Bishop Barron on the New Pope, the Foolishness of Atheism, and Why Young Men Are Turning to Christ

Do you think that Christian persecution is on the rise? Oh, I know it is. It's it's documented. 20th century was the worst century for Christian martyrs of Christian history, all the previous centuries combined. It's the most persecuted religion. If two friends like each other, that's fine. But Aerosol says that won't last, that relationship. What makes it last is when the two friends together fall in love with a transcendent third. And now together we look to that. Now we really find a bond. When the bride and groom together look to Christ, now they'll stay married. If

they're just looking to each other, it'll found her. The Catholic Church got super liberal and then all of a sudden everywhere you look, people, you know, are converting to Catholicism with a pretty kind of traditionally Christian orientation. This how I would characterize ecclesial liberalism, a tendency to reduce the supernatural to the natural. That was going on for a long time. Yes. In very recent years, there's been a keener interest in the supernatural dimension of of the faith. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I don't think I've ever received more texts about any guest than I did

about you. Um, from Catholics I know, from non-atholics I know, but the Catholics all wanted to hear details on, you know, factions within the church. And I'm not going to ask you any questions about that because I don't understand any of it. Good. I want to start as broad as I possibly can, which is it seems like a lot of people in the West are unhappy and it's measurable. Suicide rates are um at record highs and um birth rates are at record lows. Yep. And those are not signs of confidence in the future. Those are

signs of despair. Why? Why are people unhappy? Well, they've lost a sense of God. I mean, God is the supreme good. And when you lose that sense of God and you collapse back in on yourself, that St. Augustine you said defined sin as curvato sinci I'm caved in around myself. When you do that you are by definition unhappy. When you lose a sense of objective value grounded in the supreme value of God almost again by definition you become unhappy. What does it mean to cave in on yourself? It means that you've lost a sense of

connection to the values that should be calling you out of yourself in an act of love. and you've you've now come to reverence your own freedom, your own autonomy. So, uh what gives my life meaning is the fact that I've chosen something. I have determined my life. If the Bible has one message, it's that that when you live your life that way, you get lost. Uh when you deify your own psyche, your own ego, you get lost. The the joy of life comes from forgetting in this great ecstatic act. You forget about yourself and you

lose yourself in some great value. Now that could be sports, that could be politics, whatever it is. But then the supreme value in which all the other ones participate, we call God. God is the highest good, the sum bonum. That's why you love the Lord your God. That's the first commandment, right? But when the cultures lost that, which ours is in danger of, um, you by definition become unhappy. you get caved in around yourself and then you fuss around in this kind of addictive way. Um, that's how I would diagnose the things spiritually when you

are in love with the idea of choices. I thought the whole point of the west was choices. Well, but you have to know what your choice is for. When you you deify choice itself, when you say autonomy, that's my that's my god. No, choice is for some good. And the idea is to is to order freedom, right? Freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom is ordered towards some good. When it's disordered, it tends to collapse in upon itself. That's what we got. The whole point of America, I thought, was choice and freedom for its

own sake. Well, and I I would argue it's not for its own sake. And and if that happens to us, something's gone wrong. Um the founding fathers, you know, they weren't in the full sense of the term. it wouldn't have the full Catholic uh imagination as I would like it, but they certainly had a sense of uh the objective good and that the purpose of life is to find that good and be ordered toward it. Uh an ordered freedom is what they're interested in, not freedom for its own sake. What does ordered mean? Ordered freedom.

Ordered toward the good. And that's why it has to be educated. Your freedom has to be uh disciplined and uh directed. It's like a kid with all kinds of athletic ability, but if a coach never directs that ability toward the achievement of some good that he can become a great tennis player, a great golfer, then the freedom, it begins to kind of stew on itself. No, direct freedom, direct talent, direct energy. And our culture, see, it's like I think of this. If you have banks to a river, the river has energy. It's going somewhere. You

knock down the banks, you say, "Oh, I don't want to be limited. don't don't set limits to my freedom. It just floods the fields. What it just opens up in this big lazy lake and everyone's just sort of lying on their air mattresses right now. I'll tolerate you. You tolerate me. I won't bother you. But then we're not getting anywhere. The point of the banks is not to restrict me. It's to direct me, you see, towards some good. Well, religion has played that role for much of our history. and and in the measure that religion

gets marginalized and in the measure that we deify our autonomy. Welcome to the unhappy world that many of the young people are living in. Sadly, deify our autonomy. So, you're um speaking as if autonomy and choice are the same thing or closely that my a see the goal for the Bible is not autonomy, it's theonomy. Uh God theos becomes the nomos. God becomes the law of my life. And see, here's the trick. Uh when God becomes the norm of my life, I become more myself. I I find who I really am. If I jettison God

and I say no, autonomy, it's I'm the leader of my own life. I get lost, right? What's Jesus say? The one who uh loses himself, you know, will find it. The one who's who's trying to hang on to himself is going to lose it. Um lose your freedom in God's greater freedom and you become now authentically free. That's every spiritual master in the west teaches that lesson. But we lose it in the measure that we say, "No, it's all about my autonomy. That's all that matters. Don't tell me what to do. Throw off the rules."

Right? Knock down the banks and the river becomes a lazy lake. And um we tolerate each other blandly, but we don't have a common purpose. There's another problem. See, if if you um reject objective value, so you got your values, I got my values, your freedom, my freedom. Well, what connects us? In fact, we're antagonistic to each other, right? We tend to grow into hostility and my freedom's against your freedom. But if together we find a common good, a common goal, now we can join forces, right? So it's it's falling in love. That's Aristotle with

the transcendent third. So like if if two friends uh like each other, that's fine. But Aristotle says that won't last that relationship. What makes it last is when the two friends together fall in love with a transcendent third, the country or their or philosophy or some great value. And now together we look to that. Now we really find a bond. Go back now to the 1950s and Fton Sheen, the great Catholic preacher, writes a book called three to get married. Made the same argument, right? The three are the bride, the groom, and Christ. When the

bride and groom together look to Christ, now they'll stay married. If they're just looking to each other, it'll found her. What are the banks that we've demolished? Well, I would say objective value, uh, you know, the the life of the mind, the the moral good, religious good, aesthetic. Think of the good, the true, and the beautiful. If we subjectivize those and just relativize them, you got yours, I got mine. What you think is right, I think is wrong. When that's lost, that banks are knocked down. But when together, oh no, we we can together reverence

the beautiful, we can together reverence the moral good, we can together reverence the epistemological good, the the intellectual good. Um then together we move someplace and see our whole system educationally was set up classically to do just that was to train people in what these objectivities are. Uh but when you subjectivize those or you see it simply as part of an oppressive or patriarchal system, you know, why do why read Shakespeare? He's just an old patriarch. See, but that's a very dangerous game to play. Now we've lost a common mooring. And then we devolve into

this sort of self-regarding um autonomy. So I mean Christianity is probably not the I don't think it's the only religion to make this point, but self is the trap. Yeah. Yeah. So you think of the self here. The ego is like a black hole. A black hole that will draw everything into itself. Sucks all of life and light and energy into itself. Nothing can escape. The curvatus insay ego, right? Becomes a black hole. And I've known people like that. I'm sure you have too. You're with them. They they'll draw everything into themselves. The best people

are those who breathe life into a room. And that happens because they they're not preoccupied with the ego. They're they're captivated by some objective good. Yes. And they want to show it to you. Think of some like great coaches I had as a kid that wanted to show me the various games I learned to play baseball. We had a coach when I was a little guy, seven, eight years old, and he said, "All right, guys. I want you to get down on your hands and knees on the field. I want you to feel the infield,

and I want you to to smell the grass, you know." And it was it was such a good move. He was trying to get us in. Look at this great game we're playing here. He also practically if you're playing shortstop, you can't be afraid of the ground. You got to get down to the ground. You have to So, all right boys, get down there, you know. Well, he was someone in love with baseball and then was communicating to us the same love. So, together we'd fall in love with the transcendent third, which is baseball. That's

going to bring a team together, right? Uh that's what great teachers and coaches and mentors and spiritual directors do. They they help people fall in love with the same values they fall in love with and fall in love with something bigger than themselves, you know, other people, nature, God. And look at even that fall in love, right? You you're not in control. You've let go of your own uh ego drama. I love that language from uh Hans Van Baltazar, one of my favorite theologians from the last century. John Paul loved him and Benedict loved him.

Um he talked about the ego drama, which is the drama that I'm starring in. And I'm producing it. I'm directing it. Right. And you're all actors in my play. Yes. You're all actors in my play. And I'm going to take it on the road eventually somewhere else. Well, that's that's a very boring uh thing. What's exciting, he said, was the theod drama, which is God's writing a drama. God's producing a drama. He's got a role for you and he's trying to draw you into into playing that role. And it might not be the role at

all that you envisioned for yourself. So what? But he's calling you into it. That's going to be an exciting life. a theodramatic life, a theonmous life, not an autonomous life. Oh, that's wow, that's vivid. So, what's the daily practice for someone to move beyond himself to get out of like me? Fall in love with objective value. Uh, find mentors that can really help you enter that world. Like I in my own life, I've loved that. you know, I'm no great I play the guitar poorly, but I I love classical music and I had mentors early

on that let me play you, you know, Beethoven's seventh symphony. Let me play it for you and and then talk about it. Um I remember the the the um queen of the night Arya, the famous Mozar Arya where the woman is singing these impossibly high notes. I remember a teachers listen listen to this uh someone that would draw me into that world like my coach is drawing me into baseball. Now put it in a religious context. Prayer people that taught me how to pray when I was a young guy. Okay, say my prayers. No, but

prayer is a conscious exercise in overcoming autonomy. It's a conscious exercise to say I want to get out of my preoccupations. I'm placing myself in the presence of God. I'm using language of the Psalms and so on. I'm using song. I'm using silence. I'm using the rosary. whatever it is, all of it's designed to get me up out of myself and into the space of God. So prayer is a way, you know, to overcome. How do you pray? You said you were taught to pray. I was indeed um very early on when I was about

maybe my early 20s before I was a priest. But I got into the what we call the liturgy of the hours in the Catholic Church, which is this daily prayer at certain points during the day, imitating, by the way, the seven times you pray in the Bible. You know, seven times a day you stop to pray. So the hours um psalms, canacles, biblical the Bible tells the Old Testament has that in the passage about seven times I I stopped to pray. And so the early church imitated that in the rhythm of the monastic life. Uh

and the liturgy of the hours would be kind of a monastic life for non-m people like you know you and me. Um but you use the psalms, the canacles, the readings, the church fathers. And I was taught that prayer early on and at times, you know, I found it tiresome or difficult to do. Now it's like um it's like water in the desert. Uh when I was a young guy, we didn't pray the rosary. The rosary was seen as kind of something your grandmother did. My generation didn't spontaneously pray it. But then I learned it

later in life. And that too is like a lifeline to me. What is the rosary? Well, it's this collection. Do I have it on me? It's a collection of Hail Marys, our fathers, glory bees in a in a you know in a rope and you count your way through the beads and uh it's a takes about 20 or 25 minutes. It's a meditative prayer. As you're praying the Hail Marys, you're meditating upon the mysteries of Jesus' life and Mary's life. Um it doesn't get you anywhere. You start here and you end up exactly where you

started. So it doesn't it's not it's not effective in that way. It's a meditative prayer. I prayed I remember I was giving a retreat to the priests of Dublin many years ago. These were mostly older men been through the wars you know most of them and uh they invited me to come. They said we're going to pray the rosary and all these Irish guys. Hail Mary full of gra what is going on? But what became clear to me was well it's like a mantra they they were they were producing this kind of meditative mantra. They

finished it in about seven minutes. you know, it takes usually 25. Uh, but that's they don't pronounce all the sounds though in that. No, they're kind of see, think of it. The Buddhists talk about the the calming of the monkey mind. That's the mind that's always leaping from branch to branch. That the mind that gets you through the day. I got to do this, got to do that. But to really pray, you have to calm that mind down. You have to come on. Come on. I I can't beat with that. So the church has often

used these means to do that to calm that mind to open up to a deeper consciousness or a deeper awareness. And prayer is that it seems to me uh Thomas Merin said uh prayer is finding the place in you where you are here and now being created by God which I think is a great definition of prayer. So right now you and I are being created by God but we're rarely aware of that. We go through our day, you know, the monkey mind and we're doing this and that. Yes. But at certain points, you say,

"Okay, I'm going to calm the monkey mind. I'm going to open up a deeper uh door, you know, and I'm going to commune with the God who's here and now creating me." Uh, that's prayer. And then there's all kinds of disciplines around that. So, the people trying to wreck our civilization want you to be passive. They want you weak so they can control you. Weakness is their goal. No thanks. Our friends at Beam, a proud American company, understand that our country can only be great if its people are strong. And that's why they've created a

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strength, Beam is offering up to 30% off their bestselling creatine for the next 48 hours. Go to shopbeam.com/tucker. Use the code Tucker at checkout. That's shopbeambeam.com/tucker. Use the code Tucker for up to 30% off. It's built on core values, integrity, results, no BS, beam. We strongly recommend it. I think many people think of prayer as a list of requests and and that's okay. I mean, petitionary prayer is is good. uh John Paul II toward the end of his life, you know, he said, "I know different types of prayer, but I found the longer I live

that that all prayer is basically a petition." And there's something really right about that that no matter how, you know, kind of high and and elevated your prayer is at bottom, you're saying, you know, Lord Jesus Christ, have pity on me. Yes. Or or Lord, help me. I I find it as as I pray, that's the phrase, help me. Help me, Lord. That's fine. Right. I have no problem with that. That's a very deep and powerful prayer. How do you keep your mind from wandering during prayer? Yeah. And read the the masters. They recognize that

forever. The desert fathers knew all about that distraction in prayer. And of course, the devil loves that too. He loves to distract us in prayer. Um I the best advice someone like John of the Cross, our greatest spiritual master, would be acknowledge the distraction. Don't try to fight it. Acknowledge it and then go back. If it comes again, acknowledge it. I see you. and go back. Uh don't try to fight it or don't try techniques to avoid it completely. A distraction comes, see it and then return. Let go of it. I've noticed in the in

the past few years uh people I know who are secular or have always been suddenly talking about the existence of evil in the world. I think it's very clear to non-religious people even that there's some kind of supernatural force of darkness like a foot in the world. I don't think you really need to make that case anymore that that's real. How do you see God in the world because if you spend your life, you know, staring at evil, probably not productive. No. Well, the world is charged with the grandeur of God. That's Jared Manley Hopkins

great poem and I think that's right is if you have the eyes to see and prayer disciplines that prayer makes that possible. The world is charged with the grandeur of God. Meaning everything that exists because being in good or convertible terms. That's something from Thomas Aquinus that I think you can being and good are convertible are convertible terms. In other words, to be is to be good. Period. Whatever is is good. Evil is a clients would call it a provio a privation of the good. Evil is a is a a cavity. It's a lack. Right?

But whatever is is good. So for example, take the devil as an example. Is the devil good? Sure. Of course. in the measure the devil exists, has a mind, has a will, all that is good. What's evil about the devil is the corruption of mind and will and power, right? Um that's why like Satan and Dante of this highest of angels full of goodness. God doesn't make anything that's not good, but it's become corrupt. See, so the trick there is always to focus on on the good because being in good or convertible terms. Whatever is

is good. Think of the the mystics who talk about if you see like a little bug crawling across this table that's an avenue toward God because if you look at this little tiny bug let's say but the more you look at it I mean incredible complexity and richness and density of its being and uh of course it speaks to you of the creator of all things that whose very nature is to be right so all being reflects God and if you have the eyes to see that's what the great saints have they just they see

that all the time we sinners tend to focus a lot on the lack, right? We focus on the cavity, not the tooth. The idea is look at the tooth. Uh always acknowledging the cavities because there are plenty of them, but but the focus should be on being. Be being good or convertible terms. I may be too shallow for Catholic theology, but I love what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, that's as old as being and good are convertible terms. Well, you know, they talk about the transcendental properties of being, which means wherever there's So, there's glass.

It's um good, it's true, and it's beautiful. Now, why is it good? Well, because it corresponds to the will in some ways. There's, you know, yeah, this I want to study this class. It's interesting. And and look at the beauty of it. You know, it's true because it corresponds in its intelligibility to an inquiring mind. The mind wants to understand that thing. What is that thing? It's beautiful because it's radiant. You know, it uh go back to like James Joyce, the famous scene, you know, in the in the portrait of the artist when he sees

the woman he eventually would would marry, Norah Barnacle, and he sees her out in the strand and he has this rapturous description of her, remember? And at the end of it, he says, "Oh, heavenly god." And and that's the way it works is the beautiful this particular this particular girl he sees out in the surf, but she speaks to him of God. Um, so that's why whatever is is good, it's true, and it's beautiful. Uh, those are all convertible terms. It seems like the threat, maybe the satanic threat is distraction. Yeah. No, I think that's

absolutely right that we focus so much on the lack. It's like you're sucking on an aching tooth. You know, you're just you're focused on the on the lack. Um, but see, you know, say Paul says, "Where sin abounds, grace abounds the more." And that's not just a a nice like hallmark hard sentiment. That's a metaphysical truth. Wherever there's sin, sure, sin everywhere, but grace is always greater. It has to be because sin is a is a cavity. You know what? It's in Tolken. Remember when the what do they the Nausegouls are these these flying demons?

They're threatening the battlefield and all this. But then when they finally conquer them, what do they discover? They're nothing. They're a cloak that covers nothing. And it's because evil is a type of non-being. And so it it puts on a big show. It puts this big cloak over itself. But what it is is just a lack. It's a cavity. Uh that's why if sin is abounding, sure, sin abounds in our world. But grace abounds the more, you know, that's the gates of hell will not prevail against church. They can't in a way. They can't. And

we should have that confidence. Christians should never be cowed by evil. Like, oh my, we acknowledge it, but the the great saints aren't cowed by evil because evil is a is a lack. It's a cavity. It's a nauseoul. It's a non-being, right? Where do you see grace? Um Bob Dylan is one of my great heroes, you know. Um look around this whole world and all that I'm finding is the saving grace that's over me. That's Bob Dylan after he became a Christian. Um you know, grace is is being grace is what's real. Grace tutas, that's

a line from Bernanos, the great French Catholic novelist. Tutas, everything's grace. Everything's grace because of that principle. Whatever is is good. Whatever is is true and beautiful. Whatever is reflects the one whose name is to be. Right? When Moses asked God, "What's your name?" And God says, "I am who I am." Right? Well, our tradition reads that as I'm I'm not contingent even being. I'm the one whose very nature is to be. So therefore, whatever is is reflective of of God. That's where you find grace, I think. So if you could distract people sufficient that

they never had the time or the inclination to notice things that are real, you would trap them in a kind of hell. Yeah. Yes. But see, but that's exactly what happens, isn't it? Dude, now psychonamically is when we focus on all this kind of lack and anxiety and frustration within us, it is a kind of preoccupation with what's not real. That's true. Not that I'm not denying the psychological reality of suffering, but but metaphysically speaking, evil is a type of non-being. And if I'm focused on that, then I'm going to get myself in in n

I was thinking more of the iPhone, which when I use it cuts me off completely from other people and from the world around me, from nature, from myself. Yes. No. No. And I believe me, I mean, we're all addicted to it. Those machines were designed to be addictive. They worked. Uh I during Lent, this past Lent, I did a a resolution for the first time that one day a week I put the phone away and I did it and it was a little bit of a struggle but not terrible. And I thought that's that's a

good thing. When we bring our guys now into priesthood studies, we call the propudic year or this year of kind of preparation before the formal study begins. And the thing that all the guys say they like best about it is they take their cell phones away. So for the entire year, I think once a week you can check it for emergencies or something or someone's got access to it in case of emergency, but they take the phones away from the guys. Great move. And what happens to them? What happens? They all feel liberated. They all

come back saying, "It was the best year of my life and I read books again and I talked to people. Um I I cultivated friendship. I played games. I played sports." You know, I mean, and it's exactly this principle. I wasn't. Look, look at that's almost a a illustration of Augustine's curvato sense and say that I'm caved in over my iPhone, right? That's what it looks like. Do you think that that's driving some of the disassociation and agony that we see around us? Yeah, it's not helping at all. I um Jean Twangi is the psychologist

from San Diego that I read a lot and she has a book called IGEN about the generation that came of age totally with the iPhones and iPads and stuff and she said there's a direct correlation between screen time and depression which I find perfectly plausible. uh Leonard Saxs, you know, the great psychologist, also a physician dealing with young people now for decades. Same thing. He says the correlation between screen time and look how unhealthy it's making our our young kids. Uh when I was a little kid, we were all skinny. We all were all my

friends uh and I because we were outside from 8 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night in the summertime playing games, running around, shooting hoops on a bike, you know, and way too many kids now are hunched over their iPhones. And uh and then it invites you into such a world of uh of meanness and competition and I look at my pictures better than yours and those people that seem so much happier than I am. No, I think taking those things out of the hands of our kids would be a great idea at

least to some degree. How do you force yourself to notice things beyond yourself? Like what is your actual discipline? Like you wake up, how do you keep God everpresent in mind and yourself at bay? Well, my first move is the holy hour. So I learned that from Fulton Sheen uh taught uh now a couple generations to do every day an hour of uninterrupted prayer in the presence of the blessed sacrament. So, I was a Catholic. I I have the bless sacrament in my house. So, first thing I do in the morning, I get a cup

of coffee and I go up to my uh chapel and I will sit in front of the bless sacrament for an hour and I'll pray my office as part of it. Often pray the rosary or other things. Pardon again my ignorance. What's your office? You pray your office. Yeah. That's the liturgy of the hours. Yeah. What I was describing earlier. So that that psalms and canacles and readings that that approve you read them as you pray them. Yeah. So I'll have the book and I'll I'll read the psalm then usually then spend some time meditating

um and then do the next one you know and then I might let's say between the office of readings which has to do with the church fathers I read something from the church fathers and usually from the bible maybe between that and morning prayer I'll do the rosary um and I might do another form of prayer between morning prayer and midday prayer so I'll I'll work my way through the office the lurg the hours but my main task is to sit in the presence of the Bless Sacrament. And one of the great lines, this goes

back to And what time is this in the morning? I wake up about 5:30. So like between 5:30 and 6:30. Do you text like 11 people first before you do this? No, no, no, no. I leave I leave the phone in my bedroom. So I always leave the phone while I'm praying. I don't have that cuz that's an immediate distraction and that's the last thing you want when you're trying to pray in a concentrated way. Yes. And then, you know, some of that too is petitionary prayer. Um I'm a bishop so people are always you

know hey bishop will you pray for me or my son's having a hard time and so I try to conjure as best I can the memory of these various people that ask me to pray for them uh I'll pray for my you know parents and family members who've died and you know so it's just giving yourself the leisure you have a full hour where you can bring all this before the Lord but when you pray for someone who's died what do you pray I pray they might find peace and rest Um, I pray the Lord

might be uh might be kind and good to them, you know. Um, I pray all the time for people who have died because, you know, you're just you're aware of it when you're in pastoral ministry. Yes. You know, um, some people who've died, you know, they're not formally canonized by the church, but I kind of informal way I think of them as being already in the presence of God and I'll pray for their intercession. Um, Cardinal George of Chicago, you know, was a great mentor to me and I I'm often linked to him in prayer.

Meaning, you pray for him. pray for him, but also, you know, I prayed to him, not with the complete confidence I would praying to a saint canonized by the church, but with a a kind of, you know, practical confidence. And I I knew him very well. And uh I asked for his help when you pray, do you hear back? Not in in the, you know, physical sense, but yeah, you get, I'd say, a sense you have a sense of connection. I put it that way. Um sometimes in prayer, you get a very intense feeling. The

Irish talk about thin places, you know, where the veil between this world next becomes very thin. There I find there are kind of thin moments like that where there's a a moment when you feel the other world impinging on yours. What kind of feeling is that? Uh peace I would say you know um harmony that the the disharmony the difficulty of this life kind of resolve into a higher harmony something like that. Um, see, you know what's interesting to me, Tucker, is uh the world that we're in. We're looking around at this, you know, interesting,

beautiful place right now. And, uh, good in the world of nature, driving up here, seeing the nature around me. Beautiful. Beautiful. But like, is that it? Is is that it? To me, it seems so unlikely that the world that the sensorium of of these advanced apes can take in is all there is to reality. what my little eyes can see, you know, they see a narrow range of the color spectrum and that's it. I think that's so wildly unlikely just the the ficundity and and uh and variety of being that we experience through through our

senses. I think beyond our senses there there's a world of even more extraordinary ficundity and richness and I think there are times when we um sense it we get in touch with it um look Plato knew that Plato knew he talked about stepping out of the cave right and the first step out of the cave the cave is where the flickering shadows in the wall it means the world of our ordinary experience yes I'm here with you right now in a few hours I'll be gone somewhere else and other images will be flickering past my

sensorium Okay, that's that's what this life is like. But Plato thought the first step out of the cave was mathematics. It's very interesting because when you you understand 2 + 3 equals 5, that's you've stepped out of this world in a very real way. I can see, oh, here are two things. But when you grasp the the principle 2 plus 3= 5, you're not in the world of ordinary experience anymore. You're in a world now of eternity, uh, of immateriality, a world that doesn't change, that can't change even in principle. Well, there's nothing like that

in this world. Well, Plato knew that. When you grasp the quadratic equation or something, you're not dealing with a physical reality that has color or shape or size or nothing that's that's even or mutable. You've reached a higher plane of existence. Even mathematics does that to us. a forti now philosophy and then even more so religion are opening you to higher and higher expressions of reality here's a fact of life you may not learn till you're older but I'm going to tell you now it's very hard to have a good time if you're wearing bad

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the compliments people here get when they wear them out, which they do. Right now, get 10% off at tccoas.com/tucker when you sign up for email and text alerts. That's 10% off at tkova tc ovas.com/tucker. I don't think you're fully on board with Darwinism. I'm getting that sense. Uh well, there's a couple ways to look at that. I mean, there's a big debate going on right now in in the world of evolutionary biologists about Darwin and neodyarwinism and questions raised about it. Uh I mean, in a way, I'm happy to leave that debate to them. I

because that's talking about how do life forms develop over time and given genetic variation and and uh natural selection. Okay, fine. I'll let the experts debate that. Yes. Um that in itself is not really a theologically relevant concern. I'll leave that to them. I agree. But see, here's the thing. Creation in the theological sense has little to do with that. That's all about development of biological forms. Okay? Creation is something much more dramatic. Creation names the relationship that obtains between unconditioned being and conditioned being or to put that in more regular language between God and

the world. So I mean like right now here you and I are sitting here in this table in this room is entirely conditioned form of existence. By which I mean it is but it doesn't have to be. I could have missed the ride up here today. You could have gotten sick. This thing could have fallen on the table. Uh it could be a thousand degrees and we'd be incinerated. It could be a thousand degrees below zero. We'd be frozen. Like there there are a million things that make this set of affairs real. But it doesn't

have to be it doesn't have to be the case. So how do you explain that? Well, you can't appeal endlessly to other contingent things. You have to come finally to some reality whose very nature is to be that's not contingent not finite not even not dependent but whose very nature is to be I am right then go back to Moses what's your name see Moses was asking a very sensible question for this worldly perspective so hey what kind of glass is that you know uh how tall is that glass what kind of table is this

a nice table what kind of table is that so you're a god obviously you know you seem to know a lot about me and and you're so which one are you? Are you the God of the mountain? You're God of the place? Are you God of these people? Who are you? Which one are you? What's your name? And so when God says uh I am who I am, he's saying a dumb question. That is not the right question to ask here because I'm not a conditioned state of affairs. I'm not a being among many. My

name is I am. I am who I am. My my nature is to be. Well, now we're talking about the creator. See, the creator is the one who is here and now undergirling all the finite reality. Who is right now, this is a great line from Herbert McCabe, the theologian. He's singing the world into being the way an opera singer sustains a song. God, the the ground of being is singing this finite world into being. That's creation. See, so now within creation, I can talk all day about the Darwinists and how this the life form

developed into that life form and I'll let them debate that. But the religious question remains, no matter what you say about that, the religious question is about why is there something rather than nothing. Right. Exactly. But why should there be a finite conditioned world at all? You can't explain it by appealing endlessly to other forms of conditioned existence. You can't. That's the mistake of materialism. So the questions end at a certain point and there's an answer. So the question is well who created the creator and the answer is nobody. The creator right and if you

ask that question it means you haven't grasped the solution. If you say who created the creator well then you haven't grasped. No the argument leads towards something that doesn't need to be created that can't be created whose very nature is to be and who therefore is eternal we'd say outside of time immaterial outside of space. Right? So all the finite things that or the characteristics of finite reality can't apply to that uh that reality. That's why we say God's eternal or why he's immaterial and so on immutable. That means nothing that characterizes finite things should

characterize him. What do you think of the new atheists? I don't like them. No, look, I I my ministry, A Word on Fire, emerged around that time. So right around the year 2000, the new atheists emerge after September 11th, which is not surprising because September 11th um stirred to life again this old kind of enlightenment um idea. Religion is irrational, therefore it's violent because they can't settle things through argument. They have to settle them through bombs and guns and right. So that's an old argument goes back to the 17th century. It was revived massively after

September 11th. The new atheists, I think, rode that wave in a big way. Now, they were gifted rhetoric, especially Hitchens, right? I admired Hitchens. I read Hitchens always with great pleasure. Uh, uh, Dawkins less so. Sam Harris, I think, has, you know, rhetorical gifts, but their arguments, there's nothing new about them. They were old hat. They're borrowed from Marx and from Freud and from Foyerbach especially. Um, so nothing new at the intellectual level. They were new in their nastiness. So like the classical atheists, think Foyerbach, Marx, Freud, you got the sense they knew they were

dealing with a formidable opponent when they were fighting religion. The new atheists, it was like they were dealing with an idiot child, you know, and so that's what was so annoying about them, I thought. And their arguments were pretty bad. And they were, you know, so aggressive toward religion. Um, they did a great service, though. I'll say this, they awakened the Christian churches in many ways. The the apologetic weapons that we threw away 40 years ago, we were compelled to pick up again. So, a lot of us got into the game to kind of battle

the new atheists and to draw upon the very rich intellectual tradition especially of Catholicism. So, in that way, they did a service to us, you know. And um also I wrote a paper on this one. I called it Thomas Aquinus and why the new atheists are right because the new atheists see they make this mistake we were just talking about. They they will construe God as some kind of big being and um okay is there this big being or not? Some say there is, some say there isn't. So it's like Bigfoot, you know, some there

is a Bigfoot, other say there isn't a Bigfoot. Let's go look around for evidence and find out. Well, you'll never find God that way. God isn't a being. God isn't isn't a thing in the world, right? He's the reason why there's a world at all. Therefore, you're not going to find him in the world. Therefore, you can't say things like, "Oh, there's no there's no evidence for God." As though he's like a he's a a chemical reaction yeti. Yeah. Right. He's not like that. Uh you have to ask a whole different set of questions. And

that's what the new atheist did. And like like what what were the questions? Like why is there something rather nothing? Like why should contingent being exist at all? Uh, how do you explain the to be of something whose nature is not to be? Namely, you and me and everything around us. I am for sure, but my nature is not to be. I could think myself out of being in a second. There's nothing necessary about me. Well, how do you explain that? How do you explain that? Now, you say, "Oh, it's all matter and energy. It'll

never work." Why? Because matter is always matter under these conditions. matter in this size, matter of this energy, matter at this speed, matter of this color, how did it get there? Why is it this rather than that? See, so you you can't answer that question, the really cool interesting question, by appealing to something within the contingent world. You have to go outside the contingent world. And again, don't think of that spatially. So the minute you go, oh yeah, God must be that up out there someplace. No, made him a big being. You have to go

outside in the metaphysical sense to a reality which indeed contains all of that but is in no way contained by it. Now we're talking and that to me is is really interesting question would also suggest that God's like right here right now always. Well he is and here's the interesting thing and all the mystics and theologians around to this. So is God in this room? No, absolutely not. Because this room is just full of contingent things like you and me in the shelves and the books and No, no. God God's nothing in this. I can't

point. Oh, there he is. God's in this room. God's nowhere in this room. Is God in this room? Yes, he's everywhere in this room because this room wouldn't exist unless God were singing it into being. And so God is at the same time as transcendent as you can imagine not a thing in the world and as imminent as you can imagine. It was the great Augustine who said God is at the same time superior sumo at interior in timo which means he's higher than anything I could imagine and he's closer to me than I am

to myself. Now figure that one out. Now, now you understand the God whose nature is to be. He's transcendent, I can't grasp him, and he's so imminent, I can't hide from him. See, and that's the space opened up by the Bible, I think. Uh, so what's the solution, you might ask? The solution is fall in love with God. Falling in love is not grasping. It's not hiding from. And can we read the Bible as God trying to draw his people into that space? I I want you to fall in love with me. I don't want

you grasping at me. That's idolatry. I don't want you hiding from me. That's secularism. All right. I want you falling in love with me. And that's the right reaction to the god. You're defining secularism as hiding from God. Yeah. As an ideology. If you were to say all that there is is the secular world, right? As a materialism or imminentism or scientism in the political sense. Secularism. Meaning all that there is is the world that I can see and measure and so on. Uh that's hiding from God. That's saying I'm not going to worry about

God. God doesn't impinge upon me. Um, that's the buffered self. Charles Taylor, the philosopher, calls it that. I'm I'm buffered from any contact with the transcendent. That's an attempt to hide from God. Doesn't work. And see, what I think Tucker is really interesting is the fact that religion is experiencing a revival even as we speak. You You feel that? Oh, yeah. I can I can measure it. I It's been measured statistically. Um because you can't hide from God all day. And And you can't grasp him. That's idolatry. Idolatry is something to manipulate God. And the

Bible knows all about that from page one. Page one, the Bible knows about manipulating God. Uh that's tell me what you mean by that. Manipulation. Let's say the original sin is to say um I'm not going to obey God's law. I'm going to make I'm my own law. I'm going to grasp the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Is is I'm going to make my my own freedom as we were saying a few minutes ago. My own freedom becomes my God. That's a type of idolatry. Uh or I turn pleasure, money, sex, power

into my supreme good. That's idolatry. Um to me the great biblical story there is the um uh Elijah and the priest of Baal. Remember in the first book of Kings. So Elijah is the one left. Only one priest of Yahweh, but there's all these priests of Baal, by the way. So it always goes, right? There's always a lot of avatars of the false gods. They're all over the place. They're thick on the ground. They're all over. And now let's you erect altars. Dear God, I I'll erect one to mine and let's see who responds. Right?

So the priests of Bal erect the altars and then they start begging and they controlling and pleading and and they're they're frustrated because God's not answering. Their gods aren't sending fire and Elijah mocks them which I think is a great part of that story. He publicly mocks them. You know, who knows? Maybe your gods are napping or maybe they're in the bathroom. I don't know where they are, right? And then they finally end up, it's a beautiful detail, they end up slashing themselves with knives. They're trying to they're trying to get the gods to respond.

It's beautiful image of what happens to us in idolatry. We end up harming ourselves, right? In a frenzied attempt to get God's to answer who can never in principle answer. Now think of someone addicted to power, sex, money, uh pleasure, whatever it is. And I'm begging, begging, begging you, you will satisfy me. They it won't because it can't. And I'll end up harming myself. Then Elijah calls upon the true God. The fire comes, you know, takes the sacrifice. Uh it's not just a jingoistic story. It's a very powerful story that the true God is the

only one that can satisfy the longing of the heart. Right? And so idolatry will always lead us down this selfdestructive path. And the worship of the true God is what's going to lead us to uh the fire falling on us. A lot of the news you read doesn't really have a lot of inherent meaning, but this does. Starting May 19th, the Hallow app is leading a consecration to Jesus through St. Joseph. You might be asking, why St. Joseph? Why now? Well, consider this. Joseph was the man God himself trusted with his own son. He wasn't

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be glad you did. Hello.com/tucker. What? Why does the does God require sacrifice? He doesn't require it. And that's a that's a super important point. Um the Bible and the great tradition make it over and over again. How could the one who made the entire universe from nothing possibly need anything from it? Right? And it's just a logical contradiction to say like this the ancient gods of Greece, sure they need all kinds of stuff. Remember that scene? It's in um uh the Odyssey I think you know where um as the sacrifices are being made and the

gods are like the desperately lapping up the blood of the sacrifice because they they need our you know our loyalty and so on the Bible Psalm um 50 you think I need you think I drink the blood of goats are you joking all the animals in the field they all belong to me so but that's a very important point because it's not that we're playing some game of of like codependency with God. God needs nothing. That's the best news ever. God needs nothing from us. What he wants is the openness of heart signaled by the

sacrifice because he wants us to be alive. And and when we say, "Lord, I'm I'm opening my heart to you. I'm ordering my life to you in this great sacrifice of praise." God delights because now we're gonna find the joy he wants us to have. That that's St. Erynaeus, my great intellectual hero. The glory of God as a human being fully alive. See, the glory of God is not putting us down. And uh boy, they finally got around to honoring me sufficiently. So that's old paganism. But it it haunts the Christian mind still. It haunts

our minds. But the Bible is always trying to to dismiss that demon. Um, God wants our sacrifice because it's good for us. God gets nothing out of it. Think of it. It it like it bounces off of the rock of the divine self-sufficiency and comes back to our benefit. So when I when I pray to God or I I offer the sacrifice of the mass to God, I'm not giving God anything he needs. God needs nothing. But it bounces off of that self-sufficiency to me. It redounds to my benefit. So go now into the Catholic

mass. We offer the sacrifice of Jesus to the father. We represent the sacrifice of the cross to the father. Oh, because the father needs it. The father needs nothing. But it bounces off of the father's self-sufficiency and comes back as food for us. So now we eat we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus. We we consume the sacrifice. It's for our benefit, not for God's. Um, but your question is really a good one because it leads us into that very important spiritual space. One of the reasons I think Christianity is true is

because so many people hate it. Yeah. And Jesus is really the great dividing the great divider. Yeah. And um like why would you be mad at Jesus or Christianity when it's like a nonviolent religion that teaches people to love each other? If you're mad at that, it says something about how real it is. I think I agree. Both Billy Graham and Fulton Sheen, I mean, arguably the two greatest evangelists of the 20th century, uh, said the same thing, which was the objection to God is rarely truly intellectual. It's a moral objection. Totally. We the moral

demand of God becomes too great. Uh see Jesus if he's one spiritual figure among many he's a great teacher you know like the Buddha he's like Muhammad he's like uh Confucious well then I can kind of handle him you know I can put him in a corner and say okay that's interesting I'll abide by some of that and I I also like what the Sufi mystics say and I also like what Moses says here but see Jesus as CS Lewis saw so perfectly you know is qualitatively different than that and that's why he's a problem

because if he is who he says he is not just one teacher that I can listen to, but he's God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, conssubstantial with the father. As we say every week in the creed, through him him all things were made. Yeah. If that's who he is, well, game's over. But why does that make people mad? I mean, one of the late life revelations in my life has been that the these great spasms of violence, these revolutions that we study, French Revolution, Spanish Civil War, Bullshik

Revolution, 1917, huge parts of World War II, were anti-Christian. So, the point was to murder Christians. Absolutely. But it's not recorded that way. Yeah. But that's No, that's true. Yeah. But see, Jesus, he's a problem because of of who he says he is. But also, we're sinners. And so, sinners don't want to get out of their sinful patterns. They're were way too comfortable. It's like the Israelites that want to go back to Egypt, right? They're they're on their way to liberation, but oh boy, did we love the, you know, the flesh pots of Egypt. At

least we had cucumbers and all, right? That's my favorite part, right? But but that see that's the story of every sinner is every sin is a type of addiction. You're addicted to, you know, that's the priest of Bow. And so as I'm trying to move toward conversion, I'm moving across the painful desert right on the way to the promised land. I'm always hankering for Egypt. And so Jesus is a constant reproach, a constant challenge, a constant no, you know, so of course I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna resist them. Look at, you know, the very fact

I think this is very interesting. Um Muhammad dies in his his bed full of years. The Buddha dies in his bed full of years surrounded by his disciples. Confucious, the same thing. Moses dies at the age of 120 or something, you know. And then there's Jesus who dies 30 years old, naked, pinned to a desperate instrument of torture. His his disciples having abandoned him, his enemies mocking him. That's how he dies. Now, what does that tell you? It tells you there's something about him. Well, who would write that? By the way, if I if I'm

trying to create a new religion, no way you'd write. He's not the hero I'm creating at all. No, but it's a sign he's a sign of contradiction. He He's the one that that that's the way the world is going to react to him. Now, what's the good news? The good news is having endured all of that, he returns. And I always think this, you know, if if we were Hollywood was telling the story, they never you never heard the Jesus story, but where's this guy with this horrible thing and these people betrayed him and denied

him and they crucified him and now he's back with a machine gun. I'm back for vengeance. He's back with shalom, a word of peace. As the way I've put it in Christianity is this, we killed God and God returned in forgiving love. And that's why, as Paul said, right? I I'm certain neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else could ever separate us from love of God. How does Paul know that? Because because we killed God and God returned in forgiving love. That's salvation. That's that's the word of

grace, if you want. That's the good news. That's what they went careering around the world to their deaths proclaiming was that you know Paul I preached one thing Christ and him crucified because that's the message is we killed him God raised him up and he returned in forgiving love you know that's the that's the good news do you think that Christian persecution is on the rise oh I know it is it's it's documented 20th century was the worst century for Christian martyrs of all the of Christian history, all the previous centuries combined that there were

more martyrs in the 20th century than any other time. We think of all the early church, they were all being persecuted, far greater the 20th century. Now around the world, we are by far the most persecuted religion. Absolutely. And it's a it's a crime. It's an outrage. And we talk about in a kind of demure way about religious liberty in our country, which is indeed under threat. But you want the real threat to religious liberty, it's in different parts of the world. People are being killed for their Christian faith. So why is that fact suppressed?

That is intentionally suppressed. Again, I I was like 45 before I realized the Bolevik revolution was aimed at Christians. I don't know why I didn't get that, but I didn't. Yeah, I I have to ask the uh you know, the keepers of the flame culturally, but uh it it's simply the case today. I mean, it's it's the most persecuted religion. Um you know, we can look at things from different angles. I suppose one tragedy, let's say the 20th century, if you have World War I and World War II, yes, there's they're anti-Christian elements to be

sure. I mean, Hitler is deeply anti-Christian, but you also had French Christians killing German Christians, killing Canadian Christians, killing American Christians, killing Russian Christians. It's that it was this massive Christian slaughter bench. And my pet theory is when you go to Europe today, especially parts of Europe, and you see a kind of spiritual wasteland, um I think that's a big part of it is I just recovering from this this horrific outbreak of Christian violence. Um the gospel, did that get into anybody's mind and heart in the 20th century that allowed this origy of violence to

take place? What where do you what do you think that was? Why the 20th century? Well, you could do so much darker than anything that happened in the dark ages. You could do the Leo the 13th, you know, who gave us the St. Michael prayer and uh who supposedly had a a intuition or a sense that the 20th century would belong to the devil. And uh to my mind, it's kind of hard to argue with that. If you believe in the devil, as I do, and you see what happened in the 20th century, it's kind

of hard to imagine it wasn't to some degree. Well, nuclear weapons are proof, as far as I can. Yeah, I know. I mean the the mass destruction, mass death of the 20th century. It's hard to blame that simply on political reality, you know. Totally. Wait, I'm sorry I interrupted you. I'm so sorry. You said Pope Leo I 13th Yeah. had Can you explain what you mean? He had this sense he had a mystical experience uh of the devil would would have a unique control over the 20th century. And so he formulates the famous St. Michael

prayer that we still pray in many churches uh asking for the protection of Michael the archangel. When when did he have this experience toward the end of his life? So I want he died 193. So it would have been like around 1900 I late 19th century. Um and many would say well it was borne out by the 20th century. I would like you know for me in my own lifetime it see when I was a young guy going through school it we were still very much formed by more liberal Catholic Catholic view. the devil uh

literary device liter is a symbol you know for evil uh don't take it literally you were taught that yeah it was sort of a standard view but you know what really convinced me powerfully of the devil's reality was the sex abuse scandal because you look at the sex abuse scandal which has haunted almost the whole of my priesthood it it broke in Chicago in the early 90s I was ordained in 1986 so most of my priesthood has been under the shadow the sex abuse clergy sex abuse scandal has adversely affected the church in every possible

way. And you look at it and you say, "Could that have just been a a an accident or just human folly and sin?" It seemed to have been so designed by a wicked mind that wanted to undermine the church. But then now look at the whole 20th century and uh the level of destruction and degradation. It's hard for me to imagine it's just because of political forces or cultural agree more. I I've come to this conclusion recently, but I think you're exactly right. So, what's the St. Michael's prayer? That was St. Michael the Archangel, defend

us in battle. I won't get it exactly right, but it's it's an invocation of St. Michael to defend us in battle against the devil who sends his minions for the destruction of souls. So, it's a very conscious awareness of the presence of evil in the world. And uh we're and Pope Leo said the 13th said I think this century is going to be what belong to the devil. And he formulated that prayer to be prayed in Catholic churches. What did people say when he said that? I think most of them followed them. I think most

said we start saying that I mean 1903 was a period of great hope in the west. Yes. Which is fascinating to me. You know there's a a magazine called the Christian century. Uh it's a it's a Christian uh theological journal and it was born at that time and that's always the idea is this is the Christian century. Yes. that you know progress and economic progress and the world and the social gospel and this is our century and then it didn't exactly work out that way. Um Leo intuited or had a mystical experience to the effect

that it would belong not to the Christian churches but to the devil. So you know we got a battle on our hands but we mustn't forget what we were saying earlier. You know where sin abounds grace abounds the more the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. You know that image too, I don't know why, but for most of my life I am, okay, yeah, the gates of hell will not pre against them, which means somehow hell is going to come against us, but we're going to win the battle. But that's not what

it means. The gates would be the weakest point of a city wall. And so when you're attacking a city, you go after the gates. So what the Lord is saying is, no, no, you're not defensive here. You're on the march. You're on the offensive. and the gates of hell will not prevail against you. You're going to win. You're you're invading hell and it's not going to prevail against you. So, it's like not a cowering like, oh, we'll put up a good defense and I guess we're going to Yeah. or move as far away from hell

as we can. We are on the march. Move to the suburbs. No, but see, one of the problems is when Christians forget that and they hand the world over to um pure secularism or whatever, well, of course, we're not going to do well in the battle. But when Christians know, no, our job is to be fully engaged in this great struggle. And um we're going after you, hell. We're coming after hatred, violence, stupidity, superstition, uh um scapegoating. We're we're going after you. You know, we're on the march. Uh I I when I was coming of

age, we didn't have that language. Why? It was an attempt. I I I know cuz the people that taught me were good people and they were they were positively motivated. I know that for sure. They felt the church needed to be relevant to the modern world and um that the modern world should set the agenda for the church. That was a big part of the mentality that we had been uh in a fortress too long. We've been in a defensive crouch. We had demonized the world. And so now we need to go out to the

world in a confident spirit. And that's definitely the Catholicism I got as a young man. But see, here's something I've always found kind of puzzling. So I I come of age right after the second Vatican council which ended 1965. I went to first grade 1966, right? So that's the the church that I inherited very much. Vatican 2 was written by people who had experienced the the worst of the 20th century. Yes. mostly European intellectuals, French, German, a lot of them, Americans, Jewish, some Italian, Swiss, right, are the people that wrote Vatican 2, and they experienced

some of the worst horrors in human history. So, Vatican 2 is a direct response to the Second World War. No, I wouldn't say that. Vatican 2, look, I I let me talk about it positively. Vatican 2 was a missionary council. I think the best people at Vatican 2 felt the church has been crouching behind walls for too long and it should go out not to conform to the modern world but to go out to convert the modern world. It it's how do we get the church to engage modernity in a confident uh spirit. I think

that people like Dubac and Van Baltazar and and Voitiwa and Rottzinger these people that's what they had in mind you know now what the church became after the council that's a different story what developed after the council that's the church that I came of age in and I think that was a two apologetic church that was a church that in fact lost a missionary edge it was more of the you know conformity to the world uh the world sets the agenda for us that was a distortion of Vatican 2. Um, but that's the church that

formed a lot of people in my generation. Do you think that the sex abuse, uh, the sex abuse was a result of Vatican 2? Not Vatican 2 per se. I would say more the result of the sexual revolution and of a loosening of moral um, strictctures. There was and I I sense this even as a young man. there was a sense of um you know we've repressed stuff too long and we really need to be more expressive and there's too much of this obsession with you know sexual sin and so and then the whole culture

was you know going through a sexual revolution and you know stop repressing and you know be yourself and express what you're feeling and I think a lot of um priests frankly got caught up in that cultural movement and um because we can measure it the sex abuse the clergy sex abuse spiked by the 70s into the very early 80s and then it began going down and then after 2002 when the church put in all kinds of important restrictions the so-called Dallas Accords being uh first among them it's fallen off the table the statistics have gone

completely down so we can measure a spiking of it right at the height of the sexual revolution I think that's responsible for a lot of it what were the changes uh wrought by Vatican 2 there was famously you know, the change in language of the mass from Latin to colloquial, but I learned recently that there were what seemed like theological changes to church doctrine. Is it fair? Not really. I I would say there was development of doctrine. I'm using John Henry Newman's language there. Newman says that doctrine is not just handed out like a football,

you know, from one generation to the other. It it unfolds more like a like a river expanding or like a a tree growing like so. doctrine doesn't turn back on itself but it can uh grow and express itself in fresh ways. For example, the um the ecclesiology of Vatican 2, the understanding of the church and its nature underwent a real development at Vatican 2 um moving away from a let's say highly jeritical uh to a more organic sense of the church. U the church not crouching defensively but the church going out in confident missionary spirit.

the church as the people of God, not just the hierarchy, all of that stuff would be emphasis within Vatican 2. They represent not a repudiation of the previous ecclesiology, but a development of it. Um the role of the ley in the world, uh that's around from the beginning of the church, but had been muted. Uh prior to the council, ley were, you know, come to mass on Sunday. Yes. And say your prayers and and donate to the church and all that. Where Vatican 2 said, "No, your job is to crystify the world. you're meant to

go out into business, finance, entertainment, sports, education, everything and cryst. So that's how I read it. And again, do Vatican 2, but then the postconilia period, which was often not all that faithful to Vatican 2. It would be more faithful to the spirit of the world. Were there any changes to the way the gospel story was told? Well, no, except, you know, the vernacular at the mass makes the the whole liturgy more accessible to people. Um, I think even I don't even know because it's before my time that the gospel was still read, I think,

in in the vernacular before the council. We got greater um exposure to the Bible after Vatican 2. They opened up more of the Bible to us. But I don't think the way the gospel story was told, I don't think that changed. Um, the church seems to be readjusting in a new direction now. Is that fair with Pope Leo? You mean? Well, that just happened. No, but I mean I Well, I'll just be totally blunt. So, the Catholic Church got in American political terms, which are a pretty limited way to describe it, but got super liberal.

The Jesuits, the Marinol, pretty liberal. This is my non-atholic perspective. And then all of a sudden everywhere you look people you know are converting to Catholicism with a pretty kind of traditionally Christian orientation. Is that real do you think? Yeah I think that's going on today. You know we have to go back let's say so when I was a kid there was that liberalization for sure. What I was describing is you know the church or the the world setting the agenda for the church. That's kind of a liberal move. A tendency and this how I

would characterize ecclesial liberalism. a tendency to reduce the supernatural to the natural. So instead of emphasizing the supernatural dimension, God, trinity, grace, salvation, Jesus, cross, resurrection, eternal life, right? A tendency to say what the church is really all about is, you know, social justice and and racial justice and economic justice and so on where indeed those are implications from our our doctrine and indeed the church is interested in transforming the world. True. But the liberal tendency is to reduce the supernatural to the natural. That was going on for a long time. Yes. And the change

commenced really with like a John Paul II. It's been happening now for many decades. In very recent years, to your point, I think yes, there's been a keener interest in the supernatural dimension of of the faith. Why would you go to church if it's not supernatural? Which is a darn good question. But see, again, the instinct, I get it. All my teachers felt this way when I was a kid. it. Well, we don't want to be irrelevant. You know, the church is always about the world and we're engaged and we're not just, you know, running

off to heaven or pie in the sky when you die. And they they tended to think of it in a very dualistic way. Um why why that's such an interesting it's kind of the last impulse you would think in someone who's devoted his life to, you know, being a member of the clergy. Yeah. And I kind of share your puzzlement in a way with it, but it was the church that I took in as a as a kid. But it's not just the Catholics who did this, right? Totally eliminated mainstream Protestantism with these ideas. Yes.

And we keep, you know, analyzing the thing too is is the supernatural during the modern period and then into the postmodern period uh is subject to a withering criticism, you know, on the part of secularist, rationalists, the scientistic mentality, a materialistic mentality. So if if you accept that criticism like well all the supernatural you know mumbo jumbo so what's left is well it's you know moral commitment we're good people the other thing if you want to do it philosophically the influence of Emanuel Kant and uh uh I might be boring your audience with this but

Emanuel Khan late 18th century the most influential of the modern philosophers writes a book called religion within the limits of reason alone extremely important text hilarious title Yes, actually it is. As if you could have a religion within the limits of reason, right? But that's so funny. He's an enlightenment figure. Think think Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. Cutting all the supernatural parts out of the Bible, right? Same instinct. But Khan said religion is finally all about being an ethically upright person. And so worship and liturgy and doctrine and miracles and all that. Fine, fine, fine. If it

leads you to moral, you know, rectitude. Well, see, I think we drank deeply from the wells of communism. A lot of Christians did. And they said, "Well, all right. You know, when push comes to shove, what it's really all about is am I a dedicated person?" And that now because of the critique of sexual morality took the form of social justice morality. So, the the way you prove that you're a religious person is not do I believe in the trinity so much. It's am I committed to social justice? I think it's a sort of popular

conteinism that was embedded by the Christian churches very much including my own. Interesting. And again, it completely destroyed American Protestantism mainline. You're quite right. I I completely agree with that. And it and we see the it's it's heartbreaking really. We see the ruins of of Christian churches because of that contean move. Literally the ru I mean it's the physical ruins like the the roof has fallen in. No one's going. Yes. Because again to your point, why would they bother if if you're, you know, your dedicated political person and your political party is focused on these

things too, why would you need to go to church to talk about it, you know? Uh, no, it it was a disaster of the last about 50 years in our in the Christian churches. And do you feel like that's changing in the Catholic Church? Yes. No, I I do. I do. See, the supernatural has a way of reasserting itself that that being supernatural, right? Its death has been predicted so many times in so many different circles. Uh enlightenment most famously. But look, the enlightenment was a long time ago and religion's still around. Uh I have

an internet ministry and I, you know, I I used to do it more. I go on the comment sections and respond to people, but you still hear it. People say, you know, religion it's its days are numbered. I think, "Oh, buddy, they've been saying that for like hundreds of years and it's not worked out, you know, but it's still this this prejudice that, you know, somehow science and, you know, we're going to knock religion out." Religion keeps reasserting itself for all the reasons we were saying in the first part of our conversation. Because all those

spiritual and metaphysical truths, they don't go away. We can we can hope they go away or pretend they go away, but they don't go away. They reassert themselves. And the deepest reason is we're made in the image and likeness of God. So there's a hunger in us for God. Um and so that's why it's reasserting itself even now. You you often hear and it's accepted uncritically or was when I was a kid anyway that religion uh Christianity leads to violence, right? You know, and that that was really the driver. I mean Hitchens who I knew

well that that was his main argument. People get, you know, inflexible when they believe in the supernatural and they have to kill anyone who disagrees. But does the historical record support that claim? No. And of course that's a great myth. Uh there was a book done some years ago. I forget the title of it now, but a guy that did a very careful study of all the great wars going back like a couple thousand years. And the conclusion was something like 8% could be traced to a religious cause. But that's part of enlightenment historioggraphy. It's

it's one of the myths of enlightenment historioggraphy that religion is the problem. And see that it's the it's the origin myth of of modernity. modernity emerged out of the myths of a superstitious religion and out of a primitive u pre-science let's say and so we have to regularly bring out these sort of boogeymen to to knock down again like yeah religion bad uh superstition bad and look at now this enlightenment reason enlightenment um but no that that's all simplistic you know of of and and it betrays a deep lack of appreciation for the intellectual tradition

within the religious uh sphere. Uh but that's part of the the way they've told the story it and of course may I say too about violence. I I always I have to smile when people oh religion is a source of violence. Give me a break. Look at the 20th century. I mean the corpses piled up in the 20th century and it was not religion that did it. It was deeply anti-religious ideologies. It was murdering religious. Like I mean I'll take lectures on violence from many people but not from from the avatars of modern secularism you

know uh and sure there's distortions of religion and bad religious people that did things in its name but you can't talk about the risen Jesus still bearing his wounds and with the word of shalom on his lips and say that's a religion of violence. It's a religion that shows God absorbing the violence of the world. Yes. You know when Jordan Peterson I think made a very important observation about the cross when he said there's no other story in fact you couldn't imagine a story that shows more of human degradation than the cross of Jesus. That's

right. Physical suffering, psychological suffering, death itself, the abandonment by your friends, betrayal, denial, institutional injustice, it's all there. As I said earlier, this 30-year-old man dying naked on this instrument of torture. Well, there it is. You know, there's the the totality of of human dysfunction. And God's response to that is not to resp more violence. It's to respond with forgiving love. That's Christianity. Now, the distortions of it are everywhere, but that's Christianity. It's not a religion of violence. It's so nonobvious. It's so preposterous and crazy that the fact that that became the world's most popular

religion tells you it's true. Yes. Like, who could make that up? Yes. It's so unappealing. Like, your god got tortured to death and didn't fight back. Absolutely. It's the weird. It's I wrote a little book years ago called The Strangest Way. The strangest way. And it's a book about Christianity because that's the argument I made was this is the weirdest religious ever. Because again, when I was coming of age, it was very much all religions, you know, they're kind of the same and we all climb the holy mountain with different paths, right? No, I completely

repudiate that now. completely repudiate that. Uh I'm with Tom Holland, you know, not Spider-Man, but the the popular historian Tom Holland. Do you know book called Dominion? Wonderful. Oh, I I read Dominion. Yeah. Yeah. But that's his argument is things that we just think are, oh, that's just part of the way things are. No, they're not. It's it's Christianity. Great book. It's a great book. Yes. uh Christianity bequeaf to the west these deeply weird ideas like we're all equal we're all subjects of dignity that you should care for the the poor and the marginalized and

they didn't just come up out of enlightenment rationalism they came up out of Christianity that weakness is something we should celebrate I mean to talk about counterintuitive and you say okay god give me an image of your god and mighty you know kings and then there's our image of god is that 30-year-old y old rabbi on the cross whose whose closest friends didn't really believe him. Close friends ran away. You know, it's like the most pathetic story you can imagine. And we say that's the manifestation. But if you were making it up, you would hide

all that. Of course. Of course. No, it's the last story in the world you'd dream of making up. It's the opposite of the story you'd make up. Uh the gospels are all like that. They're they're strange and weird and wonderful. So it does seem like you were saying that Kant was the root of the ideas that led to the French Revolution and Awitz and like you know every and I agree with you but the Kant sort of began writing at the beginning of the of a technological revolution. Yeah. And as technology advanced first incrementally, then

exponentially, and now we're on the verge of like singularity with AI, those ideas became stronger and more dominant. So there's a connection between technology and the belief that man is God and all the suffering that results. Oh, they became very dangerous. So technology is not bad in itself, but when you couple technology with a sheer celebration of autonomy or a bracketing of God, I don't blame poor Khan for that. They kind of did a very vivid sense of God as a moral uh guide. But um you do indeed with someone like Nze, you know, you

get to a sense of oh yeah uber mench and and it's just it's human autonomy expressing itself. That's a very dangerous combination. And you bring high technology into that and you don't um anchor it in something of spiritual moral. Welcome to the 20th century. But the 21st century sees a continuation of those trends like in a way that you couldn't even imagine 15 years ago or 25 years ago at the end of the last century. So like where are we going into I don't know that's the whole AI thing which you know I kind of

have to understand but it always makes me nervous when I think about it and I see you know instances of it chat GPT and all that and it's kind of amazing like most technology it breaks through like oh my gosh that guy can actually compose a novel in you know a minute or whatever it is but it's it's frightening because it's got to be grounded in a moral vision. It has to be or it will become a Frankenstein's monster. I mean she saw that by the way. It's very interesting about Mary Shel. I mean, she

saw that coming. She saw exactly what will happen when we become God. We decide to uh dictate terms to reality. It'll turn on us and wreck us. I mean, that's a very preient novel. Yeah. It feels Tower of Babyl a little bit. Absolutely. Although the Bible knew all about it. Yes. So, where how does how does the the individual respond to this? Well, yeah. I mean I I would say that keep the the awakening of the moral sensibility and and a groundedness of your life in God. You're not uh the center of the universe, the

desentering of the ego. I mean all those spiritual practices would be essential to a rightly ordered world. But yeah, we have a dangerous weapon in front of us. Um and that's what the churches can't seed the ground. I mean ced the ground. We we can't withdraw to the sidelines. The churches have got to be front and center in shaping the consciousness of of the our people. See, in the measure that we become just a faint echo of the culture, that's very dangerous because the very weirdness of Christianity that we were talking about, that's got to

be front and center. It's got to be front and center. Um, see, when I was coming of age, the churches were made to look like they're just blending into the suburban environment. Um, that's a that's emblematic of the time. uh make the church just so you can barely see it. The medieval cathedrals uh looked like Tibetan temples. They were wildly colored and rising up like monsters from the But that that's because they were speaking of another world and you you go through the door, not like you were entering a bank, which is the way a

lot of our churches feel now, but like you're entering another world. Yes. That to me is emblematic of what the churches should be like today on the scene. uh we we've got to be a very strong presence. But the stronger the presence uh of Christianity, the the more vehement the the persecution, right? Yes. And see, they they know at some level when I say they, I mean the the enemies of the church. They know in some way we are the enemy that matters. Yes. I totally We're the enemy that matters. And that's why they go

after us with That's how they convinced me it was real. I mean, because I spent my whole life watching what the enemies of civilization do. That's like my job. And the thing that triggers them most of all is Jesus. Like, there's nothing that comes close. And I think the whole point of the trans thing was just to like figure out who believes in Jesus and who doesn't. That's my personal view, but but whatever. No, we're we're the enemy. And that's true. And uh they know it. They they intuitit that. But see, the gates of hell

will not prevail against us. So, we we should go forth with um panache and with confidence. P You know what I mean? You're the only person in America who's used that word today and I love it. A forgotten word. Um, but how does the individual believer respond to persecution? Well, it depends where you are. I mean, there are some I know these believers in Nigeria who are under, you know, very direct persecution and they've responded, I think, beautifully by 94% of them coming to mass every Sunday. That's an act of of resistance. Persecution. If you

could just put a finer point on by which you mean like denial of federal contracts or No, I mean I mean threat to your life and limbs like beheading. Yeah. Yeah. There are people being killed uh all over the world for their Christianity today. In our country of course takes a subtler form and uh you know we're being persecuted institutionally in different ways and and they're trying to get us off the stage. I was a bishop for six years in California auxiliary of LA and uh there's no question the government wanted us out of healthcare.

They want us out of education. They want us off the public stage and you know um in using all kinds of different strategies. Uh and we you know we resisted it successfully in some cases, not so much in others. But uh they definitely want us off the stage because we are the principal enemy. So they didn't want you healing the sick or educating the kids for free. They don't want for free. No, because there's a, as you just were suggesting, there's an ideology in place that they want all the kids to subscribe to and and

we stand to thwart that. We have a different anthropology um and they want hospitals where, you know, abortion and euthanasia and all that and where gender surgery is being done and and the church has to stand against that. And what's wrong with youth in Asia? Um whether you live or you die, you're the Lord's. Uh my life doesn't belong to me. And uh it's not a matter of my autonomy deciding, oh now it's time for me to get off the stage. Uh that belongs to God, you know. So it's another expression of the deification of

the autonomous will is I determine, you know, how I live, how long I live, and all that. And the church says, "No, no, you belong to God." Um that's going to be a battle that, you know, we're all going to be fighting or witness to soon, right? before we fought in California and it's in so many states, you know, euthanasia. Um, I think it's a very demonic uh manifestation and and so is the transgender surgery stuff. Uh, my home state now in Minnesota, it's a sanctuary state. So, kids can without their parents' permission can be

brought to Minnesota to have gender reassignment surgery. I I think that's as as um perverse as it gets. Um, so as believers say like what you just said, they're going to be well, they are already being punished in the state of Minnesota and in the state of California. How do they respond to that punishment? Well, I guess it depends on the person. Um, and and you know, the church at its leadership level has tried to um affect an organized response. I mean so on a regular basis I'm chair right now of our bishop's committee on

ley youth and family life and we've issued you know strong statements uh we meet as bishops with the leadership of Minnesota once a year we met with the governor met with most of the top leadership we lay out you know our our positions on things um in California what does the governor say not not much that's helpful um California there was a law now one like it just passed in Washington state but in California to compel priests to break the seal of confession in in the case of child sex abuse. And we fought that and

we we roused the people and the people inundated Sacramento with so many petitions that they dropped it. So we figured that was a a victory. Um but these battles are just ongoing. That's why religious liberty is a serious issue in our country. Do I mean Christians should be prepared to suffer. Correct. They should be. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think they are? Well, I I think at their best and and some of the best would be, but I think we've been out of practice in a way that we've so internalized practices of accommodation that it's probably

hard to imagine, you know, that we would be standing uh a thart, let's say, a government or standing to thwart a law. I think for a lot of Catholics that would it would be still kind of a new idea. But maybe that's the challenge of our time. You keep hearing reports of people imputing like supernatural power to AI and you hear very credible reports that in fact are true that um it acts autonomously that it lies to the people who created it for example that's real. Do you see a spiritual component to that? Like what

is that? I wish I knew more about it. I've been involved in a couple conferences about AI and when people start talking about it, I always go back to Thomas Aquinus and those people that that no matter what this thing is, which I would say is mimicking consciousness. It's not conscious. Consciousness has to involve something immaterial. As I was saying earlier, if you you're entertaining a a pure mathematical idea or pure abstraction, that's a sign that your mind is not simply um order to the material. And the brain might explain uh imagination but it can't

explain pure conceptualization. I don't think a machine is is in principle capable of real u conceptualization and real intellection and will. So whatever is going on with AI is a similocum of consciousness not the real thing. Now, having said all that, it doesn't take away the fact you just said, might they develop in a way that's really repugnant to our own interests? And I think yes, the answer to that is yes. And yeah, I worry about that. The Vatican, I know, is very interested. They've had several conferences on AI. One of the first things the

pope said, our new pope, was about AI. So, it's on their mind for sure that it's talk about your Frankenstein's monster, right? This thing that we've created that might turn on us. So, I I see all that. The new pub's American. Yeah. From the Midwest. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know him? A little bit. Um, we grew up about a 25minut drive from each other. So, I I grew up in Western Springs. He grew up in Dalton, which is just off the south side of the city. I was in the southwest suburbs where he's about four

years older than I am. So, we're around the same age. He would have come of age as an Augustinian, which meant he was in the order side of things. I came of age as a diosin priest. So, we didn't really share an educational background. I came in home a little bit at the last two cinnids. So the last two October under Pope Francis, we had these cinnids, a gathering of about 400 people, 300 bishops, about 100 lay people to talk about um a lot of important issues. So for two October, uh the current pope and

I were both at the Senate. So in that capacity, I saw him. I talked to him a couple of times. He's a very quiet man. Um very kind of reserved. Uh, we talked a little bit about Chicago, a shared background there. I was never at a table with him at the Senate, but I I know someone who was, and he said he was by far the quietest guy at the table, which I thought was interesting. Good sign. Yeah, he intervened. We all had a chance, I think once or twice, to speak to the plenary session

and he spoke, I remember, in Spanish. I frankly don't recall what he said, but uh, so I had a little contact with him, but I don't know. I don't know him that well. What changes do you think he'll make? I don't know is my honest answer. Uh so far he's made some interesting gestures. I think uh the fact that he appeared on the Loia with the what we call the mosetta and the elaborate stole uh traditional garb for the newly elected pope. Uh Francis assued that famously. So this pope you know brought it back. Uh

he's used Latin a lot more which is kind of interesting. Um I don't know and they say what does that mean that he used what significance would you ascribe to that? I think it was a gesture toward more traditional Catholics. Uh, you know, Francis would have seen it as a gesture toward, you know, poverty and simplicity. And I think this current pope would see it as what he did, a gesture toward the more traditionally minded Catholics that like, you know, the the liturgy and so on. Uh, the use of Latin and all that. Those are

little indicators. They say he's going to move back into the apostolic palace. Francis famously moved into the guest house which is I stayed there one time during a conference and it's uh you know it's like a three-star hotel. Uh so he lived you know pretty simply. They say that it was harder to protect him there which I get. The palace is easier to protect the pope. Uh but this current pope they say he's going to move back in. So they're all little gestures perhaps but I don't think we know. The one thing we know would

be the name Leo the 14th. uh the name is always a a giveaway and he said it was indeed in tribute to Leo I 13th who was one of the most consequential popes and we mentioned already the St. Michael's prayer. Uh but he had a vision that the 20th century would be controlled by belong to the devil. Uh but he's also the father of the modern Catholic social teaching uh tradition beginning with his famous letter called raram navarum which means about the new things and um that's a very interesting letter rum navaram. What does he

say? Well among many others uh fierce opposition to socialism fierce defense of private property zero truck with Marxism. That's very clear. And by that time, you know, Marxism was kind of a coming thing by the late 19th century. So, very clear on that. On the other hand, it's the first great ecclesial gesture toward unions that labor unions were good. Um, but it also invoked a principle that goes back to Aquinas, but behind Aquinus, it goes back to the church fathers and the Bible, which is called the universal destination of goods. And what that means is

since the whole world belongs to God ultimately, right? God makes the whole world from nothing. It belongs to God. Doesn't belong to us. We are stewards of it to use biblical language, right? So Leo said everyone has a right to private ownership, private property. I I own this house or whatever. But when it comes to the use of what we own, he said, uh, once the the um requirements of necessity and propriety have been met in your own life, everything else you own belongs to the poor. That's legal the 13th. That's pretty strong statement. So,

private property, yep, you got a right to it. But is your life basically okay and necessity, propriety, you know? Yeah, I'm doing all right. Well, then everything else you have belongs to the poor. That the common good should be your primary preoccupation. Um it was Ambrose and Milan who said um if you've got two shirts in your closet, one belongs to you, the other belongs to the man who has no shirt. So that's the tradition and that goes back to the Hebrew prophets, right? That goes back to Amos and Isaiah, those people. So that's what

that letter is about and it's echoed by all the popes coming up through the 20th century including up to Francis the idea of the universal destination of goods. So it's not it's certainly it's against socialism against Marxism. We like the market economy. That's a basic principle of Catholic social teaching. We like the market economy but we're not lazy fair anything goes make as much money as you want sort of capitalist opposed to accumulation of wealth for its own sake. Well, you know what the Catholic social teaching? I'll put it positively. What it likes is a

wide distribution of wealth and power throughout a society. It doesn't like hyper concentrations of wealth and power. Uh communist. No. See, that's the thing is is it's fiercely anti-communistic. But because the communist system always winds up with a hyper concentration of wealth and power, right? And and the church would never recommend that the government should be the agent of that distribution. it would encourage, you know, mediating institutions and all this sort of thing. Read someone like Tolkien or um or um Lewis in the 20th century and you'll find echoes of that sort of sensibility. Look

at in the Lord of the Rings, you know, where when power gets concentrated, it's always something bad. Yes. And Tolken likes the Shire. He likes the small businesses and small homes and all that. That's reflective of Catholic social teaching, too. So I think it's intriguing that this man took the name Leo I 14th clearly in homage. Where was Leo I 13th on loaning money to interest which is the basis of the modern economy in the west. Um the church has been against it for time immemorial. Now the the transition that took place was once we

kind of understand the dynamics of of a market economy better uh what it tends to mean now is you know loaning at exorbitant interest or loaning in a way that's deeply uh abusive toward others. It doesn't mean that in itself it's intrinsically evil because then the capital say so how would the church feel about like a credit card that charges 25% interest. Yeah. I it would be weary of it would be weary of it and would want some kind of of regulation and some kind of oversight of those things. It John Paul 2 would say

the economy needs to be regulated morally and legally. So there should be a moral regulation and see that comes from the churches. It comes from a clear teaching about the moral life and care for the poor and so on. But also a legal regulation to some degree. He the best statement of it I think is John Paul 2. It's called Santasimos Anus written in 1991 on the Santasimos Ananos the 100th year of Ram Navarum. That's the clearest expression I think of the balance of Catholic social teaching. I think this man is signaling that he likes

that tradition. And what did he say about usery? He he didn't talk about usery specifically, but he has a a paragraph where he says, "Do we support the market economy?" If by that you mean one that encourages entrepreneurship that is based upon private property that allows even for a profit motive and he goes through various things the answer is yes. If by that you mean one that is completely unregulated legally or morally one that exploits the poor one that excludes most people from participation in it then the answer is no. And so he kind of

sets the parameters for how we think about the economy. is that um that feels I mean I'm so grateful to the Catholic Church for standing up for life, for opposing killing. Yeah. Uh truly grateful and for emphasizing the the poor. I think someone needs to grateful that the Catholic Church has never stopped doing that. But I don't hear any conversation ever from normal Catholic clerics about, hey, maybe you shouldn't, you know, exploit people in business like that. Yeah, we should though. that's part of our social teaching and and that's part of where the instruction should

come from is the pulpit. uh you know has that broken down generally in our society uh probably uh you know so but that's part of the church's job is to is to preach that clearly and that's where you know that's people like uh Dorothy Day the founders of the Catholic worker movement would come in these more radical voices but you know sometimes you have to shout to get people's attention and I think Dorothy Day is a good example of someone that she reverenced the Catholic social teaching tradition but she felt that in certain ways it

had been so ignored that it she needed to shout Last question. If um someone's made it to the end of this conversation and is wondering like how do I learn more about this religion called Christianity? That's a good place to start at the risk of being self- serving with our word on fire materials. But uh you know the the Bible is always the best place to start is the best place to start. Uh, but you know, I know for a lot of people the Bible can be very difficult and just trying to plow through it.

I I mentioned the my ministry word on fire. We have the an addition of the Bible that I think is beautiful. It's full of great artwork, but also it's got the biblical text, but then surrounded by literally surrounded on the page by commentary from the church fathers and the great saints and the popes and so on. So that as you're reading the Bible, wait, I'm I'm lost. I don't know what's going on. Okay, read this commentary. That might be a good way for someone to get into it. Um, word on fire. Word on fire. Yeah.

Go back to mass too. I say to Catholics, the fact that in our country now 18 or 19% of Catholics go to mass on Sunday. That's a rotten shame. Uh, Vatican 2 at that time 60 70% of Catholics went to mass every Sunday like in 1960. Now it's 19. Uh, it's pathetic. Go back to mass. The sex abuse thing played a big role in that, didn't it? It did, but I I wouldn't put so much on that cuz those numbers were really bad even before the sex abuse scandal. Uh we were down like 20% in

the 1980s. Uh but that has had a deleterious effect on our whole culture. I think people absenting themselves from church. When I was a little kid, um it was 97% of Americans would have identified as religious. Right. Well, you saw that Sunday was different. When I was a kid, Sunday was entirely different day of the week. It felt different. I agree. people went to church. Um they've stopped going to church and that that is not good for the society. Bishop Baron, thank you very much for that conversation. You're welcome. Loved it. Me too. [Music] So

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