Cardinal Meyer Lecture with Bishop Robert Barron Day 2

so welcome back to uh many of you welcome to those who maybe weren't able to come up last night uh because of the bad weather again i'm father john carchi the current rector here and a bishop baron really beautifully laid out what the seminary has meant to him and i think it's fair to say it's meant to all of us who've gone through and are now priests in the archdiocese of chicago or all across the country and even the world in some cases it's always mentioned in his biography and you certainly saw it here but i don't think it's always fully appreciated the fact that so many hundreds of men who are now priests in parishes all over the world as pastors a couple of bishops i know were not only taught by bishop baron but were formed by him as a formator here at the seminary and so while millions of people have downloaded his social media content i think it's fair to say that hundreds of thousands and through the ripple effect i'm sure millions as well have been touched by the parish priests that he helped to form that same thing in many ways could be said of the faculty member who will be directing things this morning our program this morning dr melanie barrett joined the faculty about the same time i did but i went off for further studies and she launched right into teaching which he's been doing very generously and faithfully for almost 20 years now as you heard in the q a last night where the rubber hits the road with these questions of objective truth and so forth really falls in the lapse oftentimes of the parents and the teachers and the newman center chaplains you know how do you somehow convey this how do you instill it in the next generation well melanie is the head of our moral theology department and there's probably no area of study in the seminary that's more important for forming the future priests to be able to help prepare parents and teachers and so forth to wrestle with those very kinds of questions and so a very accomplished scholar in her own right in moral theology but a much beloved teacher here for now almost a generation of new priests i'm privileged to call her a colleague and please to call her a friend dr melanie barrett [Applause] good morning everyone a warm welcome to those joining us both on site and online as father karjee mentioned last night all of the papers presented here last night and today will be published in chicago studies which is the academic journal published by our faculty you can subscribe for free to the journal by going to our website usml.edu and then clicking on the link to chicago studies also it's important to note that our campus bookstore will be open immediately after this event and we have a wide variety of books to purchase for bishop baron so if you'd like to add to your collection or buy future christmas presents for your friends and family members come to the bookstore the schedule for this morning is as follows first bishop baron will present his second lecture second two members of our faculty dr patricia pintado murphy and father brendan lupton will offer formal responses to bishop barron's two lectures per tradition the cardinal meyer lectures were designed to be an intellectual engagement at a high level so father lupton and dr pintado will offer critique and challenge though in the spirit of charity we love bishop baron he's our former colleague and rector so we'll go easy on him but not too easy third the audience will be invited to ask questions and i ask you to keep in mind when you're preparing your questions to keep them as brief and concise as possible so as to leave space for other people to ask questions now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce our 2022 meyer lecturer bishop robert baron bishop baron holds a doctorate in theology from the institute catholic in paris a master's degree in philosophy from the catholic university of america and a master of divinity degree from mundelein seminary as mentioned in the brief film that you just saw he taught theology here for almost 25 years from 1992 through 2015 and he served as rector president from 2012 to 2015. in 2015 pope francis appointed him to be an auxiliary bishop of los angeles in the late 2000s bishop barron founded the global media ministry word on fire which includes a website a scholarly institute which publishes the journal evangelization and culture and multiple forms of media outreach all comprising a lay ecclesiastical movement with global outreach oriented toward the renewal of the catholic church bishop barron has published 18 books the most recent of which is light from light a theological reflection on the nicean creed published in 2021 also well-known our letter to a suffering church 2019 arguing religion a bishop speaks at facebook and google 2018 his biblical commentary commentary on second samuel 2015. his book length interview by john allen called to light a fire on the earth 2017 and the priority of christ 2007. so without further ado let us offer a warm welcome to bishop robert barron well good morning everybody good to see you back most came back from last night that's a good sign how many are here for the first time today i'm just curious so oh there are a lot of you here just for the first time today so what i did it's a bit different than the usual meyer lecture procedure which is to give two discrete talks mine really is just one talk that i subdivided so let me just spend about a minute and a half for the benefit of those who weren't here last night kind of setting the stage um what i'm talking about is what charles taylor the philosopher calls the buffered self that means the self that's cut off from contact with the transcendent and i identify that as very typical of a lot of people today especially young people and the reason why there's so much disaffiliation from the churches this lack of contact with the transcendent something taken for granted up until very modern times taylor argues that we're probably the first culture in human history we in the contemporary west who think we can find a fulfilled life apart from a relationship to a transcendent source so that's the problem that we're dealing with what i'm suggesting now in this paper is strategies for breaking through the buffer itself and i'm using the three great transcendental properties of being namely the true the good and the beautiful and i'm arguing that the church is maybe the privileged instrument for this breaking through of the buffered self we should not come to the secular culture had in hand begging for a place around the table on the secular culture's terms no no we are the great bearers of this tradition that links human beings to the transcendent mystery of god and so we go forth i quoted paul tillich last night and his german said mit klingenderspiel we go forth with fife and drum as a church because i'm dealing all the time in my social media ministry with young people especially who are heart sick they're so sick because of a lack of connection to the transcendent mystery of god and so that's the task i think of our time call it the new evangelization if you want but that's the task of our time so what i did last night after that setup was i talked about the truth and i contrasted it to the sort of information gathering that's so typical of our time so on these machines that we all have that we have all kinds of data literally at our fingertips but data that we control that we manipulate that we can send and receive and so on and i contrasted it to the classical understanding of truth which is something that we don't manipulate and control but rather changes us and enters into us i'll leave you just with this one image from the presentation last night from iris murdoch the great irish novelist and philosopher where she said think of someone who's lost in great depression and anxiety self-preoccupied and then they look out the window and they see she names it a kestrel it's a kind of small falcon and they see that falcon and suddenly everything falls away and they're so enraptured by the goodness and the beauty of that image that everything falls away and and they said now everything is kestrel you know and then when they turn back to their problems which they inevitably will they somehow seem less pressing well that was for her she's a platonist that was an example of how the good how the good breaks through we're not manipulating it controlling it on our terms but the good breaks into our consciousness and i argued last night during the q a that so many of the great artists and i'll refer to some of them today name those moments of breakthrough when we call it grace breaks into our lives okay so that was the talk last night was the setup and then truth so what i'm gonna do today in my time is talk about the good and then the beautiful and how these um serve to break through the buffered self so that's the program does this light go on here it seems like a shadow on this is a way to put this on who knows how to put this light on it was much better last night i could actually see my text better wait just to turn this on there you go there you go beautiful beautiful i still got it some authority around here okay so i want to turn now to the second great transcendental property of being namely the good like the true the good is in our highly relativistic time a problematic notion for it appears as an imposition on one's freedom and capacity to decide for oneself the meaning of one's life this is precisely why as we saw the notion of the good is so central to iris murdoch's strategy of de-centering the ego i'd like to begin my analysis by drawing a distinction parallel to the one that i made in the last section between gathering information and true knowing just as the assembling and sharing of data is central to the digital culture so is the familiar gesture now of liking or unliking we might be tempted to appreciate liking as a perhaps less intense form of loving since both involve the signaling of a positive attitude towards someone or something but this is to miss the crucial difference when one likes another she's expressing only the most superficial kind of approbation this approval does not reach deeply into the other nor does it come from a profound place in the interiority of the one who grants it and this very ephemerality and superficiality is what's made the term so appropriate in the digital space in which can in which one can casually like a posting or a picture or story and promptly move on to something more interesting or one can garner hundreds or thousands of likes without ever establishing anything even close to a relationship with the one who bestows the designation and again very much like information likes are utterly under the control of the self since they involve no real commitment to the other and are bestowed from the safe and antiseptic distance of a computer keyboard now in sharp contrast to liking is loving which in the definition offered by iris murdoch this is wonderful i think listen now this is murdoch's characterization of loving quote the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real good the eagles like a black hole i said last night tends to draw all things into itself and under its aegis to love see is to break out of it the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real and how reminiscent this murdoch formulation is to aquinas's characterization of love as quote willing the good of the other close quote to love is to break free of the gravitational pull of the ego to relocate the self as it were in the other when i like you let's say on facebook i'm in control when i love you i've given myself to you in such a way that i am no longer in control of our relationship when i like you you move within the ambit of my desires and preoccupations when i love you my life is no longer about me it's about you the novelist jonathan franzen puts it this way quote to love a specific person to identify with their struggles and joys as if they were your own you have to surrender a large part of yourself close quote carl voitiwa and i'm using his john paul ii name when he was a philosophical writer voitiwa catches the rarity and strangeness of love by distinguishing it from any sort of selfish desire here's voitiwa quote good will is quite free of self-interest the traces of which are conspicuous in love as desire good will is the same as selflessness in love not i long for you as a good but i long for your good i long for what is good for you to get that everybody is to get christianity in many ways again to love is not i long for you as a good aren't you good aren't you wonderful see for me but rather i long for what is good for you in his commentary on love and responsibility voice was great text the john paul ii specialist rocco boutilloni observes quote the desire for the other as an answer to one's own ontological insufficiency and as the completion and company of one's own person no longer comes first something else comes first the wonder aroused by the other's beauty and the will that that interior beauty of the person which is perceived in the lover's glance should realize itself close quote though the other's loveliness first attracted me i no longer want it for me but for her her reality mattering more for me than my own now following the prompt of dc schindler the contemporary philosopher we can correlate this demarcation between liking and loving to a crucial distinction between two very different understandings of the will and its activity though its roots are in the late middle ages especially in the thought of william of occam the typically modern sense of the will comes to us perhaps most directly through the work of john locke though it certainly is reflected in his explicitly political writing most notably the two treaties of the government locke's interpretation of the will is most fully articulated in his epistemological masterpiece the essay concerning human understanding in this text he lays out a revolutionary idea of the will as primarily an active power of self-determination if that sounds familiar it's not an accident that's crept down now totally into our culture whereas on the traditional reading a good outside of the will prompts that faculty to respond on lock's reading the will has ontological primacy and remains undetermined by anything outside of itself here's locke's own account i'm quoting for that which determines the general power of directing to this or that particular direction is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has in that particular way close quote in a radical departure here from the standard interpretation lock holds that the direct object of the will is not the thing but an action namely its own action rather than appreciating the will as extending itself out into reality locke effectively shrinks its area of concern here's dc schindler again quote it the lockheed will no longer stretches out beyond the agent but extends only as far as the boundaries of the self close quote and in lock's own extremely clear and illuminating formulation i'm quoting now from locke himself the will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but our own actions terminates there and reaches no further close quote we might say that the will for locke perhaps determines itself toward a perceived good but it is not determined by that good so concerned is he to maintain the control of the will over itself that locke argues that the self quote not only begins its act of will from itself alone but that movement likewise ends exclusively in the self as the will's proper object close quote whatever connection eventually obtains with the world outside of the dynamics of the will remains secondary and extrinsic subordinate to the sovereignty and sufficiency of the choosing self detached turned inward expressing approval or disapproval without personal connection this lockheed will is perfectly attuned to the world of liking rather than loving do you ever hear a teenager today say well i decide it's up to me i determine the meaning of my life it's it's my freedom well what was a high philosophical perspective in john locke is now the default position of most teenagers today it's most instructive now to compare this interpretation to that which was on offer in the pre-modern context thomas aquinas's account will serve nicely as a contrast to logs though thomas does indeed speak of librium free will as in one sense its own cause causa sui he says nevertheless thomas insists that this self-determination is only one dimension of the will's operation ingredient in every choice is the influence of the body passions mind and understanding and behind all of these the most important cause namely the external good which ultimately rouses the interest of the will moreover the particular good which immediately interests the will is itself embedded in a higher and more general good that it serves and that in another again and so forth the essential point is that for aquinas the will does not generate its own activity on its own terms but rather is generated by an entire nexus of goods extrinsic to it whereas locke understands the will primarily in terms of power thomas understands it in terms of attraction and once we construe the will as power the goods external to it must be appreciated as rivals to some degree since they compete with the will limiting its capacity for self-determination but when we conceive it along aquinas's lines as a kind of intellectual appetite that's his language we grasp how goods external to the will enhance the will allowing it to realize its own most nature on the lockheed reading we make contact with the world through an act of our own choice thus keeping ourselves firmly in control but on thomas's reading the good reaches into us and draws us up out of ourselves here's d.c schindler again quote the world is always already active in me shaping me helping to make me who i properly am and my will as a means by which i make this movement my own close quote just as in the epistemic order the intelligibility of the objective thing lights up the intelligence of the knower so here in the volitional order the goodness of the object fires the will affecting a union between the two the intelligible gives itself to an intelligence that gives itself back and objective value gives itself to a desire which then gives itself in return on the more typically modern view the self retains its sovereignty and essential isolation whereas on the classical view the intellect and will are always in relation to and in a certain sense subordinate to the other which calls out to them being with or being for is always metaphysically fundamental which of course should not puzzle christians who hold that the creative source of all existence is a play of relationality these clarifications serve to illumine survey pink hairs the great dominican contemporary theologian his well-known distinction between two understandings of freedom namely what he calls liberte dan di ferrance liberty freedom of indifference and liberte de calite we say freedom for excellence the first freedom of indifference massively on display in the culture today is perfectly correlatable to locke's notion of the will for it designates liberty as a state of neutrality in the face of a variety of options a capacity to choose free from any exterior constraint and de ferran indifferent to the yes or the no but the second type of freedom usually rendered in english as freedom for excellence makes sense within a domestic framework freedom for excellence is not the sovereign capacity of the will towards self-determination but rather the disciplining of desire so as to make the achievement of the good first possible and then effortless so one becomes a free player of the piano not by exercising arbitrary choice or staying sovereignly in control but by subjecting oneself to the objective goods of the laws that govern the playing of that instrument one becomes a free and fluent speaker french not by speaking any way that he wants but by allowing his will to be so deeply influenced by the objective value of the french language that it becomes indeed second nature to him freedom for excellence accordingly does not stand in opposition to law rather law in a way is the condition for its possibility structured good taken into oneself through an ecstatic act of self-forgetting is what the classical world meant by the term freedom on lockheed grounds or contemporary grounds in the minds of most young people today saint paul's holdings simultaneously that he is the slave of christ jesus romans 1 1 and that jesus has set him free galatians 5 1. well that's so much nonsense on lockheed terms how can anyone slave and be set free but it's luminously clear on thomas grounds now the buffered self is a place where liking predominates over loving for liking is utterly compatible with that narrow egocentric space but as so many of the philosophers and spiritual teachers have intuited authentic love tends to break through the buffered self for its perce perhaps the surest route of access to the transcendent other whom we call god truly to will the good is to touch the real as iris murdoch said and to touch the real is to take the first step toward the one whom aquinas characterizes as enz realismum the most real being and that's god now i'm gonna make this move by following two paths the first a searching out of the foundations of the moral life and the second an exploration of the trajectory of that life so we've broken through the buffered self with with the good that galvanizes the will now we'll take the second step beyond that now to the source of the good dietrich von hildebrand whose devotion to the true and the beautiful could never be called into question neverwest insisted that the quest for the good is the most important more important than finding either truth or cultivating beauty we might regret it if a person never develops a capacity for knowing high philosophical and mathematical truth and we might lament someone never becoming an artist or an aesthete but we would never consider either those failures a spiritual disaster but we would indeed think it'd spiritually ruin this if someone fails in the moral order some of the basic good theorists held to the incommensurability of those values that they recognized as fundamental arts knowledge sociability etc but this seems not to be quite right because of the qualitative difference between the three quests for the transcendentals there does seem to be a primacy to the good compared to the true and the beautiful and maybe this is why plato named the very highest reality not the form of the true but the form of the good it's also i think why john henry newman distinguishes between the feel that a mathematical genius might have for the most elegant form of demonstration or the sense that an aesthete has for fine art distinguish between those and the moral intuition that we call conscience again we might feel a certain remorse if someone lacked the first two but we consider the lack of the third catastrophic newman remarks that the first two powers might be characterized as sensibilities but the third we refer to as a voice implying that it alone puts us into immediate contact with someone else indeed with a person who presses upon us with an unconditioned authority who functions as law giver who finally possesses knowledge intensive and extensive enough to reach into the very deepest recesses of our interiority here's newman's elegant formulation of this idea quote if as is the case we feel responsibility are ashamed are frightened at transgressing the voice of conscience this implies that there is one to whom we are responsible before whom we are ashamed whose claims upon us we fear close quote lester attempted to understand the dynamics of conscience in purely moralistic terms newman vividly evokes the person-to-person quality involved in hearing and responding to that voice i'm quoting again in this gorgeous english prose here listen to the alliteration this is newman quote if i'm doing wrong we feel the same tearful broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us upon hurting a mother if on doing right we enjoy the same sunny serenity of mine the same soothing satisfactory delight which follows on our receiving praise from a father we certainly have within us the image of some person to whom our love and veneration look close quote you see why joyce called them the greatest writer of english the german phenomenologist mark schaeler makes much the same point in his analysis of the act of repentance here's shayla i'm quoting by the way carl voitiwa did a lot of work on mark schaeler quote repentance begins with an indictment how german that sounds by the way compared to newman but before whom do we indict ourselves is it not then in the nature of an indictment that there should be a person who receives it and before whom the charge is laid repentance is furthermore an inward confession of our guilt but to whom do we then confess repentance ends with a clear consciousness of the removal of guilt but who has taken the guilt from us what shayla remarks here is that the sentiment of authentic shame and remorse goes far beyond a feeling of responsibility toward another human being whom we've offended it places us painfully of course in the presence of the source of all moral obligation and the experience of being truly forgiven in a similar way passes beyond whatever psychological satisfaction we might derive from receiving the benediction of another human being whom we've hurt it introduces us into the presence of a grace coming from a transcendent place though both of these treatments have a rather dark tonality i would insist that both are operating within the ambit of love we feel ashamed upon performing a morally wrong act precisely because god has out of love drawn us in a particular way and we've responded not with an answering love but with rebellion but even in our regret we've entered into intimate contact with the form of the good with the source of moral obligation with the living god even as we feel remorse we know that our journey beyond the ego has reached a qualitatively different level now there's a second path which leads from the perception of the good to an experience of god and it proceeds more teleologically than ethiologically that's to say it's ordered toward what ultimately lures the will it saves the besides the famous five that he outlines at the beginning of the summit theologia thomas aquinas provides a number of implicit arguments for god's existence throughout his massive text one of these can be found in the opening questions and articles of the premise of gundam having determined that the will necessarily seeks the good or at least the apparent good thomas appreciates how particular goods find themselves nesting within wider and wider horizons of the good so for example i wrote this now many months ago i got out of bed this morning seeing this rising from sleep is a good but that value i recognized is in service of the greater good of working on this meijer lecture which in turn is in service of the further good of addressing eventually all of you which nest within the even greater good of propagating the truth which activity finds itself under the aegis of the unconditioned truth which is a supreme and consummate good the possession of which makes me happy now thomas says we could do this with any act of the will as simple as getting out of bed in the morning but if i keep doing that kind of analysis you see how the will is being drawn by the good out out out to the ultimate summum bonum the highest good of god to speak of this sumumbonum this count summit good is not to speak of one good however impressive among many but rather of the unconditioned good which by definition exists beyond any distinction between subjectivity and objectivity it is to speak of the properly infinite and inexhaustible good that we refer to as god therefore the simple act of getting out of bed does indeed place me at least implicitly in the presence of god this kind of analysis thomas holds can be undertaken with any act of the will which is precisely why he can say in that famous question 22 of the day veritate that just as in every particular act of knowledge god's existence is implicitly co-known so in every particular act of the will god's goodness is implicitly co-willed once again the ecstasy involved in any true act of love not liking i'm in control there but through love willing the good of the other it will reach its fullest expression in the total surrender to the unsurpassable good okay and with that now i want to move to the beautiful the third of the transcendentals i need a drink of water now having seen how the first two transcendentals call the eagle beyond itself awakening an act of self gift and self surrender we turn now to the last of the three namely beauty ever since hanzo's von balthazar raised this issue many decades ago it's widely acknowledged that nutrition has tended to overlook or at least marginalize this great transcendental property of being somehow we see it as less serious than the true and the good perhaps a pleasant decoration which enhances the more fundamental transcendentals indeed thomas himself readily appreciates the true and the good as belonging essentially to the notion of being since the mind grasps being as true and the will desires it as good but though he affirms that beauty is a transcendental his reflections on this quality in relation to being are far less direct and focused and though i follow the traditional ordering of the transcendentals moving from the true to the good to the beautiful i don't want thereby to suggest that beauty is the least important in point of fact i would invoke a sort of liturgical hermeneutic here and declare that just as the most significant figure in the liturgical procession comes last so here i'm placing the most important of the three in the last place what i hope to make clear in the course of this section is that beauty in a sense is the most immediate basic and in globing of the transcendentals that truth and goodness appear finally under its aegis and i'll suggest this perhaps explains why commencing with the beautiful might be the most effective evangelical strategy i found in the course of my pastoral work that beginning with the true what one ought to believe or with the good how one ought to behave is in our relativistic and subjective uh post-modern setting often a non-starter but simply showing something beautiful is for most people especially young people less threatening more winsome this i will contend is not simply an accidental feature of our time but rather follows from the metaphysically and epistemically basic quality of the beautiful perhaps the first issue we have to come to terms with is that of the objectivity of the beautiful i think it's fair to say the default position of most in our western culture today is that beauty is quote in the eye of the beholder close quote which is to say simply a subjective impression or response utterly dependent upon the formation psychology perceptive capacity of a given recipient if we were to seek out the sources for this widespread subjectivism we could look to spinoza in the 17th century and his insistence that we do not desire something because it's good but rather we call it good in the measure that we desire it the consequence of this is the denial that beauty is a quality of an object i'm quoting spinoza but only something existing in the mind a feeling or a mental satisfaction close quote but perhaps even more influential than spinoz in this regard is the 18th century philosopher david hume who observed in his inquiry concerning the principles of morals that though euclid gave a thorough account of the nature and attributes of a circle the great geometrician never once mentioned its beauty humopines the reason for this is clear i'm quoting now beauty is not a quality of the circle but only the effect which that figure produces upon the mind close quote if we follow the subjectivizing line of interpretation all the way to the end we come to the formulations of the logical positivists of the early 20th century and others for whom quote a value judgment is in reality nothing other than an exclamation so if i say oh what a beautiful building all i'm saying is i'm exclaiming i'm saying nothing about the building in itself i can only hope that people see how this trajectory of thought is conduced toward a deep impoverishment of the human spirit i'd hope furthermore that they would see that this truncated understanding of beauty is analogous to the distortions of truth and goodness that we've explored above namely data gathering and liking for all three are conditioned by the stubborn dominance of the all-seeing and all-determining ego just as authentic truth and real goodness are not subject to the manipulation of the self but rather summon the self outward so real beauty invades the subject stops it in place that's why we speak of aesthetic arrest when you're just stopped by something beautiful it rearranges the self and sends it on mission the tidy spinoza and humane accounts of beauty which have unfortunately become the default position of so many effectively puts shackles on the soul preventing it from achieving the unique kind of ecstasy both thrilling and dangerous that real beauty prompts dietrich von hildebrand's distinction between a value and a value response helps in the determination of the objectivity of beauty look there's no question that things persons and events of great beauty elicit from us a reaction which is simultaneously bodily effective and intellectual we indeed speak of being moved by beauty or beauty penetrating to the heart but these are the subjective responses to an objective state of affairs that prompts them namely the truly beautiful which is not simply satisfying for me personally but which i recognize here is von hildebrand's language to be objectively important in itself close quote whether it benefits me or not whether it moves me more than it affects someone else whether or not it's reverenced or despised in a given cultural moment the cathedral of chartres is beautiful by a sort of immediate intuition we know that cathedral is if i can borrow the language of augustine here for enjoyment and not for use i mentioned that last night things are useful they're subordinate to something else what's for enjoyment is just because there it is there it is their shark cathedral does it please me who cares does it please you i don't care there it is in its objectivity how hard it is though for people today everybody to to see that take this thing off its beauty is oven for itself its beauty is the principium and whatever is awakened in me as a reaction is the principiatum you know very useful in this context is c.s lewis's observation in the abolition of man that the feelings i have in the presence of a sublimely beautiful landscape are not themselves either beautiful or sublime they are rather humble and grateful and this helps to prove on hildebrand's point that there's a sharp distinction between an objective value and a subjective value response at the risk of moving from the sublime to the rather ordinary i'd invoke here an article i read many years ago in rolling stone magazine in which various musicians were asked which was the first song that rocked their world now i understood immediately the nature of that question they were not inquiring after the songs that these musicians particularly liked or found entertaining they were wondering what was the first piece of pop music that overwhelmed their subjectivities that changed them that made them think about themselves and the world in a different way in a word they were wondering not about the subjectively satisfying but the objectively beautiful i knew immediately by the way how i would answer that question the first song i remember liking was the archie's sugar sugar and i i think it's fair to say that it's the first time that sugar sugar's been mentioned in a meyer lecture i think i'm correct in saying that i like that song as an eight-year-old kid but the first pop song that rocked my world was bob dylan's masterpiece like a rolling stone which i referenced last night the former i found subjectively satisfying the latter made me a different person once again this is why the readings of beauty offered by spinoza hume and their myriad disciples on the ground today are so dangerous frankly because they effectively preclude or explain away the ecstatic transcendence of the self which is prompted by real beauty as it is by real goodness and real truth now having determined the objectivity of beauty we naturally ask the socratic question what precisely is beauty make this a little bit easier on myself prior to the subjectivizing moves of the modern philosophers thinkers in the western tradition were altogether willing to offer accounts of the beautiful and for our purposes it's best to perhaps to turn to thomas aquinas for many ways he recapitulates the thinking of his philosophical predecessors with admirable scholastic understatement thomas says the beautiful is quadvisam plachet that which having been seen pleases here of course includes more than mere visual perception but the term nicely combines two elements that are essential at least in our ordinary experience of beauty namely the physical and the intellectual we take in through our senses some object or image or melody that's to say some arrangement of matter but then we perceive through our intellect a harmonious pattern or form evident in it if we simply know this pattern through abstraction we're dealing with truth but when we delight in it when it pleases us we're dealing with the beautiful but what exactly is it that pleases us quadvisam placha that which having been seen pleases what is the patterned element in which we delight to determine more precisely the nature of this aesthetic form i'd recommend we turn to the 39th question of the first part of the summa de la ga where thomas provides his most thorough account of beauty here's thomas aquinas for beauty includes three conditions integrity or perfection since those things which are impaired are by that fact ugly due proportion or harmony and lastly brightness or clarity once things are called beautiful which have a bright color close quote an admirable account say perhaps that last characterization of karitas as having bright color if that were the case we'd be hard-pressed to find most of rembrandt's paintings beautiful what becomes clear when we consult analogous text in st thomas is that claritas has much more to do with the light of intelligibility whether we're talking about a beautiful face or beautiful landscape or beautiful symphony even a beautiful fast break in basketball we're noticing that it is one that everything in it contributes to a sense of wholeness secondly that all the parts that compose it are in harmonious relationship one to the other and finally that this unified and formal pattern shines forth delightfully to my mind one of the very best explications of these two mystic qualities is found in james joyce's autobiographical novel a portrait of the artist as a young man which i referenced last night joyce was carefully trained in scholastic thought and maintained a lifelong interest in it observing once that the only real intellectual option on the table is between scholasticism and nihilism at about the midpoint of the novel joyce's alter ego the character stephen daedalus engages his friend lynch in a lively discussion around the topic presently under consideration after citing the passage from the 39th question of the summa stephen offers his commentary using the visual aid of a quote basket which a butcher's boy had slung inverted on his head close quote he commences this is stephen dowdless in joyce's novel in order to see that basket your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not the basket the first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended you apprehend it as one thing you see it as one whole that's integritous right integrity then stephen continues you pass from point to point led by its formal lines you apprehend it as balanced part against part you feel the rhythm of its structure how great that is you apprehend it as complex multiple divisible separable harmonious that is consonancia consonants think of any beautiful thing a golf swing a fast break a face this building that's what we're doing feeling the rhythm of its structure then he says what do we make of claritas the brightness of color to which thomas refers stephen doudless conceives that for a long time acquaintance's full meaning baffled him and finally he came to this conclusion i'm quoting again when you've apprehended that basket as one thing and it then analyzed it according to its form you make the only synthesis which is logically and aesthetically permissible you see that it is that thing which it is and no other thing the radiance of which he speaks is the scholastic quidditas the whatness of the thing marvelous when we sense that something is truly beautiful isn't it true we have a tendency to say now that's what it's supposed to be now that's a golf swing now that's a fast break now that's a gothic cathedral right in a strikingly noble german shepherd we see what that breed is at its best in an elegant golf swing we see the very archetype of that notoriously difficult athletic move watching a gorgeous sunset we might be forgiven for saying now that is a sunset in each case having taken in both the wholeness and harmony of the thing we're responding to the luminosity of its form hanzo's von balthazar summed up this domestic analysis even more iconically than thomas himself commented that beauty occurs at the intersection of species and lumen i call it form and luminosity by species he means to convey what thomas expresses by both integritas and consonancia and by using that eloquently ambiguous term which can designate both form and appearance species can mean like we speak of the eucharistic species the appearances right he at least implies the fact that in our immediate experience beauty comes through the appearances mediated by the senses and by lumen of course he's suggesting claritas that peculiar radiance of form that causes delight in us as a value response now with these clarifications in mind we're in a position to understand the primordial and inclusive quality of the beautiful that i hinted at above what is it that first gets our attention what is it that first draws us out of ourselves in the direction of the real i don't think it's correct to say that the true plays this role for the abstraction of form from matter requires considerable time and detachment uh from the object of our contemplation nor does the good first beguile us for we first have to sense that something is valuable in itself before we can appreciate that it's worth seeking for ourselves is it not the case that the quality which initially awakens our love which is to say our transcendence of self is in fact beauty first we delight first we find something splendid and then our attention then our attention drawn we come to know what is true and then to seek it as good here's dc schindler's commentary on the primordial quality of beauty quote we are suggesting that beauty is an encounter between the human soul and reality which takes place in the meeting grounds so to speak of appearance thus understood beauty turns out to function as the foundation for all of our subsequent interaction with things in the world it opens the horizon for there to be a world at all and is so indispensable for proper human existence close quote von balthazar made the marvelous and counterintuitive claim that what initially triggers in a little child the openness to something beyond his subjective desires and preoccupations and ultimately an openness to the wider world and to the graciousness of being as such is nothing other than the smile of his mother first we find our mother's smile beautiful and all the rest follows as night follows the day and this balthazary suggestion serves as a neat segue into a consideration of beauty in relation to god as we saw in our consideration of the true and the good the initial breakthrough of objective value into the space of subjectivity leads ineluctably to the breakthrough of transcendent value hence rupturing the buffer itself precisely because they are transcendental properties of being both the good and the true service forerunners harbingers of the unconditioned good and unconditioned truth well the same dynamic obtains in regard to beauty evidence of this can be found throughout the philosophical and literary traditions i'm going to draw attention first to two places in the platonic corpus namely the diotima speech from the symposium and then this strange and marvelous metaphor of the wings of love we find in the phidras i'll begin with the symposium don't worry only a few more pages don't worry surrounded by his colleagues at the festive table socrates reports an account that he attributes to the wise woman diotima who speaks of the initiation of a person into the way of love he will begin she says diotima with a particular beautiful thing or person that awakens his affection but he will perceive quickly enough that the loveliness of the individual object or body is related to any other object or body of similar loveliness next he will grasp i'm quoting now the beauties of the body are as nothing compared to the beauties of the soul so that wherever he meets with spiritual loveliness even in the husk of an unlovely body he will find it beautiful enough to fall in love with and to cherish close quote and from this she continues he'll be led to contemplate the beauty of laws and institutions and from these to the sciences and to all forms of knowledge until finally in this beautiful seminally important quote in our tradition turning his eyes toward the open sea of beauty he will find in such contemplation the seed of the most fruitful discourse and loftiest thought and reap a golden harvest of philosophy how lovely beginning with the particular beautiful and then moving to ever higher forms of beauty until finally looking out to the open sea of the beautiful itself that trajectory haunted the western tradition this gazing toward the open ocean of the beautiful itself corresponds precisely to the former denison of the cave remember from last night looking with squinting eyes toward the sun and realizing he's found the source of all goodness and beauty the second great platonic trope for this relationship between beauty of the individual and the beauty of heaven is found in the feeders that marvelous dialogue in accord with his musings in the meno and elsewhere socrates holds that all of us originally inhabited the realm of the forms and there we were outfitted with wings to fly to the heights of contemplation at our birth as he tells this sort of mythic tale at our birth we fell into matter and though we lost our wings in the process their roots remain embedded in our shoulders it's strange but kind of a striking image and when we see a beautiful person this is plato we commence to shudder with awe as if in the presence of a god and then to sweat now listen i'm quoting for by reason of the stream of beauty entering in through his eyes there comes a warmth whereby his soul's plumage is fostered and with that warmth the roots of the wings are melted which for long had been so hardened and closed up that nothing could grow now i know it's a bit fanciful but doesn't it give you the sense of what it feels like when you're in the presence of someone or something or some event that's really beautiful it makes you want to fly i don't mean that just in an emotional way it makes you want to fly up into the realm of the forms to fly to the source of beauty we do not simply exalt in the splendor what we're seeing we feel the impulse to fly for by a powerful intuition we're drawn from that particular beauty to the source of beauty the platonic metaphors find a marvelous contemporary correlate in joyce's account in the porch of the artist i've always already quoted from it but the even more famous passage of that novel of stephen's encounter with the young woman standing in the surf just off of sandy mountain strand in dublin the the character at that point is in deep depression and anxiety and he's kind of lost and what's my life all about and he's wandering typical irish i get it you know tip wandering on the beach and then listen a girl stood before him in midstream alone and still gazing out to sea ah diotima we're gonna get we're gonna get gazing out to the sea of the the open sea of the beautiful right there she was alone and still gazing out to sea her long slender legs were delicate as a cranes her slate blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetail behind her her long fair hair was girlish and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty her face well because she's alone and still silhouetted by the sea steven can see her as one and perfect separated from all that might compete for his attention in a word integritas is on display then what did we hear in that description but his careful following of the rhythm of her structure noticing how the various parts of her body and pieces of clothing relate to one another into the composite consonancia has emerged next the aesthetic arrest which allows for the perception of the radiance of form as described i'm quoting again and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze without shame or wantedness long long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his like a medieval maiden sought by a troubadour she allows him to worship but at a proper distance and she feels no shame because she knows his look is not for the purpose of possession but rather of contemplation finally this aesthetic regard and attitude permit the growth of the wings undoubtedly signaled by our hero's last name his name's peculiarly his name is stephen daedalus where's that come from daedalus but he's the maker of wings in ancient mythology see joyce knew this great tradition from dante back to plato and he knew the looking out to the open scene he knew about the growth of the wings when we see something beautiful it's all there it's all there like diotima's hero stephen the girl gaze out together to the open sea of the beautiful itself and the young man then acknowledges that the connection to transcendence has been accomplished at the end of his speech here's what he says heavenly god cried stephen's soul in an outburst of profane joy that's joyce's commentary that's how it works everybody that the authentically beautiful once we take it in and we learn how to take it in it causes the wings to grow and it causes this family to look out to the open sea of the beautiful itself and this joyous you know with a deeply ambiguous relationship to the church but nevertheless his great hero could say heavenly god at the at the terminus of this experience and joyce himself he's telling us how he became a writer that's how he became a writer and he said my job is now to report epiphanies and that's what he does moments when the when the divine breaks through in the beauty of the world these marvelous accounts give expression to something that many of us feel in the presence of beauty but can't articulate how beautiful faces events objects and songs can transport us to a higher dimension of reality von hildebrand speaks in this context of quote beauty of the second power close quote this is a loveliness that goes far beyond whatever harmony and integrity we might expect in a given physical arrangement a melody might indeed be beautiful in the self but somehow its humble notes point beyond themselves to a transcendent beauty here's von hildebrand it beauty the second power kindles in us a yearning for the world of lofty immaterial realities basically this is a longing for that which is above us tourism it draws us upward okay this paper is already a little on the lengthy side and so and i'm just going to close with a couple of practical remarks that truth breaks through the buffered self should certainly lead catholic catechists teachers professors evangelists to stop dumbing down the faith i talked about this last night to start embracing a smart intellectually informed apologetics i've heard at times in the catholic commentary at the view that one should prefer accompaniment you know pope francis word over apologetics this is a beautiful example of a false dichotomy but i can assure you that anyone who thinks that young people especially do not have myriad questions about the faith has not accompanied many young people but more than this catholic educators and formatters at all levels should help their charges see that any engagement with the truth can and should lead ultimately to god it may suggest a stress should be placed on mathematics and the physical sciences since these are seen by most people today as paradigmatic vehicles for understanding the truth let your students understand that these disciplines lead them out of the cave and toward an experience of the invisible dimension of reality indeed to the very threshold of the divine of course there isn't a catholic mathematics or physics but there is indeed a catholic context for the study of these subjects teach it to your students that's the kind of summary of the talk last night knowing that the good breaks through the buffer itself catholic leaders and educators should stand a thwart ethical relativism and show how an acknowledgement of objective moral value is implied in the intense political and social commitments of so many in our culture though most young people today assume a subjectivist position regarding sexual matters they're anything but relativist when it comes to moral causes they take seriously does any vocal social activist today hold that racism sexism the oppression of the poor homophobia are simply matters of private opinion or subjective positions that one may or may not adopt well the question answers itself so we should start with these acknowledgments of objective moral value and then press in both ideological where they come from and teleological directions where they're going inviting people to search out the ultimate source and trajectory of these convictions finally knowing that the beautiful ruptures the buffered self catholic leaders and formators should find ever more creative ways to use our splendid aesthetic tradition in evangelization as hinted above for many people today the beautiful is a less threatening transcendental than the good and the true so start with the beautiful a vivid exemplification of this truth can be found in evil and was brides had revisited the narrator charles ryder is a cool agnostic and a budding painter who commences his long journey toward the church with an experience of the overwhelming beauty of the manor house brideshead which functions throughout the novel as a symbol of the church drawn in by its loveliness charles in time comes to appreciate the moral demand and then the truth also present within the walls of that place the movement was from the beautiful to the good and finally to the true i found that much the same dynamic obtains in the learning of a sport first a young person finds the game splendid beautiful to watch and this awakens an intense desire to play and finally having played he comes to know the rules and rhythms that govern the game from the inside eward cousins who served twice as pollock theologian here at mundoline seminary once commented to me that the particular genius of catholicism is that quote we never threw anything out close quote he meant that we have more or less there have been exceptions but more or less resisted the iconoclastic tendency which sadly presents itself with some regularity up and down the centuries we've tended to keep and savor the beautiful and this is of supreme evangelical importance i'd encourage catholic catechists and evangelists to learn our aesthetic tradition well i'd encourage catholic artists and architects to make beautiful things i'd encourage liturgists to make of the mass the courtyard of heaven recent surveys consistently reveal that what disaffiliated catholics remember with particular affection is the beauty of the religion that they abandoned we should take that very seriously buffering the self from contact with god is a moral and spiritual disaster the renaissance secular society has no interest of course in addressing this problem but the churches especially the catholic church i would say are the privileged means by which this buffering can be undone the good the true and the beautiful are our best tools let's use them god bless you all thanks for listening thank you thanks everybody [Applause] thank you bishop aaron our first respondent this morning is dr patricia pintado murphy dr pintado is assistant professor in the department of pre-theology here at mundelein seminary she holds a doctorate in philosophy from the catholic university of america as well as a licensure in philosophy from the university of navara prior to joining the faculty at mundelein she served as assistant professor of philosophy at the pontifical college josephinum and assistant professor of philosophy at desales university she also taught in the religious studies department of catholic university during graduate school dr pintado directed a program on the new evangelization at the etheneum of ohio and she currently serves as managing editor of the josephine journal of theology she has published scholarly articles on modern philosophy its impact on the relationship between faith and reason and its influence on theology and the nature of secularization particularly following the thought of cornelio fabro and joseph rotzinger she also is interested in the history and experience of hispanics in the catholic church in the united states so let us offer a warm welcome to dr pintado [Applause] good morning uh just on an anecdote to begin with i wanted to thank our director john cartier for giving me the opportunity to answer to bishop baron's lecture and i have to confess my first reaction was to text father brandon uh and ask him you know more or less say you know i feel like david and goliath and father laptop responded you're goliath right bishop baron offers a powerful analysis of the human condition in contemporary culture by relying on child's tailors as secular age my brave response will first offer an overview of taylor's terms to further illumine the question of what the buffer itself is second i will address bishop baron's diagnosis to answer the question of why this self is in crisis finally i will offer some complementary suggestions to answer the question of how to help our buffered cells according to taylor the cultural shift from an enchanted to a disenchanted world gave rise to exclusive humanism the self becomes the buffered self who is closed off from outside forces and focuses exclusively on the imminent world as opposed to the transcendent world taylor calls exclusive humanism the attitude that allows the buffered self to create or find meaning through its own means this self inhabits the immune frame a constructed social space that frames our lives entirely within a natural rather than supernatural order but within this imminent friend the person will census still senses a longing for transcendence the desire for the spiritual endures triggered by dissatisfaction with a life constrained by the mere search of material satisfaction in our postmodern world we're living in what taylor calls the age of authenticity where spirituality is alive as a quest one has to find one's own faith yearning for experiences of fulfillment given that we are emotivist as mcintyre as alistair mcintyre explained in his version of the modern self emotions and personal choices at what are what convey meaning how we think and what we do is determined by the things we like and thus what we choose this is what bishop baron refers to as well as the culture of self-invention which consists in one's capacity to determine through freedom the meaning of one's life taylor argues quote that all options are equally worthy because they're freely chosen and it is choice that confers worth in a court this assessment coincides with bishop parents awareness of how unlimited choice is a must for the generation of the nuns in sum the key question posed by taylor is if one can find fulfillment without god having elucidated taylor's understanding of the buffer itself i will briefly turn to bishop baron highlighting some of his key insights one the culture has given rise to the loss of religious commitment two the good life can be had apart from any relationship to a transcendent reality three scientism ideological materialism and the self-invention culture are cutting us off of a living connection to the transcendent and finally the secularist ideology is soul killing and the human heart quite naturally rebels against it as a way out bishop baron beautifully describes plato's emancipated prisoner this is the religious person making his or her way through the secularized world of today moving among the buffered cells to accomplish the liberation of the self bishop baron relies on dietrich von hildebrand and iris mordock to situate baron's contribution let me quote tracy rowland's overview of the different critiques of modernity quote most most post-concealed generation scholars are familiar with the many critiques of modernity from theological and sociological perspectives in the court she lists the example of alistar mcintyre charles taylor hans bloomberg eric vogelin and the radical orthodoxy reading presented by catherine pistock and john milbuck there is a common agreement that this culture develop in opposition to the medieval theologically especially domestic synthesis bishop baron follows in the footsteps of fombaldaza who saw the severance of the relationship between the true the beautiful and the good as the central pathological this is the expression of tracy roland as the central pathological feature of the new culture for the sake of brevity i will simply highlight bishop byron's insight into the first chant in delta the truth he's spot on when he states that the postmodern sense of truth is information information is knowledge about something as distinct from direct acquaintances as stacy schindler states a second mark that he explained to us was that information that information is shaped by transferability i can receive change manipulate and send this data everywhere bishop baron turns to aquinas to explain that real knowledge of another thing or person puts the subject in a far more receptive mode quote the ego is not in control but rather invited into openness and responsiveness to another and of course he points to david trace's insight that the very disciplines that in the minds of many today must root us in the empirical order in point of fact lift us beyond it to the invisible order and as bishop baron concludes quote if even the simplest acts of real knowledge and not simply the gathering information involves self-transcendence we see now that this is only an invitation to the radical loss of self coming to know the intelligence behind the intellect the intelligibility and of course now i come to the third section of my talk the way of conclusion i will attempt to indicate some complementary suggestion to answer the question how to help our buffered selves i will address the themes of friendship community and witness on the one hand and the obstacles to believe in god that arise in contemporary culture but are caused by the deformation of christianity due to protestantism and some failures of our own church on the other hand and i said we buffered cells because as christians we are part of this post modern world heirs of modernity benefactors of right we're not immune to the cultural trends described by charles taylor and bishop barron we could speak of a divided self leaving out the faith is sometimes reduced to worship on sunday and to preserve immoral values in the family and still how we work or how we use friends for pleasure utility seems to be shaped by the common goals of the secular world success security money fame my first suggestions follows from my early study of aristotle's nicomachean ethics and my life experience namely the importance of friendship i'm not challenging the greatness of the catholic intellectual tradition in terms of diagnosis bishop baron's philosophical insights are superb particularly if the audience are highly educated atheists or agnostic intellectuals and committed catholics whom bishop baron enlightens so well through his ministry on word on fire but i want to emphasize the importance of friendship in reading those in reaching out to those alienated from the faith they are often not ready for a philosophical argument because as david brooks and jordan peterson have shown us any attempt at relationship passes through our emotions our experiences our frailties to engage the isolated buffered self of the nuns and overcome their suspicion or their indifference towards religion may simply show we may simply show care and concern be attentive to the history and be very very patient as we walk together as monsignor luigi giusani loved to quote from brian hunt newberg quote nothing is so unconvincing as the answer to a question that has not been posed taylor argues that believers in a new way of quote inhabiting their faith quote endocode he calls for an honest and authentic faith genuinely open to the other we need to learn to be sympathetic and understanding towards people and positions different than our own quote where you really have a desire to know what it is like to be the other person and live their kind of spiritual life and of course this is what eddie stein would call empathy according to ratzinger quote the heart first enlightens the understanding this is how thought also begins to see through love this is why faith does not arise from understanding but from hearing fetus ex audito romans 10 17 and of course why are many close towards the transcendence what makes imminence appealing taylor puts forward various reasons dislike of religious fanaticism progress of the natural sciences and the benefits of technology that claim to explain everything focus on the transcendent is accused as betraying this earthly social sensual life according to martha nussbaum and the exclusive concern with human needs call it consumer consumerism or materialism that numbs the person to seek higher goals and still the question remains if there is something more beyond the imminent world according to taylor in our zeal we would love to share the truth about christianity but in light of these obstacles those alienated from the faith have to first trust us and then they may ask why we're different in this age of authenticity the nuns will be struck if our humanity has been transformed our friendship with the nuns may help them change because we ourselves have changed by our friendship with christ this leads me to the second suggestion community the new liberate itself uh and this is not too harsh of a critique but the new liberty itself that bishop baron describes seems to be leaving the cave by himself or herself and seems to stay alone but christ says that we will be recognized by the way we love each other or as ratzinger affirms quote love for christ and of one's neighbor for christ's sake can enjoy stability and consistently only if its deepest motivation is love for the truth love the center of christian reality is at the same time arrows for truth and only so does it remain sound as agape for god and men and accord eddy stein suggested that those who live with holy church can never be lonely they find themselves called embedded in the great human community everywhere all are united as brothers and sisters in the depth of their hearts and because streams of living water flow from all those who live in god's hand they exert a mysterious magnetic appeal on thirsty souls without aspiring to it they must become guides of other persons striving to the light and of course or in the words of pope francis quote each community is called to create a god-enlightened space in which the experience in which they can experience the hidden presence of a risen lord and of course young people could be awakened to the presence of the lord in the pursuit of the common good and through acts of solidarity within a community and so begin to challenge their buffered cells after all flannery econo said quote when you start to think of others people's problems and stop thinking of your own you have found christ and of course according to bishop baron the nuns are anything but relativist when it comes to moral causes that they take seriously particularly social justice and the environment the empathy that lies at the heart of social justice and environmental causes is the essence of community tied to the idea of friendship and community taylor calls for recovery of an incarnational christianity and the power of the witnesses he mentions a variety of remarkable people from teresa of lisu to teresa of calcutta and especially charles peggy the witnesses of converts also helped to show that quote the christian faith can be lived better and more fully end of court as people seek to growth in truth the saints are not the forgotten among are not to be forgotten among the cloud of witnesses who according to taylor court have radiated some sense of direct contact with fullness this broad cloud of witnesses of faith had an having an encounter with god's power and love and we reach out to the nuns in communion with them finally and in responding to the problem of the buffered cells we have to face the obstacles that the church has erected by falling to live out the incarnation of christianity we cannot summarize here 300 pages of taylor's narration of the impact of modernity on christianity and the church so i will have to it will have to suffice to quote cardinal francis george's famous statement during the sin of the bishops for the americas in november of 1997. he said that u.s citizens are quote culturally calvinist even those who profess the catholic faith and of course this calvinism translates in other isms that we can just mention in passing now feederism dayism legalism moralism individualism so how has christianity changed from the late middle ages to the present taylor discusses the shift to a more inward and internal personal devotion and an easiness with sacramental religion and the idea of salvation by faith this contributes to the buffering self in america from his way of reading scripture calvin rejected the sacramentality espoused by the catholic church which he ridiculed as magic since he thought that it does not change christians or help them obtain god's salvation these two contributed to the buffer itself the reformation's fear of idolatry moreover brought an emptying of the spiritual life through a process of excarnation so taylor goes on to say that as far as to state that the protestant reformation was the main engine of disenchantment and thus of buffered self especially in its calvinist expression turning briefly to some challenging facing some challenges facing our catholic church i'm reminded of tia's elio's question in chorus in the rock quote is it the church that has abandoned humanity or has humanity abandoned the church and of course asserts that vatican ii repeated repudiated clericalism moralism and a pastoral policy of fear and of course we could contest his observation but i suspect that some of the factors that led the nuns to abandon the church have to do with these recent research of the springtrad institute states that 52 of young people have little to no trust in organized religion while yes the beautiful past bishop baron has outlined further ways to open the buffer itself a witness has to begin from our own transformation because of an encounter here i am drawn to what pope francis says in evangelium gaudi quote i never tire of repeating these words of benedict 16 which take us to the very heart of the gospel and this is benedict being a christian is not the result of an ethical choice or lofty idea but the encounter with an event a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction and of course it is through the witness of disciples that the nuns can encounter christ again recall the words attributed to trees of avila christ has no hands but yours no mouth but yours and of course others encounter christ through the witness of the living testimony of his disciples bishop baron correctly alerts us to the false dichotomy of preferring accompanying over apologetics indeed apologetics is not opposed to a company but evangelization is more than apologetics in other words a witness identified by non-religious persons or those who have fallen away as an authentic way of life may be the first way of entry to build a friendship invite them to a community something that young people to to today are craving and encountering the person of christ in others ideas philosophy doctrine will reinforce that encounter as ratzinger taught us quote indeed in the person of jesus a perf appears the perfect dialogue itself between god and humanity through our experience of christ we come to know god who is not only logos but also dire logos and of course also finally as christmas vivid number 212 indicates quote and this is now francis any educational pro project or path of growth for young people must certainly include formation in christian doctrine and morality it is likewise important that i have that it has two main goals one is the development of the kerygma the foundational experience of encounter with god through jesus death and resurrection the other is growth in fraternal love community life and service in the words of romano guardini when we experience a great love everything else becomes part of it thank you thank you to dr pintado we'll have one more talk and then we'll give bishop baron an opportunity to respond to both respondents our second respondent this morning is father brendan lupton an alumnus of the university of saint mary of the lake father lupton is a priest of the archdiocese of chicago he was ordained in 2005. a patristic theologian he earned a sacred theology doctorate in historical theology at catholic university of america in he has served on the mondeline faculty for nine years and currently is president of the pontifical faculty father lupton is author of the book saint paul as an exemplar of holiness and pastoral leadership in the writings of pope gregory the great published by edwin mellon press he also has published scholarly articles in several journals including chicago studies downside review and studia patristica so let us offer a warm welcome to father lupton [Applause] [Applause] as dr barrett mentioned i'm an alumnus of mundelein seminary one of the great graces of my life as i was privileged to have bishop barron as a professor and oftentimes people will ask me what was it like to have bishop barron as a teacher and my usual response usually is i never looked at my watch during class so i know generations of priests are indebted to bishop baron for instilling in them a love of our great tradition before beginning this response i would like to thank bishop baron for his excellent lecture and his insightful and clear diagnosis of the current culture and his proposals of how the church might engage the nuns especially via the way of beauty it's my hope that my response might be able to supplement bishop baron's argument of how we might engage the nuns to do so i'd like to focus on another challenging moment in the history of christian evangelization that is from the apostolic age until the rise of constantine in 312 a.d the purpose of examining this moment will be to propose another way to evangelize the nuns bishop baron focus on the great transcendentals which call the ego out of itself i'd like to focus on another way to engage them through the lessons of the early church this method is summarized well in the famous latin phrase estoria es magistra vite history is the teacher of life in short early christian evangelization efforts can help us navigate our own current mission to engage the nuns and this affiliated although the first few christian centuries were vastly different from our own nevertheless the early christians faced a far more difficult situation than we do today they also achieved the type of success that we would long for historians argue that the number of christians from the apostolic age until the 4th century grew at the rate of 40 percent per decade this type of growth is staggering considering their overwhelming challenges to contextualize these challenges let us consider for a moment what christians were up against in around the year 200. during this period historians conjecture there were 200 000 christians in the roman empire which was under 1 of the population of about 60 million since there were so few they had little resources a single copy of the septuagint would have been a tremendous luxury for a small christian community there's no public churches few works of christian art very few works of christian literature in fact one could argue that pagans had the way of beauty on their side various pagan shrines and temples dotted the roman world they also had the culture not only did christians have scanned resource but pagans who even knew about christianity considered it odd strange and bizarre take a look at this graffiti which was discovered in some soldier barracks in 1857 on the palatine hill in rome and brian you can turn on the slide there we go can people see that in the back no okay there's not surprised here's another view of it let's see if this works can you see it so this uh graffiti was discovered in palatine hill in rome in 1857 this graffiti is thought to be from around the early 3rd century around 200 a.d the inscription reads alex seminoles worships his god in rather crude greek it's believed that it was meant to mock alex semenos most likely a soldier for being a christian in fact the raised arm was a symbol of homage or worship this graffiti is the earliest known pictorial representation of the crucifixion of jesus it captures well what romans would have thought of the idea of christianity in the first place a crucified and weak god does not make sense gods were powerful did what they pleased and certainly would not succumb to the worst punishment on earth this type of god is more of an ass than a god for a roman this summer i was talking to an alumnus of underlying seminary who had me several years ago in class it was telling me that this was the one thing that he remembered from my class this image which i found consoling and a little disconcerting besides this representation of some early pagans impressions of the new faith the first pagan written source to refer to christianity is pliny's letter to trajan penned in 111 a.d on this occasion a local magistrate pliny and bithynia modern-day turkey wrote to the emperor trajan to find out how he should deal with this small group called the christians should he hunt them out should he leave them alone in this letter pliny refers to christianity not as a religio but as a superstitio the difference would be similar today to the distinction between a major world religion christianity judaism islam and a fanatical cult for pagans christians were members of a deviant cult in fact the great nt wright explained that if one were to become a christian during this early period it'd be akin to going off the grid today and giving up every form of technology the gods at this time were involved in every aspect of one's life from sowing to farming to soldiering to renounce the gods was a radical rejection of common pagan life it seems strange and bizarre the graffiti and brief quotation from pliny's letter provide two snapshots of how pagans viewed early christianity yet the number of christians grew how did they do so an immediate retort however is that the conversion of constantine led to massive conversions this was a watershed moment however historians admit that even if constantine had not seen the blazing cairo in the heavens christianity still would have become the dominant religion of the roman empire based on its rate of growth of 40 per decade given these overwhelming odds and christianity success we ask how did they succeed this question has fascinated both theological and historical luminaries since the fourth century sin augustine speculated that quote christianity must have reproduced itself by means of miracles for the greatest miracle of all would have been the extraordinary extension of the religion apart from any miracle end quote in short grace and the power of god must have been at work in his famous 18th century work the his history of the decline and fall of the roman empire edward gimmick argued that pagans had tired of the greek and roman gods and thirsted for a more robust faith which christianity supplied specifically gibbon added that christianity promised eternal life worked miracles and introduced intolerant zeal all of which led to its success in the early 20th century alfred von harneck speculated that people were attracted to christianity because of its emphasis on spiritual and physical healing this paper is not the place to analyze these various theories brother would like to focus on the work of rodney stark historian and sociologist who has written extensively on early christian mission in fact he's devoted most of his academic work to this question his analysis will supplement bishop baron's presentation provide some inspiration for those in the trenches of the church's evangelical mission and for this presentation i would like to focus on two subjects within stark's work his social conversion theory and evangelization through plagues social conversion as mentioned stark is a sociologist thus unlike the theology of augustine historical approach of gibbon he approached the question of christianity's growth as a scientist first he wanted to watch people convert to new and deviant religious movements theorize about the process and then test if similar dynamics of patterns occurred in the early christian years at first blush this methodology seems difficult to execute since in the first few centuries there were no surveys few research studies or october counts there are gaps in our knowledge and this must be acknowledged before setting forth his findings as mentioned first stark desired to study people committing to a new and deviant faith since of course christianity was one at its inception in the mid-1960s he learned of a new cult which people were beginning to join the munis or the unification church founded in 1954 in seoul by the late sung ming moon the munis have one to two million members today allow me to summarize briefly the beginning of this faith in the early 1960s a certain young korean woman young kim immigrated from korea to the u.s to start a branch of the moonies on u.s soil dr kim had been a professor of religion in seoul at first dr kim attempted quote to spread her message directly by talks to various groups and sending out many press releases by radio spots and by renting a hall in which to hold public meetings but these methods yielded nothing end quote eventually however kim recruited some new initiates the first were all young housewives who lived in kim's neighborhood kim rented a room in one of their homes and was able to recruit the property owner who then recruited some of her neighbors stark notes that the group quote never succeeded in attracting a stranger end quote remaining with this pattern the additional initiates were friends are of one or more of the moonies from these observations and others stark concluded that quote conversion to a new deviant religious groups occurs when other things being equal people have or developed strong attachments to members of the group than they have two non-members this conclusion explains has been confirmed in numerous other sociological studies on conversion to deviant faiths in short people are much more likely to convert to a new deviant faith when they develop more social ties within the group then outside of it from this premise stark notes two important corollaries first if a person has strong social ties to a major major religion it's unlikely that he or she will convert to a new deviant cult the uncommitted however are far more likely to convert quote converts to new religious movements stark explains are overwhelming from relatively irreligious backgrounds the majority of converts to modern american cult movements report that their parents had no religious affiliation along these lines today's nuns present a tremendous evangelical opportunity since they are disaffiliated from any religious group and therefore do not have any social ties to particular faith the second corollary is that stark is a successful movements that is deviant colts discover techniques for remaining open networks able to reach out into the new adjacent social networks when he uses the term social network it does not mean something like facebook or twitter but rather a community of individuals united via friendship and relations in other words if a religious group is self-contained it will die religions must be plugged into various communities of people to experience growth now at this point one might ask is conversion to a new deviant faith only based on relationships and not faith or even truth are religions merely social clubs stark explains that usually new converts begin to adhere to the doctrines of the deviant faith after conversion you might say that the doctrines drew them in but usually the social ties led them into the new faith according to sociological studies stark writes quote after conversion has occurred is when most people get more deeply involved in the doctrines of their group end quote some sense the sequence follows a post-liberal understanding of the acquisition of truth in which a certain culture facilitates the apprehension of truth the example that bishop baron often uses to explain this dynamic is learning how to play the game of baseball a person does not learn by merely watching or reading about baseball a person learns to play by playing similar vein especially when people enter into the game of a new deviant faith then they learn and understand its teaching having studied the dynamics of conversion to deviant faith examined early christianity to see if relationships also played a significant role before examining his results again it should be repeated that the first and second centuries did not have pew research studies and there are gaps in our knowledge when examining the apostolic work of saint paul stark was able to discern traces of social conversion in the acts of the apostles he notes that quote paul did not rush from place to place leaving a trail of converts instead he spent more than two years building a christian group in ephesus 18 months in corinth several years in antioch and many historians believe his stays in some other places were considerably longer the apostle remained so long in these cities in order to get to know the citizens to form friendships to form small christian communities along similar lines nt right makes an interesting observation concerning paul's day job quote the apostle spent most of his waking hours with his sleeves rolled up doing hard physical work and hot climate and the perhaps two-thirds of the conversations he had with people about jesus and the gospel were not conducted in a place of worship or study not even in a private home but in a small cramped workshop such an informal setting is ideal for forming friendship and trust another historian of early christianity bart ehrman who should be read with caution observes that when luke mentions a household conversion that is when an entire household converts to christianity in the book of acts it connotes they were quite common they household conversions are recorded in the books of acts quote as a matter of course as if there was nothing at all unusual about members of a household joining the potter familias or even the mata familias in the faith and so when paul and his companions were in philippi they converted a wealthy woman named lydia and immediately she and her household were baptized soon after an unnamed jailer learned he must believe in jesus to be saved and he and his entire family were baptized without delay the author of acts saw nothing at all unusual an entire family joining the new faith sure it seems that luke's expressions imply that these types of conversions were common besides familial conversions luke also recounts conversions through friendship in acts 10 when saint peter baptized cornelius his relatives and close friends in each of these cases members of the household or friends convert to christianity through social and familial ties although these are isolated instances the great historian of late antiquity peter brown supplements earman's observation and writes ties of family marriages and loyalties to heads of household have been the most effective means of recruiting members of the church and had maintained the continued adherence of the average christian to the new cult end quote suppose for a moment however that someone in one of these households was reticent to convert since he or she might have had a previous attachment to a pagan god whom now he or she must renounce how would christianity compare to his or her current religious life the theologian patristic scholar boniface ramsey explains that quote early christianity distinguished itself from the paganism of the time by its firm belief in the possibility of a tender intimacy with the divine an intimacy that went not only from man to god but that was believed to go as well from god to man short christianity turned the religious world upside down a pagan was required to pay homage and devotion to a god since the god demanded it the relationship did not commence with the god's love of the vindical in fact scholars have noted that outside of the scriptures the greek verbs agapen and felane both meaning to love are never used to describe a god's love for humankind on the contrary their adherents are supposed to agha pain and feeling the gods they do not love their subjects in return imagine for a moment hearing this startling discovery the one god loves humanity this must have melted their hearts along these lines saying peter saint leo the great in the fifth century writes it is far less amazing that human beings should progress upwards towards god than that god should have come down to the human level end quote peter brown speculates that one of the reasons why people rioted over christological issues was that when the position was unorthodox they felt that the love of god for humanity expressed in christ jesus had been removed in other words if jesus were a mere man god's love for humanity would not be embodied in christ himself this compelling nature of christian teaching reveals that it was not just a social club but something that melted people's hearts and reversed their world unfortunately today god's love for humanity has become a platitude and lost its power that would have had to those early christians having reviewed stark's social theory of conversion and some examples from acts of the apostles one could argue that the real catalyst for conversion was saint paul in his preaching this is true the apostle preached the kerygma someone converted the household and friends followed suit without the words of paul no gentile would have entered this deviant faith the social ties were secondary agents but nevertheless played a significant role the second point evangelization through plagues after the apostolic age that is after all the apostles had died christianity entered a new chapter of evangelization at this point the church did not have an evangelization strategy or even many evangelists in fact history chronicles only a few gregory the wonderworker a few nameless preachers in egypt and eventually martin of tours the historian ramsey mcmullen writes quote after saint paul the church had no mission had no organized or official approach to unbelievers in other words it had no official or organized approach on the whole so how did christianity still grow stark speculates that ironically plagues might have assisted in evangelization in 165 a horrible plague struck the roman empire and persisted for 15 years barely after the people recovered in 251 another epidemic multiplied throughout the empire during both of them a quarter or a third of the population died including the famous emperor marcus aurelius in 180 in vienna pigs and christians responded differently to these epidemics since many of the large cities were more or less petri dishes because of cramped living spaces and poor sanitation most citizens knew enough to flee many christians however remained in the cities to care for the sick in 260 the bishop of alexandria dionysius chronicled what happened during the second plague and disclosed three important events first he explains that christians remained to care for the sick in the city quote most of our brother christians showed unbounded love and loyalty never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another heedless of danger they took charge of the sick attending to their every need and ministering to them in christ end quote second the pagans the bishop reveals did the opposite and left quote that he then behaved in the opposite way third he implied that christians had a higher rate of survival quote its full impact fell on the heathen end quote so why would a higher percentage of christians survive clearly they didn't have better medicine stark proposes several reasons first possibly some christians might have acquired immunity because of early exposure to the virus second as stark explains modern medical experts believe that conscientious nursing without any medication could cut the mortality rate by two-thirds or more nourishment and water could assist a person to battle through the virus finally a loving and caring presence might as well assist one to recover if according to dionysius a higher percentage of christians survived then some important implications follow the overall percentage of christians would increase without any conversions since many pagans died and fled more to it such a demographic demographic shift would alter their social networks pagans would be much more likely to enter a christian social network furthermore if christians did nurse pagans back to health and there's no reason to suppose they didn't this would be a wonderful opportunity to form social bonds importantly remain an open social network in short these epidemics ironically might have been a great evangelical opportunity to welcome pagans in the christian community in conclusion finally this brief reflection was intended to supplement bishop baron's practical steps to break through the buffered self bishop baron focused on the power of the transcendentals to do so especially through the way of beauty this paper has argued that social relations in early christianity played an integral role in forming the base movement of the church which then continued to expand these relations therefore served as a powerful agent to help promote the growth of early christianity against tremendous tremendous odds today as well they can help to break through the buffered self often a strong christian community is one of the best ways to point towards the true the good the beautiful which is above all christ himself this argument contextualizes rather seemingly mundane parish events such as fish fries st joseph tables basketball games if they are used correctly they can transform a parish community into an open network and invite the disaffiliated to faith in the one god who loves them thank you [Applause] thank you father leptin we will now give bishop baron a few minutes to respond to father lupton and dr pintado and then after that we will open it up for questions from the audience either way whichever you prefer well good thank you first of all both of you for those responses i promise this will be very very brief i want to get to your questions um you know here's the first observation really in regards to both responses so what i would say at a meijer lecture so at this sort of high level academic symposium is not the sum total of what i would do to evangelize so a lot of my work and word on fire would be reaching out to people through all kinds of other means so the fact that we're giving a high-level academic lecture doesn't mean oh that's the only way that we evangelize so dr patado's points about family and friendship and communion absolutely absolutely i agree with that and a lot of the work that i do these other levels involve that very much um i was just very intrigued too by that the uh observation about protestantism um and and cardinal george you know with um the influence of calvinism on our culture i just go back to it experience i had in the chicago area uh many years ago i recently come back from france where i was studying and i used to give tours at notre dame in paris i used to love to go to shark cathedrals so i love the gothic churches and all their splendor and color and so on and i went out to wheaton college and i have a great reverence i love wheaton college and i have great reverence for billy graham i went to the billy graham center and saw his the podium that he preached from and artifacts about his life and wonderful and then we went into the chapel there and it was an absolutely plain white space with a pulpit and you know again with all the reverence i can muster for billy graham which is very sincere i remember thinking to myself um something went wrong with the human spirit something went wrong that we got from chartres to a completely empty white room and part of that was the loss of beauty as a route of transcendence and it was the result of some of that disenchantment that we talked about so i think that's really right but i agree with all that you said about the other means and we don't reduce this to an academic you know exercise of course although the meijer lecture is an academic exercise but not our evangelization um father brendan's talk was very interesting to me uh hearing a lot of it for the first time but i i think that's right i i'm a newman man john henry newman that it's very mysterious how we come to ascent he said the moment we say yes that's true what makes us do that to some degree it's a matter of of intellection newman thought it's to some degree it's a matter of argumentation but but very often it's a whole conjuries of different influences and experiences and hunches and friendships and communities and so that when you say that mysterious statement i believe in christianity i believe in jesus christ what's brought you to that point i agree is very mysterious and it's rarely simply a question of a clinching argument though as you know i've been stressing the importance of the intellectual because we've dumbed the project down and that's been very problematic but that's why in my own talk i emphasize it's not just the true that's the way in but the good and under the rubric of the good i would talk about things like friendship and about community and about social justice that's true the young people they very much respond to our concern for the poor terrific that's one way that the good breaks through and then the beautiful as i think i've sufficiently emphasized uh that's not just that's not an intellectual argument that's showing forth the beauty of a saints life for example or the beauty of the sistine chapel ceiling so i i quite agree i think with both my respondents that it's a much wider uh project than you know making arguments of course it is but this is the forum where we make arguments a meijer lecture but i certainly agree with all that and uh and furthermore think it is the question of our time i keep out in la i keep beating that drum you know it's an evangelization especially of the young has got to be priority one so i think my two respondents uh contributed to that too so thank you for that so that's enough for me um questions uh what's our next move so for the questions please keep in mind jesus's exhortation to love god and love your neighbor and an important way of expressing love for your neighbor is to keep your question as concise and brief as possible so that your neighbor will enjoy listening to you and also so that you leave space for other people to ask questions as well hey bishop baron uh for theology deacon ben thompson archdiocese of atlanta my question for you is in regards to the truth the transcendental of the truth should we recover a divine illumination theory of knowledge as a way to deal with the escaping the cave of the buffered self let me kind of eliminate what i mean so you judge by truth truth is that which is everything is not that which is except god himself who is the light that enlightens all men but sometime in the middle ages we kind of replace that maybe we say thomas with a mere likeness of the divine light that is a creature within us and thus we judge inside ourselves buffered selves uh everything subjective potentially is the way that logic might lead so do you think that we should try to recover a divine illumination theory of reason well i is this working hello hello there we go uh no i don't think you have to get into that kind of specificity that you have to have an augustinian epistemology rather than an optimistic one thomas talks about the lumen agentus intellectus you know so he has a version of it but i don't think you have to make that move specifically to break through the buffer itself i think if you if you sense the truth the way thomas describes it you're breaking through what what has happened in modernity um so i think that would be sufficient as you know from the talk i'm deeply sympathetic with the platonic tradition love it you know and i love aquinas too and i think catholicism is big enough to contain both of those epistemological theories so i wouldn't say you have to do it but thank you for that in seth hostiller diocese of cheyenne wyoming for theology if we take an augustinian understanding of sin just describe it as choosing the lesser over the greater then we might say that that is a what gives rise to that is a disordered encounter with and if that's the case an imp greater emphasis needs to be on how these transcendentals how we're forming that encounter and so i'm especially thinking of social media and in regards to a future priest the homily and the means by which we try to give access or create a forum in which the transcendentals are encountered the homily has a very particular role in the liturgy in this people in this time and if you extract that and you take it and you put it into social media is there something about the medium of social media being a very consumeristic very entertainment driven that undermines our goal of trying to bring a transcendental that is properly ordered and properly understood well in a sense sure but at the same time nothing's perfect and nothing in this side of the eschaton is going to you know just get everything right so the fact that i would publish sermons online that are you know viewed by 150 000 people every week i think that's worthwhile even though you're quite right that a sermon belongs within the liturgy and the purpose of all of it is to bring people to the mass that's that's i would say the point of all my evangelistic work is to bring them to the mass so some would argue well no that's not you should just have the mass and and this is all misleading but i guess i i'd say be a glass half full sort of guy when it comes to that sure it's inadequate it's like i remember reading someone said when the telephone was first invented someone goes it's such an inelegant form of communication well of course it is you know are you much sure they have a conversation with someone but who's going to put away their telephone so i think we have to use the social media but the instinct behind your question is a good one that we have to be wary of at the same time and aware of its limitations but you know i think glass half full on that one hi bishop baron i have a question about your choice of the transcendentals and uh i was wondering in our time there's an ever increasing focus on uh diversity in the spectrum of choices and the multiplicity of things and uh you didn't mention uh unity as a as an approach to uh just to being into recognition ultimately to god and i was wondering uh why that why you left that out or did you see a role for that sometimes scene of the great tradition is one of the transcendentals too unity the one and in that sense sure the one is great there's the problem of the one and the many which is the oldest problem in philosophy but uh that we want to bring people to the one god absolutely that we want to gather people into the one church absolutely that we want to be one in christ sure but then within that unity there's plenty of room for pluralism and the ground for that is the trinity so the one god subsists in three persons so there can be a legitimate play but you know i unity is always a good thing but it doesn't preclude you know real diversity the problem today i think is we've so we've so skewed that question where it's diversity diversity diversity but no one's speaking for unity anymore you know it's like everyone wants the pluribus no one wants the unum and and it's both we need and it was just nothing but diversity all the time we lose what binds us together we lose our communio right um so it's it's always trying to find the balance that's as old as plato that problem but it persists to this day i think very clearly where our culture is is is enamored of diversity but that's a dangerous move because that becomes destabilizing you can be you can be hyper focused on unity welcome to totalitarian societies and so on but it's finding that right balance which is the language of love finally you know is a is the reconciliation of the one of the many so quick answer to a complicated question uh bishop my name is father don raskowski and priest of diocese peoria i work at a catholic hospital as my ministry and a year ago my mom and dad passed away and part of the look what i'm thinking is comments on the transcendentals of being particularly focused on suffering i loved your conversation with jordan peterson well uh but he one of his things is the truth is the antidote to suffering and i would add goodness and beauty so i'm seeking perhaps as i deal with people who are sick and dying sometimes tragic tragically and people seeking the meaning of life or like a man for seeking for meaning from vicar frankel so i was wondering perhaps and a comment or two or thought as you know father brennan kind of men mentioned this idea of the plagues and suffering maybe some thought about applying the transcendentals to the particular suffering yeah that's good that's a thoughtful remark certainly suffering can lead to a breakthrough of the buffer itself you know it can it can lead you out of a self-obsession it can be a way of you know of cracking through so i think that's true and so it might enable as i was describing it truth goodness and beauty to get in and the lord can use suffering for that reason so i think that's right i think that's certainly true in pastoral settings i've found not that we're trying to foist suffering upon people but i think it can seem it can be an opportunity for a real breakthrough i think that's right please bishop aaron um john poppy executive director of saint vincent de paul society of the archdiocese of saint louis in that same vein of of suffering and maybe viewing the nuns as a suffering group as well not to sound antagonistic but has the church lost the courage to enter into the breach and help people with their suffering and be with them in their suffering i just want to appreciate your perspective and commentary around courage to enter into that breach well i hope not i don't think so i think of all the different ministries including your own right that the church has that that reach out to people and their suffering uh certainly most of the years i was up here training young men to be priests that was a huge focus pastorally is how to enter into people's times of pain and suffering um so i don't know i i don't sense that i where do you see that that we're not entering into people's pain um i think with the whole question of powerlessness you know there's such a drive in our culture to want to fix yeah to fix the situation and to help people understand that so often times it's you're powerless and then there's you know there's the opportunity to enter into relationship with the crucified christ sure and that's where i see that that message just doesn't seem to permeate or radiate anymore from the church yeah if that's true that's regrettable i hope that's not true my experience with priests both here in l.a that they seem pretty willing to enter into those painful places with people and i think that's that's my understanding of priesthood it means your willingness to go into those places to go all the way down as christ did so hope that's still the case you know please really great great talks guys and your response is wonderful food for thought sean glanville deakin to be i live maybe in many ways the way many people in this audience do i have one son that i hope to be at mundelein next year i've got another son who's going to get married joyful experience to a non-baptized woman and he's one of those nuns that's scandalized for whatever reasons by the church has a great sense of justice lives in a great community of friends but he's going to get married outside of the church so i'm just at that point in this book seventh story thomas martin where where right in spite of his own intentions he's wandering the streets of rome and he comes and he's looking at mosaics yeah and he finally encounters the mosaics and the churches and he's converted he's converted through beauty so it tracks to what you say but here's the deal beauty is the initiative of the creator and our receptivity to it so how do we as evangelists and the new evangelization pivot towards somebody that responds to beauty i mean i'm impatient so how do we how do we walk with those nuns that don't even perceive they see the beauty but they don't know the source of the beauty yeah no it's good and i'm glad you held that book which is a very important book for me and my own conversion really you know look at merton yes you're right the the beauty of the churches in rome that mysteriously got into his soul think of the death of his of his grandparents and the death of his mother earlier how that experience of suffering had a lot to do with it but also think when merton picks up etienne gilston spirit of medieval philosophy and reads this deeply coherent uh doctrine of god which he never dreamed existed that god was essay ipsum subsistence and all that so my point there is the beautiful the good the true we're all operative in mertens conversion and it's never one or the other and and it depends on on the person i just tell the students here you've got to be a very uh nimble sort of evangelist there's never one way to do it and it depends on the person you're talking to some people respond really well to beauty others respond like the justice thing so with it was it your son-in-law to be your daughter the passion for justice start there because they don't think that's subjective they don't think that's a little private opinion they have they think that's objectively real and good right good start with that because that's a way to break through the buffer itself and then as i developed in this paper both ideologically and teleologically it'll lead you to god if you let it go other people i know tons of them have intellectual issues and questions fine begin with that what do they think is true a lot of young people sciences terrific start there that in other words take get a foothold any way you can with any of the transcendentals uh and it depends on the individual which one works but you got to be nimble and um and fast on your feet you know like a tennis player able to respond to the ball as it comes there isn't one way to do it but lots of ways please my question to you is when you're coming back to chicago we need you oh uh my name my name is ron persh i'm the father also of six beautiful children with my wife a grandfather of nine chil uh great grandchildren um i'm probably a perfect example of the buffered south i i put on here uh titled judgmentalism if that is i don't have a doctorate but i think that's a word uh my mother uh ingrained in me the saying truth is only truth if it manifests love otherwise it is just fact so i could tell someone jump in the lake if i tell them with love and respect in raising my children i have tried to pass on this wisdom of truth versus fact in light of manifesting love sometimes i encountered uh rebellion of course from from the children or criticized from other families that judge how i'm raising my children as being judgmental like your clothes are too tight or your friends are bad influence or you're too much on social media my question to you is do you encounter a similar challenge of walking on needles when promoting the truth as manifesting love or judgmental promoting an agenda is it okay to use our judgment to promote true love yeah no there's there's a lot there and again i think it's a case by case um sometimes a moral demand gets through to people in a big way and so look at the bible and look at the prophets judgmental come they're constantly pronouncing judgment on israel sometimes that works for people sometimes that really gets through and wakes them up other times all the hackles go up and you have to know the person you're dealing with i people today in our post-modern culture you start pontificating about here's the way you want to behave i find with young people they really oppose that especially in the sexual order they hate our sexual teaching i mean study after study has shown that so i might recommend not beginning there you know with young people now i'm not saying bracketed i'm saying get there get there indeed but you might start in a different way you know so it depends it depends on the you know the psychology of like your own kids a lot better than i do and uh you know you've just got to be creative and nimble when it comes to it use what works there i'd be very pragmatic use what works what brings people to christ it might be you know all kinds of different things um so that's a quick answer to a it's a complex set of things you're asking there thank you please thanks to all the speakers uh for these great reflections my question has to do with two things you've talked a lot about in your ministry bishop aaron which is one the idea of the culture of self-invention and two your suggestion that we should always look for points of contact with the environment culture and one thing i think touches on both of these ideas is the connection between transgenderism which crudely is the idea that a man can transition into being a woman and vice versa and trans substantiation which very crudely is the idea that bread can transition into being a man now yes they both have the word trans in it which sometimes leads me to joke with my friends that they're being very transphobic whenever they give me a hard time for believing in the real presence but apart from that trivial comparison they do seem to have a deeper connection which is the idea that appearance and reality can diverge and one of the reasons i find that comparison helpful is because it touches on another one of your teachings which is that we shouldn't domesticate the strangeness of christianity but rather that we should argue how that very strangeness corresponds to deep intuitions people already have about the nature of reality even if they sometimes follow those intuitions to incorrect conclusions so my question is do you think that this belief in the divergence between appearance and reality which is now such a large part of the culture of self-invention is something evangelists can appeal to when trying to argue for the real presence with the popular culture and if so how can we do that in a way that in your words allows us to accept what we can but resist what we must thank you i'm not sure how i'd respond [Applause] i think i know what you mean by it's such a and you're using a lot of my own material i know there uh which is which is good um [Music] yeah i the the transgender thing though and any suggestion that it's similar to transubstantiation is a non-starter i mean there's a there's a superficial linguistic uh you know connection but and to use that as a means of evangelization i don't think that's going to be a wise move i'll tell you one thing when the california bishops met with pope francis right before covet we had the ad limit a visit and we had three hour conversation with him as we were leaving he said one more thing i want to really emphasize you have to resist the the gender ideology you have to stand to thwart that because it's repugnant to the bible to our anthropology and it's doing a lot of damage so pope francis told us that as the as our marching orders so i certainly wouldn't want to use you know sort of a transgender ideology to to um you know back up the doctrine of transubstantiation the appearance reality the um issue there like with transubstantiation is you're dealing with god who's immaterial and god's capacity is radically other to enter non-competitively into the world of nature you're not dealing with you know a question of of of biological sexuality so that they're just different language games being played there i'd say um so i mean you use what works but i wouldn't recommend using that i don't think as an evangelical strategy you know i mean and then look the church's stance toward people with uh gender dysphoria or those issues there's always one of love and always one of outreach and of deep sympathy and with deep concern and care so it's i never want to give the impression that they're you know we approach that in a sort of flippant way but i think we have to be clear too about the objectivities you know under consideration so again that's a quick answer to all kinds of subtle stuff that you raised there but yeah hi thanks so much um so my question is about effectivity um because it seems like the modern move that's really unfortunate around objective beauty and feeling is not just this movement to make it into the merely subjectively satisfying that's for sure i totally agree with that that's super problematic but to actually sorry yeah okay but to simultaneously shut down effectivity entirely right shut down what i couldn't hear the word affectivity yeah so what i'm thinking here is that you know in the presence of this divinely consummately beautiful objectively beautiful face of christ because of human finitude original sin and concupiscence instead of feeling just love ah wonder trust and devotion to christ in return i also feel fear dread exposure vulnerability and i'm actually afraid of my own feelings of vulnerability so how do we open people up to an expression of affectivity that will open them up to the beauty of the transcendent yeah and i'm not opposed to that at all in fact as you heard in the talk i frequently mentioned dietrich von hildebrand who's the great philosopher of the heart and he felt the tradition tended to overlook that too much and he defined heart as the seed of the emotions and he identifies it we we tend to say when you really fall in love with someone i'm going to give you my heart and he thought that was very important i don't say i'm going to give you my mind oh thank you very much you know there's something about the heart that is so elemental in us and that we do respond to truth goodness and beauty effectively as well so i don't want to shut that down in any way i think we should open up the heart as one of the the organs by which we respond to the transcendentals especially beauty um so no no i think we should open that up and that's part of the genius of catholicism that we have something like a sacred heart devotion we don't have a devotion to the sacred mind you know i mean but to the sacred heart and that's meant to you know awaken my heart too so i i'm with you on that we we should awaken the heart not put it to sleep absolutely so i'm going to intervene here at this point so we have 16 minutes remaining so we have to a hard stop time of 11 45 and we have 10 people still in line for questions so here's what i'd like to ask all of you to do those of you who are currently in line please state your question and also state who you're referring the question to bishop aaron father lupton dr pintado and then sit down and all of you can take notes on what the questions are and then bishop baron and others can respond to them all at one time sure hi i'm asking about uh the rise of stem university degrees the decline of liberal arts degrees and i'm wondering if you think it's because of the rise of relativism and if our students today aren't reading plato joyce lock is that it and are we better off reminding and encouraging the truth of the universality and the truth of maths and sciences such as the golden ratio or the cosmos hi i'm a phd candidate in organizational behavior and human resource management and one thing that's really struck me in my journey and my phd journey is that a lot of our theories are tainted by this idea of self-invention and self-determination in fact one of our leading theories of work motivation is called self-determination theory um so what i started to do is to reject some of those theories in my writing and in my teaching but i'm worried i'm concerned that as i do this i'm going to be left with nothing to teach and nothing to write about so i'm curious what approach can i take do i take uh you know bishop baron you talk about the the steel man and the straw man argument you know do i try to do that um or do i just keep eliminating theories thank you okay go ahead please yes uh thank you bishop aaron panel responders this morning i'm mark kanabe i'm a lutheran pastor i am not a cultural calvinist nor nor a calvinist happy to be here bishop aaron last night you were talking about the uh importance of contemplation and again a little while ago you just mentioned uh you know the importance absolutely of bringing people to the mass now one of my frustrations as a as a lutheran pastor is uh we get we in the mass in the lutheran mass we get the true we get the good but often where's the beauty where's the transcendence and and i'm sure roman catholics don't have this difficulty in the mass but um yeah and just just the power of beauty to to convert to bring people to the faith liturgical apologetics you know as we all know the example of 10th century hagia sophia was responsible for converting mother russia how can we be better attentive today in the mass lutherans catholics to uh inculcating a sense of beauty uh within the mass and then just one more quick comment to our first responder the late richard john newhouse father john newhouse would say any homily or any uh presentation that begins with the words and ratzing or said would be would be well worthwhile so thank you hi bishop aaron uh my name is jim vandalot i just want to thank you for answering my questions and teaching me how to argue i'm just a parishioner and a father of three i love my church and you often talk about this culture of indifference this culture that's afraid to offend and i'm afraid that it's a impermeable that's permeating even at the the parish level that at least what we're experiencing about a year ago um my good friend luis who was here last night and asked you a question um we brought to our attention the the word on fire engage to our parish leadership and um essentially we were still thank you but no and um part of it was the um the come back to mass series and how um in in your in your introduction to that um you mentioned that you know missing mass is a you know a mortal sin and they look at it as well we're not going to attract people like that we're not going to attract people um by by offending them you know and i i i disagree i mean at the end of the day i think it's in the delivery um but i just struggle with a parish she's afraid to talk about abortion afraid to talk about so many of these you know core teachings of the church for fear that we're going to lose people but we're already losing people and and it's because what we're doing is not working and i just would love to hear your feedback on that thank you yeah uh father mark duran i'm on the faculty here in the department of moral theology and so because i'm in the moral theology i will be concerned concerned with with the good obviously and you draw the distinction between the likes and and love and and i think it's uh i think it's coming from the and because moral theology it's the purpose of that is to to uh there were questions about that by deification of the human being and so and so making a human being that he's able to laugh with those who love and cry with those who cry and so it's the problem with uh with the buffered self is the self that is uh that is self contained but is incredibly afraid and fragile so it's like and also that's connected with with young people who are who are in the stage of development of their own self yeah and so it's uh in the in this kind of the situation making oneself to be open to love make it's making oneself to be also vulnerable and that also that shatters the people in lacking on themselves in lacking in lacking on themselves and so because of that the suffering is a double-edged sword which can cause people to lack on themselves because of the experience of their love yeah and also turn them out of themselves as fulton shin said if you have the problem with your teenager send him on the mission to the poor country right and and his and his buffer itself will be will be closed but i would like to ask all of you about your impression about fragility of the buffer itself yeah okay good uh hi linda corey i'm also on faculty here thanks for being here uh bishop baron i'm just wondering um more important than me being a faculty member here i'm a mother of two sons in um high school and i'm always trying to capitalize on the good that's happening right now so i know transgender was mentioned but this there's kind of this opportunity right now where they're in this position where they're confused because they actually believe in the idea you know the whole idea of the the idea of self being separated from the body so they can comprehend right my friend is a boy trapped in a woman's body a girl's body at the same time they say i don't believe in god because you know because science goes against it but they're smart they know that there's a contradiction so i'm wondering if in the middle of this there might be an opportunity to talk to kids that are kind of caught between these two things that contradict themselves i think it'd be helpful yeah that's interesting hello i'm baekwasa i graduated from undergrad um just this past year um this question is directed for dr pindigato as well as bishop baron it has been deeply unsettling to see how young people and my peers myself included have been influenced by the protestant worth ethic and as much as we place our self-worth in our accomplishments and our achievements and i'm wondering what's the alternative to that good morning thank you for all of your wisdom and speaking to us my name is jessica and i am a woman i'm not anything special i'm a convert um of seven years and my history prior to coming to the catholic church i went into a lot of different protestant i explored a lot let's just say and one thing that i learned was that protestants at least in my experience are really really good about forming small groups and journeying with people in a wide variety of ages and times in their life and they all kind of gather together to journey in faith together a little bit better than sometimes catholics do and so my question is because that's such an integral part of the culture of protestant church how can we move in a catholic like how can we incorporate something like that in our catholic faith so that we provide an area that's not an echo chamber for our own thoughts yeah thank you bishop baron i love your materials you have i'm a youth minister and a year ago i got certified nationally certified and actually you signed my certificate my question to you is working with young people with a pandemic or plague what can we do to bring back the nuns bishop baron i'm the father of nine my youngest son 18 years old and back you're super excited to be here with you um my youngest sister also one of nine is also here you know thanks to the grace of god and people like you listening to your podcast has kept us all into faith we have a sister-in-law who's bedridden we're preparing her for death and the only thing she tolerates on her tv is your sermons and your problems anything else she says turn it off now god bless her my question my question for you is actually a prayer request that we prepare her welfare for her death and we do have priests that come in regularly and take care of that with us also for the apollo's family uh there's many of us and we're all spread out and then also this evening my my other son joseph wanted to be here but he's gonna go with two friends who are also all three of them are young dads to go see jordan peterson and he wants to put uh saint jose maria's book the stations of the cross in jordan peterson's hands so he's we're praying for his conversion as well so my question is a prayer request thank you so much god bless you uh i am father machi from society of christ and my question is connected to the topic of truth and beauty and one of the most intriguing description of encounter between scientific rationality and aesthetic and spiritual experience is polish book michael angelo in robin's book written by countess karolina lanskolonska encounters described in this book her experience from concentration camp in robertsburg germany and on the one hand there is an orthopedist a german professor gab hart who comes from sanatorium and performs experimental operation on polish women and on the other side there is imprisoned polish countess who gives them lectures on the history of european culture and she wrote that during the great week on monday thursday i chose leonardo the last supper for the good friday and easter sunday i chose suitable works by and today i can only express the hope that i gave my listeners what i received from them the chance to tear one self away from the moral and physical squadron this entry humiliation surrounding us and return to those values that once constituted my own very special world and so right now when i am thinking about shameful confrontation between scientific reason and faith i am thinking about professor gephardt and countess lanskoloniska however i realized that i was educated trained and formated in catholic institutions to think in that context of shameful encounter between scientific reason and faith automatically about galileo and even one of the most significant polish catholic intellectuals said after john paul ii passed away that his biggest achievement was rehabilitation of galileo father we're short on time could you get to your question please this is my question do you think that we as a catholics have that tendency to demonize the history of ecclesiastical relation to science and angelize the history of science as a pure and immaculate progress and second question about prayer do you think that we should not only pray for next copernicus or amanda but also for catholic foucault or firearm and who will teach us how to explore expose idolatry of science and to ridicule its bright and tyrannic appetites thank you last question please [Music] last night as we were leading right said to someone i felt like i was watching paul talk to the hellenist in uh in acts 5 or 6. today i i felt like i was listening to to to paul speaking to peter in the council of jerusalem my question is as a bishop what what's what must we do together as a catholic church and globally as the christian church that we cannot do a part that we cannot do a part that we must do together the christian churches right yeah i mean is there a message what you did today blew us away you know over the last two days you opened up our minds to think in different ways and for me as i listen to you speak you know we were we were pushing against the boundaries of of the buffer and i thought the veil you know veil in the temple and god never stops pushing back what was what what must we do as a church to pull away the veil so thank you all for those 12 questions uh it's 11 44. we have one minute remaining so maybe we could go five minutes uh over bishop baron if you could give us just five minutes oh gosh touch on those and then maybe father lupton and uh dr pintado any final comments you might have sure two minutes there's so much there obviously and they're so rich the questions one of the questions about the liberal arts you know in many ways this whole paper these 44 pages were sort of um critical on my part in favor of the recovery of the liberal arts over and against this sort of technologized view of of knowledge and that we as a church as the bearers of you know the true the good and the beautiful for their own sake that's the point libero free it's free from utility and every last night you know i i use it as a laugh line on purpose say that i i'm for the most useless things useless things are the best things and the liberal arts are free from utility but see we're in danger of losing that and that's causing real damage to people's souls and so the liberal arts absolutely the recovery that is super important um the the question about the uh i said missing masters of moral sin i wonder if they paid attention to how i explained that in the video which was not legalistically but simply in terms of spiritual physics if we stay away from the worship of god on a regular basis we're doing deadly damage to our souls that's simply true that's not on some legalistic pharisaical remark that's simply the case and that's the point i made if they listen to the video more carefully i don't think they'd see it as legalistic or off-putting i was trying to explain why the church keeps saying we need to worship god we need to worship god and if you don't worship god then you turn inward you turn into the buffer itself and it does mortal damage it's like your doctor will say to you you're eating you know fritos and big macs and never exercising and smoking four packs a day you're in mortal danger he's not being pharisaical he's being honest you know so that's my that's my uh i love the stuff about um suffering and that many have brought up and um absolutely as a way in and and the father mark's remark about the fragility i think is is important too and and when i love another and allow another to love me there is this kind of vulnerability and part of the buffering of the self is that defensiveness no one gets in you know and uh i won't make myself vulnerable to another and that's dangerous stuff because we need to fall in love with god but falling in love with another person is often the vehicle for that so i think that is very important um [Music] jordan peterson i'll say one thing about jordan peterson who i've had a couple dialogues with but isn't it interesting why don't you think about him you think he's crazy and all that fine but isn't it interesting that here's this layman doesn't have a theological degree or background doesn't wear any kind of clerical garb he's not a really compelling speaker like he's not a polished orator but he's thinking out loud about the bible and millions of young people are responding to him you know and i've said to my brother bishops i said i don't care what you think about the guy in his but there's something we should be paying attention to here that this guy is getting tens of thousands coming to his talks and millions online what is it and what he's doing those of us who have studied the bible know exactly what he's doing uncovering what the church fathers called the moral sense of the bible he's doing kind of psychological language but it's the bible as a moral instruction and he's tapped into it in a way that they're responding to so we should learn from that um this is the last comment what can the churches do together you know i love that we have to we should love each other and let people see that i've been in a lot of protestant catholic dialogues over the years and you know we can debate the 16th century until the cows come home we've been doing it for 500 years and and i get in those conversations justification and all that and papal authority but i said to my protestant friends look we got a common enemy now it's much more dangerous this secularized world people that don't believe in god 40 of young people don't go to church and don't claim any religious identity we shouldn't be fighting right now about justification we should be talking about god you know we should be talking about god and about jesus christ and and we should make common ground against the common enemy of secularism so i think that's what the churches can do together you know [Applause] father lupton and dr pentado sure thank you dr barrett in many of the different questions i heard a fair amount of real pastoral concern especially for the disaffiliated and the nuns and just reminds me of an anecdote i learned here as a seminarian sister sarah butler who was a faculty member here for many years one of the things that she mentioned to us in a class where she said if you're struggling with a particular area maybe find a saint who struggled in that same way and not only ask for their intercession but come to know their story and may be able to read a biography or something along those lines so a story to me that very much comes to mind especially think about this affiliate today is augustine's confessions and just reading to that story you see how when augustine reflects later he went away in so many different ways in how god kept on calling him back and as you know the famous story that his mother didn't want him to go to rome and he went just for fame and for a promotion he goes to rome he goes there and there he reads cicero's hortensius and that really led him to the way of wisdom started his conversion so at the moment that he seemed to be most lost he was actually in some ways becoming the most found so i think in some ways that that can be a help for all of us who are concerned about nonsense affiliated to find saint some ways that also struggle in those same ways as an intercessor and a friend in that process and just finally was father mark's question asking about the fragility again thinking about augustine's confessions fascinating how that book begins our hearts are restless and august speaking not just about my heart but the human heart since its inception is made for god and in that way there's many opportunities for it to come to god through many different avenues i'd be very brief i think what's one of the most compelling questions we can pose to young people and old particularly in our culture is what kind of happiness they're pursuing because as i already mentioned particularly the pressure is essentially to seek success and acquire a lot of money and at least older people that have reached that goal that's the moment when they may be thinking about what's missing and the longing that taylor talks about because they have acquired and they have all the possessions they wanted and nevertheless they don't seem to be satisfied i guess that's one of the ways in which we can start and and it can happen already with a 29 year old successful business woman or oh man so the question right there is to say look and i follow aristotle in this no matter how much you have not only is there a problem of never being satisfied but you're constantly in fear of losing those things because there are just material possessions and they may be still yearning for being acknowledged for who they are and not for what they have because again the affirmation of the others based on your success can go away and so i would say you know following that path that's when you can start talking about you know and again like arizona would say it's not that you give them instructions about you know you're going to be more fulfilled when you have more virtues but that by looking and engaging with people who have virtue you start learning how to be friends and how those friends and peterson makes a big deal i think that's the third rule of his 15 rules just make sure you find friends who are going to help you to be good so a reminder our campus bookstore is open if you'd like to buy some books of father bishop aaron and we thank all of our speakers this morning and thank you all for coming [Applause] you

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Length: 170min 20sec (10220 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022