Word on Fire – Page 19 – Madison Catholic Herald Archive (2001-2025)

Just a few weeks before the most significant Christian holy day of the year, British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking on an evangelical radio program, articulated what, for him, is the meaning of Easter.

He explained that the central message of Easter is “kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility.” I’m for all of those virtues, but so, I would venture to guess, is any decent person from any background, religious or non-religious. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, fair-minded agnostics, and atheists would all subscribe to that rather abstract and harmless description of the significance of Easter.

In a sense, we shouldn’t blame the prime minister for his characterization, for the Christian Churches in general, but especially the Anglican Church, have not distinguished themselves for the crispness of their doctrinal formulations.

But if that’s all Easter is about, not to put too fine a point on it, the jig is up.

Why our democracy trusts in God

I was pleased that the United States Supreme Court dismissed a suit brought by Michael Newdow, a Sacramento man who wanted to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from the nation’s coins and paper currency, as well as from the fronts of our public buildings.

The argument that the gentleman brought forward was that this custom somehow violates the First Amendment guarantee that the government shall make no law either establishing an official religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion in the United States.

Word on Fire

On April 2, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

What ‘Whiplash’ can teach us

Over the years, there have been numerous films that feature the character of the “monster-mentor,” by which I mean an elder who forms a young apprentice through the toughest kind of tough love.

Think of Lou Gossett, Jr.’s character in An Officer and a Gentleman who puts Richard Gere’s young Navy recruit brutally through his paces; or of the awful drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket who ruthlessly prepares one young man to be a soldier, even as he leads another to commit suicide; or of Pai-Mei in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, the Kung-Fu master who brow-beats one recruit until she is able to put her fist through a four-inch thick piece of wood.

A very Christian ‘Cinderella’

Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella is the most surprising Hollywood movie of the year so far.

The director manages to tells the familiar fairy tale without irony, hyper-feminist sub-plots, Marxist insinuations, deconstructionist cynicism, or arch condescension. In so doing, he actually allows the spiritual, indeed specifically Christian, character of the tale to emerge.

It probably strikes a contemporary audience as odd that Cinderella might be a Christian allegory, but keep in mind that most of the fairy stories and children’s tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm and later adapted by Walt Disney found their roots in the Christian culture of late medieval and early modern Europe.

Strategy for the New Evangelization

I once gave a sermon in which I mentioned Keith Richards, the lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones.

I recounted how struck I was by a passage from Richards’ autobiography in which the guitarist described the almost maniacal dedication with which he and his bandmates set out to learn Chicago blues.

“Benedictines,” he said, “had nothing on us.” I urged my listeners to approach their spiritual lives with the same “Benedictine” focus and fervor that the young Rolling Stones had in regard to the blues.

Word on Fire

On March 12, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

Putting God first in our lives

Artistic representations of the Ten Commandments often depict two stone tablets on which there are two tables of inscriptions.

This portrayal follows from a classical division of the commandments in which there are two specific categories: those that order humanity’s relationship with God and those that order human relationships with one another.

If we consider the Bible as a totality, it becomes apparent that the Scriptures give priority to the first table, those commands dealing with God.

A message written in blood

Recently, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of 21 Coptic Christians were brutally beheaded by masked operatives of the ISIS movement.

In the wake of the executions, ISIS released a gruesome video entitled A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross. I suppose that for the ISIS murderers, the reference to “the Nation of the Cross” had little sense beyond a generic designation for Christianity.

Sadly for most Christians, too, the cross has become little more than a harmless symbol. I would like to take the awful event on that Libyan beach, as well as the ISIS message, as an occasion to reflect on the still startling distinctiveness of the cross.

Fry, Job, and the cross of Jesus

The British writer, actor, and comedian Stephen Fry is featured in a YouTube video which has gone viral: over five million views.

Fry is, like his British counterparts Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, a fairly ferocious atheist and debunker of all things religious.

Fry’s rant

In the video, Fry articulates what he would say to God if, upon arriving at the pearly gates, he discovered he was mistaken in his atheism.

Word on Fire

On February 18, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

Christianity not primarily about ethics

Many atheists and agnostics today argue that it is possible for non-believers in God to be morally upright.

They resent the implication that the denial of God will lead inevitably to ethical relativism or nihilism. They are quick to point out examples of non-religious people who are models of kindness, compassion, justice, etc.

Non-believers praiseworthy?

A recent article proposed that non-believers are, on average, more morally praiseworthy than religious people. God knows (pun intended) that during the last 20 years we’ve seen plenty of evidence of the godly behaving badly.

Word on Fire

On February 11, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

Thomas Merton’s influence

I write these words on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton, one of the greatest spiritual writers of the 20th century and a man who had a decisive influence on me and my vocation to the priesthood.

I first encountered Merton’s writing in a peculiar way. My brother and I were both working at a bookstore in the Chicago suburbs. One afternoon, he tossed me a tattered paperback with a torn cover that the manager had decided to discard.