Category: Word on Fire

On
Bishop Robert Barron

Jurassic World: Gets it right, and gets it wrong

Spoiler Alert! This column reveals details of a newly released film.

 

The original Jurassic Park film from 25 years ago rather inventively explored a theme that has been prominent in Western culture from the time of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment — namely, the dangers of an aggressive and arrogant rationalism.

Beginning in the late 18th century, poets and philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Herder, William Blake, and John Keats warned that the lust to understand and control nature would result in disaster for both the human soul and for the physical world.

Read More
On
Bishop Robert Barron

A reflection on the Irish referendum

I will confess that as a person of Irish heritage on both sides of my family, I found the events in Ireland recently particularly dispiriting.

Not only did the nation vote, by a two-to-one margin, for the legal prerogative to kill their children in the womb, but they also welcomed and celebrated the vote with a frankly sickening note of gleeful triumph.

Read More
On
Bishop Robert Barron

Paul Tillich and The Shape of Water

I knew that The Shape of Water would win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It checked three of the major Hollywood boxes: celebration of oppressed people, valorization of complete sexual freedom, and a Christian villain. It used to be that a black hat or shifty eyes or a foreign accent would give someone away as the bad guy, but now, it is the quoting of the Bible.

Of course, this shouldn’t surprise us in regard to The Shape of Water, for the auteur behind the film is the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who has gone on record many times as a despiser of religion, especially Catholicism.

Read More
On
Bishop Robert Barron

A Quiet Place: A surprisingly religious film

Spoiler Alert! This column reveals details of a newly released film.

I went to see A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s new thriller, with absolutely no anticipation of finding theological or spiritual themes. I just wanted a fun evening at the movies. How wonderful when a film surprises you!

I don’t know if I can find the golden thread that draws all of these themes together into a coherent message, but I think one would have to be blind not to see a number of religious motifs in this absorbing film.

Read More
On
Bishop Robert Barron

A thoughtful case for priestly celibacy

This article is the first of a two-part series.

There is a very bad argument for celibacy which has reared its head throughout the tradition and which is, even today, defended by some. It runs something like this: married life is morally and spiritually suspect; priests, as religious leaders, should be spiritual athletes above reproach; therefore, priests shouldn’t be married.

Read More
On
Bishop Robert Barron

If you want to change a corrupt world

This article is the second in a two-part series on Jordan Peterson’s new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

This archetype of the hero also allows us to read the story of Adam and Eve with fresh eyes. In paradise (the word itself denotes “ walled garden” ), our first parents were secure and innocent, but in the manner of inexperienced children.

Leaving paradise was, in one sense, a positive move, for it permitted them to grow up, to engage the chaos of the unknown creatively and intelligently.

Read More
On
Bishop Robert Barron

The Jordan Peterson phenomenon

This article is the first of a two-part series.

Like many others, I have watched the Jordan Peterson phenomenon unfold with a certain fascination. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you don’t spend a lot of time on social media, for Peterson, a mild-mannered psychology professor from the University of Toronto, has emerged as one of the hottest personalities on the internet.

Read More