Tag: Word

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Bishop Robert Barron

Called to be salt and light for all

This is the second in a two-part series on salvation history, with the goal of understanding the role we play in this history. In the first part, Bishop Barron discussed how the creation narrative in Genesis teaches us that our role as human beings is to “praise God on behalf of all creation” and that the Fall is man’s loss of this “priestly identity.” In this second part, he covers the three other acts in the “drama” of salvation history: The Formation of Israel, the Coming of the Messiah, and the Church.

Beginning with the covenant with Abraham, God shapes a nation according to his own mind and heart; he teaches a particular tribe to worship him aright, to be his priestly people. His ultimate intention is to use Israel for the instruction of all the nations of the world.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Who we are and what role we play

This is the first in a two-part series on the five “acts” in the drama of salvation history.

This fall, I am giving presentations to all of the high school teachers, staff, and administrators in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. These talks take place on an annual basis, and they are dedicated to a regular cycle of topics. This year, the theme is morality. Lucky me!

My guess is that disquisitions on doctrine or Church history or pastoral practice wouldn’t raise too many hackles, but ethics is practically guaranteed to rile people up, especially now when issues of same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and assisted suicide are so present to the public consciousness.

Who we are as Christians

I am not sure whether I’m delighting or disappointing my audiences, but I am not ordering my talks to address these hot-button questions. Indeed, it is my conviction that a good deal of mischief and confusion is caused precisely by characterizing Catholic morality primarily as a matrix for adjudicating such matters.

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Bishop Robert Barron

The communion of saints ‘online’

Recently, while working at my computer in Santa Barbara, I encountered a confounding problem and decided to call Brandon Vogt, who is not only the excellent content director at Word on Fire, but also a trained engineer and tech whiz.

After trying in vain to talk me through the problem, Brandon said, “Look, let me just take over your screen.” And with that, he pressed some buttons in Atlanta, where he was attending a conference, and then commenced to move my cursor around the screen, click on all the right settings, and resolve the difficulty.

The Internet and the saints

Though I had seen him do this before, I was, once again, impressed by this long-distance maneuver. Displaying my utter lack of scientific expertise, I asked, “Now Brandon, is this being done through the phone lines or is outer space involved?”

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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

Lessons derived from the Resurrection

The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the be-all and the end-all of the Christian faith. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, all bishops, priests, and Christian ministers should go home and get honest jobs, and all the Christian faithful should leave their churches immediately.

As Paul himself put it: “If Jesus is not raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain and we are the most pitiable of men.” It’s no good, of course, trying to explain the Resurrection away or rationalize it as a myth, a symbol, or an inner subjective experience. None of that does justice to the novelty and sheer strangeness of the Biblical message.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Blasting holes through the buffered self

Last week, during the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, I had the enormous privilege of sharing a breakfast with Fr. Robert Spitzer, the inter-galactically smart Jesuit, who once served as president of Gonzaga University and who now directs the Magis Center on matters of faith, reason, and science.

I had just finished Spitzer’s latest book entitled The Soul’s Upward Yearning and delighted in discussing it in some detail with him.

The ‘buffered self’

This text is, in my judgment, the best challenge to what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “buffered self,” that is to say, a self isolated from any sense of the transcendent.

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Bishop Robert Barron

The Doritos commercial and voluntarism

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the absurd reaction of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) to the lighthearted Super Bowl commercial produced to advertise Doritos.

In the 30-second clip, a pregnant mother, undergoing an ultra-sound, is annoyed by her husband who is absent-mindedly munching Doritos while their baby’s image is displayed on the screen.

But as the father moves the corn chip, the baby in the womb moves with it; and when the mother throws the bag across the room, the child reacts so keenly and purposively that he decides this is the moment to be born.

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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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