Bishop Barron Interview in Rome | EWTN News In Depth

[Applause] God bless you all thank you I must say I'm always wary of the standing ovation before I begin to speak peace be with you Bishop Robert Baron is the bishop of Winona Rochester in Minnesota previous to this he was the auxiliary Bishop of the arch dasis of Los Angeles he's also a celebrated author Theologian and prominent figure in the world of Christian evangelism Christ is the yes to all the promises made to Israel his focus is on spreading in the Christian message through social media and his YouTube channel word on fire has almost 150 million views making him one of the most influential and widely watched Catholic figures in the world Bishop Baron if you are into theology the best but what made a young Robert Baron want to become a priest in the first place it gave me a sense of the reality of God that I've never lost and what's his view on the state of Catholic ISM today the church has been in a kind of hand ringing you know mode of well what do we know and who are we to tell you and we're here really learn more from you come on I'm colum Flynn and I sat down with Bishop Baron here in Rome to find out Bishop Baron great to see you again and thank you so much for doing this interview my pleasure the last time we met was in beautiful lisman yeah for World UT day now here we are in Rome the Senate on cidality you this isn't your first Senate how many have you been as not my first rodeo I did the um Senate on young people which was 5 years ago 2018 uh so it's my second Senate how does this compare you know practically they're very different uh 2018 like most senates we were in that Senate Hall which I don't know if you've seen it's over in the Paul the six but it's a somewhat claustrophobic room there Theater seating uh we were in cassic the whole time so every day in a heavy black cassic and you're in a seat that's like the middle seat on an airplane and you're there uh the whole time so this one's a lot more comfortable I'll say that we're in we're in the front area of the Paul v 6 the big audience Hall they cleared out the chairs and put in these 36 round tables we're also not wearing CICS every day just wearing the you know the black suit so it's a little it's more comfortable more Humane you know easier to get through the day and we know that there's so many different perceptions of the Senate and people online saying different things but the incredible thing when you look across the room the universality of the church that is there how do you find that meeting people from every corner of the globe it's the best part of it I think uh it started for us at The Retreat you know this uh Senate really the Senate began with the retreat out in sakano which is about a half hour north of Rome but I remember walking into the dining room there be this cacophonous sound you know and every table there's Spanish speakers here Italian speakers there German speakers there French speakers there English speakers are mixed and and it was the universality of the church in all of its kind of cacophonous Wonder there's no other group or Society in the world I don't think that could Muster that kind of international uh universality and that is an extraordinary thing the final thing on the Senate that must be incredible then when you have that diversity of opinions A diversity of viewpoints different challenges for the church in different unique parts of the world yeah and that's an important point you know we tend to see the world through the rather myopic lenses of the West and you realize very quickly it's very different in other parts of the world and issues that preoccupy Us in the Western World often do not preoccupy people in other parts of the world at all in fact on the contrary and that I think has been one of the interesting dynamics of the Senate now if we can talk about you Bishop Aron because many of our viewers will know you from your uh great videos online millions of views all over the world but maybe not know so much about your own personal story of how you got to where you are today you grew up in Chicago you're from Chicago outside Chicago yeah in the suburbs and as a young guy you were the next big baseball star that was your dream yeah I mean Sports were the center of my life from the time I was six probably until about 16 so 10 years of my life baseball was my best uh sport I was pretty good at it I was All-Star Most Valuable Player a couple years I was good at baseball I was decent at basketball and football and when I read I read books about sports uh when I watched TV it was Sports so that was really my life for about 10 solid years yeah and I it's true I wanted to be a pro baseball player that was my dream when I was a little kid so what happened I realized I wasn't that talented no and I got interested in a lot of other things but um yeah it sort of it sort of faded away when other interests came along but if you looked at a little you know little portrait of me when I was 12 or 13 that was what was on my mind now when you were 14 and I know you came from a Catholic Family the cathol tradition and all that probably going through the motions as many Catholics are part of your identity but maybe you think too much it but then when you were in class 14 years of age and something struck you Fenwick High School the spring of 1974 and a young Dominican frier presented one of acquaintance's arguments for God's existence and I I always say you know to this day I don't know why it struck me the way it did um but it did it gave me a sense of the reality of God that I've never lost and it started me on a path of exploration and it filled me with excitement whenever I read ignatious Lola you know about desolation consolation and the idea of you know when he read certain texts he liked them for a while then it faded away but other texts he read and this deep sense of of peace and interest and excitement remained that's what happened to me when I was that age is reading aquinus even though I barely understood it but it produced in me this sense of peace and consolation I knew that's what I need to to look into I need to go down that road and that started me on the road that's led me to sitting right here with you wow it's incredible that at such a young age it stirred your intellectual curiosity but was there a point when it went beyond interesting ideas to you and Concepts to something you you thought that this is truth this is real and I believe it so much that I want to dedicate my entire life to it it started with with meron so I begin with Thomas aquinus and then very soon after that maybe two years later I read uh meron seven story Mountain for the first time and I read that book when I was about 16 and it's a book about someone falling in love with God and that's what happened to me I think as I read it is aquinus opened the door to the reality of God and then Merton led me into this experience of God and the sense of a really personal relationship with God and that book to this day if I pick it up it fills me with with consolation it fills me with a sense of of peace and it it massively struck me when I was 16 the only time in my life I've ever spent a little bit of money to get a first edition of a book was I came across a first edition of the seven story Mountain that's actually signed by Merton and it's to we don't know who it is but it's to Bob now it could be Bob Gibney it could be he had a couple friends named Bob and it signed Tom you know so I got to get that I so I spent a little bit of money I'll admit and I I got that book so Merton deepened and broadened um what a coin is started and very interesting thing about that actually young Thomas Merton atheist you know agnostic at best stumbles on etan jillson's book on the spirit of medieval philosophy and he reads the Catholic intellectual tradition that's what kicked the door open for Merton it was Jon's expose of Thomas aquinus it's very similar to m away and then Merton starts down that path and then gets so engaged he becomes a Trappist Monk and so it was a interesting parallel with me reading meron was my way into the deeper Dimensions when it went from the the head to the heart I think so faith and reason and then when you were ordained a priest what was the moment like everything had built up to that it was wonderful my my pries ordination I remember with great uh fondness and and excitement you know my family being there these great mentors of mine Seminary professors it was a very joyful day I don't want to overstate this but I contrast it with my ordination as a bishop which was a difficult day and nothing against La they were terrific me in LA but you know I was 55 years old and I was in sconsin Chicago and I had my I I love the work I was doing my Ministry was there my friends my family and then suddenly you're going to Los Angeles where I knew absolutely nobody and nothing about it that day was more challenging I remember the day I was ordained a bishop but my priet ordination I remember with great joy that's funny the other day I I interviewed Archbishop Anthony Fischer from Australia sney Australia and I said what do you love about being a bishop and he said well I really love being a priest don't always love being a bishop it's tougher it can be tough sometimes tougher yeah but when you were growing up when you were taking the priesthood seriously young curious guy still with talents you still could have gone down many other Roots did you struggle with it and did you ever doubt the faith did you ever think maybe I should get married and have a family maybe I should have a career there was a time I'll tell you I was at Catholic University in Washington I was doing my masters in philosophy I was in the Seminary uh program but you know you're 21 years old and you're reading Marx and n and Freud for the first time they have an impression on you yeah sure and and there was a time when I I thought I don't know I've got a lot of doubts a lot of questions would I be better as a professor of philosophy so there was a time during those years I thought maybe not not priesthood maybe I'm better just in the classroom and I I should get a do doctorate in philosophy and and do that so it's for a time that beguiled me but see my experience of of vocation has been the just the Relentless pursuit of of God that God always came back and I always knew I would not be happy apart from from this adventure that's that's what it's felt like to me what about marriage in a family yeah I mean at that time probably I would have thought about it and thought well that's a different trajectory now you know for my life um but God came after me you know when we look around the world today the Western World the Catholic Church the Steep Decline and something else that Archbishop fiser had mentioned the rise of the nuns yeah not the NS but the N NES the census form religion nun right how does it make you feel as someone who is so passionate and committed to the church and the faith when you see the fall fall off yeah I'm sick about it and that's why I've been talking about writing about it for a long time and see I see it not just as an intellectual issue it's that there's an intellectual Dimension but what I see is the spiritual suffering of people when they say they follow the crazy new atheist and they say you know I came from nothing I'll go back to nothing there's no uh objective moral value my life has no meaning read Richard Dawkins I me he lays it out that bluntly and people go oh yeah you know give it to religion but then spend time with that philosophy of Life what do you end up with you end up with this desperately hopeless iism and so I've seen reams of people you know who've gone down that path to deep unhappiness deep alienation and so I've said to my my brothers even here like this is why the church is doing what it's doing you know we're not doing this for our health we're doing it because we've got a life-saving message the gospel it's it's not just a nice set of ideas it's a lifesaving message and so that's why the rise of the nuns uh now now to be fair I think they're falling again and I mean that in a good way I think people have begun to realize how desperately awful that nihilistic view of the world is and there's a Reawakening I think we seen it a number of ways Reawakening of interest in in religion um so that's how I feel about that I I feel very passionately about it and it's the central uh at least in the west it should be the central pastoral focus of the church and I've seen you say before that the atheists from your point of view you said they stop asking questions just when it get when they get interesting yes no yeah that's why I I never buy this nonsense about you know religious people are you know pre-scientific and not very bright on the contrary it seems to me that that the the materialists are great at asking questions that the scientific method can handle and that's terrific but there's a lot of Life most of what's really interesting about life that the scientific method can't handle and it's very convenient to say oh I just won't ask about that I'm just not interested philosophy begins in Wonder yeah of course yeah and it begins in this this deep hunger of of the heart and the soul for meaning and for purpose and for truth and for beauty and for goodness and the Sciences cannot adjudicate any of that and so I say to young people all the time don't believe this this sort of weird mysticism that says uh knowledge is reducible to science um your heart tells you otherwise and your head if you give it a little exercise will also tell you otherwise so how does the church try and turn the tide again how does it go back and evangelize to a hugely secular society now today with truth and beauty and we've got both uh in Spades in Catholicism so we're a smart religion and we should not dumb it down which we have done for way too long call upon the intellectual richness of our great tradition and get boldly into that public conversation um you know I someone I admire very much on the Protestant Side William Lane Craig you know who at the height of the new atheist thing got into the debates and he he was drawing on frankly much of the Catholic intellectual tradition we Catholics were pretty bad at it so draw on all the richness that we have intellectually and then also draw on the beauty of our tradition which beguiles people often in a more Winsome way if they're not maybe they're resistant to truth claims they're resistant to moral claims but the beautiful can get into their soul in a way so begin with truth and beuty and then have confidence uh much of my adult life I say this with regret the church has been in a kind of hand ringing you know mode of well what do we know and who are we to tell you and we're here really learn more from you come on Peter and Paul came to this town a long time ago and they weren't here you know just to listen to Roman culture I mean fine they were here with a message they were here with a message uong gelon there's good news and it's good news that will change the world and in fact it it worked the fact that over there where Peter lies buried to this day but dominating this once imperial capital is the cross of Jesus you know that didn't come welling up from Roman culture that came from a message that these people brought we should do our work with the same energy and the same Panache and the same confidence it's difficult isn't it for many priests and Bishops around the world especially when the you see the the days of good intellectual debate on television on radio Public Square seem to have gone and now you risk suddenly hurting someone's feelings you risk being cancelled you risk having the media against you is it more difficult now to preach the the Catholic Church's beliefs and truths and ideals yes in the measure that our capacity for real argument as you suggest has um has diminished when I was a kid there was a guy um William F Buckley Jr in America who had this show called Firing Line and it was one hour long and Buckley was this um you know very um uh kind of interesting quirky personality super bright super articulate and he had on very smart people from all across Spectrum he had left center right he had people he agreed with people he disagree with and for one hour at a very high level conversation two people with like a you know just a neutral background talked about serious matters that show was on for 35 years I remember watching as a little kid and just being beguiled by this guy's words like what does that mean you know for the fact that our culture was able to handle that show or go back even further in my country go back to the mid 19th century and uh Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas would gather Illinois Farmers out in the field they'd be standing in the mud and Douglas and and Lincoln would engage in four hours of of high level public conversation um in our Tech culture now in the social media culture something has been lost along those lines our capacity to make and sustain a real argument and not a sound bite not a little put down not a clever quip but an argument you know yes we we've not lost entirely but I think we've got a couple Generations now that don't even know what a good argument is and that's what you trying to do with word on fire on social media on YouTube we just had World Mission Sunday and you have become a digital missionary in a way when our last interview we did in Lisbon short interview just a few minutes long and so many people watched it and I was surprised by the mixed reaction one hand I love Bishop Baron what a great message the other hand he shouldn't be preaching this he should be saying this do you read the praise do you read the criticism and does it affect you well some of it you know sure you become aware of um I don't go looking for it you know I think it's just it just comes with the territory if you're a public intellectual especially in a religious context of course you're going to get you know a wide variety of responses something I'm actually rather proud of I don't know any other figure in the Catholic World who's attacked more from both the left and the right than I am and I'm happy about that um because you know I nailed my colors to the Mast a long time ago I'm not hiding anything I'm a Vatican 2 Catholic I love the interpretive tradition of the great postc conciliar popes up to Francis but including and especially John Paul 2 and for the catechism of 1992 I don't like Catholic liberalism I don't like radical traditionalism those are my colors you know uh my my theological Heroes Thomas aquinus among the fathers irenaeus um origin Augustine Newman in the 19th century balazar 20th century that's my world that's that's what I stand for and and I know in the church today there are there are enemies on both sides of that there are right-wing enemies of that and leftwing enemies where did that deep Division come from and how is it affecting the church do you think well in a way we've been in a civil war since Vatican 2 you know Vatican 2 in some ways is a is a kind of watershed and that those two camps emerged you know in the wake of the council I think the great contribution of John Paul 2 and Benedict and Francis and Paul v 6 was to provide a coherent uh interpretation of Vatican 2 that shows it as a development indeed in continuity with the past but but stating things in a fresh way in dialogue with the modern world and I think that's the right path now what opened up once that path emerged was Critics on the left Critics on the right right and that Civil War has been going on for a long time it's still going on exacerbated now by the social media yeah which have made it louder and Rous no not to my mind not so much objectively but I think the social media Echo chamber which which encourages the oneliner quip and the and the mean-spirited comment the anonymity of it all that has has produce this kind of vile Echo chamber I think that's worse than it was I mean are the disagreements worse than they were let's say in the' 60s or 70s or ' 80s heck when I was coming of age trust me there were disagreements trust me a lot of people were critical of John Paul II you know uh like people today that will say oh you know poor Pope Francis he's getting you know attack well okay but John Paul II and Benedict believe me were getting attacked like crazy they weren't as aware of it maybe because it wasn't on their social media feed every day yes that's the difference and so it didn't have quite the same resonance as has today word on fire yeah such an Empire you have built what are you hoping to do in the future with it or any ideas or well you know the the ongoing growth of the word on fire Institute is important to me which is a training really of lay evangelists we we've begun online but we have all kinds of plans to expand that I've spoken before and we're making some progress on this idea of of an order of priests that would be um dedicated to what I think is the needful thing today which is the Outreach to an increasingly skeptical culture Outreach to the unaffiliated uh I think that's the the requirement of our time spiritually and I'd like to see an order develop along those lines um we have you know plans for various projects for Word on Fire um and it's done you know very well thank god what about you yourself Bishop started off in Chicago brigh heed looking at Baseball Stars that's my future your plan life changes the tapestry of life you never knew you would be sitting here today as a bishop right what are your dreams and hopes for the future well I mean I think to continue uh my work as as an evangelist I'm you know Bishop of a dases that I love I've been there a little over a year and you know that's the the job the church is giving me to do and I'm very pleased to do it uh so I'm certainly that's that's my future given to me by the pope but beyond that I would say you know the ungoing work award on fire um is it difficult to do the the two to manage a media Empire like that into no because I've got so many good people at word on fire you know 65 strong who do most of the you know practical day-to-day things though I I've been doing this now for over 10 years because I was director of mundeline Seminary full-time administrative job I was auxiliary Bishop of the largest dicese in the country La full-time administrative job now I'm Bishop of a dicese so i' I've been a full-time Church administrator for like 12 years and during that time word on fire has has grown and so on so no I I don't really find it hard to juggle those two things finally what gives you hope because you mentioned we have truth we have Beauty but the church has always had that and yet we still see such Decline and I remember once I had a friend in New York who was going through a hard time and I said pray about it and she said how do you pray yeah like the even the base level Foundation is not there when you look at the church today what gives you hope a lot of things and I we've talked about the negative side of the social media and that's true but you know look I use the social media I love the social media and you know talk about Lisbon when I was there a few months ago and I'm wandering around Lisbon the number of people from all over the world that are responding to the work we do at word on fire being here in Rome at the Senate I mean every day people from all corners of the world well that means there's something in Catholicism that is still very compelling to people and that when it's laid out in a way that's intellectually satisfying and aesthetically pleasing and morally compelling they respond to it uh and that gives me a lot of Hope you know and I I don't believe this new atheist nonsense and I I don't believe that's going to in the long run hold people's hearts and minds and the church look I look out at the city of Rome here you know we've been around for a long time and we've been through a lot worse than we're going through right now so we will endure so Christ gives me hope and the holy spirit gives me hope that the fact that we've been given this great message we've been entrusted with it but we're under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and we've been through a lot worse and and the there's still nothing better on the table there's there's no fresher fish on the market than Christianity it's still the most beautiful compelling message that we got Mr Baron thank you so much for your time you're [Music] welcome

Channel: EWTN

Views: 134,105

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: tF1Rbbbb6fU

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023