Bishop Barron on Not Dumbing Down the Faith: Answers to Young People's Pressing Religious Questions

well good good morning everybody and you know my first happy responsibility is to thank all of you and i mean that from the bottom of my heart i mean i know two things one how important it is to be communicating the faith to the next generation secondly how hard it is today especially with the rising tide of of you know secularism and kind of indifferentism it's always hard to teach young kids i mean it's always difficult it's a challenge but i think especially today it's a challenge so thank you and i say that on my own behalf but also on behalf of of the church what you do is supremely important and god bless you for your willingness you know to share the faith with with young people so good what i want to talk about today you know you know this i've been being this drum for a long time to stop dumbing down the faith to present the faith in an intellectually compelling way and i say it everybody not just because you know my background is in uh teaching and theology and philosophy i say it because of my study of the unaffiliated the last several years i've been really paying a lot of attention to the surveys of the so-called nuns right the n-o-n-e-s those who have disaffiliated from religion the numbers i've shared them many times are startling 26 of our country right now would say they have no religion it was three percent when i was a kid so it's a tremendous increase and it's worse among younger people 30 and younger the numbers go up to as high as 40 percent and furthermore the kids that you're dealing with most of you that's where the battle is being fought that a lot of people are disaffiliating younger and younger now as part of those surveys something i've discovered is when they ask how come you left well they give a variety of reasons that's true and i've given presentations on all the different reasons but time and again number one reason that the young people give for leaving is i don't believe the teachings i don't believe the doctrines another way they put it is this i never got my questions really answered now again there are other reasons they give for disabilities not just this but i'm i'm continually impressed by the fact that number one reason is for one of a better term an intellectual reason they were not intellectually satisfied by what they were hearing in our classes and courses now again everyone please don't misunderstand me i'm not saying for a second that the whole thing should be reduced to you know academics and to theological correctness no no all the things that we do and i'm talking here about forming young people in prayer forming them into liturgy forming them in a good community sensibility forming them in um retreat experiences forming them through outreach to the to the poor and the sick and the marginalized those are all super important so please don't misunderstand me as though i'm saying all that secondary it's not it's not in fact when you look at the surveys many of the disaffiliated will say you know i do finally remember prayer experiences i do fondly remember retreat experiences and maybe above all they'll say i fondly remember when we were encouraged to do works of of social justice so those things remain of tremendous importance keep doing them please but can i suggest we should put a renewed stress on answering the questions that they have is addressing some of the concerns that they say were not answered in their religious ed classes and i want to make it now even a little more precise i don't know if you guys know about the website reddit r-e-d-d-i-t well reddit is one of the most popular websites in the whole world and it's a forum for the exchange of ideas and opinions the people that use it are disproportionately younger people and and probably disproportionately males over females they'll say young men from 18 to 30 but generally it's younger people use reddit well reddit has a feature and my word on firefox told me about this couple years ago called ama and ama means ask me anything so people come on reddit from different walks of life and they'll say i'm so and so and they could be famous people or they they represent some walk of life and they say ama ask me anything and then the debate ensues right so i was encouraged to get on there simply to announce myself as i'm a catholic bishop who loves to engage atheists and seekers and non-believers right so i would be willing to bet most people 98 of people on reddit didn't know who i am but i announced myself that way i'm a catholic bishop that loves to engage seekers and non-believers well i've done it twice now first time i was the number three most popular reddit in the whole year i was right after like bernie sanders and jordan peterson no kidding the second time i did it i was number two in the country after i think bernie sanders now again i'm saying it not because they know who i am i'm sure they didn't know who i am but that a religious person came on this website frequented by young people and said hey ask me anything and it proved to be massively popular now massively obscene massively you know obnoxious and all that too believe me you're going to hear everything on on reddit but i got in both cases like tens of thousands of questions observations etc now once you you wade through all the kind of obnoxious obscene things and all that and there's plenty of it but you can discover a lot of really good honest questions and they fell very recognizably into certain patterns and what i want to do is share with you the top three questions i got on my two times on reddit ama and then try to say something about each one so that's the way i'm going to structure the talk today here are the three questions no doubt no doubt at all that these were the number number one a number top three first one is there a god bishop prove to me there's a god i heard that thousands and thousands of times second one what about the problem of evil and suffering so bishop you say there's an all-loving god but yet the world is full of all this suffering and negativity how do you explain that third one and i found this one maybe most intriguing because i wasn't quite expecting it third one though real popular how do you know of all the religions of the world and all the religious philosophies that somehow your religion is the right religion go you can check it by the way go i think you can still find i don't know how long they're up there but just look it up on reddit look up my name and and you can find these streams of questions and you'll find these are the top three so what i want to do now just this brief time and i hope i have a chance to engage you too is just say something about each one of these three leading questions because trust me when i tell you the young people you're dealing with they got these questions they got these questions okay so first of all god's existence is there a god i can't tell you how many times i heard it show me there's a god prove to me that god exists and boy how many times did they say something like you know and people just told me when i was growing up just believe it just have faith in it and they tell me that is not enough that did not satisfy me but one thing that really struck me i don't think i one time on reddit saw anybody engaging any of the famous arguments for god's existence even though gosh in our tradition as you well know there are there are a lot of them there's a book i just read recently and it was dealing with about 24 of the classical arguments for god's existence that people have developed over the centuries but on reddit ama not one kid ever said to me oh and by the way you know i i listen to this argument and here's why i don't agree with it no it's as though they'd never never heard of them it was just a matter of this kind of kooky belief that my teachers proposed to me and there's no good reason for it and i don't get it so that struck me as interesting that somehow we by we here i mean all of us involved in religious education catholic protestant jewish everything else that somehow we have not communicated well to our young people that there is a very richly intellectual tradition around this question so i said there are 24 there are many more than that too can i just explore with you two approaches to god and my starting point for each one is going to be something that i think young people find especially compelling so let me let me just talk about two of them the first one begins with the sciences and i'm being purposely a little bit provocative here because boy one thing you hear from the young people is well science disproves religion you know religion makes all these kooky claims and and then science came along and boy it's got you know empirical analysis and it forms hypotheses in a responsible way it does experiments it draws conclusions we have testable results and the sciences have produced the technology it's working right now for all of us but from the iphone that every kid has in his pocket it's produced a technology which has made life so much richer and better and more comfortable and so heck the sciences seem great and haven't they disproven religion and they look at religion and again i heard this like crazy on the reddit uh forum you know these old texts from the ancient world that seem so crazy and contradictory and uh you know so much has been debated and unresolved and murky so you get that religion seems kind of shaky and ancient and questionable and then the sciences seem so smart and testable and and beneficial so if it's a war between religion and science on those terms guess who's going to win and the kids say it all the time science is better than religion science disproves religion okay and i've talked about this in other words i can't go into all the details about religion and science but what i want to do here is to start actually with the sciences start at the very heart of all the sciences what is the basic assumption and i would call it everybody frankly a mystical assumption that stands behind all the sciences whether it's psychology it's biology it's chemistry it's physics whatever it is the assumption that stands behind all the sciences is that reality is intelligible fancy way of saying it can be known it has a pattern that corresponds to the questing mind now think about for a second if the world was just a chaotic jumble well how would the scientists go out to meet it with what kind of confidence if the world was just chaotic jumble of nonsense no scientific mind would go out to meet it with confidence rather there's something like pattern form intelligibility on the grandest possible scheme and in every nook and cranny of the universe in fact isn't it interesting i remember talking to my nephew my nephew drew is a really smart kid he's a senior now at mit so doing the highest level right math and physics and all that stuff i said drew what i find really interesting is that reality as you're analyzing it as an engineer now you know corresponds to the most complex mathematics you know as you're analyzing the world so you can build bridges and build buildings and and construct things and and so on well you're using the most sophisticated complex mathematics to do that work well why does it work that way why would that complex mathematics correspond to the real world that you're dealing with where does the order pattern and intelligibility of the world come from you know einstein said this he has a lot of interesting quotes about kind of science and religion but my favorite is this one the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible right because the more you stare at that the stranger it becomes right why should the world have these incredibly complex mathematical patterns of intelligibility but it does because otherwise the sciences wouldn't even get off the ground joseph ratzinger in his in his wonderful introduction to christianity of course ratzinger becomes pope benedict xvi ratzinger says the only finely satisfying explanation for the intelligibility of the world is some intelligence which has placed that pattern-ness that order that intelligibility into things ratzinger observes something i've always loved this he said our language gives this away because when we come to know something we say that we recognize it right i recognize the truth of that recognize recognize i think again what's already been thought now now in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and through that word all things came to be the great claim of the bible is the world is not dumbly there the world is intelligibly there because it has been spoken into being don't literalize that language that's beautiful high poetry to express what i've just been describing the world's not dumbly there it's not chaotically there but rather it's intelligibly there because it's been known into being by a great primordial intelligence another thing that's interesting everybody many have pointed out ratzinger included it's no accident that the modern physical sciences that we all honor and reverence as we should emerge when and where they did which is to say out of the great christian universities of europe they came out of a thought world that took for granted creation the idea that all of reality has been stamped by a primordial intelligence and look at the first great scientists almost without exception they were all devoutly religious people because the sciences came up out of that matrix i'll leave you just with this quote from paul davies paul davies is very interesting australian physicist high high level physicist but writes a lot about science and religion he wrote an article where he was kind of tweaking the noses of his scientific colleagues and his simple question was this where do you think the laws of nature come from that's a good question so he's making the point that i'm trying to make here that all of the sciences rest upon the assumption that there's a law-like quality to reality huh where's that come from how do you explain that i might suggest it's a good way for our young people who are properly enamored of the sciences to see the link between science and religion they're not enemies no in fact religion is right there at the very heart of science if we look at it the right way okay here's my second approach so that's the first one through science the second one also starts with something i think almost all young people take for granted and reverence i'm talking about the objectivity of moral value the objectivity of moral value now i don't mean here that we should start with the church's sexual teaching they don't like the church's sexual teaching so that's comes through in every single survey i'm not saying the church of sexual teaching is wrong i don't think it's wrong but the young people don't like it so i wouldn't recommend starting with that however however almost without exception they do like the great values of social justice don't they you talk to young people what what really motivates them that there are these great social justice values that you you shouldn't abuse the poor and the marginalized that you should not be sexist that you should not be oppressive that something like slavery is is clearly wrong that human trafficking it's a terrible thing racism that's wrong i mean i don't know i don't know one young person that would disagree with any of that do you well what they're acknowledging is there's an objective moral value involved there if you were to say no no i think morality is just a question of you know your subjective opinion so yeah i know you think slavery is a bad thing but if someone else thinks slavery's okay well that's all right we should be tolerant and inclusive i don't know one young person that would say that do you or you know yeah i mean with sexism sure we i think that's wrong it's my subjective opinion but someone else they might think no sexism is fine would they buy that or you know all the nazis yeah i mean sure i think that's a terrible thing what hitler did but you know if that was the consensus of the people of that time who am i to tell them when they're wrong i don't know any young person that would ever say such a thing you see what they're resisting and they're dead right about it they're resisting the tendency to turn objective moral value into simply a matter of subjective preference now i know i know we so highly value inclusivity and diversity and all those good things but when it comes to these primal moral truths i don't find young people subjectivist at all i think they hold to objective moral value okay just as in the scientific order where do the laws of nature come from where do these objective intelligibilities come from so here now in the moral order where do these objective moral values come from oh they just come from the societal consensus no no no because 1935 in germany there was a societal consensus that it was perfectly fine to imprison jews and put them to death oh you know no no that's just you know a matter of subjective opinion no you don't hold that you hold to the objectivity of these values where do they come from how do you explain them what does the bible witness to everybody over and over again that god is the great law giver that stands behind the objective moral laws that we intuit how is god described as the giver of commandments again i know right away they think sexual morality and tell me what to do so bracket sexual morality for a moment go back to these things i've been talking about do you think slavery human trafficking racism are objectively wrong yeah where does that come from where did those objective states of affairs come from they can't come from my private opinion they can't come from the consensus of my community they come in fact the bible says from this great moral law giver whom we call god just a last connection isn't it interesting john henry newman saw this that we referred to the conscience as a voice think about that it's curious because you know i've got let's say an aesthetic sensibility where i i make judgments about works of art and oh that's beautiful and that's it that's not or that's more beautiful than this okay now if i make a mistake in that order i don't feel ashamed i might feel stupid or i might feel you know uninformed or something but i don't feel ashamed that i made a bad aesthetic judgment or if i make a mistake in my mathematical calculation i don't feel i might feel stupid but not ashamed but when i go against objective moral value how do i feel not just stupid or uninformed i feel ashamed now why because i know i've offended someone you see with the voice the voice of conscience not just an attitude or a sensibility it's a voice it's someone who has given these objective moral values to the world and when i run counter to them i feel under judgment now turn it around make it positive when i do something right you know when i liberate someone who's oppressed when i fight against racism when i when i fight against all forms of slavery what do i feel well not just hey that was a that was a right judgment no i feel joyful in the presence of someone who approves of this where do physical laws come from the great intelligence that placed them there where do moral laws come from from the great moral law giver in whose presence i feel lifted up or ashamed depending on how i behave morally now can i suggest you know fellow teachers um start with these two approaches there are many more you could use but start with these two start with two things that they reference the sciences and and objective moral values and then keep pushing where do they come from what explains them what grounds them i think at the very least you're going to have a cool discussion you have an interesting engaged discussion okay that's that's question one the question of god of god's existence here's question two in the reddit ama all over the place the problem of suffering okay if you believe in a god who's all good all loving all-knowing all-powerful how could there be such evil in the world you know you can invoke the evoke the holocaust and the black death but heck one child dying of leukemia is enough to to start this uh argument how do you explain that thomas aquinas by the way you know the way thomas wrote is when he was laying out his position he would precede it with objections it's really it's clever and it's important for us today because we tend to dismiss our opponents but thomas laid out their arguments really clearly and persuasively here's the way he argued against god's existence thomas said if one of two contraries be infinite the other would be altogether destroyed like if there were an infinite heat there'd be no cold right but god is described as the infinite good okay therefore wouldn't that eliminate all evil there's an infinite good but there is evil therefore god does not exist that's in thomas aquinas that's his objection and may i say that's a darn good argument that's a really good argument and the young people they might not you know express it that pithily but they feel it that's exactly what they're feeling hey if there's an infinitely good god how could there be any evil good argument okay how do we begin to respond to this sort of concern well going back to thomas aquinas then before him to saint augustine the classical answer is god doesn't create evil because evil is like a like a parasite right evil isn't something positive evil's a lack of being think of like a cavity in a tooth right what's evil is the lack of something remember in in tolkien's lord of the rings those uh what they call the nos golds that fly around on their you know they're these wicked figures and they're cloaked with the hood but then it's it's uncovered that actually when the hood comes off there's there's nothing there you know and tolkien's making the same point that evil is not substantive it's always a shadow or it's a parasite see i'm saying it's a lack of good that ought to be there so god doesn't create evil or evil isn't standing against god as a rival but still the question remains okay god didn't create it but god permits it then and here's the answer so that from it there might come some greater good that's the principle god permits evil and suffering so as to bring out of them a greater good now now can we see this sometimes in life yeah sometimes we can pretty easily so think of someone boy they they wanted that job they were really trying to get that job and they interviewed ford and they prayed for it and they didn't get it and they were bitterly disappointed but then because of that they took another job that proved to be in fact so much better than the job that they were initially going for right so that evil that suffering actually led to something much better or you know i know this is my pastoral experience someone boy they wanted to get into that university that's the what i want and i applied for it and i wrote the essay and i hoped and i prayed and then i didn't get into that university which is what i wanted with all my heart and i was bitterly disappointed and angry but then i went to another school and at that school i met the woman who became my wife who's been now the center of my whole life the mother of my children and if i had gotten into that first university i never would have had that experience okay and we can all multiply stories like that where we do see the principle that sometimes evil brings about a greater good that wouldn't happen otherwise or people we know this pastorally that go through tremendous suffering physical suffering but out of that suffering comes a deeper sense of god or of compassion or so yeah my point is we all get that principle at the same time let's be honest often we don't get it often suffering just seems dumb that it doesn't lead to something better it just seems like dumb suffering we can't see oh yeah because of it something great happened does that undermine the argument no and here's why we got to remember that god is not like one agent among many so you know you and i are all doing our various things and trying to get the best situation and but god isn't like that god is the creator of all things provident over all reality over all of space and all of time why does god permit a given evil or suffering maybe i can't see it in this life in this world with my very narrow limited vision but does that mean it has no purpose no now everybody revisit the book of job and i think if this is like the number two question that young people have i think in our classes if we spent some good time with the book of job which is the greatest old testament wrestling with this question remember job righteous job you know the good man the best man on earth and then every possible suffering befalls him and job cries out to god like we all do like these young people do how how can you explain this explain this to me why am i going through this suffering his friends try to explain it with their their different theological perspectives and job finds none of it convincing and finally calls god into the doc right explain yourself to me why and then have the kids read this it's job chapter 40 i think god speaks out of the whirlwind you know whirlwind the the dust and the eyes you can't see this overwhelming reality of god and it's the longest speech by god in the old testament it's cool the longest speech by god in the old testament is on this question and it begins famously job where were you when i laid the foundations of the world where were you in other words god takes job on a tour of the whole cosmos that he's made the point being job your suffering is not just about you but is ingredient in my providential concern for the whole of reality now that highfalutin stuff from philosophy in the book of job can i make it a bit more concrete with two examples first one is a little bit silly second one is more serious um when i was a little kid we had a dog named tiger because i lived outside detroit so we love the detroit tigers and so we had a beautiful colleague named tiger well tiger was a great dog but like all dogs hated the vet right and he he kind of we didn't take him in the car that often he kind of knew when we were taking him to the vet and he would get completely beside himself we'd arrive at the place he'd start to tremble we take him in and this this one time we took him in for shots it was something simple but the poor talk was just trembling you know so i remember the vet i'm a little guy i'm like seven or eight years old and he says why don't you hold him so i kind of held him around his neck like this and then the vet gave him shots you know but here's what i remember and it's vividly in my mind even though it was decades ago is tiger you know how dogs they're not as expressive as we are but but dogs can be pretty expressive a dog can express what he or she is feeling right so tiger looked at me and the look said why are you doing this to me so i mean tiger knew i was like his buddy i'm his best friend you know and yet i was there in this awful place the vet while he's going through this terrible thing that he didn't understand it was just causing him pain and he was looking at me as if to say why are you doing this to me so anyway tiger is giving this look and what occurred to me even then i'm like seven or eight years old even then i remember thinking i wish i could explain this to you you know but the difference between even my little seven-year-old human mind and his mind was so great that i i couldn't even in principle explain it to him you know well tiger listen these are shots and they're gonna awaken your immune system in a new way and it's gonna prevent you from getting sicker later so i know it's a little tough but just endure it you'll be better this actually is good for you what you're going through well i couldn't even begin to explain it to him and the frustration i felt at that that i knew what the point of this suffering was but i couldn't communicate it to him now here's the second story it's along the same lines but it's more serious because it was in my pastoral work i was newly ordained so this is a long time ago and um this young father came to me young guy probably early 30s and he said father i'm going through this terrible time i said what's up well his son who was about three i think had some physical issue i forgot what it was but it required surgery and so the father was there with him at the hospital that the kid went through the surgery and then afterwards there was this young kid in great pain right physical pain but also in great psychological pain because he's in this terrible place this hospital he didn't know surrounded by strangers in great pain and his dad was right there with him and the father said to me it brought tiger back to my mind because the father said to me i couldn't explain it to him is i i wanted to tell him why he had to go through this surgery and they removed something which means you'll be better in the long run and you've got to go through a difficult time but you should be much better and if we hadn't done this you might have died well i mean the three-year-old kid's not able to take all that in and the father looked at me with the sense of deep frustration and i thought you know so it goes our god who has concern for all of space in all of time who's the lord of all things what what we take in is a little tiny swatch of space and time right a little tiny bit from our perspective yes indeed some suffering just seems like dumb suffering and there's not much we can really do about that and is it possible that god even in principle couldn't explain it to us here's one more little story also from my pastoral time i was helping out at a parish near chicago and um every week practically i would see this family of parents about five kids and they sat right up in front because one of their daughters she was about eight maybe at the time was profoundly uh handicapped both physically and and mentally and she was kind of strapped into a into a chair you know and profoundly affected and then often during mass she would she'd get agitated or she'd get fussy and she'd start vocalizing and you know kind of squirming in the chair and i was just always struck by the the tremendous suffering she's going through and that the whole family for all these years you know has gone through but the person i noticed alongside the young girl was her brother who was i think a bit younger than she maybe like seven and week after week this young kid when his sister got agitated would with such care and and compassion and simplicity and not drawing attention to himself would would attend to her would comfort her and talk to her you know now i never came to know this family all that well but they've never left my mind and i'll tell you why because why would god allow this why would god allow this poor girl to suffer why would he put her family through this well i mean look i don't know i don't know but i used to muse maybe that brother is developing a heart of such compassion that when he comes of age he passes that on to his son who then passes on to his daughter who becomes a saint at the moment the church most needs that saint now look i'm speculating here everybody i'm just kind of musing my point is god has command of all of space in all of time why why are certain evils going on well maybe it's not even the answer is not even to come in our lifetime maybe it's not for us so much it's for something far in the future i don't know where were you when i lay the foundations of the world says god to job and says god to us too but you know look my holding tiger around his around his neck while he was going through this the father sitting with his son even though he couldn't explain it to him that that brother caring for his sister even though he couldn't explain it to her our god is like that too maybe not able to give the answer that we want and need but present to us in compassion as we suffer it seems to me that's the you know answer in quotes the answer by our great tradition again i'm not trying to solve this thing but it might be a good way to engage the minds and hearts of young people is to address this question head on about suffering okay i've been going on a little bit too long let me draw two clothes a little more quickly with number three the third question they asked over and over again well why be a christian so come on bishop aren't there you know hundreds of religions and they're all good and uh you know we're all climbing the holy mountain by different routes and so you got your path but other people have their paths and you know who are you to be saying your religion is right um why don't we just say we tolerate all religions and you know we got one among many well as i say this is a huge value today as we all know you know inclusivity and tolerance and diversity is a huge value but what's the danger of course is if we hyper stress these things it can undermine our sense of evangelical enthusiasm you know go forth and preach to all nations it he didn't say go forth and and just you know be tolerant toward all religions he said go forth and preach this gospel to all nations now mind you never in a violent way never in a way that's that's disrespectful vatican ii clearly teaches there are elements of truth and goodness and beauty and all the great religions that's certainly true i don't deny that for one second however we do hold that god has revealed his heart most fully in the great tradition of israel culminating in jesus christ crucified and risen from the dead and this is the great message that god wants the church to communicate to the world and so it does matter that we're christians and let me just try to articulate that in terms of a few simple points christianity claims first a personal god now i know that can seem kind of obvious but it's not you look at the great religions and spiritualities and religious philosophies of the world by no means do they all hold to a personal god very often god is portrayed as a as a force or an energy think of star wars star wars expresses an old um philosophical perspective go east of the suez as joseph campbell said and you'll find a very impersonal sense of god christianity holds no god's not a force or an energy but a person with mind will purpose freedom secondly relatedly christianity is not the story of our quest for god go to any bookstore go online you'll find a million titles all about the human quest for god fine i mean good there's something to that obviously but christianity biblical religion is not primarily about our quest for god ho-hum finally as though god is kind of dumbly out there and then we just have to go climbing up toward him no no no the bible is the story of god's quest for us and that makes all the difference it's a qualitatively different approach to religion it's it's about god coming after us it's about the hound of heaven right running after us as we run away from god god is not like just the holy mountain waiting for us to climb it's like the mouth the mountain's coming after us you know but it's the personal god who is actively seeking a relationship with us that's a different texture that's a unique texture in religion thirdly and relatedly christianity is not a religion of karma it's a religion of grace and i'm making kind of a broad distinction here but you know what i mean religions of karma and karma is a great principle think of john lennon's instant karma you know i said karma is a principle of justice and retribution so you know if if some harm is done it needs to be repaired there's an injustice that needs to be answered and set right it's like a re-establishment of a cosmic harmony and you'll find that a lot of different religions especially religions of the east and again i like karma and you'll find some of it in the bible that's true there's some sense of karma or redressing a wrong or setting things right but but the bible is not primarily a karmic religion it's a religion of grace what do i mean i mean the personal god who's after us loves us even when we don't deserve it is not just a god of justice but as a god of super abundant love grazia is a free gift beyond what we deserve beyond what we merit and fourthly and relatedly christianity is a religion of incarnation so watch the trajectory here the personal god who's looking for us who loves us when we don't deserve it loves us what does john 3 16 say god so loved the world that he gave us his only son god's gracious love is so intense that god becomes one of us the word became flesh and dwelt among us now why so that we might be divinized the church fathers said in their in their latin deus fit homo utomo fear at deutsch that means god became human that humans might become god now now say what you want about that we get debated true or false but that's a unique claim everybody there's no philosophy of religion there's no other religion that makes a comparable claim that the personal god who's after us and loved us so graciously that he became one of us that we might share in his life now again we can debate that and you can say oh i think that's crazy but i don't know that's a distinctive religion that's a distinctive view and i'll be honest with you i speak now as an evangelist if there's a more compelling religion than that i'll join it as far as i'm concerned the the personal god of gracious love that runs after me and becomes human so that he might draw me into his life that's a pretty exciting message in fact that's the greatest humanism ever proposed by any religion or any philosophy in human history god became one of us that we might become divine i think that's a message still really worth propagating and that's the answer to that question well why be a christian among all the religions i don't know to me it's a pretty cool religion christianity and it's worth uh proclaiming okay i'll draw two close there uh answers you know responses anyway or let's say the beginning of a good conversation about the three questions that seem to preoccupy young people the most god bless you all thanks for listening amen thank you bishop incredible um i we do have time for a few questions so i would invite everyone if you have a question for bishop on the topic that he shared or about teaching um i know we want to ask him questions more about six or seven-year-old bishop baron but um let's not do that let's stay on topic and um just put those in the chat box and we'll we'll get to those and then um bishop i wanted to start i was thinking while you were talking across the board the question that comes up the most is how to engage parents um because a lot of times the children no matter what age get on board but parents who are uncatechized or who have been away from the church for a while so what would be your advice for all of us engaging parents yeah first of all i i totally agree with that i mean getting parents on board is essential i would suggest they got the same questions i bet these top three questions i bet every parent's got them too and and you say correctly theresa that a lot of the parents who become either disaffiliated or just kind of maybe you know bored with religion i think stir them up with these three questions i bet they've got them and maybe started a good discussion with them around them here's something else do you guys know the work of christian smith he's a professor at notre dame in the sociology religion and he's been studying this question of the nuns for a long time he said once to us he i invited him when i was chair of the bishops committee i invited him to come and talk to us and he said one of the biggest changes is young people don't talk to their parents about religion now i remember my mother i talked to my mother this morning by facetime she's she's now in her upper 90s um still going strong but i remember vividly when i was a little kid i'm like 10 12 years old my mother and i talking about religion now my mother was a faithful catholic went to mass on sunday but she also she loved talking about god heaven sin grace and i remember as a little kid talking to my mother about that and my mother wasn't super pious and religion on her sleeve but it was like just a natural part of her life christian smith says young people and their parents and their friends don't talk about religion and that's a real problem so how about engage these same questions with both parents and children and get them talking to each other about them absolutely who would you say besides your mom was like a great teacher of the faith to you who sticks out well i'm sure you have a whole list father tom paulson who's still alive he's also i think in his upper 80s or early 90s he was a professor at fenwick high school when i was a kid i was 14 and he presented one of thomas aquinas arguments for god's existence which changed my whole life uh so he had a big impact on me um my mom though i would stress that again she my mother was not well educated she went to high school uh but she was and is smart and and just liked religious questions she's kind of a natural theologian without being trained in theology but she had a natural feel for it and um yeah and my dad i mean i my father you know when i was a little kid i thought he's the strongest guy i know and he was kneeling one day at mass and it just struck me strongest guy i know and he's kneeling to somebody stronger and my father again not in a showy way neither my parents would show you about religion but every sunday it wouldn't occur to them to miss mass by the way another christian smith thing and you know at the risk of sounding sexist in any way but especially the father's perdurence in the faith makes a difference to kids if dad remains a faithful mass goer the kids tend to remain connected to the church and he's not making uh it's just a statistical fact you know so parents absolutely go to mass and talk to your kids about religion i would say hmm stephen wants to know how do you respond to the comment that we as catholics are not tolerant well some of us aren't i mean that's true and we always should be again but tolerant it's one of those kind of tricky words isn't it uh always responding in love never in violence never imposing only proposing so by tolerance i would mean all of that but it doesn't mean indifferentism i think it can shade into a sort of subjectivism or indifferentism like ah well who really cares what you believe you know we're all trying to be good people but that's too strong you know you can be evangelical without being intolerant you know you can be boldly a proclaimer of the faith without being obnoxious about it and imposing it so there's a middle ground there i've often said you know theresa that in our culture the two extremes seem to be violence on the one hand and bland toleration on the other hand as if those are the only two options and i think that a very happy third option is religious argument and religious engagement it doesn't mean i'm i'm attacking you or i'm trying to impose myself on you but it also doesn't mean i'm just kind of oh who cares no let's let's like talk about how about we talk about these three things and i'm convinced that christianity has really good answers to all three okay i'm not being violent i'm not imposing it but i am proposing it with energy i think that's still a valid path absolutely anna wants to know are there any books you might suggest that explain the three questions you went over and i would like to add to that any books in general for us just to go deeper into our faith and help us yeah i'm trying to think these three questions in particular on god's existence the one i'm now the one i'm referring to is kind of a hyper technical book on the on the 24 arguments for god um you know i think the works of peter craft do you know peter craft k-r-e-e-f-t he writes a lot of really good substantive books but are also pretty accessible pretty easy to read i'd recommend any of his things on on god um you know i mean we're on fire we've tried to do a lot of things talking about these issues i have a whole dvd series on the mystery of god um maybe take a look at that i just finished this book on the creed it should be coming out sometime next year might recommend that um but i think peter craft might be a good place to start richard wants to know how do you prepare teachers to answer and embrace the questions well how about we start with this in other words okay here are the three questions and i think that's pretty plain now i've just given you a couple of suggestions um start with those and then have a good conversation see what what ensues so someone says yeah i don't find that very convincing well how come and let's have a good argument about it uh so i don't know start with the questions and maybe begin with the observations i've made here and then see what what follows but but don't opt for either you know okay let's impose it on people or let's just blandly tolerate let's engage so maybe start with these suggestions and of course everything i've said here today something like new to me it's all like just classical catholic stuff you know but start the i'm start the conversation absolutely a few more here anitra can you give me resources for parents who need answers to hot topic questions for their teens and adult children yeah you know what good book there i'm just thinking of it is brandon vaught um who works with us at word on fire but brandon also writes in his own name and a book called return and it's all about how to bring people especially young people back to the faith who've wandered away so go get that brandon it's v-o-g-t brandon vaught return that's that's a good place to start nancy says in my school community one of the biggest challenges is that our parents do not attend mass especially now with the pandemic even in a normal setting how can we motivate them to seek the sacraments and especially attend mass yeah tell me please because i i'm bringing that up all the time i worry about it i worry this is such a weird moment in the life of our church we've never had this before and i worry that people have been away for so long that they've been watching on tv or maybe you know a relative handful are going to our masses outside now maybe 100 or so um i worry about it i do because they're already staying away a lot of people we're already staying away from mass and then this thing happened so i don't know i'm wrestling with that too i'm trying to figure it out one suggestion i've made is everyone that comes let's say to one of our masses now make a resolution that when the time comes please god sometime soon when we can all come back to church bring somebody that's been away for too long bring a family member uh someone at work but become a kind of a one-person evangelical crew and say i'm gonna find one or two and bring them back to mass but i'm still wrestling with that too i'm not quite sure what the best answer is marta says how do we get the male figure the father of the family to understand the importance that we're taking in the walk of faith with their children yeah tell them first of all tell them that statistically it's true and that you know it just has a massive effect on on the kids so i don't know tell it propagate it uh explain it to people um but yeah getting the parents involved is absolutely essential it won't happen without that um i mean i grew in my faith and it's just again it wasn't so much explicit it was more implicit that i just knew it was very important to my parents and when you're a little kid i mean your parents set the tone for your life in many ways and so yeah of course you're religious my mom and dad are it was just take it for granted but that's i know has changed a lot from the time i was a kid till today and um what are some rules of engagement to have a good they put argument but i would say conversation yeah but you don't think and i i don't mind the word argument because i know it has this negative overtone like we're yelling at each other but think of thomas aquinas is trading in argumentation it just means making a case it means you know bringing your premises to bear assembling your evidence um drawing conclusions it's having a rational conversation that's what an argument is you know so teaching people how to have a good argument without becoming rancorous or without just giving up into like bland toleration that's something we can really teach our young people how to do that um one thing is to begin with their questions that's what i did today right as i i listened for days to these people on reddit and okay i heard your questions you think of of jesus now going to emmaus you know and hey what are you guys talking about as you go that's a really good evangelical starting point he didn't start by preaching he got there mind you you know but he started like hey what's on your mind what are you guys talking about as you go so what are you talking about in religion these three is there a god why is there suffering why christianity all right good now let's keep talking you know uh but start with their questions last question what is your drink at starbucks bishop i don't go to starbucks that often i like coffee a lot if i hate i do have starbucks at my house we have the little you know keurig machine and i got starbucks coffee i don't know what i i like strong coffee i hate when coffee tastes like just brown water i like when it's like really got a strong punch to it i can't have too much coffee i get kind of too keyed up my assistant sylvia is also my wonderful spanish teacher during all these zoom meetings you know i've been all this time in my office and she's learned to bring in she has this kind of we call it coffee especially that she makes for me i don't know what she puts in it but it really packs a punch and it keeps me awake during all the zoom meetings i do like coffee yeah great well bishop thank you so much for your time i know every every time i meet with you we're always um talking and you're always sharing ways to help others and to teach and so we really appreciate that yeah do you want do you have anything else to add before we close with you no just to get a word of gratitude to all of you um you know really happy with your dedication and uh the massive importance of the work you do i just want to impress that upon you um you're in the front lines and this is one of the key battles going on right now in the life of the church is the disaffiliation of our young people happening at the age that you're dealing with and so to be mindful of that and you know if this helps at all say okay i do understand the questions you have um keep going keep going can i give you all a blessing before i go please please the lord be with you and may the blessing of almighty god the father and the son and the holy spirit come down upon you and remain with you forever and ever amen thank you god bless you praying for you thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video i encourage you to share it and be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 61min 49sec (3709 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020