Category: Word on Fire

On
Bishop Robert Barron

The Case for Christ and evangelization

The Case for Christ is a film adaptation of Lee Strobel’s best-selling book of the same name, one that has made an enormous splash in Evangelical circles and beyond. It is the story of a young, ambitious (and atheist) reporter for the Chicago Tribune, who fell into a psychological and spiritual crisis when his wife became a Christian.

The scenes involving Lee and his spouse, which play out over many months of their married life, struck me as poignant and believable — and I say this with some authority, having worked with a number of couples in a similar situation.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Jackie and the priest in conversation

Somehow I managed to miss the film Jackie during the Christmas season, but I watched it, twice, on recent long flights to and from the east coast.

Like many others, I was struck by its moody, more “European” style, the high quality of the acting, especially on the part of Natalie Portman, and its historical verisimilitude, but what particularly impressed (and surprised) me were the scenes between Mrs. Kennedy and a sympathetic priest.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Lessons of suffering at Lough Derg

A few years ago, our Catholicism series film crew arrived at the shores of a large lake in far northwest Ireland, in the county of Donegal. We stepped onto a ferry and were taken to an island in the middle of the lake.

On the island was a collection of buildings, which in both architecture and color reminded me vividly of Alcatraz prison. The weather that day was horrific: temperature around 50, heavy winds, and a steady cold rainfall. Our hosts offered us tea and scones and then we made our way onto the island to begin our work.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Theo-dramas of SS. Patrick and Joseph

I am always pleased when the feasts of St. Patrick and St. Joseph roll around every year, the first on March 17 and the second on March 19. Joseph is especially dear to the Italian people, who celebrate him with festive meals, and Patrick, of course, is specially reverenced by my own people, the Irish, who celebrate him with parades, parties, and (often) too much drinking.

Though separated by four centuries and though hailing from extremely different cultures, Patrick and Joseph have a great deal in common, spiritually speaking. For both stubbornly situated their lives in the context, not of the ego-drama, but the theo-drama, and therein lies their importance for the universal church.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Why it matters more who Jesus is

I have been reading, with both profit and delight, Thomas Joseph White’s latest book, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology.

Fr. White, one of the brightest of a new generation of Thomas interpreters, explores a range of topics in this text — the relationship between Jesus’ human and divine natures, whether the Lord experienced the beatific vision, the theological significance of Christ’s cry of anguish on the cross, his descent into Hell, etc. — but for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on a theme of particular significance in the theological and catechetical context today.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Love is both tolerant and intolerant

Every community, inevitably, has a value or set of values that it considers fundamental, some basic good which positions every other claim to goodness. For most of the modern liberal democracies, for example, freedom and equality play this determining role in the moral discourse.

In Communist societies, economic justice, construed as the elimination of the class structure, would provide such a foundation. In the context of German National Socialism, the defense of the Fatherland and the will of the Führer anchored the moral system, however corrupt.

There is a rather simple means of identifying this ultimate value: in regard to any particular moral or political act, keep asking the question, “Why is this being done?” until you come to the point where you find yourself saying, “Well, because that’s just a good thing.” The “just a good thing” is the value that your society or culture considers non-negotiable and which in turn determines all subordinate values.

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On
Bishop Robert Barron

Love is both tolerant and intolerant

Every community, inevitably, has a value or set of values that it considers fundamental, some basic good which positions every other claim to goodness. For most of the modern liberal democracies, for example, freedom and equality play this determining role in the moral discourse.

In Communist societies, economic justice, construed as the elimination of the class structure, would provide such a foundation. In the context of German National Socialism, the defense of the Fatherland and the will of the Führer anchored the moral system, however corrupt.

There is a rather simple means of identifying this ultimate value: in regard to any particular moral or political act, keep asking the question, “Why is this being done?” until you come to the point where you find yourself saying, “Well, because that’s just a good thing.” The “just a good thing” is the value that your society or culture considers non-negotiable and which in turn determines all subordinate values.

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On
Bishop Robert Barron

Evangelizing through the good

Anyone even vaguely acquainted with my work knows that I advocate vigorous argument on behalf of religious truth. I have long called for a revival in what is classically known as apologetics, the defense of the claims of faith against skeptical opponents. And I have repeatedly weighed in against a dumbed-down Catholicism.

Also, I have, for many years, emphasized the importance of beauty in service of evangelization. The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the Sainte Chapelle, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, and the Cathedral of Chartres all have an extraordinary convincing power, in many ways surpassing that of formal arguments.

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