Bishop Barron on The Limits of Tolerance

well some years ago the new yorker ran a cartoon i particularly loved and it's a wonderful lampoon of the loopy ideology of inclusivity which is characterized now so many of the christian churches it showed a uh a minister addressing a very uh attentive congregation in a neat and tidy church and the minister said like he's just finished his sermon it was now in accord with our policy of equal time i'd like to give our guest speaker an opportunity to express his point of view and then you see right next seated and dressed perfectly and tapping his pages on his knee is the devil so there's you know the commitment to inclusivity has become so great that christians will listen even to the devil preach well i was put in my cartoon when i read this astonishing uh sermon that was delivered by catherine jefford shorey who is the presiding bishop of the episcopal church of america so we're not talking about a low-level figure this is a very you know weighty figure within the christian world she's the head of the episcopal church in america she gave a sermon in curacao venezuela on the issue of what else diversity she talked about how beautiful the country was and all the diversity and so forth nevertheless she laments that we have a very hard time accepting things that are different and so on well if you make the right distinctions between what's you know intrinsically bad and what's just different or unusual you can make her point that sure there are a lot of good things that are unusual that we should be open to fine but she in fact moved in this astonishing direction as she explicated this point she was commenting on acts chapter 16. the story of paul arriving in philippi and he's accosted by this young girl who is possessed by a dark spirit who has given her the spirit of divination and she's being employed or really enslaved and used by these nefarious people that use her to make money so she's a young woman in a pretty bad situation demon possessed and now being manipulated by abusive people and she shouts things out to paul and follows him around finally paul's had enough and in the name of jesus christ he exorcises her and the evil spirit leaves her now up until last month i was saying the entire christian interpretive tradition read that as a story of liberation of paul liberating this young girl from this terrible enslavement both to dark powers and to human manipulation but not a bishop jeffrey shorey who written instead as a story of paul's a deep intolerance i just want to read a little bit of her interpretation here she says paul is annoyed perhaps for being put in his place and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness paul can't abide something he won't see as beautiful or holy so he tries to destroy it well here's the problem the bible tells us it's not beautiful holy it's the devil and paul is delivering her from it but the bishop here reads it as a story of paul's sort of patriarchal arrogant intolerance of of difference that a christian bishop would read that story that way simply beggars believe but then it actually gets more bizarre as she goes on because in the story in acts once this girl sort of handlers her enslavers discover what paul has done they're angry with paul because it's going to cost them money right so they stir up opposition to paul and there's a riot in the city and paul's thrown into prison so there's a famous scene where paul is imprisoned in philippi it's because of this act of of compassion on his part that he delivered this young girl the bishop reads it in an entirely different way and again it's it beggars belief but here's what she says that getting thrown in prison is pretty much where he put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she too the little girl shares in god's nature just as much as he does maybe more so in other words she's kind of rejoicing that some first century philippian version of the liberal thought police was uh careful enough to throw upon prison for his deep act of patriarchal uh intolerance and then she goes on uh that night in prison paul we hear you know reaches out to his jailer and there was you know the earthquake and all this business but paul um reaches out to the jailer and compassion and brings him actually to christian faith well the bishop reads that as paul finally coming to his senses dropping his patriarchal hang-ups and rediscovering compassion because he had forgotten about god in the early episode wouldn't it be a lot clearer to say paul who had never forgotten about god delivered the young girl by exorcising her and delivers the the jailer by giving him the christian faith in other words it's not paul passing from patriarchy to compassion it's the consistently compassionate paul delivering people in different types of of enslavement uh i would suggest that's a much cleaner way and clearer way to read the story now here's what's the at the heart of this matter the hinge of it is this typical confusion we have today between love which is a great gospel value and toleration and inclusion which are the great values today love as i've often said is to will the good of the other that's what love means that's the the gospel the bible value it means to will to want the good of the other and then do something about it paul is consistently showing love in this story by willing the good of the other in the first case delivering the girl excluding the evil spirit he shows love toward the jailer by bringing him the christian faith what's happened today though is love is not the real value the value is toleration and inclusion see but real love means you're not going to tolerate lots of things real love means you sometimes have to exclude certain things what's happened is a dangerous conflation of toleration inclusion with love now how dangerous is it i suggest read this sermon because you might begin to see the devil himself as something beautiful and holy

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 700,075

Keywords: Fr. Robert Barron, Word On Fire, Katharine Jefferts-Shori, Tolerance, Diversity, Love, Catholicism, Christianity

Id: l_OfAX5LLOI

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2013