Tag: bishop

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Bishop Robert Barron

Advice to students, new and old

Last week I offered some remarks at the matriculation ceremony for Thomas Aquinas College in California. Since I would give the same advice to any Catholic students reentering the school year, I thought I would share my thoughts here.

A few months before I was named bishop, I gave another lecture at Thomas Aquinas College. I was asked to deliver a talk that I thought was going to be a little too heavy. It was late at night, I had flown in from Chicago and driven up the California highway, and I thought, “Oh, this talk is going to bomb.”

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Bishop Robert Barron

Ben-Hur: a tale of Christ, a tale of grace

Lew Wallace’s 19th century novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, inspired two silent movies in the early decades of the 20th century and the magnificent 1959 film starring Charlton Heston in the lead role.

Almost everyone agrees that Heston was born to play the part, and who can forget the drama and excitement of the chariot race with which the movie comes to its climax?

Roma Downey and Mark Burnett have produced a new instantiation of the story, a streamlined version of the 1959 film. Like its predecessor, this one features a charismatic actor (Jack Huston) as Ben-Hur, plenty of visual grandeur, and yes, a stunning chariot race, depicted this time with the most up to date camera technology and CGI virtuosity.

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Bishop Robert Barron

World Youth Day 2016: Source of hope

When I arrived in Kraków for the 2016 World Youth Day, I was pretty exhausted, having left Los Angeles some 15 hours earlier and having had to change planes in Munich.

But I was enthused as I approached my first appointment right in the heart of the Old City. Through the good ministrations of George Weigel, the world’s leading expert on John Paul II, I was one of a group of bishops and priests invited to spend time with the original youth group of Fr. Karol Wojtyła.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Vikings is religiously interesting show

At the prompting of some of my younger colleagues at Word on Fire, I spent time during a recent vacation getting caught up on the History Channel show Vikings.

My friends had told me that Vikings, curiously, is the most religious show on television. They were right.

Don’t get me wrong. There is enough violence, pillaging, plundering, sword-fighting, and political intrigue to satisfy the most macho viewers; but Vikings is also drenched with religion — and for that I applaud Michael Hirst, its sole writer and director.

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Bishop Robert Barron

The cross of Jesus: God’s awful work of love

I would like to continue reflecting on Fleming Rutledge’s extraordinary book The Crucifixion, which I consider one of the most insightful theological books of the decade.

In a previous article, I drew attention to Rutledge’s bracing insistence on the awfulness and shame of the crucifixion. In the ancient world, there was no punishment more painful, terrifying, and de-humanizing than the cross.

It is not simply that Jesus died or even that he was put to death by corrupt people; it was that he endured the death reserved only for the lowest and most despised.

In the light of the resurrection, the first Christians looked back on this horrific event and saw in it something commensurate with the weight of sin. Somehow, on that instrument of torture and humiliation, the Son of God was addressing what could not be adequately addressed in any other way; he was paying the requisite price.

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Bishop Robert Barron

How strange is the cross

Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion is one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books of theology that I have read in the past 10 years.

Both an academic and a well-regarded preacher in the Episcopal tradition, Rutledge has an extraordinary knack of cutting to the heart of the matter. Her book on the central reality of the Christian faith is supremely illuminating, a delight for the inquiring mind — and man, will it ever preach.

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Chris Lee

Aquinas and the art of public debate

There is, in many quarters, increasing concern about the hyper-charged political correctness that has gripped our campuses and other forums of public conversation.

Even great works of literature and philosophy — from Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness to, believe it or not, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — are now regularly accompanied by “trigger warnings” that alert prospective readers to the racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism contained therein.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Aquinas and the art of public debate

There is, in many quarters, increasing concern about the hyper-charged political correctness that has gripped our campuses and other forums of public conversation.

Even great works of literature and philosophy — from Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness to, believe it or not, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — are now regularly accompanied by “trigger warnings” that alert prospective readers to the racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism contained therein.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Mercy lessons from the woman at the well

I had the enormous privilege recently of addressing English-speaking priests from around the world who had gathered in Rome for a special Jubilee celebration of the Year of Mercy. I met Fathers from the States, Canada, Australia, Latvia, Ghana, Cameroon, Ireland, Nigeria, and many other countries.

During the Communion at the Mass which followed my talk, I saw hundreds of priests in their albs coming to the altar to receive the Lord, and I thought of the passage from the Book of Revelation concerning the white-robed army gathered around the throne of the Lamb.

As a basis for my presentation, I used the wonderful story from the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel concerning Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well. From this encounter, I derived four principles regarding the divine mercy.

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