Tag: Barron

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Bishop Robert Barron

Why Serra matters today

The upcoming canonization of Blessed Junípero Serra in Washington, D.C. — the first ever to take place on American soil — has generated, as I’m sure you know, a good deal of controversy.

For his defenders, Padre Serra was an intrepid evangelist and a model of Gospel living, while for his detractors, he was a shameless advocate of an oppressive colonial system that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Indians.

Even many who typically back Pope Francis see this canonization as a rare faux pas for the Argentine pontiff. What should we make of all this?

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Bishop Robert Barron

Why you need spiritual food

Every third summer, the Catholic lectionary provides a series of readings for Sunday Mass from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. This is the magnificently crafted chapter in which the evangelist’s Eucharistic theology is most fully presented.

It is a curiosity of John’s Gospel that the Last Supper scene includes no “institution narrative,” which is to say, the account of what Jesus did with the bread and cup the night before he died.

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Bishop-elect Robert Barron

Stephen Colbert, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Henry Newman, and the providence of God

Recently, Stephen Colbert gave an interview in which the depth of his Catholic faith was on pretty clear display.

Discussing the trauma that he experienced as a young man — the deaths of his father and two of his brothers in a plane crash — he told the interviewer how, through the ministrations of his mother, he had learned not only to accept what had happened but actually to rejoice in it: “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10; that was quite an explosion . . . It’s that I love the thing that I wish most had not happened.”

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Fr. Robert Barron

Mother Nature is one unreliable lady

Conservation International has sponsored a series of videos that have become YouTube sensations, garnering millions of views.

They feature famous actors — Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Robert Redford, and others — voicing different aspects of the natural world, from the ocean, to the rain forest, to redwood trees. The most striking is the one that presents Mother Nature herself, given voice by Julia Roberts.

Nature’s indifference

They all have more or less the same message, namely, that nature finally doesn’t give a fig for human beings, that it is far greater than we, and will outlast us. Here are some highlights from the Mother’s speech:

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Chris Lee

Death of God and loss of human dignity

Many of you have seen the appalling hidden-camera videos of two Planned Parenthood physicians bantering cheerfully with interlocutors posing as prospective buyers of the body parts of aborted infants.

While they slurp wine in elegant restaurants, the good doctors — both women — blandly talk about what price they would expect for providing valuable inner organs and how the skillful abortionists of Planned Parenthood know just how to murder babies so as not to damage the goods.

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Bishop-elect Robert Barron

Death of God and loss of human dignity

Many of you have seen the appalling hidden-camera videos of two Planned Parenthood physicians bantering cheerfully with interlocutors posing as prospective buyers of the body parts of aborted infants.

While they slurp wine in elegant restaurants, the good doctors — both women — blandly talk about what price they would expect for providing valuable inner organs and how the skillful abortionists of Planned Parenthood know just how to murder babies so as not to damage the goods.

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On
Fr. Robert Barron

‘Laudato Si” and Romano Guardini

In 1986, after serving in a variety of capacities in the Jesuit province of Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio commenced doctoral studies in Germany.

The focus of his research was the great 20th century theologian and cultural critic Romano Guardini, who had been a key influence on, among many others, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger.

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Fr. Robert Barron

A prophetic pope and social teaching

In the wake of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ and the pope’s recent speeches in Latin America, many supporters of the capitalist economy in the West might be forgiven for thinking that His Holiness has something against them.

Again and again, Pope Francis excoriates an economy based on materialism and greed, and with prophetic urgency, he speaks out against a new colonialism that exploits the labor of those in poorer countries.

In a speech in Bolivia, a country under the command of a socialist president, the pope seemed, almost in a Marxist vein, to be calling on the poor to seize power from the wealthy and take command of their own lives. What do we make of this?

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Fr. Robert Barron

We’ve been here before

Recently, I had the privilege of spending four hours in the Sistine Chapel with my Word on Fire team. Toward the end of our filming, the director of the Vatican Museums, who had accompanied us throughout the process, asked whether I wanted to see the “room of tears.”

This is the little antechamber, just off of the Sistine Chapel, where the newly-elected pope changes into his white cassock. Understandably, tears flow in that room, once the poor man realizes the weight of his office.

Papal memorabilia

Inside, there were documents and other memorabilia, but what got my attention was a row of albs, chasubles, and copes worn by various popes.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Love, tolerance, and making distinctions

Last time, I wrote a piece on Bruce Jenner’s transformation into Caitlyn Jenner. I argued that the manner in which Jenner spoke of his transition reflected a Gnostic anthropology, which is repugnant to a biblical view of the human being.

I didn’t say a word about Jenner personally; I urged no violence against him/her; I didn’t question his/her motives. I simply made an observation that the moral and spiritual context for transgenderism is, from a classically Christian standpoint, problematic.

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