Justice | Breaking In The Habit

One of the things that has surprised me thus far—though it shouldn’t have—was the amount of people I’ve met here at La Setenta Dos that have already been to the United States. It’s difficult to say how many, but based on my very limited, very anecdotal evidence, it seems like a good number.

The implications of this are quite terrible, for a number of reasons.

The first, and most apparent, is that no one should ever had to go through what they go through once, let alone multiple times. Risking their lives, living in fear, enduring physical and emotional pain, feeling unwelcome, begging for food—the list is not a good one. The journey for Central and South Americans to reach the United States is not a tale of adventure, complete with romance and triumph, narrowly escaping danger with comical flippancy; this is not Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean. Their journey is dangerous, tiresome, deflating, and unsettling, producing very few winners and even fewer without scrapes and scars.

But that’s just part of the journey. As is evident by the amount of repeat travelers, arriving in the United States does not guarantee continued living in the United States. Those who do not have documentation live every day in fear of a traffic ticket or accidental brush with law enforcement because it could be the day that they’re sent back to the very place they fled. In a moment—any moment—they could be “found out” and deported, torn from their new life and forced to go back.

Go back to what, though?

I spoke with some men who had been in the United States for five, ten, even twenty years. One guy came as a teenager, graduated from high school in California, lived and worked for five years after high school before being deported. Where is this 23 year-old, having lived in the United States for eight years, going to go? How is he expected to make a livelihood in a country where he now knows very few people has nothing to his name to start with?

The fact of the matter, no matter the legal or ethical code one adheres to when it comes to immigration, is that many of those who have fled their country and arrived in the United States have no other home than the United States. They have no “home” to be deported to: their family, friends, possessions, job, and really, experience, all exist in the United States. In speaking with some of the migrants here, that was what gave me the greatest punch to the gut. Not only are they fleeing the violence and oppression that instigated their original departure, but many of them are also fleeing in a desperate attempt to return to the ones they love who had not be deported.

With that on their minds, the fact that they have to risk violence, go hungry, and face abuse along the way—terrible things for anyone to endure even once, let along two or three times—becomes an almost commonplace experience, a perpetual uphill journey. Been there, done that. Whatever it takes to get home.

5 Comments

Posted on June 7, 2016 by CaseyOFM

Justice, Ministry, Trips

franciscan friars, immigration, La 72, La Setenta Dos, Latin America, Mexico, migrants, refugees

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 a three-hour car ride, arriving at our destination a mere fifteen hours after departed. At this point, it was only 1:30pm, a long way away from finishing.

The biggest adjustment, even greater than the language, was the weather. As some of you know, Washington, D.C. has been unseasonably cold, remaining in the 50s and 60s during the month of May as it experienced 19 straight days of rain. When we arrived in Tenosique, Mexico, a tropical area in the south of the country, the temperature was 102 with a dew point of 66. I was completely shell-shocked throughout the first day. No air conditioning, no ice or cold water, no relief in either night or day. (Now in our third day, I have not stopped sweating at any point.)

But wait, we haven’t even done anything yet; our day, in a sense, was just beinning! First there was a tour of the place, were acquainted with our rooms (more in a second), a quick nap, then concluded with multiple hours of aimlessly walking around the grounds attempting to have conversations in Spanish with the volunteers and migrants. Let’s just say I was not in the mood nor did I have the energy for this to be enjoyable.

So what about the room? Well, let’s just it’s not exactly what we were expecting. Not a room in the friary, our room is a communal barracks-style room shared with other volunteers. It’s kind of austere…

It was at this point that we thought we had made a mistake. What have we gotten ourselves info? There was no mention of our language classes and it appeared that we would be volunteering all summer as workers (or at least until we died of heat stroke.)

Christian and I prayed together that night before bed in our sweltering room, exhausted, dejected, and a bit worried. We were going to reserve judgment until the morning, deciding that a good night’s sleep would make things better.

We were half right. The heat kept me up all night, prolonging the longest day, but the next two days have been much better. We met with the director and made a schedule, organized prayer times (previously not regularly done but added at our request), and began our classes.

We’ve had some interesting and exciting experiences already since then, and it looks like it’s going to be a great, albeit hot, Summer for the both of us… But that first day was something I will never forget nor do I want to repeat!

Before leaving, I filmed this final video for the summer. My internet is not great here so you may have to go to the YouTube channel to find it, but this link might work:

8 Comments

Posted on June 2, 2016 by CaseyOFM

Justice, Ministry, News, Post-Novitiate, Trips, Video

Franciscan, immersion, Mexico, News

Back at the beginning of Lent, I said in a video that Lent was a time of preparation for the renewal of our baptismal promises. Because the video was mostly about Lent, I didn’t give a full explanation of what that meant, and I’m sure I left a number of you thinking, “What promises? I was a baby… I didn’t make any promises.”

Maybe so. But your parents and Godparents did for you.

You see at baptism—whether its done as a child or as an adult—all of us Christians are incorporated into Christ and Christ’s Church by being cleansed of our sin, permanently marked on our souls, and commissioned to live the threefold office of Christ: priest, prophet and king. Lumen Gentium, the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church promulgated at the Second Vatican Council (essentially the highest teaching authority on the Church), had this to say:

These faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God; they are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ; and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world (Lumen Gentium, 31).

It is for this reason that baptism is considered entry into the “royal priesthood”(1 Peter 2:9) making all the faithful, myself and likely you included, “priests” in a very real sense. Did you know that you we were priests?! Obviously different from our brothers with the title “father” in front of their name, what we are called to is no less significant in the life of the Church.

Called to offer sacrifice

Traditionally, the role of the priest is to offer sacrifices to God; this is the case for the Levitical priests in the Old Testament, this is what Jesus did when he offered himself as a sacrifice, and this is what Catholic and Orthodox priests do today on the altar. They interact directly with God and make the world holy because of their actions. But guess what: there are other ways to make the world holy than celebrating Mass! Just because we as non-ministerial priests cannot offer the “Holy Sacrifice of the Mass” doesn’t mean that we’re free from this office of Christ! Once again, the Second Vatican Council had this to say: “The supreme and eternal Priest, Christ Jesus, since he wills to continue his witness and service also through the laity, vivifies them in this Spirit and increasingly urges them on to every good and perfect work” (LG, 34). All of us as Christians are called to be priests like Christ in the sense that we are to offer sacrifice and make Christ present through our works. Even the ordinary lives of the faithful—going to work, being married, praying at home, even enduring hardships—can be done in a way to “consecrate the world itself to God” (LG, 34). This is an extraordinary reminder and a powerful commission we should take seriously: we are called as baptized Christians to make the world holy through our actions.

Called to be make God known

In the Old Testament, prophets were not so much the people that saw the future as they were people who saw the present as God does. They were people so close to God and attuned to God’s Word that they could look out into the world and proclaim what needed to be done to build God’s world (and even sometimes how God was going to react if we didn’t!) Jesus was the greatest of the Prophets because he was at the same time the one delivering the message and the message itself; his very existence proclaimed God and taught people about what God wanted for us and the world. As sharers in this office of Christ through baptism (yup… you guessed it) all of us are called to be prophets in the world as well. While ordained ministers are entrusted to teaching and preaching in an official sense, the council was clear that all Christians are a part of this mission, even taking on a part particular to them: “Now the laity are called in a special way to make the Church present and operative in those places and circumstances where only through them can it become the salt of the earth” (LG, 33). In other words, we are all called to spread the Word of God in the world, but the laity, living and working in the secular world, are able to reach people and places that the ordained generally can’t. Does this mean that everyone is expected to start reading the Bible at their workplace or asking fellow soccer moms if they know Jesus? No, not necessarily. Evangelization is not always so explicit. But it does mean that the way we live, all of us, needs to proclaim ourselves as Easter people, people who know the joy and life of the Resurrection and a God who loves us. There are infinite ways to show this!

Called to lead others through service

Finally, we all know that Jesus is the true King, the “anointed one” of God awaited in the Old Testament, ruling now on his throne in heaven. He is the all-powerful, just judge that governs all of Creation. The king of glory comes the nation rejoices! In an official way, ordained ministers take on this role as the ones who govern the Church, leading the people and making laws for proper life and worship of all Christians. But once again (last time!) the laity are not off the hook! As baptized Christians who live and work in the world, the laity are not only part of this commission, they are given a special role in it. Think about it. If we’re supposed to build the kingdom of God as Jesus announced, who is going to be better able to act with justice in the world: the priest running a parish or a regional manager of a bank? While ordained ministers might be better equipped to govern the Church, the laity, in fact, are better equipped to build a just society because they live and work in it. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, sales reps, social workers, factory workers, minimum wage clerks, authors and musicians. Each one of these professions is intimately connected with the wider world and the economy, and each Christian working in these places has insider knowledge about what needs to be done to create a better world. Being incorporated into Jesus’ “kingly” office means using the authority, knowledge, and ability one has to “serve others rather than be served.”

A priestly people

Taken together, all of us baptized Christians constitute a “priestly people” unto God, a royal priesthood of believers. As such, we are given a special commission to be priests, prophets, and kings in our world in a way that fits our way of life. One does not have to be an ordained minister to make Christ present, and in fact, there are ways that only someone who is not an ordained minister can do it. In this time of Easter, having purified and prepared ourselves in the time of Lent, we are sent out into the world to begin living this again in a renewed way.

How will you be a priest, prophet, and king today?

7 Comments

Posted on April 22, 2016 by CaseyOFM

Justice, Ministry, Theology

Baptism, Catholic Church, Easter, Jesus, Lumen Gentium, priest prophet and king, threefold office of Christ, Vatican II

(For those on email, click here to watch the video.)

During my sophomore year of college, I had a sort of “Catholic Awakening.” Baptized as a child and deeply committed to my faith since high school, it was around this time that I discovered the rich tradition of social teaching in our Church. Called “the best kept secret” in the Catholic Church, Catholic Social Teaching is the social justice component of our faith, the part of the Gospel that demands that we care for our sisters and brothers. I was amazed at the commitment the Church had towards the poor, doing wonderful acts of charity, of course, but also calling for serious acts of justice. In a sense, the Church calls all of us Christians to look out into the world, identify injustice, and work to build the Kingdom of God in its place. It was powerful, insightful, and revolutionary to me at the time.

What the Church wrote in its documents and what I saw it doing in the streets made sense to my intellect, but truly spoke to my heart. I wanted to know more. For the first time in my life, I began to study everything about the Church in a substantive way: theology, liturgy, history, scripture, morality. It was truly the start of my adult faith.

Today, I present to you a small snippet of that faith, a quick foundation in what sparked my serious interest many years ago. As Christians, we are all called to live the Gospel, not just in prayer and thanksgiving, but in serious works of charity and justice. I hope that this video speaks to you as it did for me many years ago. If it does, or you’d like to know more, I’ve copied a few of my favorite quotes from Catholic Social Teaching below:

“Decisions must be judged in light of what they do for the poor, what they do to the poor, and what they enable the poor to do for themselves. The fundamental moral criterion for all economic decisions, policies, and institutions is this: they must be at the service of all people, especially the poor.” Economic Justice for All 24

“The root reason for human dignity lies in man’s call to communion with God.” Gaudium et Spes 19

“A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.” Populorum Progressio 101

“Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.” Caritas in Veritate 21

“We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. Yet the orientation of the economy has favoured a kind of technological progress in which the costs of production are reduced by laying off workers and replacing them with machines. This is yet another way in which we can end up working against ourselves.” Laudato si 128

“Each of us as Catholics must acknowledge a share in the mistakes and sins of the past. Many of us have been prisoners of fear and prejudice. We have preached the Gospel while closing our eyes to the racism it condemns. We have allowed conformity to social pressures to replace compliance with social justice.” Brothers and Sisters to us

“Peace is but an empty word, if it does not rest upon that order which Our hope prevailed upon Us to set forth in outline in this encyclical. It is an order that is founded on truth, built up on justice, nurtured and animated by charity, and brought into effect under the auspices of freedom.” Pacem in Terris 167

“When there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State.” Rerum Novarum 37

“The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.” Evangelii Gaudium 56

2 Comments

Posted on April 4, 2016 by CaseyOFM

Justice, Video

Caritas in Vertitate, Catholic Church, Catholic social teaching, Catholic vlog, charity, economic justice, Economic justice for all, Gaudium et Spes, if you want peace work for justice, justice, Laudato Si, pacem in terris, Populorum professio, social justice

It’s an election year in the United States, which means that we’re still eight months away from voting and people are already exhausted from all the campaigning and fighting! November 8 can’t come soon enough! And yet, I think there’s a lot of work to be done before that day comes. Election day may be far off, but there is a lot that we can and should be doing as Catholics today to prepare.

1. The Gospel is political

For some, the thought of politics gives a stomach ache. Many would prefer to ignore discussion or arguments, and even more would prefer that the Church not get involved with politics. And I agree, if by “politics” we mean partisan endorsements or campaigning. That’s illegal. But if by politics we mean voicing our opinion, shaping the conversation, and working to build a better world… then the Church absolutely needs to be involved in politics. In that sense, the Gospel is inherently political. In 1971, the United States bishops even went as far as to say, “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel” (emphasis mine). In other words, one cannot fully live the Gospel unless one acts on behalf of justice.

2. We need to prepare

This is no easy task, however, and we can’t simply show up at the polls one day and act on behalf of justice (although, just showing up at the polls would be better than 45% of Americans who did not vote in 2012.) Who do we vote for? What do we vote for? Why do we vote for this or that? Questions like these take lots of preparation for Catholics. We are not a Church that defines the way someone should vote. There is not a “Catholic ticket” of issues because the Church does not set forth policies; it sets for values. This is an important distinction. The Church says, “Care for creation,” or “respect life,” but it does not say whether to support Carbon taxes or emission limits. There might be a good reason for both. Or neither. For every issue, there are many ways to respond with the Gospel, not just the two that the main parties support, and certainly not one perfectly correct one. Being active in our world and participating in the development of our communities, states, and nations—something that is required by Catholic Social Teaching—requires that we be informed enough in our faith and in what’s going on in the world to choose what best fits our conscience. This takes time.

3. We are all the body of Christ

The reason this takes time is because we don’t live in a vacuum. We live as a community, and although we may wish otherwise, we are not uniform in mind and spirit. We face disagreement and opposition all around us, even in our own parishes. This is not a bad thing: the Spirit speaks to different people in different ways, and there might just be something to learn from or to teach to our brother and sister in the pew next to us. This can, however, make it a very difficult thing. How do we talk with one another? Often, we tell “them” that they’re wrong and that they should believe the truth, by which we mean the opinion we hold. This happens even among the best Catholics; Facebook can be a breading ground for name-calling, religious superiority over others, and divisive smears. This is not productive and we as Catholics need to be held to a higher standard. Listening is a skill. Tolerance is a virtue. Respect is a requirement. It’s all well and good to say that we respect the human dignity of all people as a political stance, but another thing to recognize that the person who disagrees with us is still the body of Christ, and to uphold their human dignity with our words and actions.

These are just a few of the things I discuss in this brief video about being Catholic in a political world. If you have any questions or would like to discuss something further, leave a comment here or on my Facebook page.

For email subscribers, click here to watch the video.

2 Comments

Posted on March 14, 2016 by CaseyOFM

Justice

2016 presidential election, Bernie Sanders, Catholic Church, Donald Trump, election, Hillary Clinton, politics, religion and politics, Ted Cruz, voting

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Breaking In The Habit

Been There, Done That

The Longest Day

A Priestly People

Let’s Get Political