It’s been alive and well in the world for centuries, and even a topic that I have written about before. For Catholics, it’s a tired argument, one that has no place for us because we don’t see science as the enemy of religion. Science is yet another way, along with divine revelation in Scripture, Tradition, and magisterial teaching, that we can learn about God. As Pope John Paul II said when he gave a speech to Vatican scientists, “Truth cannot contradict truth,” and so we are called to use the intellect and ability God gave us in every way we can.
In the back of our minds, though, we often wonder how true this has been in our history. “Sure, we believe that now, but what about Galileo?” This was a thought of mine even when I wrote the post about science two years ago. “At least we got it right in the end, but we were kind of in the “Dark Ages” for a while.
That was until I learned about Galileo in one of my seminary courses this fall. (As some of you may know from this article, the Catholic University of America received a grant some years ago to incorporate scientific study into seminary courses.) While Galileo was in fact condemned for holding a belief that we know to be true today, what I learned was that he was not condemned on the basis of contradicting Scripture and that Church did not condemn him because it did not like science. No, he was actually condemned because he failed to produce enough proof for his claim prior to teaching, broke his own oath, and then to top things off, led a smear campaign against those who funded him and his fellow scientists. (The last bit is not illegal but it certainly didn’t help his sentencing!)
Check out the video above or click here to learn about what actually happened to Galileo, where the myth came from, and how the Church has viewed science for centuries.
The Galileo Myth
Think you know the story of Galileo’s run-in with the Church? Chances are, the story you were taught in school isn’t the same one of history.
Breaking In The Habit is a site meant to present an experience of Franciscan life in the 21st century through reflections and videos in order to engage Catholics and non-Catholics alike about Franciscans and the Church, to promote the faith and stimulate greater involvement, and to encourage vocations to consecrated life, particularly within the Franciscan charism.
As hard as it is to believe, Christian and I had our last Spanish class yesterday. After a little more than seven weeks, our time is up at La72, and we’ll be heading to Mexico City on Wednesday… Read More
Our first day in Mexico was the longest day of my life. Beginning our travels at 10pm on Monday evening (having been awake for thirteen hours already), we took a plane to a bus to another plane to… Read More
