Bishop Robert Barron - The New Evangelization and Higher Education

the auxilary Bishop of Los Angeles is with us today Bishop Baron you and I were both ordained as bishops less than one year ago so we both qualify as baby bishops but I've attended the school and you haven't yet but if you want my notes you can have them so you can pass you are a skilled educator and evangelist we appreciate your many years of teaching the faith with new technology and media it is good to have you with us as well we look forward to your address to us later this evening welcome Bishop Baron I was out to lunch with this friend of mine older priest friend and I was carrying on in this vain you know we had Fulton sheen who was the great hero but then we dropped the ball and our Protestant friends of soul you know outrun us and we're behind and bla bla bla bla bla for an hour I talked until he looked at me his head well what are you doing about it and I remember distinctly I said well you know I'm a professor of theology and I'm writing books and he goes yeah yeah but then that's not what you're talking about you know put your money where your mouth is and so honestly that got in my craw I must have been so everybody did is I went it's just a few weeks later after that conversation I went down to WGN Radio which is the biggest radio station in Chicago I thought why not just go for the top yeah so I said what would it cost or would you have room you know for like a sermon program on WGN Radio and there's oh yeah we have a good time 5:15 Sunday morning for 15 minutes so between 5:15 and 5:30 at which point the Lutheran hour took over till 6:30 so I said well and how much would that be and they said would be fifty thousand dollars for the year so okay and I went first the archdiocese I shouldn't be laughing but I went to the archdiocese and I this out I said hey is there any chance and they said no but if you raise the money we're behind you all the way and I should make fun I'm really not making it the church has got a lot of financial burdens now etc etc so they said go raise the money so I went to the parish I was helping out it on the weekend which was a well-to-do parish and I told them what I just told you this very story and I said I need fifty thousand dollars and they can't I gave it to me that we raised the money my first inkling by the way by direct experience that the money is there that if you tell the good people of God about a project that they get and they think it's worthwhile the money is there anyway money came forward I got on WGN Radio I was on for a year at 5:15 a.m. I got a lot of letters from truckers I'm like truckers going by the 294 would hear me and I'll have 515 well then we expand a little bit do you have relevant radio here in Pittsburgh area yeah some relevant radio which is a national kind of semi national Catholic Radio Network picked up the show and then we'd start doing some DVDs of a lot of these retreats and talks I've been giving around the country we filmed and then EWTN picked those up and that was kind of a breakthrough moment because that sort of raised the profile higher around this time and here I want to pay tribute to Cardinal George and not just as a personal tribute but in light of what Cardinal Wuerl mentioned last night of the role of bishops in all this right around this time I had been on a trip somewhere and I came back to Mundelein seminary and there was some big to-do going on I went over to the cafeteria and there was Cardinal George and he saw me had oh I want to talk to you always a bad sign by the way and here's he said to me exactly he looked at me he said I want you to jumpstart evangelization and I looked at him blankly and then I said you want me to run the office of evangelism no no no I don't share in the office I want you to jumpstart evangelization and still looking blankly I said what does that mean you're on it and he said I don't know but I want you to do it I'm not kidding and then what he did it is really one of the great graces of my life he said I want you to step away from the seminary for a while I want you to come and I want you to live down at my house and I want us we're going to work together on this project so out of the blue like that Cardle drawers kind of drew me into his household and then together we began thinking this thing through again just a tribute to Cardinal George who's been gone now just over a year and proved to be a tremendous mentor to me and still as someone I invoke in prayer every single day maybe what happened once maybe twice a week if you're lucky where our schedules would mesh and we'd be there at the same time for dinner at his house dinner with Cardinal George how many been through a doctoral defense in this room I mean when you're that you're the one defending that's what it was like now without the terrible pressure but the joy of the intellectual combat if you made a statement at Cardinal George's table you better have your footnotes in place I mean you better be able to tell him where you got that from they are some of the great memories I've had in my 30 years as a priest are those very lively conversation with Colonel George well in the course of one of those he said to me I was with John Paul too now john paul ii was his hero does he was the hero to Cardinal George and he was there for the unlimited visit where you report on the you know your diocese and so he laid out all the facts and so on and John Paul listened politely and then john paul ii his hero turned to him and said what are you doing to evangelize the culture what you know is John Paul's great theme and now if you know Karl George he was never a loss for words right what a most articulate people I've ever met he said he was at a loss for words there he was in front of his hero and he didn't quite know what to say so what night table he said that's what I want you to do I want you to eventually and that's called passing the buck you know but that's what we talked about a lot at the table was the evangelization of the culture and that's where a lot of this work came from you know the table that we mentioned the great Bishop ray getter now mostly don't know Bishop getter he's now about ninety and retired much beloved auxilary Bishop of Chicago great man very holy man and a meat-and-potatoes Chicagoan you know I don't think Ray has cracked a philosophy book in 70 years you know but a good guy well he was all he's so good that he would never excuse himself from the table when the Cardinal I was started talking about philosophy he would just sit there politely you know so one night we were talking about I remembered to say it was who strolls phenomenology in relation to to post modernity so the car took a well anyway so big corpus would get hurt patiently said through the whole boring conversation and then as we're going up the stairs he said to me well I don't know what the hell you two were talking about but you made me miss the wheel of fortune so that was life in the Cardinal zone god bless him he's a great man still going strong at 90 anyway so Colonel George what he wanted me to do at first was to go downtown in Chicago it was very much a Vonda let's go it was a Pope Francis move that we would address the business community not by having them come to us but we go to them so we sponsored luncheons in a room like this at some of the big business clubs downtown University Club Union League club we had a lunch and then I would get up and give a half-hour punchy little talk no QA so we will get right back to work and so for two years we did that I spoke about God about Jesus about the church about sacraments about the church's social teaching etc etc and they were great I enjoyed them very much but I think the Cardinal there's something charmingly nineteenth-century about this it's something John Henry Newman would have done to gather people in a room and give a talk and I said there's so much more we could do your eminence if we use the media especially these exploding new media right well Cardinal George never used email you know he learned how to type on a manual typewriter I mean so he didn't know that world directly at all but he got it and he said basically go you know the first thing we did after that commission was were the YouTube videos and I'm some of you watched the YouTube videos I've done YouTube started in about 2006 and I remember it would have first started it was like this anomaly it is sort of novelty act and people would have film of my cat jumps off the roof and I want to get 500,000 views well I remember thinking well why don't we try something here why don't we try make our video and I'll talk about the culture pop culture in all the high culture movies books music and let's see if we can find Semyon of Araby now there's a term from the Church Fathers I've always loved right the seeds of the word the log-off spermatic cost the greek fathers call it the seeds of the word that are present in the world and if they're watered properly grow into Christ you know so can we look around the culture I wagered and find signs that we could work with so the very first one I did if you go back it's February 2007 I did a little video on Martin Scorsese's movie that departed which is just come out I just seen it and I talked about evil or the or the way evil works its way in our institution something like that but it was me sitting in a chair we had a little bit of a Cisco Ebert thing remember that show that the movie reviewers that I'd be there in a theater kind of setting and talking about movies well when we first did those things I had zero idea if anybody would watch is none zero my mother never why I thought maybe my mother would watch but she's never watched one my mother one time said to me Bobby don't you think you're a little overexposed which i think is probably the voice of the Holy Spirit coming through my mother anyway I remember distinctly when our team was thrilled when we got like 300 views on a YouTube video yeah we got the 300 well what happened was though in for a short time the audience began to grow and it began to grow and this beat this was a grace because I didn't know this at first but the YouTube videos people can comment on them you know so I put this thing out there and then suddenly comments are appearing I thought oh goodie a comment well well well the comments of YouTube you know to this day 90% of them are negative people that hate God they hate the church they hate me they hate priests or whatever and at first I was put off I'll confess that but then in time I thought you know this is really good this means we are getting way outside the walls of the church talk about I'm not going to get the direct smell of a sheep but talk about smell of a sheep because we're getting way outside the sort of tidy boundaries of our Catholic world nothing wrong with that world but I wanted to evangelize outside those walls and this was very clear evidence that we were reaching them furthermore I have what the French call visual khumba you know that's kind of a joy of the battle all right human comment let me answer you know and then that would awaken another response and then and in some kid I don't do as much anymore in all the time but in those early days I would get into these kind of lengthy and sometimes very complex conversations around these issues of God and morality and virtue and sera sera and I loved them and see that brought the audience up higher and higher because people would get on and to follow these conversations proud to say we're very close to now 18 million views of these YouTube videos so over time they built up to to an impressive outreach and they still I love this YouTube will give you the demographics very clearly of who's clicking on these things who's watching men in their 20s and 30s watch them thank God because talk about a group that we have a hard time reaching the Catholic Church young men in their 20s and 30s watch these videos and you can tell from the comments they're all macho masculine you know guys young guys want to fight with me good good you know I like that sort of evangelization so the YouTube videos allow us to do it well once those got going we then had a meeting of our board I remember the word on fire board and I was laying out what we've been accomplishing etc etc and one of the board members looked at me and said well you know what's your dream project if you would just dream it go crazy what would you do and I said very spontaneously I said well I would do something like Kenneth Clark civilization remember that some old enough to remember that show from the 70s the great Kenneth Clark the art historian did this show called civilization where he went around to the great monuments of Western art and architecture and so on and then he talked about what it meant to be a civilized person and I love that show and the book had a big impact on me when I was a kid I said something like that but about Catholicism because we got I remember saying we've got a beautiful religion and we got a smart religion and I want those two elements to come out and I'll mind you this is 2007 2008 2002 was the height of the sex abuse scandal we're still in the wake at that time of the single worst thing that's ever happened to the American Catholic Church we've all lived through extraordinary the worst time worse than the nineteenth-century burning down condiments on that the worst period American characters history no question about it is what we just lived through I thought what do you do at a time like this I wanted to bring forward the truth and beauty of Catholicism so anyway I laid that vision out they said well why don't you do it I said well I can make it to wheeze right away I'm a teacher of the seminary and I've got to do that and we don't have enough money they said we'll work on it so four members of the board I didn't go with them they went down to see Cardinal George and they sent him some information about it and they said we want to talk to you they told me later Cardale George walked in the room and he had their material like this and before he sat down he said whatever I have to do to make this happen I'll do so we got that Cardinal George was behind it he said I'll you know keep away from the seminary or freem up Alban now all we had to do was raise four million dollars so we had contacted the production company led by Mike Leonard something you might remember Mike for 25 years or more he was a correspondent at The Today Show and did these kind of human interest pieces and he was from the parish that I would go to on the weekend and mike has a production company we approached him and we asked what would this cost roughly if we're doing a ten-part round-the-world thing and he gave us the four million figure but Mike open all kinds of doors because Mike NBC we had NBC fixers on the ground we had NBC connections NBC camera people NBC cinematographers so that was a grace of God that he put Mike Leonard in my path but we still needed that little for million dollars and I think it's an extraordinary per the story because you know at the time I wasn't I wasn't that well-known and I was proposing this thing I had nothing to show for myself except the YouTube videos and a few you know speeches but I laid the vision out to Catholic Way people we got no there no grants we never got one penny of grant money of any kind no no institution really it gave us money they all came from private individuals at fundraisers and I would lay out this vision of you know your parents and grand parents used to invest in schools and parishes and seminaries and I said that's where the immigrant generation was evangelized and they were indeed but now I explained they're not coming to our institutions it's this is again Francis of Alden ethical I mean that we got to go out to them you know I said and this is a way if you want to reach people under 45 everyone's geared to a video world well people got it you know I mean they got it and they began giving the money mind you we started filming in 2008 for the Catholicism series and the economy collapsed the course remember 2008 so a lot of our donors backed out but when we got just enough money for a trip roughly a quarter of a million to do a trip or of episode we call I say well let's just go and do it and if it's one or two or three let's just do it and all of us I'll say this all of us we were on the same age we're all like in our high 40s early 50s this is the cinematographer the producer the director the camera people were all around the same age and I didn't know how would be used I really did I didn't know how but I just felt this sort of compulsion to do it and we all did we just got to get this thing done and so we scraped the money scrape the money and eventually we got the 10 episodes film it then took about a year to do editing and music and then it came out in 2011 we know all this time we used to say we'd love this to be at PBS level you know big a like a PBS level documentary never dreaming for a second PBS would ever play it because it was very Catholic so we got home and thing was done more or less and I said well what do we have to lose so we sent it to the local PBS channel in Chicago WTTW and I fully expected like you know thanks but no thanks or god bless you but you know we couldn't possibly play those what a week later they called and said we'd like you to come down to talk to us I said that's got to be a good sign No so we got down there around the table and they said well we love them we think it's beautiful we think it's compelling we think people of any faith find it interesting and I remember distinctly I said you do oh yes I mean of course you do you know I was really honestly I was flummoxed by it he said we will take it and then we're going to release indicator so they syndicated all over the country and 260 some channels picked it up only three channels didn't pick it up I won't name what cities they were but only three said it's to Catholic for PBS but 260 some picked it up and then they did four of the of the series and ewt I did the rest which I'm very proud to say I'm pretty convinced it's the only show that's ever been shown on both PBS and EWTN right which are usually mutually exclusive so the series came out and then you know it's a constant source of joy to me to hear how it's been used because as I say truthfully I didn't know how would be used we didn't have any great plans but you thought we need to do it and it has been picked up and used you know widely throughout the church and outside the church has brought people back to the faith now I'm telling you the story under the rubric really of it can be done you know it can be done I think it just took some creative thinking on the part of people around me it took the very active involvement of a great Bishop Colonel George who cleared the way and opened doors and so on it also and word on fire from the beginning has been a great example I think of clerical way collaboration because it's the lay people that were on fire they're 12 people now that worked there full time but keep it going it was delayed people who funded it who gave me the money to get it off the ground and I think working together we did something in the wake of this this painful time in our history you know so it's a little baby rah-rah to everybody there's no reason why we can't I think be creative and try new things and even a PBS you know could look at the wealth of Catholicism and say hey this is worth showing to a wider audience so anyway that's that's the point of the first part of my talk which leads me to part two the fruit in many ways everybody of the last many years of the work I've been doing is that we need a new apologetics as part of the new evangelization a mind you I'm totally on board with the Pope Francis program of encounter and outreach and emphasizing the positive it knows for example in the catholicism series i don't say one word about birth control i don't say one word about abortion i don't say one word about gay marriage now there were a lot of people that were saying oh you need to have an episode on the hot-button issues and i said no no i don't want to do that because i think that's we get stuck i want to lead with the beauty of the faith i want to draw people into it because he's my conviction was if you're teaching people baseball what don't you do you don't start with the infield fly rule you know I'm saying you don't start with a particular rule you start with the beauty of the game hey look at this game look at the great players look at that field look at Wrigley Field I'm in Chicago you know bias here but look at baseball watch it play it yourself and then you will tend to learn the game from the inside right so that was my instinct very much so I'm totally on board with that having said that I do think essential to the New Evangelization is a new apologetics now when I was coming of age in the years writing for Vatican 2 apologetics had a bad name apologetics sounded defensive it sounded rationalistic it sounded anti ecumenical it sounded like we were retreating into the Catholic ghetto etc etc well I don't know maybe that was true to degree but look at in the wake of the new atheist phenomena in the wake of September 11th a lot of that happened when the culture in a rather dramatic way turned on us now couple that with the sex abuse scandal and you've got a lot of the the mess that were in now where the culture looks at Catholicism in a very negative way what do we need you guys know those that we're massively losing our young people you know the last stat from the Pew study is the Pew Forum studies the one that stays in my mind is the six to one ratio the Altima is that for every one person that comes into the Catholic Church six are leaving I mean we're hemorrhaging people right now and as you well know a lot of them leave during their time in college doctor will mentioned the atheist clubs I know about that springing up in high schools and universities I know from the YouTube videos exactly what's blocking a lot of people today especially young people so it's based not on surveys or just abstract theorizing this is based upon a lot of experience in the trenches and I identify five areas that people really get blocked on now if I'm if I'm lucky I won't get to the lot of time before we have the fifth one I'll show you why here are the five a deep misunderstanding of God there's a deep misunderstanding of God out there and that's blocking a lot of people number two there's a deep misunderstanding of the Bible and how to read the Bible three a deep misunderstanding about Christianity's relationship to science for a deep misunderstanding of the Bible and Christianity's relationship to violence and then finally the Church's teaching on sexuality those are the big five you see why if I run out of time before get into sexuality as far as I'm concerned the big is based on ten years of in the trenches researcher what's blocking young people God the Bible science violence and sexuality those are the big five so I promise I'm going to stay within time boundaries I'm going to be really brief with each one the purpose here is just to give you a hint of the areas I think we should be looking at first of all God God there's out there a theory that I like that's called the yetee theory of God every Yeti the big foot right well Bigfoot some say there's a Bigfoot some say there isn't let's find out let's investigate and look for evidence of Bigfoot does he exist or not the assumption there is that there's this being out there somewhere in the world there's as being among beings and some say it exists and some say it doesn't let's go find out speaking now out of the mainstream of our great theological tradition the one thing God is not is a being Thomas Aquinas says that God is not an individual God is not the end sooo mom the highest being God is not in the genus of being it's a very interesting comment Thomas makes you think about me I'm in the genus of humanity and aren't we all at least in the genus of being aren't we all beings yeah but God is not in the genus of beings as Thomas Aquinas huh what does he mean he calls God not ends Summa highest being but rather epsom sa subsistence the subsistent act of to be itself God's not one thing among many however great god is that subsistence infinite act of being itself in and through which all finite things come to be now maybe you're thinking like ray get er right now like why is he giving all these abstractions atheism is predicated largely upon the assumption that God is a great competitor to the human project go back to Feuerbach come all the way up through Marx and Freud and Sartre Nietzsche all of them all the way to Christopher Hitchens what do you find God is a competitor to human flourishing feuerbach the founder of modern atheism said the no to God is the yes to man that's modern atheism everybody God is a threatening being that that hovers over our freedom threatens our flourishing same thing in Marx same thing in Freud Sartre said if God exists then I can't be free but I am free therefore God does not exist now those are your high-level philosophical positions years ago they're now very much in the common perception of people God as a looming threat what's the importance of saying that God is not a being but being itself it means that God is not competing with us on the same field it's not a zero-sum game as though if God gets all the glory I need to be denigrated if God gets the attention I need to be marginalized no no what did st. you're an a sa Gloria Dei homo vivre ends the glory of God is a human being fully alive I see everybody that there is Christianity if you want in a nutshell there is Christianity God's glory is that we are alive he's not threatening our well-being he's the condition for the possibility of our well-being here's just an image to keep in your mind look in the ancient myths the Greek and Roman myths when when the gods burst into human experience what happens people are incinerated when the gods break in things have to give way now the Bible look in the 3rd chapter of Exodus there's a bush that's on fire but not consumed what does it mean it means that when God comes close to creation he makes it luminous and beautiful and does not consume it now mind you mind you what's the name that God gives when Moses asks the commonsensical question which one are you right so there are a lot of gods in the ancient world and this is clearly a divine figure speaking to him so he says well what's your name which one are you saying and what's God's answer right and see that's the ground for Thomas Aquinas that God is not ends umem highest being but rather being itself the very nature of God is to be and that means the closer he gets the more alive we are that's the great answer to the atheist now there's a whole theology behind this but that's oh it's a path forward in dealing with this fundamental objection about God here's number two the Bible the Bible causes a lot of trouble I find for young people what's the Bible listen to someone like Christopher Hitchens or Bill Maher do you guys watch Bill Maher Mantz how about overexposed I mean I that guys on constantly what's the Bible for them Oprah scientific nonsense a Bronze Age mythology old myths and fables and legends talking snakes and and whales of swallow people up and all these old fairy tales and you religious people naively take all this stuff in as though it's you know gospel truth the Bible's may follow of constantly I find in these YouTube forums how do you read the Bible here's a clue the word of course comes from the Greek term top biblia right which is a plural term it means the books the books the Bible's not so much a book but the Bible is a library it's a collection of books written over a long period of time by a variety of different authors two very different audiences two very different purposes and using very different genre right watching an atheist after atheist the attempt to make the Bible a univocal text to be read with one clunky set of interpretive lenses do you take the Bible literally well my answer is do you take the library literally well it depends the man what section you in what section you wander into the history section you know especially contemporary history you might want to take that more or less literally but you wander into poetry section you wander into mythology section you wander into biography etc etc it depends on what section you're in the Bible I try to explain to people over and over again is made up of a wide variety of different genre from saga legend yes quasi history yes theologically interpreted history very often poetry Psalms letters apocalypse etc cetera all different literary genre see I would have you agree with me one of the problems I find is the breakdown in the humanities we're an awful lot of especially young people don't know how texts mean anymore do you find that that there's such a dominance of science I'll get to that in a second such a dominance of the scientific model that the binary option emerges of science or nonsense no but how subtly texts mean across a variety of genre is largely lost on people but until you get that you won't get the Bible right I love this from William play ker do you know him the die just four years ago great Protestant biblical scholar he distinguished between what's in the Bible and what the Bible teaches is it very useful distinction I think people always tell you what's in the Bible I'll draw something else that's in the Bible but what does the Bible teach that depends play curses on patterns themes and trajectories within the Bible right and I often find myself urging people to look at that don't take up any passage and tell me well here's what the Bible teaches that'll never tell you the truth of it but patterns themes and trajectories within and across the genres the Bible that will tell you much more accurately what the Bible teaches and the last commentary here less comment here is the necessity of reading the Bible in the church because people I'll come back with his argument I'll say well how do you know all so how do you make these determinations and I'll say that's why you need to read the Bible within this grand and long and complex interpretive tradition that we call the church yeah I use an example of of Shakespeare would you ever think it's wise to pick up Hamlet and hand it to a 17 year old and say just read it you'll be fine you'll be fine or pick up Moby Dick or any or the wasteland of TSL you say just read it you'll be fine I don't there's a whole family of interpretation around Hamlet and Shakespeare there's a universe of interpretation around TS Eliot and it's within that matrix that we understand these texts a phortse or I with the complex collection of texts in the Bible to read it in and with the interpretive tradition of the church I urge people all the time third major problem Christianity in relation to science everyday I would say I deal with some version of this problem Christianity in relation to science again what's religion Bronze Age mythology texts written when people had no idea what a bacterium is ancient nonsense blah blah blah right one of my great professor he's still live at Catholic University it was Robert Sokolowski one of the really great Catholic philosophers I think still writing today he told his years ago and I found this borne out over and over again that modernity needs to tell its own myth of origin over and over again almost in a ritualistic way what did he mean the myth that modernity emerged only after a long Twilight Struggle against the obscurantism and superstition of religion right how long have you heard that story or seen it told only after this long terrible struggle read breed Dan Brown if you want to of a pop version of it only after this long terrible struggle did the sciences and the liberal democracies emerge right now who's the tragic hero of this story Galileo whom I find mentioned almost every day on my YouTube forums in some way Galileo the the heroic scientist who battled against these backward-looking clerics who are trying to stop him now I won't dwell on Galileo which is a complicated story in itself but I tell people vis Galileo is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book the book of the play between religion and science and to reduce that book to the one paragraph in the one chapter is beyond tragic and then here's where the thing really gets problematic rampant among young people is what I would call scientism what scientism it's the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge right now we all know everyone knows the sciences thank God for them have been massively successful and there are attendant technologies I mean who would we lion eyes in our society but you know what Bill Gates and Ed up and of Steve Jobs the people that have given us the technology that we use in fact it's all around us it's in my pocket here you know great great I love what the Cardinals had last night in the clip that they showed scientists are wonderful but I can't begin to tell you anything about what makes it an act good or evil they can analyze the Sistine Chapel ceiling tell you what it's made out of they can't begin to tell you why it's beautiful or what it means they can analyze that the ink on the page of Moby Dick but they couldn't begin to tell you the purpose of that novel they can't tell you mind you why there's something rather than nothing see all of those are extra scientific questions but there's a tendency among the young people to reduce all knowledge to the scientific form based upon the scientific method of observation and hypothesis formation and experimentation and repetition of experiments etc etc great method super productive the problem is a logical one finally because scientism is self-refuting like my saying I speak no English it's a self refuting statement to make the statement is to undermine what you're saying scientism is not itself a scientific proposition see I mean it is the view that all knowledge is reducible to the scientific form of knowledge is not something that the scientific method can generate it's a philosophical statement and so scientism undermines itself see again here I do think the breakdown of the humanities is part of the problem is that we've so elevated the sciences in our culture we've so lionized scientists that we've forgotten other paths of knowing and see I remember David Tracy the great theologian said that religion is a closer cousin to poetry than to science and there's something that right about that that if we try to relate it all the time to science we're going to miss something it's a closer cousin to the way poets know and here's a last thing I think a far more compelling story of origin is not the modern myth of the twilights struggle against religion I think rather the physical sciences emerged where and when they did precisely because of Christianity now many people have rehearsed this story but I think it's a compelling one namely they had to come out of the matrix that took the doctrine of creation seriously now why why if you take creation seriously the first thing you know is the world is not God right it's not divine and from ancient ancient animism zall the way to star wars you have this view of like the divinity of nature no no but if nature is a creature we don't worship it we are permitted in fact to observe it to analyze it to dissect it to experiment upon it it's not God it's a creature second presupposition that makes the science as possible the assumption that nature is radically intelligible right whether you're a psychologist you're a biologist you're a chemist you're a physicist the one thing you have to assume is the being you're going to meet has an intelligible structure that's a strange thing the more you think about it but all of science takes it for granted as an assumption where'd that come from in the beginning was the word and through that word God spoke the world into being what that mean that symbolic language but that all of nature is imbued with an intelligibility that comes from God those two assumptions the world is not God the world's intelligible made the science as possible therefore I would say don't urge the war of religion and science but urge this great congruence between the two and then I remember some years ago I did a video and I was so happy we found the picture of this fellow how many of our young people know that the formulator of the Big Bang Theory right which everyone takes for granted now the Big Bang Theory of cosmic origins was George lamento George lameta was a Catholic priest and we found this wonderful picture of him with Einstein because he had to convince Einstein Einstein didn't think the Big Bang was right and father lamentable convinced him well the picture he's got a Roman collar it's about eight inches high this giant collar there is next to Einstein how many of our young people know that how many of you people know of it precisely at the time of Galileo so many of the early pioneers of the sciences were priests anyway don't get me started on it but these these fundamental assumptions about scientism I think we have to keep going on there all right I got one more and then if I'll run out of time before I get to sexuality so we got God we've got the Bible we have science the next one again I'd say practically every day I hear it Christianity biblical religion is violent now this objection I think came from September 11 it was revived I should say revived by September 11 what did people see they saw an old enlightenment principle on display namely that religion is irrational therefore violent see religious people you can't you can't adjudicate your disputes rationally you people so all you've got recourse to his violence go back to Leibniz Spinoza cons Hegel Thomas Jefferson you'll find that argument in the early modern period it was revived now read Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins revived in our time by September 11 one thing I found is the opponents of religion man 2 they know the violent text of the Bible they don't know the black Mulder well but they can cite chapter and verse of the violent text in the Bible their favorite is in 1 Samuel when Saul is removed from his kingship now why remember because he wouldn't put the ban on the Amalekites and the band men kill everybody men women children and animals so Yahweh gives that command to solve kill everybody and so he conquers the Amalekites and he kills almost everybody he leaves a few including King Agag the king of the Amalekites and a few of the animals well who shows up remember the scene the prophet Samuel what's this I hear he hears the bleeding of animals and he hears the the talking and he sees a gag the king what's this Oh Saul says well you know I I basically put the ban on Santa know but I kept the view and though Samuel declares that Saul's all overcame and then he says it took a sword and he hacked ag-gag to pieces the word of the Lord trust me all the opponents that they know these text in the Bible and we know them to Pope Benedict called them the hard text in the Bible these hard times okay every day I hear someone say biblical religion is violent and that's why it gives rise to so much trouble okay let me just give you one path on this one path it's a complex thing obviously go back to the 3rd century and the great origin of Alexandria one of the Great's of the church fathers who understood this problem in his bones Origen knew the Old Testament really well he also knew Christ and he said basically how do you reconcile these texts with the crucified Jesus here was a here is origins answer which I think is still compelling remember play curse thing about trajectories within the Bible don't take a particular text out but look at themes and patterns and trajectories what's the ultimate trajectory of the whole Bible Origen said the last book of the Bible the book of Revelation remember the scene they're up in the heavenly Court and a scroll is presented that sealed with seven seals and the scroll represents you could say the whole of the Bible or the whole of history and who will unroll the scroll who will read it and no one appears and so the visionary begins to weep you know that's the way a lot of us feel by the ways who will read this text who understands what it's all about and then we hear we hear the Lion of Judah is coming great the Lions coming to read this thing and out comes remember this little lamby pie a little lamb comes out and I'm saying that way because the Greek is the lamb standing as though slain so out comes the weakest animal you could imagine a little lamb who's been slain the weakest image you could come up with but of course he's talking about Jesus crucified and it's the lamb standing as though slain who alone can open the scroll now what's the message Origen says it's only from the standpoint of the crew find Jesus that the whole of the Bible is rightly read don't read the Bible apart from that interpretive lens if you do you will miss read it now what did he draw from this now go right back to a gag and Samuel Origen said we must read these great texts as metaphors of the struggle against evil how do we deal with evil most of us sinners we deal with it the way soul does right God says put the ban on it and we say okay for the most part but I'll keep a little bit here on the side for myself right I won't entirely eliminate this wickedness or this evil but I'll keep a little bit um suppose I went to our spaceship Gomez my new boss on LA and I said Archbishop you know I love being a bishop and I love my new life out there and I'm confirmed in my priesthood after 30 years and that's why I'm celibate 90% of the time right or you know honey I love you with all my heart you know you're my whole life which is why I'm faithful to you you know 75 percent of the time would you be happy with that the doctor says yeah we got 90 percent of that cancer out of you there are certain forms of evil that have to be done to death you got to wrestle all the way down they've got to be eliminated not played with that makes sense you got a hack a gag to pieces so that's what Origen that's how he interprets that now keep the crucified Christ in mind what do you see in that image there's the lamb slain what you see is the son of God going all the way down think of Frodo going into Mordor right in Tolkien's great imagination what does Frodo we have to do he can't mess around with it he's got to go all the way down all the way down Jesus fought sin and death all the way he hacked a gag to pieces and that's why he's Christ the victor and that soul messing around but not the king that's playing around with evil but the king who truly conquered synonym bets origins ancient 2nd century early 3rd century reading of these still puzzling problematic texts but at least I think it shows a way forward honestly I just stopped maybe in the QA you could ask me a thing about how vast the the 5 again is to review them and K I'll close with this can I recommend to all of you in your campus ministry it's based on ten years of smell of the Sheep in the trenches work with people I think if you put a program together with these five themes I think you get a lot of kids and a lot of interest get your best person on your campus or in your part of the world on God to talk about God what does God mean for serious believers get someone now your best Bible person maybe at your university or somewhere nearby get your best Bible person how to read the Bible thirdly get a scientist we got one of this table right here get a scientist who still has the faith and to talk about religion of science maybe talk about Galileo maybe talk about the origins of the sciences etc maybe bring another Bible person back and talk about violence in relation to the Bible and then lastly someone to talk about the theology the body and human sexuality I think those five you're going to find people coming to the talk and will find it compelling and then the very last thing I absolutely promise now is just to leave you with a sense of hopefulness I hope about what we can do go back 16 years or so I mean I saw none of this I might horizon the word on fire work none of it until that priest challenged me and I think it was the voice of the Holy Spirit kind of say alright buddy stop complaining and do something about it and I think if you do and you do it with with confidence intelligence and panache I think people respond and they'll come and join you and I think friends we all have to do it if the work of the New Evangelization is going to go forward so god bless you all thanks for listening thanks everybody thanks very much

Channel: Saint Vincent College

Views: 62,292

Rating: 4.8149467 out of 5

Keywords: Bishop Robert Barron, Robert Barron, Bishop, Saint Vincent College, SVC, Latrobe, Benedictine, Higher Education

Id: DvzgnNx00k0

Length: 51min 53sec (3113 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016