Bishop Barron and Fr. Mike Schmitz Interview (2021 Good News Conference)

welcome everybody i'm john barron from word on fire catholic ministries and what we are doing today is seizing an opportunity i'm here in orlando florida where the good news conference is about to get underway and the two men who are delivering the keynote addresses at this very large gathering of catholics just happen to be with me now we've got bishop robert barron and father mike schmitz and uh it's no doubt that they are maybe predominantly responsible for the fact that this conference is sold out at this point um so everybody is thrilled and looking forward to seeing you two uh over the weekend they of course are two of the most prominent and most widely followed catholic church men in the u.s they are master evangelists speakers authors uh bishop aaron is of course the founder of word on fire and everybody knows father mike from his ubiquitous energized and very smart videos not to mention the bible in a year podcast which earlier this year became the number one podcast in the world and has held pretty steady since then and though they are appearing on different days at this conference we knew we couldn't pass up the chance to find some time to get them together for a conversation um thanks to father mike and and bishop for making the time to make this happen and here we go unrehearsed unedited unvarnished um uh uh hopefully interesting conversation with uh with with two great uh leaders um i just talked about where you guys are now um you know what what has developed with with your careers but i wonder if we can go back a little bit to the beginning um when you you kind of first felt that that something clicked inside of you where where you knew that something more important was happening with you with your catholic faith something that that probably ultimately put you on the path to the priesthood and i think in both cases something happened during the high school years so father mike yeah no i uh thank you and this is this is an incredible honor for years i've uh referred to myself as the poor man's father baron and so this is this is i know i can't say that anymore because i can't be the poor man's bishop baron i'm just poor man's father um but uh back in yeah i was raised catholic and uh i'm the fourth of six kids and so sunday mass every single sunday and uh i was i would always say that i in catholic elementary school that uh i didn't i didn't like it i didn't like going to church i but you could only in my family could only miss mass if you're too sick to do anything else for the rest of the day so there were times where i i tempted but it's hard to get away with that when your mom's a nurse and your dad's a doctor i fooled him a couple times i don't think they were fooled but at one point uh when i was about 15 or so i had this conviction it was it's only an act of god's grace because um i had this conviction this awareness of personal sin and it wasn't like anyone came into my life and pointed it out it was well i know what the sins are because i went to catholic school i went to you know go to mass on sunday but all of a sudden it was like oh my gosh that's what i that's what i've done and i remember remember thinking so clearly i i can't save myself i need a savior and it was ding you know kind of one of those light bulbs of oh my gosh everything they've they've given me the answer my entire life but i never cared about the question and so now all of a sudden i have the question and the question is is really i'm desperate for an answer and i have it automatically so i knew two things i knew once i needed to pray and i didn't know how to pray and so i remember uh i had a rosary hanging on the bed post and my mom would pray the rosary every night but i wasn't going to ask her mom how do you pray the rosary because i thought she would freak out and so i just thought i went to a religious set on wednesday night and mrs sophie haglin was our teacher and there was this booklet called youth praise the rosary and i said mrs can i borrow that booklet sure you can have it you know take it forever and so i would have the booklet have my rosary and just that's how i started learning how to pray and then i knew i needed to go to confession and i didn't know the rules as far as uh saturdays and you know that's when you have confessions so but i knew where the priest lived so i got on my bike and i rode across town and knocked on the door at 10 o'clock in a tuesday morning and he was there and i always say he was there because priests only work one day a week and uh and uh i said father can i go to confession sure come on in went to confession and i remember walking out of that rectory and i had three clear thoughts in my head my first was god thank you so much i was just overwhelmed my gratitude of just i walked in here with all this sin and i'm walking out completely forgiven because of you jesus like thank you so much my second thought was god if you want me to be a priest i'll hear anyone's confession anytime they ask and i'd never thought of being a priest before because if you don't like church you don't think about being a priest too often and my third thought was thank you god second thought i'm going to be a priest i'll hear anyone's confession anytime they ask my third thought was oh she's really cute like so that that's set up the uh the roller coaster of junior high high school whatever college of just kind of god what do you want me to do but that was the beginning and where all of a sudden everything they've been telling me mattered to me deeply and uh it was the beginning it was incredible yeah well and you you had a similar encounter with grace in high school and you were right down the hall at the time you know first of all i most of my life have been in seminary work and so i've heard a thousand stories of of vocation and call and i never tire them because i'm always fascinated by how god tailors his grace to a particular person you know so flannery o'connor talks about the breakthrough of grace that happens in people's lives and in the case of of priests it happens in a in a particular way a very unique way and so that was your yeah the way the lord found you know um your heart mine was at fenway high school i say john was down the hall because he was a year ahead of me at fenwick and um it was early in the afternoon and we were just in from the playground as i remember so it's all these sweaty guys fenric was all guys school all the time and this young dominican friar taught us one of aquinas's arguments for god's existence and it's sort of like you i'm born and raised catholic i went to mass every sunday and you know i never doubted god's existence but i never thought about it deeply never thought you could think about it deeply and i don't know why for some reason it just hit me with an extraordinary power of the reality of god and i started um looking for books this is of course long before the internet and i went to our library and found this big tome uh on thomas aquinas you know tried to start reading this thing and i didn't really understand it but i was fascinated by it and that's how god kind of broke into my life though he was present to me of course as a as a catholic kid but that's the moment when things kind of you know uh awakened in me and that started me on the path no kidding that i'm still on and when i chose my motto as a bishop i chose aquinas's you know non-nizite domini i'll have nothing except you and aquinas has followed me all my life so i think of it really i think god's grace happened through a saint through aquinas who kind of broke into my life and said okay you you know i want you to do something that's how it started for me that's incredible you know it's funny you mentioned even just finding books um i'll go back to my mom uh kind of like when i talk to our students i say you know how your moms have a bunch of a stack of books that they want to read someday second magazines they want to read someday and they're like yeah like that's my mom she had all these catholic books these catholic magazines and uh tapes and that was that was i thought well what do i do now and then i'll borrow this book in this book and um through that just reading those books listening to those tapes realizing like you you mentioned there's a way to think more even more deeply about this and i remember even just encountering the reality of the eucharist how jesus is really present and i i don't say freaked out i flipped out um but i remember running downstairs into the kitchen and like to my siblings like do you know that jesus is really present in the eucharist yeah they're like yeah he said no like yeah that's really him we know and i i don't know if i was sick that day or what but it that just was this well then i need to be close to him yeah because that's where he is and it just it yeah it's incredible did it become like a voracious reading experience i read so much yeah yeah it was just such a gift so my best friends became uh people like well i didn't see this is the this is why the poor man's father baron because i didn't go to aquinas i went to you know people who learned from aquinas so i love dr peter craft yeah just was was so so insignificant bishop fulton sheen was so c.s lewis um these people who made big concepts really accessible let me tell you fulton sheen because so here i am 14 15 years old and i get this big tome of thomas aquinas i'm trying to read it and my father our father said to me you know kiddo maybe you could find something a little easier and and he mentioned fulton sheen yeah so i went to the library and got this fulton sheen book which did indeed make a lot of that easier but reading was so important to me that was a way in which is why a lot of my work has been against this anti-intellectualism which held sway believe me when i was a young guy there was almost an animus against the intellectual life and that's terrible in my judgment that's the way i got into it right that's what and people you mentioned craft there's a whole generation of people your age and younger who were drawn back to the faith by peter craft oh he's been so he's an extraordinary teacher and a great writer but books books have played from you know look at augustine on such a huge role yeah in people's journey to the lord yeah i would say that um and the kind of people that i was drawn to i think are the kind of people like as we continue to talk the people i emulate and so i remember c.s lewis at one point he was giving a talk to um i think it was seminarians and i think it was called they might have referred to themselves as youth ministers or you pastors or something in the anglican church and uh he said that he believed the final exam for people before they for the anglican men before they get ordained shouldn't be uh answering big theological topics in big theological way it should be here's a big theological topic communicate this in a way that the ordinary doc worker can understand and he said because you can't if you can't do that we wouldn't send you to burma if you didn't speak burmese we wouldn't send you to china as a missionary if you didn't speak chinese and so why would we send you to you know south london if you don't know how to communicate in such a way that the people living in south london could understand i think i do remember that vaguely in lewis and it reminds me of um billy graham's or something similar namely he said any christian preacher at the drop of a hat should be able to explain the gospel to any group that shows up so if there's your church or whatever it is hey um you know a bishop a group of six-year-olds have shown up okay you should be able to drop ahead to explain the gospel though yeah uh bishop a group of uh academics from uh you know villanova have shown up explain the gospel to them if you can't do that at the drop of a hat you're not qualified yeah and i've always thought that's right like what is the gospel and can you explain it to any group at any level without dumbing it down yeah right without doing it with integrity but able to address uh people at different levels and all that and i think that is true what's your what's your reading like now uh still is voracious um i listen a lot yeah so audible.com yeah i think i keep them in business but uh but i just um there are some books that that i i just have found have been so incredibly helpful uh ralph martin's book fulfillment of all desire i i don't know if i've read a i think it's a modern classic i think that it probably will have you i'm sure years ago i just thought it i probably i'm on my sixth or seventh read-through of that or listen through of that because it's just one of those where i keep coming back to it and it's one of those books that reminds me of here's the interior life and here is the point of everything we're going through also you know i think sometimes what i can fall into is i can fall into the trap of okay here's where i'm at when it comes to relationship with the lord and the process of him hopefully purifying and sanctifying me and i can forget a little bit that this is a continuum that this is a journey that this is not the only stage is the one i'm at you know kind of a little bit of uh interior solipsism and so it's been a gift to be able to be reminded of yeah just how god works in the soul and your reading is still voracious yeah my eyes are getting worse as i get older i can't read the way i used to you know uh but no i read a lot of them i do in fact i'm in you know santa barbara and i have to drive all the time to la and around my region so i've gotten into the audible books in fact i tried the brothers karamazov in my life i think three separate times never got through it trying to read it yeah finally just got a really good audible with a great narrator got my way through it yeah i've listened to all kinds of big novels i did the same thing with both this grandmaster really like i haven't read it i've listened so i say i get read it even if i listen to that's better in any way when you listen through a novel especially right yeah yeah you know and uh bishop has mentioned a couple times that we were in high school together and i should have mentioned that we we are brothers i'm his slightly older brother um so forgive me if i occasionally call him bob um along the way but you know you guys both have important day jobs um and and you're busy with that you're both terrific with you know traditional preaching but from the very beginning you you both have been unafraid to engage the culture to engage with pop culture to um you know offer catholic perspectives on everything from current movies and music and you know other societal trends um it's it's been very effective you know i think and and i think it's it it's it's brought different people in uh who might not have otherwise you know clued include themselves into a podcast from a from a catholic priest but but why is that important in evangelization it's just an intuition i had from the beginning that they're not coming as readily to us so that's been proven over and over again the rise of the nuns so-called and people are disaffiliating from the church so if we simply say let's get our parish programs in better shape and invite people in well they're not coming we have to go get them and right at that time as the nuns were increasing the social media was was emerging and i thought well here's a tool here's a way we can get into the world of people that wouldn't come naturally to church okay if that's true then how do you get them well maybe not by leading with you know the essence existence distinction and thomas aquinas maybe lead with as i did in the very beginning with youtube commentaries with movies movies and music are places where young people are and so i started with that and it was an experiment i didn't know when we first started youtube was 2007 and i didn't i was going to watch no idea in the beginning i remember very vividly when we reached 300 views in a video and we're like no really 300 people watched our video wow you know so it was an experiment that i think worked and i think we've we both had that experience yeah you try this and people do respond and it's a way to get some traction and plant some seeds you know and and we've both seen them grow in all kinds of marvelous ways so i think it's experiment that that paid off and and so you were with your uh videos a little bit later uh but but still with that um uh underlying interest often in in pop culture yeah you know it's interesting because uh bishop you've you know talked about bob dylan and movies i i've only referenced or only kind of taken a dive into movies occasionally and it's usually because it's a movie that i really was moved by or that i thought i think this could really this could resonate with maybe some other people but it's one of those elements of i think what you know when it comes to evangelization there's this whole uh uh movement of pre-evangelization or this step of pre-evangelization and i think that the critical um element of pre-evangelization is it's there to build relationship yeah um where there's trust and i think that when there's that consistency of you show up here you're on the on someone's phone or on on the computer and you're talking about things in a way that is not bombastic in that way that is kind of winsome in a way that just like oh this is this person really believes this then even if someone disagrees with you on this or that topic uh there's an element of trust that i think begins and like you've mentioned planting seeds i think one of those seeds it's planted is well they at least seem authentic even if i disagree yeah and so i believe i can trust that they are representing what uh the gospel is they're representing what the church teaches and um that's a good beginning yeah i quite agree with that and and the they call the sticky quality of the internet where you know you put a video out and maybe that's not quite my thing but it sticks them to another video that you did and oh well that one yeah that's interesting that leads me to another one and i have tons of stories i'm sure you do too of people that started with some video of mine that they just stumbled upon somehow and it led them by the circuitous route to the rcia program you know so that's something about the planning of the seeds and taking advantage of this real sticky quality of the internet um i love that i think what you said about trust is is dead right too that hey that that guy seems normal and he seems happy and he seems like not a complete nerd and you know so maybe i'll spend a little time with him um the other thing about i i don't know about your experience but in the early days what surprised me a lot the the negative comments i didn't even know people could comment on these things and i put a video out about something and what i'm looking at these comments of people people that mad at me and the church and god but especially in the early days i learned it's a way in i guess subtraction okay hey listen tell me exactly what you don't like about this or oh yeah that's a good point you're making but i think you're wrong about and it allowed you at least to start a conversation sometimes they were really good conversations would unfold and again here's someone that would never darken the door of any of our institutions or our churches but i'm able as a at that time a catholic priest to have a conversation with this non-believer or skeptic or whatever so those are all great things about it i think yeah and also i like how it's connected so i'll get a lot of messages letters emails saying i found your videos and then i found bishop baron and then i found matt fratt and pines with aquinas and then i found and now i'm finding myself in rcia like you mentioned how sticky things are and how it's not just one person or one ministry but it's this kind of working together without even working together yeah but it's it's the you know the lord just keeps leaving people because i know that i have a lane and um the lane won't go all the way to the finish line the lane will help someone get to the next person that's the next person will hopefully get them into the finish line yeah and as you say the lord is working that's the mysterious thing is that we were in different ways i think um chosen and directed and then the lord does his work and i i just use the image of the of the sewing of the seeds all the time because the kind of work we do you don't know where these things are land i finish a video in my studio you know and i'll say okay good got that one done and off we go you have no idea no idea it could be years later somebody watches that video at the right time and it it does something yeah that's the beauty of it you sort of let that go and say okay now lord you you supervised this process yeah there's times when i'll be so excited oh this was awesome yes i love this idea isn't that great and then i'm watching the numbers sometimes thinking wait you guys that went by doesn't this hurt your heart you hit your heart because it kind of lifts you up that's the other side that was really good actually it wasn't yeah the um uh you know just just going back to evangelizing a little bit through the lens of of culture yeah um you know i think what what's been interesting is is giving giving viewers the the you know that idea that there there is a catholic perspective that can be brought to bear on on uh you know many artifacts in in in in pop culture and giving them a vocabulary or a code to understand that can you talk about that a little bit and yeah and maybe you know tell us what what are some of your favorite catholic movies that we might not have even realized were catholic movies well and again when i say catholic i just mean here one that i think is susceptible to a very catholicizing interpretation and my favorite example i just thought the other night it was on it was on tv uh clint eastwood's grand torino you know which is people know because they go get off my lawn that's what they remember about that movie but that movie and my judgment is the best exemplification of the christus victor theory of redemption namely that jesus conquers the devil tricks the devil exposes the devil and in that very act also liberates those under the sway of the devil i won't go into all the details of the movie but clint eastwood this very unlikely christ figure but makes a move at the end of that movie that simultaneously exposes wickedness to the light and to justice and liberates by an act of self-sacrificing love even to the point of death so there's a good example i watched that movie i had yeah i like clint eastwood's movies and i i went into it with no expectation whatsoever of seeing a religious movie when it ended i thought my god i'm going to use this forever to explain the christus victor theory i don't know a better exemplification of it so i did a video on that and you know okay there's a catholic vision of life now i don't think about clintus wood's uh formation i don't know if he had that in his mind or what but there it is unmistakably and i think if you've got the catholic lenses on you can see that in a in a film the very first commentary i did on youtube was on scorsese the departed now scorsese is a you know an ambiguous figure in terms of his own catholicism but he's a catholic formed by catholicism and that movie too i think has a lot of motifs of of sin of death of redemption etc so our job i think is to say okay if you look at the world with catholic lenses you can see it in a particular way and i think that is a good way to you know start yeah i would say that um i've never seen the departed which is tragic i guess but i did see a great on the plane [Music] because uh because are you a cop i'm not a cop i know that part um but the um gran torino i yeah gran torino is so like you mentioned so clearly that i one of my favorite movies is i think it's the imdb number one movie of all time uh shawshank redemption oh right great christ imagery exactly and there's it's so it permeates the whole thing innocent man uh falsely accused falsely convicted but free in the in pressure and time the whole all the themes i just i every beat of that movie i think is just is incredible i had uh last christmas my christmas homily i said that the best christmas movie of all time in my uh in my opinion is the movie taken with liam neeson okay like what christmas will be like well it's the story of i've got certain skills exactly a very particular set of skills um that uh his daughter's taken yeah and what is the father who will do anything whatever it takes to get his daughter back obviously um it's not a christmas movie but the the reality is here is um another image image of christ the victor who is also willing to leave comfort willing to leave security willing to leave heaven in many ways to do what to rescue us to rescue his his children who have been because of their own foolishness and falling by the strong man and so no i think and i love shawshank for that reason and i think the final scene you know when when red finally comes to see him on the beach and there he is all in white and he's in the by the boat so it's all by the seashore yeah which is very creepy and then the embrace at the end but right the innocent man that moves into this world of dysfunction and fully corrupted by it right but then shows them a way out a path forward then goes through a kind of death and resurrection and then at the end of time welcomes the prisoner that's finally and of course stephen king who wrote the the story upon which that's based does indeed have a a christian imagination certainly um so yeah and as you say maybe the most popular movie the last 50 years and it's full of christianity yeah this is siskel and ebert for the religiously declined but you know both of you have um have have come to prominence using new media you know video podcasts the internet digital distribution all that now new media is probably a term that became quaint a month after it was coined you know it's the media right uh at this point you know was there something more effective or different about new media back in the day or even now compared to old media books or preaching from the pulpit is is there something that makes that different more useful more efficient using you know the the digital realm well i think i remember talking with one of our students and he was uh he was tricking out his mom's minivan and he said he he had taken out all the seats and reupholstered all of them he had made a whole new moulding for a dashboard and he had taken on the carpets he did stuff with the engine he did all these things and i i said would you did you grow up working on cars i was like no there's a youtube youtube tutorial i said what and he said no this you know we're the tutorial generation and i said i love that because that in so many ways is the thing that's one of the reasons why ascension came to me and said would you want to go on youtube into these videos because that's where a whole generation of people are living that's where they're going for their information and i said yeah that would be that's essential that idea that i have a question i can type it into this machine this magical rectangle i've got in my pocket and maybe come up with some kind of answer and i think that if anything that i've recognized has been the new media is that it's it's a an answer to people's questions yeah i think of years ago when cardinal george invited me to do work in evangelization and he said i want you to evangelize the culture and i said well what do you mean i don't know exactly but we'll figure it out right so the first move we made was i gathered in these nice rooms in downtown chicago and we had business people on their lunch hour would come we'd serve them lunch i'd give a brief like half hour talk and then back to work that was the idea and they were successful we filled these rooms with people and i think they were they were good so that year ended and i talked to carl george and i said well you know remnants i think they were good i think they were they were fruitful but i said there's something kind of 19th century about this it's what john henry newman would have done yeah let's gather people in a room and give a formal lecture i said there's so much more we could do with the at the time the new media he said i know nothing about that but i think you're probably right so that's really where we got the start with word on fire is to do what i was doing in those rooms but now to a much wider world and the opportunity for connection that's the great thing about it you can connect with people and that's where the commentary even though it can be used to begin as something negative is beautiful i can give a talk and it's going to someone across the world you know someone who's on a ship in the in the south china sea would write to me and say hey i heard your podcast that's beautiful i mean the opportunity it gives us fulton sheen i mean had to depend on people tuning in at a particular time and so on now that we can be 24 7 all over the world uh it's a marvelous opportunity we'd be derelict in our responsibility if we didn't use it as a church yeah you know so you know i suppose the amazing reach and connections that you both have found using the digital spaces is probably a happy surprise you know you said you were thrilled with 300 views early on and um uh you know the sheer numbers that you're you're attracting at this point are undoubtedly a happy surprise what are what are some of the other surprises you've encountered as as uh as priests who are always at least knee-deep in the internet um good or bad surprises i always say twofold uh one is i am always really grateful when brother priests say hey i love what you do because that's you know i mean in any kind of fraternity or any kind of group of people there can always be the temptation or the fear that am i am i sticking my head up too high you know that sense of what are my peers what are my brothers really think did they resent this do they you know dislike it so whenever i have brother priests who say i really love what you're doing it just it helps because they because there can be a certain sense of um isolation or perceived isolation or perceived kind of are what are you trying to make yourself special like i'm not i just i was invited to do this and i'm trying to do it you know so that's really helpful the second the thing is um there are so many times when i'll talk to young people who will say oh we watch your videos in religious ed or at our catholic high school or wherever and uh and then i'll say well how many have you ever looked on your own and usually the number drops about 90 uh but then i realize there's all these volunteers in parishes and in schools and churches i religious ed programs all over the country who they're in the relationship with these young people and yep here's a tool in the tools of video a humber tool's a podcast but they're the one who they're walking in that messiness of young people's lives or people's lives and i think that's incredible i get to make a video or i can make a podcast and then you know go back to my ministry which is very local but then people doing their local ministry get to share this tool or share this video and i just think it's still collaborative even if we didn't even know we were doing working together and i just that that always strikes me i'm so grateful for those teachers and volunteers and it's incredible surprises good or bad yeah i'll say something on the bad side maybe because i've been extolling the virtues of social media and i i hold to that absolutely i use it i think it's been marvelous i must say over the years i've been genuinely surprised by the amount of vitriol you come across and the amount of just the meanness that can surface you know in social media and you do a video that you think is like pretty harmless and benign and like oh my god what are people saying here and then that gives rise to counter some of that i have found at times even appalling you know and the scapegoating that goes on and uh you know all the studies now being done especially how young people are often adversely affected by this environment that's created by social media and the low self-esteem and the you know all of that so i see that and it's a very ugly side of social media i've been on this reddit ama a few times you know that they ask me anything and it and one saying it's it's wonderful i the times i've done it i think i've been second or third most popular in the in the country after like bernie sanders and jordan peterson and i say it not because they know they don't know me from adam but i just go on as you know catholic bishop eager to talk to non-believers or something like that well you get this enormous response but you have to wade through like just pools of of vitriol and negativity and hatred to the church you do indeed find good things that's why i'm happy to do it you find the questions have emerged but there is a shadow side to it that's what i'm trying to say there's a shadow side to it and i think those of us involved in the church have got to play a role in trying to address that to teach people again how to have a real argument as opposed to just throwing mud around i think a lot of people have forgotten what a real argument is like you know you've said something i disagree with and here's why and here's my counter position and i've drawn these conclusions and here's it's not that very often it's just some explosive odd hominem attack so that side of it is bad and i think we can play a role in trying to ameliorate that situation a bit do you run into that as well um i think there is that um one of the things that i will i'm grateful for is that uh there's a good team who kind of manage the they manage the the youtube channel and the page and it's a situation where yep there are uh there is the negativity but i think that a lot of times i uh i've developed a thicker skin which is really good in the last number of years where just like okay i realized that most people who are commenting or most people are tweeting are uh having a bad day yeah or they have some what they're saying is not necessarily what they mean it's coming from some other place and so the one this is the stuff that sometimes bothers me more a little bit is when like someone makes like a response video kind of a situation where they kind of like okay i appreciate the the discussion nature of it or having the argument part of it but then i also think well to shoot do i do i jump back in and have my response to your response and um but that's okay though because it means we're engaging and and i think that that is the best uh yeah do you find this that i have to almost tell myself a very conscious way okay behind every comment there's a person right because it's so hard you see these sometimes brutally offensive words will appear you're like all right behind those words there's a person as you say maybe having a bad day maybe coming out who's engaged right right who at least is there and as a child of god and is a human being so one little discipline i imposed on myself a long time ago is whenever i respond i try to say friend comma right and it's a signal to me really like okay this is a friend in christ this is someone that you know there's a person behind those words and sometimes like if someone's really just trolling and you can tell that i might do a teasing response you know if someone has some terrible thing about how i'm this awful person and so on i'll say oh so you really like me so i'll do that sort of thing sometimes just to be playful but i try to say friend all the time yeah just to remind myself there's a person behind those those words yeah and i i will often um if i can put that uh whoever is commenting in the place of i think of a niece or a nephew that i've got and if i can do that then then it's okay you hear me now i it's good i in that that works for me every time because they my nieces and nephews they have me wrapped around their fingers i don't do anything for them and so when i i'm like what the heck i can't believe you're asking they're challenging or not challenging but can believe you're saying this i think well yeah i can see yeah if this nephew if he wasn't having a bad day this is i get to hear him say this that's a good that's a good way to do this that's a good way to think about it in my heart but i mean all of this drama and trauma and and passion of online interaction um you know is there is there a way to turn that into something more positive and youth useful i mean we've got such passion so many people yeah you know responding uh arguing uh uh and then you know there it sits is is there a way to to to turn that into something more positive or useful well i think so i think we've been hitting on it really here we're talking about it uh to turn a comment into an argument in other words see i like the word argument people say oh argument you're being negative no to take in a comment and say okay let's bracket the vitriol at the heart of what you're saying seems to be you're mad about this right or you think the church is wrong about this particular am i am i saying that correctly do i have that right and to send that back so it's like you're turning the vitriol into more of an argument and if the person you know is responsible and they might say yeah yeah that's right that's what i'm mad about okay good now we can have more of a conversation but if i respond with like what are you talking about well that's not gonna help you know so i think you can you can discern within this um sometimes messy communication something like a real argument and then you can engage that creatively well i even find that when people get responded to they will say i never thought you'd respond i never saw you right back the temperature goes down right away yeah and and i typically don't respond too much online i will respond to every email i possibly can um or i'm not and i try to stay away from social uh network messaging just because it's another another kind of like floodgate yeah um this i have a job to do i mean back in my diocese there's still work that has to be done yeah and so but when it comes to emails uh i just i always want to respond and especially for someone who is like you mentioned just passionate about this whatever they're writing about um the answer the response is almost always that like oh so you heard me right like yes yeah hopefully you felt heard that's right yeah you know i wanted to talk about the bible over the last year and a half both of your ministries have had incredible success with with the bible you know your podcast which started this year um its success you know kind of speaks for itself there's so many people that i run into who are following along uh uh daily the word on fire bible is uh the first volume of that came out in 2020 we've had a hard time keeping it in stock and we've had a lot of support for um what will eventually be the additional six volumes you know of this thing two new creative approaches to the bible um uh you know a what prompted you to do that to take to to to do something new with the bible and what what does the success of these projects tell us about the hunger for for for for knowledge and greater understanding of the bible go ahead well i love the word on fire bible i've um i really do it's it's such a gift i just love how what you design is so it's accessible elegant and beautiful and i just think that there's an element there that just is like is is so important um i we uh i mean i mentioned that i take in a lot of information audibly and so you know i sit down and i start reading and i fall asleep you know it's one of those situations where i'm like i know that i i find myself taking a lot of i found myself last year year before um being really distracted by the amount of voices i was allowing into my mind into my heart and they're wise voices i mean people saying smart things by saying wise things but also it was the wisdom of the world rather than the wisdom of the lord and i just i recognized that i just thought okay i'm being distracted i'm kind of feeling distressed because also how culture is going how the church is going how all these our country is going was an element there where i was just like i want to do so i want to fight and and realizing i was reading the book of judges at the time like reading reading with my eyes and uh and i was reading going oh this is nothing new in fact it was worse there are times in our history where it was not just a year or two or a season it was generations it's the most brutal book in the bible so yeah and it just came out in the bible yeah and you're like this is the people of god though and they're going through chaos generations of chaos and uh i thought this is nothing new and so then it was i thought it just was the lord i think speaking saying um well you take in information through your ears and the bible will offer an eternal perspective on our temporary situations and i thought i would love to be able to have a podcast where we just went through every day and let people like really truly you know the book um from christendom to apostolic mission by you mary oh gosh it's so good but one of the elements of that is we need to recover a biblical worldview yeah and i thought this maybe this could be the case and so i wrote to ascension and said would you what do you think about this and they said we think that's a great idea let's do it and so yeah heck i'll return the compliment i think your podcast was just so inspired and you know as my brother said the success speaks for itself so that's marvelous uh my inspiration was vatican ii uh vatican ii called for a revival in the bible and my conviction is it didn't happen my generation i'm probably yours too we got such a steady diet of the historical critical method yeah so we read the bible you know in an intelligent way but through very particular lenses was tended to look at you know the intention of the human author of the text so it gave you a historical sense but i think what we lost was the overview of the whole bible the narrative that god is telling what's god's intention you know through these these great stories my other experience i don't know if you've shared this but all my years of being a priest and you sit down after the opening prayer and it's now time for the first reading and here's a reading from the book of you know the prophet isaiah or a book for the book of judges or reading from and the reading unfolds and you think the people have no idea yeah no idea what's being said it's not to blame the people at all we get this little you know segment from an obscure book from long ago so i remember thinking we've got to find a way to open up the bible you know with all of its richness and a lot of people think of jeff cavins you know and his his bible program was i think very important that way what you're doing i think the word on fire bible that was our inspiration was to know let's present the bible but now with art and with commentary and with all kinds of stuff that would draw people into it but it's vatican ii is my inspiration and uh i think it's it's of the holy spirit these efforts to bring the bible to people yeah what what what i think people would be interested in in in how you work uh a little bit you know they see they see you in the videos and all that how does that work you're you're doing it primarily from from your residence yeah yeah um a lot of times what uh what comes up in video topics and whatnot or uh well you have a video top we'll just say that video topics is the questions that are my students are asking me it comes out of a conversation with somebody or multiple conversations and i realize oh this is on the heart of the people who are living on this campus and that most often is the the genesis of of a lot of the topics or content that that we post and you and you're doing a lot of your videos uh from a studio close to your residence yeah now we have a studio in santa barbara when i first started you mentioned cisco and ebert you know this they would always be like in a movie theater i started them at the auditorium at mundoline where i was a teacher with this old-fashioned auditorium i was sat in one of the chairs there we filmed the commentary then we did them in the office in chicago in skokie then i did them in my rector's office when i was rector there then out in santa barbara first in my room and now in the in the studio so different places mine come out of my column so like every week or ten days i'll write a column about something and they often come from either my own reading my own read of the situation or the word on fire staff so i'll turn to father steve and say what should i write about or i'll call brandon or i'll call someone and say what's going on that i should write about and they often make a suggestion and then i do the video based usually on the column and it's important because there's a danger i think of we could just start bazooing so let me sit down and let me tell you my feeling about but i always make sure that mine have a structure and so then i take from the column we do little kind of bullet points on a cue card so usually when i'm talking to the camera there's a little bullet points next to me so at least i've got a sense of the structure of it that's how i do it but you know regardless of the backdrop the lighting the cameras you know it's the evangelist that makes the difference and and and regardless of you know any of those backdrops you guys have uh have been terrific in in in conveying um you know the message the truth and as as we're closing here uh i just wanted to ask a you know a quick question that may seem impertinent but i think people would be interested in um uh the answer and it may be a quick answer what are you trying to do what what what is your mission what what are you trying to do with these uh with these um you know evangelistic outreaches well you know i can put in terms of my talk tomorrow which is is why we evangelize and two things to get people out of hell and to tell them of who their lord is what i mean by that is to yes in the full eschatological sense to keep people out of hell but also to draw them out of the hell that exists even now so all of us sinners are in hell to varying degrees and a good evangelist is trying to show there's a path out of that and it's called jesus christ and if you if you enter into the power of jesus christ there's a path out of the hell you're in and then secondly to know who your lord is so everyone you know bob dylan you got to serve somebody and no matter who you are you might think you're autonomous no one's autonomous we're all serving somebody and it he's quite right it may be the devil it may be the lord but you got to serve somebody so which army are you in whom do you serve that's why i evangelize get people out of hell and tell them who their lord is father mike what are you trying to do yeah yeah i remember um so my my patrons saying when i was when i was confirmed with saint francis xavier and who was patron of missionaries and i chose him because of that because his patron saint of missionaries i remember when i was i think 17 or 18 years old i uh was a part of this this evening program that the local community was hosting and they wanted to be able to introduce me somehow and they said this is mike schmitz his parents are you know and he does these sports and what's what's your goal in life and i in my kind of i don't know youthful zealer i said i want to bring as many souls to heaven as possible and the woman who announced it her interpretation was he he wants to help people but but still but i'm like that that's that that's it that that there's no greater thing just the same exact it's the same souls bring as many souls to heaven as possible and i think um that just did play a small part in that yeah no it's a big question and i and i i assumed that the answer would actually be simple um you know in both cases and and it is um we have come to the end of our time here and and uh i know both of you are going to be busy uh in the next couple of days here at the good news conference we wish you luck with your with your keynotes and all your other activities and again we can't thank you enough for setting aside the time for this conversation so that is all from orlando at this point thank you very much

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 306,024

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Id: T4mcgqnspKw

Length: 47min 6sec (2826 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022