Breaking In The Habit

The Flaw with the Abortion Argument

Today I decided to talk about an easy issue that is in no ways controversial or problematic in our world. Okay, maybe not…

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Posted on August 26, 2020 by CaseyOFM

Justice, Video

abortion, Casey Cole, Catholic Church, Christian, debate, ethics, life, moral theology, planned Parenthood, theology, womb

Christian Clichés

A few years ago I did a video called 5 Words a Christian Shouldn’t Say in which I suggested that our speech can be lazy sometimes. Maybe even more repugnant than swear words are words that express something contrary to our faith. What we say matters.

Unfortunately, there are many phrases that fit this bill as well. As common and seemingly religious as they are, things like “Jesus take the wheel” doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. When we ask ourselves, “Is this what I actually believe?” the answer is almost always “no.”

And so, in the spirit of that first video, I offer five Christian clichés that we need to eradicate from our everyday speech.

Posted on August 24, 2020 by CaseyOFM

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Do I Have to Obey?

One of the biggest problems with theological debates online is that many people fail to understand the concept of the “hierarchy of truths.”

Sometimes it’s a matter of treating everything the Church teaches as equally important. When this is the case, well-meaning Christians will call other Christians heretics because they don’t fast on Fridays or because they have a problem with the Church’s teaching on contraception. While both of these teachings are important, neither of them are dogmatic in nature, meaning that disobedience of either does not result in excommunication or heresy.

Far more commonly seen, unfortunately, is the confusion of the hierarchy, elevating a non-authoritative teaching over dogmatic principles. This is seen when people quote the theological writings of a pope, saint, or prominent theologian as proof of something, forcing people to obey. Maybe it’s even a line from an ecumenical council many years ago. Just because a pope, saint, or theologian writes something, doesn’t mean that it is a binding teaching for all the faithful. We must have an understanding of the difference between private opinions and the ordinary magisterial teaching of the Church, and then within that ordinary teaching, where it all fits together.

Hence, this week’s video. It is by no means a comprehensive work and will need a few more followup videos to even cover all of the basics, but it’s a start: what is the hierarchy of truths? What must a Catholic obey?

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Posted on August 21, 2020 by CaseyOFM

Catholicism In Focus, Theology

Catholic Church, Catholicism In Focus, ecumenical council, hierarchy of truths, Ordinary Magisterium, Vatican II

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The intricacy of the plan, the thrill of the chase. There’s something so entertaining about “heist” movies. Whether it’s the suave Ocean’s Eleven or the brute The Fast and the Furious, movies about people stealing stuff captivate us from start to finish.

Which… is kind of weird when you think about it, right? Are we not just glamorizing criminals? Br. Tito and I discuss this conundrum in this week’s Everyday Liminality.

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Posted on August 19, 2020 by CaseyOFM

podcast

Catholic, Everyday Liminality, podcast

Should Catholics Boycott Walmart?

I owe part of my vocation to Walmart. Yes, you read that correctly: Walmart played a part in me becoming a Franciscan. Let me explain.

When I went to college, I was very excited about my faith. I wanted to be a youth minister that planned retreats and lead praise and worship. I was “on fire” for the faith. There was just one problem: I knew very little about my faith. I knew that church was fun and that Jesus loved me, but the theology of the Church? Its social mission? Its history? Its anything of substance? Yeah… I was a bit hazy on that.

Finding that the Catholic Campus Ministry group on campus was nothing like a youth group (no praise and worship, no skits, no fun games) I found myself struggling to click with church during my freshman year. The things I loved weren’t there.

Then, in my sophomore year, CCM put on a four-week series on Catholic Social Teaching. We talked about the right to life, the tenets of social action, the need to get involved in the world, and, finally back to Walmart, we watched the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Although the documentary is not religiously motivated at all, it offered a spark for a larger discussion on a Catholic perspective on the economy. We discussed questions of workers’ rights, working conditions, the role of money, the responsibilities we have in the world, solidarity—all things that are straight from the Catholic Tradition.

I’d never heard any of it before. I had no idea the Church cared about this stuff. To say that it was “life changing” might be a bit of a cliche, but it certainly had an effect.

Today, I hope that Walmart may have a similar effect on your faith. In this video, I begin by presenting the opinion that I have long held, that Walmart is a bad company that does more to harm the world than it does to help it. And we could stop there. But that would only be part of the story. The fact of the matter is that, despite its many failings, Walmart actually does a lot of good as well.

Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Are we willing to tolerate human rights violations for a good price? At what point do we say that they’re crossing the line? My hope with this video is not to give an easy answer that “Walmart is good” or “Walmart is bad,” but rather to show the serious dilemmas we face when we enter the marketplace and to challenge everyone to ask moral questions about the economy. Although less clear-cut than issues of sexual or scientific morality, economic morality must be something we Catholics take seriously.

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Posted on August 17, 2020 by CaseyOFM