Non-Catholic Q&A w/ Bishop Barron (December 2021)

how do you know that map is right well because it worked it got me where i wanted to go you know how do you know that gps system is working properly well every time i use it it gets me where i want to go and so in a way christianity that's kind of lewis's point that it it sheds light it it gets me where i want to go it it uh it works it works as i'm trying to find joy and i'm trying to find direction and happiness this map works that's how i know it's true welcome back to the word on fire show i'm brandon vaught the host and the senior publishing director at word on fire today we're with bishop baron taking questions from non-catholics lots of great questions from protestants atheists skeptics non-catholics from all over the place and bishop baron is here to answer them bishop good to have you and hope you're ready for this uh rapid-fire series of questions yeah i always enjoy these episodes and i love hearing from the non-catholics too just to say what's on your mind and what are questions that naturally well up so i'm always happy to do this before we get there a little update in your life there was some big news coming out of baltimore recently you were there with all your brother bishops for your big semiannual bishops meeting but as a part of that they elected new chairs for several of their committees you previously were the chair of the evangelization and catechesis committee but you were just elected to a new chairmanship tell us about that i was i was elected the chair of the um committee for laity marriage youth and family life covers quite a lot of ground they asked me last summer it's the custom is is your name is surfaced and then i was i was asked would i be willing to run and tell you the truth you know i knew from my previous time as chair of evangelization it's a fair amount of work uh it also means that that ex officio you're on what's called the administrative committee so you're part of the committee that really runs the whole usccb so that means there are four other meetings during the year i have to attend and then you deal with your staffer and and you prepare for your own meetings it's a fair amount of of work so it was some reluctance i said okay i'm willing to run tell me the god's truth i i didn't think i'd be elected and uh so when i was i thought well all right lord i guess you want me to do this and you know i'm excited about it it is a wonderful um focus to have i mean in some ways laity you know you and i have talked a lot about this over the years i i think a still largely unrealized dream of vatican ii is the is the universal call to holiness the role of the laity in the transformation of the world so the committee under archbishop corleone's leadership did a lot on the sort of marriage family side of it i thought maybe i i might focus on on youth and laity um i've been interested of course in young people for a long time and evangelizing them and understanding why they're disaffiliating but also the laity becoming great catholic lawyers and teachers and journalists and politicians and and shaping the laity to christify the world i i think you know that's a very important theme in vatican 2. so i i'm just thinking out loud here a little bit i won't be chair for another year your chair elect for a year and then you take over but that's what i'm thinking about at the moment it reminds me of that lion you often quote bishop from newman i think it was newman about like what did he think about the laity was that would be a funny church without them it'd be a funny church without them yeah all right well let's get into the questions here the first one comes from nick in new york he is asking about how catholics understand the bible here's his question hi bishop baron this is nick from new york calling because i currently go to a protestant evangelical type church with my wife and family and i'm struggling between that agnosticism and returning to the catholic church um you know just struggling with things like sola scriptura that they teach and how they use bible studies to teach hey the bible's true and everywhere to god why because it says so right here um how do i think about this stuff thanks a lot for your help god bless you yeah you're raising a a classic question and it's as you suggest it's a complicated question um you know as i understand the the protestants and and you you get different points of view within the protestant world but sola scriptura would mean that the great kind of universal and and uh infallible source of truth and meaning and religion is is the bible so there's a there's a irreducible primacy to the bible uh i know process friends of mine have taken me on at times for being too simplistic about that you know that that protestants are willing to read other authors etc and it's not just a sort of a crude fundamentalism in regard to the bible but it's a way of saying it has a unique infallibility and primacy that's i think what the more sophisticated protestants would say about sola scriptura now as a catholic i'd say this there's a problem though and the evidence is in this again whatever number you want to choose the shocking variety of protestant churches all of which claim the authority of the bible what that shows you it seems to me is it's never enough simply to say there's the bible and its authority end of the argument but the christians have realized from the beginning that the bible of course has this primacy and yes indeed infallibility but the bible needs to be interpreted and needs to be read in a definitive way and so at certain points in the great tradition the church in its magisterial authority is intervened to say this is the right reading and now a very good example of that would be the conciliar statements go back to something like the council of chelsean right 451 when it determines that in jesus two natures come together divine and human without mixing mingling or confusion in the unity of one person now that's all greek language but it's grounded in the biblical witness but there were a lot of biblical people at the time who are saying very different things think of the aryans think of the semiarians and and think of the orthodox they're all saying different things the council said no this is what it means this is what the bible means so the church has recognized the importance of magisterial authority alongside of the bible as also the work of the holy spirit so the holy spirit certainly breathes throughout the pages of the bible they're inspired we'd say right they're god breathed i think is the term that's you actually find well so the holy spirit we would say as catholics is operative in the great interpretive tradition of the church that we call the magisterial teaching and that both of those are from the holy spirit and both of those enjoy infallibility and so we resist a solar scriptura that would bracket as it were this essentially necessary umpiring role and i've used that image before if a game is going on and that's the tradition in a way is like that right the church is playing the game of christianity and with all of his different players and so on well at times in the game it's confusing like okay is he safe or is he out was that a fair ball or foul ball well you need a living voice of authority on the field to say nope fairball nope foul ball he's out no he's safe well then the game could go on if you eliminate those referees or umpires from the game what you get then is endless squabbling not the playing of the game so i'm giving you the catholic perspective that sola scriptura even i think interpreted in a more generous sophisticated way is in danger of bracketing the essential role played by the interpretive magisterial tradition without which uh the church is going to descend into doctrinal chaos john henry newman saw this very clearly in the 19th century which is why he became a catholic so quick answer to a very complex question that you raise bishop i know some protestants who are maybe considering catholicism that are stuck in this dilemma that nick is as well they think that there's a dichotomy that either you're a solo script or a christian or you have a low view of the bible but i think it's important to add to what you just said all of which is true that even if catholics don't believe that the bible is the sole infallible rule of faith we still have an extremely high view of the scriptures themselves we love the bible nick mentioned bible studies we have bible studies we read from the bible at every mass we love the bible yeah it's the word of god and right the mass uh as many have pointed out in every detail is biblical uh the liturgy of the hours that i pray every day as a priest and as a bishop it's all biblical uh our liturgy is intensely biblical at all levels so right we don't have by any means a low view of the bible all right let's turn to another young man anonymous who is considering becoming a christian and he's asking for a little help here's his question yeah okay hello bishop baron i've never had any religious beliefs but christianity is an attractive worldview and there are good reasons to believe it it seems to me that worldview is essentially a matter of personal preference problem is i don't see any necessary connection between this and truth in other words i see the niceness and the happiness of christianity but not the moral or epistemic ordness of it given that we can't know beyond reasonable doubt that it's true can you tell me why i ought to become a christian thank you yeah another good searching complex question um i'll go back to newman again uh we give a cent to things rarely on the basis of one clinching argument or one syllogistic demonstration so even the language of you know proving beyond a reasonable doubt very rarely in life do we assent to anything because we have that kind of clinching evidence rather it comes from a whole conjuries of um causes argument to be sure but also personal witness hunch intuition uh the friendship with a christian let's say but we take all these elements together and they move the mind to ascent but this is true not just in religion but in almost every area of life that's how the mind comes to ascend so i guess i'd quarrel a little bit with i don't want you to impose an artificial template on this as though i have to find here's the clinching argument that's going to make me say yeah this is true or compare it even to a scientific paradigm let's say you know einstein's theory of relativity which supplanted an older paradigm the newtonian paradigm well why did people end up saying yeah it's true well there's never like oh yeah there it is there's the one argument rather it was a whole series and set of arguments and intuitions and experiments and hunches that led people to say yeah this is a more adequate paradigm for understanding the physical world same is true it seems to me in regard to religion uh what leads you to say yeah christianity is the right religion it's a whole slew of things you know uh now look at the great apologists and that's what they do i think is they bring together this and that and and they they draw the various strands together let me give you just one though just one that i think is especially important about christianity the christian claim that in jesus divinity and humanity meet right indeed in the unity of jesus person divinity and humanity me that corresponds indeed to the deepest longing of the human heart that's expressed in every philosophy every religion all the literature of the world that what human beings want above all is to be united to god in the most intense kind of union well the claim of christianity that this has happened that the word became flesh that god has come among us that we might all become sons and daughters of god in the sun that through the incarnation we can be drawn as as saint peter puts it to be sharers in the divine nature uh i don't know any offer in any religion or philosophy more compelling than that one that that corresponds more profoundly to the longing of my own heart that to me is a very powerful indicator of the truth of christianity now does that settle the argument no if we had a chance to talk i'd give you lots of others lots of other indicators but it's it's akin to asking why do i accept this scientific paradigm it's rarely an argument it's a whole it's a whole vision of life that comes from a variety of sources reminds me of that great c.s lewis line in the weight of glory his famous sermon he says i believe in christianity as i believe the sun has risen not only because i see it but because by it i see everything else that it gives explanatory light to all these other things we already accept like the dignity of the human person or the intelligibility of the world or our hunger for thirst and for justice and righteousness and beauty and truth that christianity explains all those things better than any world view yeah you find the two in the post-liberals i think of like william plaker who said it's like asking how do you know that map is right well because it worked it got me where i wanted to go you know how do you know that gps system is working properly well every time i use it it gets me where i want to go and so in a way christianity that's kind of lewis's point that it it sheds light it it gets me where i want to go it it uh it works it works as i'm trying to find joy and i'm trying to find direction and happiness this map works that's how i know it's true all right let's turn now to another non-catholic randy he's in california your state he is a protestant transitioning to catholicism and is asking about what he can expect along this journey um okay hi my name's randy smith i'm from california my question is this if i'm considering going from protestantism to catholicism what are some doctrinal and practical changes that i should expect and are there any major things i i should consider uh while going through this transition period um these are all good questions aren't they um you know i can say some obvious things one i would say is the sacramental discipline of catholicism now again depending on what denomination you're coming from because some protestant churches are higher liturgically and sacramentally but it's a mark of catholicism that we take the mass as the source and summit of the christian life is the most important expression of what we're about and so weekly attendance at mass we're a liturgical religion so some protestant religion or denominations really aren't high liturgical uh expressions of christianity well we are and so you should expect that uh but the whole sacramental discipline involving uh confession on a regular basis involving the frequent reception of the eucharist involving uh you know the anointing of the sick etc so there's a a sacramental economy about catholicism um doc trying to lead we could point to a number of things maybe the the authority of the pope being you know a key difference um so authority moving out from just my own subjectivity where i'm i'm the supreme religious authority now it's to the pope to the bishops to the great interpretive tradition of the church that's i think a major um change uh you know i wouldn't want to overstate it because there are so many things that we have in common uh you know with with protestant christianity uh we have the bible in common we have great faith in jesus and great love for him you know maybe i'd mention the saints again depending on on what protestant denomination you're coming from but we put a great stress on on the saints their witness uh the fact that there are spiritual friends that we can invoke their aid and help from heaven um so i think those are some things brandon you know better having made that transition yourself what comes to your mind yeah i'd echo all the things you just said i was thinking back to my own conversion to catholicism and for me the biggest shift was just this massive expansion of my horizons i found that catholicism took in all that was good and that i loved about protestantism but it expanded it it added a whole bunch of new things like it's interesting like for you mentioned the subjectivity of my own personal religion or the subjectivity of just me and my bible they're just me and jesus and catholicism affirms all those things that's important to have a personal relationship with jesus to personally read the bible but then it adds to that the whole mystical body of the church and all of the saints and the art and the splendor the liturgy the sacraments so it was it was almost like a big bang moment for me where it's just you're entering this new world where the horizons just explode outward and now it's you're trying to take all of it in so that was most jarring for me yeah that's super helpful that helps me to understand it okay let's go next to a young woman she lives in israel other side of the world she's an evangelical she's asking about the catholic concept of sin here it is okay bye bishop baron i'm a non-denominational christian from israel my question is why does the catholic church consider substance moral isn't austin equally bad but can also be forgiven thank you yeah thanks for that question my my first response is is well no the bible itself you look in the first letter of saint john where he distinguishes between what we call now mortal sins and and venial sins so that's clearly in the bible that some sins i mean all sins are offensive to god all sins diminish our life and all that but some are so disruptive of the divine friendship that they really produce a kind of spiritual death in us and we call those moral sins following the first letter of john and i think that's commonsensical actually i mean we know as we live our lives that we do some things that yeah they're bad they're wrong i shouldn't have done that but i realize they don't rupture my fundamental friendship with the lord but there are things that i can do that do involve a rupturing of that friendship and maybe just compare it to our human relationships um you know the things that we do that might be offensive to a friend that i shouldn't have done that it was a you know maybe it's a white lie or whatever it is but then other things you know if if you you do some acts that that are just so repugnant to that friendship that the friendship breaks uh that a kind of death the friendship has died because of what you did i mean i i think we all know what that's like i don't maybe have to enumerate those things but i think you know what they are and so in a similar way i think with god they're not because god is is you know falling into a snit or god is you know i'm i've had it with you i'm leaving it's it's that i've done some things that have so broken my relationship with god that a sort of spiritual death ensues and i have to seek uh the forgiveness of the lord which is always available that's the flip side of this of course i can commit the greatest sin the most mortal sin imaginable if i come to the lord with a contrite heart i'll be forgiven and that's the possibly good news of of grace um i've i've killed 10 000 people you know saying in in wars or whatever it is i i i'm overwhelmed by guilt i'm i've i've severed my relationship with the lord yeah i come with a contrite heart and seek his forgiveness i'll receive it you know but i think the the distinction that um we make is a biblically based one and also it's based in in common sense all right next up we're going to turn to frankie he is another protestant and he's asking about church unity you know in the last prayer jesus prays before he dies he's asking that all of his followers are one is he and the father are one so frankie's wondering when or if this is ever going to happen here's his question hi bishop baron my name is frankie from grand rapids michigan i am a protestant but have always deeply respected and loved the catholic church as a christian yearning for church unity our catholic protestant split breaks my heart my question is whether you see any realistic movement from either side toward reuniting the church and if not what in our modern era are the major stumbling blocks i think good questions today aren't they they're all searching you know let me speak first as just as a as a person of faith it believes in the grace of god believes that jesus wants us to be united based on that i'm going to say yes i think there's a reasonable hope that we will be united um we got the 10 54 split between east and west which is also heartbreaking indoors to the present day we have the 1517 split which you're quite right is heartbreaking to any christian gosh in my lifetime enormous steps have been taken in regard to both of those so go back to my my parents time i think people wouldn't have imagined that the orthodox roman catholic split could ever be healed my my father and mother i think went back in the 19 whatever 40s would never have dreamed that the protestant catholic split could be healed but look in the meantime we had a second vatican council that put ecumenism right at the heart of the project and look at paul vi embracing his counterpart you know and from constantinople those are unheard of gestures think of in the wake of vatican ii the catholic church's statement on justification from 1999 which made extraordinary i don't say concessions not the right word it acknowledged extraordinary points of contact between the catholic view and the lutheran view if i if i if i remember that wasn't just the catholic statement that was a declaration from catholics together which was even more significant yes yes no no is the problem solved no the problems remain and i've been involved in a lot of catholic protestant arguments and debates over the years and yeah a lot of the 16th century things remain justification by grace through faith the authority of the pope the nature of the church nature of the sacraments i mean all those but i would say in the last what 50 years a lot of progress has been made and just the fact that we're not anathematizing each other we're not automatically condemning each other to to perdition that we are actually in active dialogue with each other those are really positive signs so i'm not giving up uh i think serious differences remain and you know i've insisted with my protestant interlocutors in some cases i think there are real differences here that should not be papered over and we really do take different points of view but i'm not giving up hope i think there are signs of of real hope let's turn next now to south africa uh i think this if i'm pronouncing this correctly the questioner's name is esme but they're asking about the saints and uh why catholics honor them revere them a timeless question we hear a lot but here it is hi bishop baron this is esme from hermanus in south africa i'm a protestant from a calvinist tradition but i'd like to find out more about catholicism especially the role of saints from our tradition perspective they are viewed as idols and a remnant from paganism but i'd like to find out what is their role and why are they not idols yeah thank you for that uh the main reason they're not idols is nothing like worship is offered to them so if we were if we were worshiping the saints uh then they would take on a sort of idolatrous quality and and that would be deeply problematic worship is due to god alone right uh we honor the saints we don't worship them we claim them as spiritual friends but we don't idolize them as though their divinities we recognize them as people who've been brought to a higher level of intimacy with god so a friendship with god that goes beyond this life a friendship with god in heaven and from that place they can um help us they can intercede for us they can express their friendship with us so i you know i i would affirm the reformers including calvin in the measure that they saw certain practices in regard to the saints as quasi-idolatrous maybe people were treating the saints as though they were demigods or something in that measure sure we should we should reform that we should we should get over them but authentic catholic teaching and practice doesn't for a moment think the saints are are divine or or semi-divine they're our friends there are spiritual friends who've reached a higher pitch of intimacy with god and with whom we can enter into i think a powerful friendship i think this morning when i was in my holy hour you know praying my office and various things i prayed the rosary and what do we say in each hail mary but you know pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death well mary is the is the queen of all saints we say right and so what we ask her is we ask other saints too can you intercede for us so we're all approaching god as creatures vis-a-vis our creator we don't for a minute imagine that mary or the saints have become one with the creator i mean they're they're creatures like us friends of god who can help us in the spiritual journey so that's how i articulate the catholic view on saints all right we've got a couple more questions left this one is from david he is a pastor in australia and he's noting that the catholic bible and the bible's most protestants used seem a little different protestants have 66 books catholics have 73 with little bits and pieces of others what's the catholic view of these extra books here's his question uh hi bishop baron my name's david and i'm a pastor from australia my question is can you outline the catholic view of the apocrypha which is often left out of protestant bibles thank you yeah good thank you it's kind of a technical question but an interesting one um you know the biblical canon emerged over a long period of time so texts would float around they'd be preserved they'd be passed on and and then at various points in the tradition they would be gathered they would be canonized if you want well one of those important moments was when the hebrew scriptures were translated into greek and we call that translation the septuagint because it was produced according to legend by 70 translators well at the time of the septuagint when the bible was rendered into greek a number of texts were included now they were not the same as those that eventually became canonized as the official hebrew text these include what are called the apocrypha or the deuterocanonical text maccabees one or two maccabees the book of wisdom the book of sirach there's a few others right so the catholic church has reverenced those as part of the canon of scripture from the time they were included in the septuagint mind you too the septuagint would have been the bible used by referenced by the new testament authors you know who write in greek and they would have known those scriptures this is the gospel writers paul et cetera so the catholic church and also the orthodox churches too i think reverenced the so-called deuterocanonicals the protestant reformers who were very interested in like always getting back to the original getting back to the basics appreciated those as as inspiring texts edifying texts but not belonging to the official canon which they recognized as the official hebrew canon so that's the difference we catholics reverence them as part of the of the infallible inspired attacks of scripture all right well let's close with this one it's phil in new york he is asking about apparent contradictions in the bible like all of these bible questions bishop that's is interesting from a lot of non-catholics that's what they're focusing on here's phil's question hello my name is phil from new york i'd like to ask bishop baron what do we what do we say about these so-called discrepancies in the bible the so-called aaron statements in the bible that puts him to question the inherency of the bible thanks yeah good these are they're all very searching and they all require a semester course to answer them adequately um here's one perspective i've made this distinction before we should distinguish between what the bible teaches and what's in the bible so are there a lot of things in the bible that are if you want culturally along for the ride things that were were floating around in the culture at the time when the biblical texts were written and are in the bible indeed but are not really taught by the bible what i mean there is they don't correspond to the deep themes and trajectories and and uh focuses of the bible and so you know why is that there and that seems pretty weird and that seems like an odd thing to say we have to make that distinction first of all between what's really essentially being taught by the bible and what just happens to be in the bible the other distinction i make is between types of genre so a lot of the so-called discrepancies or contradictions are born of a certain confusion about genre as though the entire bible is just straightforward historical reportage if we take the whole bible that way then we're going to find you know contradictions but if we read it i think with a more nuanced interpretive framework and we say well yeah this text is a poetic text that text is an apocalyptic text that text is more historical that one's a theological meditation that one's a poem that one's a legend you know then we start to see apparent contradictions are born really of trying to read universally what ought to be read more analogically or more uh in a more nuanced manner those are just two quick responses i'll give to that but again we need a whole semester course to deal with it adequately if i could recommend a book to you phil check out my friend trent horn's book titled hard sayings a catholic approach to answering bible difficulties he's got a whole section where he walks through one by one each of these common apparent contradictions showing how the contradictions more apparent than actual so hard was the other one brandon trent but who's the other gun that i just read at your recommendation our bible scholar from um is it atchison who also talks about the the dark passages yeah that's dr matthew ramage that's it yeah and i thought his book was helpful too on the the dark passages in the bible yeah he's got it that's the very title i believe dark passage of the bible reading the bible with benedict the 16th and thomas that's it yeah yeah that sounds very i'll try to include both of those books here in yeah the show notes well listen thanks for all the great questions if you're non-captive and you have some more send them in we'll do another episode like this later on you can send your questions in through askbishopbarren.com that's the website askbishopbarren.com if you have been listening and enjoying this show we ask that you please review it i know we've asked this a few times over the last several months but this really helps get the show up in the rankings and exposed to new listeners so uh maybe you've been listening for years pay it back by taking five seconds and leaving a quick review on your favorite podcasting service well thanks so much for listening and watching and we'll see you next time on the word on fire show [Music] thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video i invite you to share it and to subscribe to my youtube channel

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 168,458

Keywords: catholic, catholicism, bishop barron, catholic questions, questions for catholic, catholic questions and answers, catholic q & a, Catholic view of the apocrypha, contradictions in the bible, questions on catholic faith, role of saints, sola scriptura catholic, sola scriptura, catholic bible, catholic saints, questions on saints, ask a catholic, ask a priest, ask a bishop, ask a catholic priest, ask bishop barron, non catholic questions

Id: ba6zGRcD4lM

Length: 33min 34sec (2014 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 13 2021