Recapping the Jordan Peterson Dialogue

i like talking to jordan peterson because he's a very serious man and um you know he doesn't let you off the hook i mean that in a good way like he'll really pursue a question and if he finds something puzzling he'll want to know more about it and we talked about pretty deep um themes [Music] welcome back to the word on fire show i'm brandon vott the senior publishing director at word on fire we've shuffled around our titles a little bit but it's good to be here with you we got a great discussion today about bishop aaron's recent conversation with jordan peterson we're going to recap that dialogue we're going to get bishop baron's thoughts about it and we're going to revisit some of the key moments and turning points from their conversation but before we get there bishop baron good to see you i know you said it's kind of hot there in your new santa barbara studio isn't it it's very rare to be hot in the studio normally i'm really cold in here there's no air conditioning in santa barbara that always surprises people because the weather is usually so perfect out here no one needs it but occasionally in the summertime it gets a little warm so for the first time ever i'm a little warm in the studio so if you see me sweating it's not because i'm you're making me nervous you know well before we get to the jordan peterson conversation a couple of word on fire updates here first of all you just returned yesterday from los angeles where you were engaging in a long dialogue i think you said it went almost eight hours nine hours about season two of the hit film series the chosen lots of people have been talking about this raving about it uh what were you there for in particular what did you guys talk about i was there with um dallas jenkins who's the writer and the and the you know producer and the guy behind the chosen and then with two other gentlemen one was a messianic jew so a jewish rabbi but who accepts jesus as the lord and savior and then with a wonderful professor from biola university a protestant scripture scholar and they have been both very involved in the writing of the script so they're really invested in the program they asked me to come on as a catholic voice to assess the series from a catholic standpoint so we went episode by episode season two all eight so i got advanced copies of some of the ones we haven't seen yet and um you know it was an interesting day we covered a lot of ground a lot of different issues and questions and they would look at it from a jewish and evangelical and then i from a catholic perspective you know questions of mary questions of forgiveness and salvation questions of jesus the play of the natures between jesus i mean all of this was grist for the mill but it was it was good it was a good day i'm sure by the time this episode releases those videos will be available so we'll link to them and if not follow bishop aaron on social media i'm sure we'll share them there second update i feel like every time you and i get together bishop we're announcing a new book from word on fire and today we got a new one it is titled after humanity a guide to cs lewis's the abolition of man now a quick word about this book is written by michael ward who is arguably the greatest c.s lewis scholar in the world he wrote the groundbreaking book planet narnia which uncovered this secret code c.s lewis embedded it in the narnia books but he's widely recognized for his scholarship on the work of lewis and this book is the first ever guide to the book that lewis himself described as maybe his favorite book and he lewis said one that was not really discussed by the public called the abolition of man i know you've read this new book and you've read the abolition of man so tell us a little bit about this title yeah real proud of this book i read it in manuscript form several months ago and loved it the abolition of man very short text but i think pivotal and i just wrote a column really on this theme because i think it has great relevance to today when we've so relativized our sense of value and truth uh i don't know any book like michael ward's here that looks almost in a line-by-line way at the abolition of man it also gives a i thought really fascinating historical background and sort of conceptual background to the text it's also got great pictures i love the pictures in the middle of all the key players that were involved in it so anyone that loves lewis get it it's one of the best louis books out there now i think anyone who is interested and who shouldn't be in this theme of objective truth and value will benefit from this book and then uh we're also able to aren't we giving with it brandon if you buy that book you get this little edition of the abolition of man itself it's a very short text and we're publishing it with the same cover right as the michael ward book so it's a great deal get it yeah so go to the website wordonfire.org humanity when you order michael's book as bishop baron said we'll give you for free c.s lewis's book titled the abolition of man so you get the original book plus the new commentary it's a great package together all right let us move now to your recent dialogue with jordan peterson this was the second time the two of you sat down for yet another two hour discussion this one was titled christianity and the modern world it was recorded in march it was published in april on jordan peterson's youtube channel last i checked it has almost 800 000 views and over 10 000 comments so clearly struck a nerve among people and when you read the comments you'll see the wide range of of people who enjoyed this discussion atheists agnostics protestants catholics orthodox like everybody just loved a serious respectful conversation about religion so let's start with your initial impressions what was your takeaway what did you think how did this one go compared to the first one well i loved it it was a great it wasn't back in march it doesn't seem that long ago but i remember being very cold in the studio when i was recording that uh i loved it i thought it was a great conversation we covered a lot of interesting things i like talking to jordan peterson because he's a very serious man and um you know he he doesn't let you off the hook i mean that in a good way like he'll really pursue a question and if he finds something puzzling he'll want to know more about it and we talked about pretty deep um themes so i always enjoy that uh the first conversation was um just before he went through his own kind of sickness and his wife was so sick and i think he was in a in a you know somewhat difficult emotional space in that first interview he seemed you know he's going through a lot he's written a lot about that you can read it in the beginning of his new book the second one to me he seemed kind of more himself and more you know engaged and alert and you know pursuing questions and so you know i just enjoyed spending that time with him we'll get to this here in a moment but i noticed in the second one he seemed to have a more personal and profound analysis of suffering given this immense amount of suffering he and his wife and his family have gone through when he spoke about it you could tell it was so heartfelt and not just abstract not an abstract question yeah quite right quite right okay so about a month ago when we've recapped your dialogue with alex o'connor we went through and played a bunch of short clips and kind of revisited them got your thoughts on them we're going to follow that same pattern here so i've got about eight clips lined up they're each about a minute long so i'll play the clip and then we'll get your thoughts on each one of them good first one is at the nearly at the very beginning when jordan is kind of wondering asking you pondering why people young people are leaving the catholic church so here's his thoughts on that i also think that and this pertains to um something we also talked about discussing which was that the continual drain from the church the catholic church perhaps in particular but perhaps not in the west of young people um and i think part of that is their inability to make intellectual sense of of everything that they're faced with a religious tradition and a scientific tradition especially on the biological front but not only that they don't know where to place these things in their in their view of the world i think that's partly why my lectures because you'd ask about that had become popular because i am trying to do that and what do you think about his analysis of why young people are leaving the church it's backed up by a lot of the research as you and i both know people will identify all sorts of things they think oh that's why young people are leaving but in study after study it's intellectual problems i don't believe the doctrine or to his point religious doctrine is at odds with what the scientists tell me and so that causes a cognitive dissonance so i agree with them i think that's true it's a major block it's a problem for young people so if the scientific mode of thought is the dominant one today we got to find a way at least to reconcile that view of the world with a religious view see scientism is attractive in a way because okay i understand everything through the scientific lens but then they realize in pretty short order you're not going to adjudicate the deepest questions of life that way so we have to open those questions they're properly religious ones but in such a way that it's not at odds with what they know from a scientific viewpoint so i think that is a major challenge today you know it's it's an it's a perennial challenge for the church uh aquinas took the dominant intellectual form of his time aristotelian science and philosophy and then tried to show a compatibility with christian doctrine well the same challenge today you know so i quite agree with him and i think the fact that he's a psychologist so he's trained in if you want a scientific western tradition and he's opening up these religious texts and trying to show at least in his case their psychological meaning great great and and young people see okay well he's a scientist and he thinks these texts have some significance i get it that makes sense to me so in that way you know he's a john the baptist type figure i think for those who are more explicitly religious you mentioned how jordan's opening up these religious texts i checked when i was preparing this episode on his genesis lecture series so he did a bunch of big long stand up lectures on the book of genesis and the first video i think it's two and a half hours maybe three hours long is 9 million views 9 million times people have sat down and watched that and that that leads us here to the second clip where early on in the discussion you two were talking about the bible and jordan emphasized that the bible is a book to be taken seriously not just by believers but by anybody in the western tradition so here's him talking about the bible you hinted at it a bit there by saying well look many many people have looked worked on this for a very very long period of time and in some sense it's a living document right because right because it does have to be the bible just doesn't exist as a book on a shelf it's it's a pattern of meaning within a context and the context has to be taken into account so you say well there's a powerful context for its interpretation it's also a fundamental text in that the bible is implicit in all sorts of other great texts like shakespeare or any anything that's a product of judeo-christian culture that's a deep product is deeply affected by the bible so it's there implicitly whether you like it or not and so it has to be taken seriously i would say even if you don't believe it but then to the degree that you believe the central axioms of western culture you have to wonder how much of what's biblical you do end up believing because of its implicitness yeah you know i think brandon there he's going after as i would too this sort of easy dismissal of the bible on the part of the new atheists so think of you know the sam harris's and christopher hitchens of the world who just in a very cavalier way you know dismiss the bible as as pre-scientific nonsense and bronze age mythology and all these poor things they didn't you know know a molecule from an atom and yet they're they're carrying on well that sort of dismissal is is really destructive first of all it's stupid because as he points out this is the master text of western civilization in many ways and the brightest people up until let's say the scientific era the brightest people in our culture were focused upon it and so if it's just a bunch of old you know wives tales and silly nonsense it that doesn't just doesn't hold it's not tenable but then again the question is all right well how do i read it seriously and hang on to what i know from other sources of knowledge and that's i think for me a legitimately catholic way to do it we don't isolate the bible as though it has no relation to what we know from other disciplines no no it's got to be in dialogue with that at the very least um because we don't bifurcate the mind we don't play the double truth game that you know aquinas fought that in the middle ages against the latin of arrows so that's still a temptation to say oh i'm a scientist but and then i've got this kind of quirky interest in this ancient text no no you've got to read the ancient text in light of what we know from other fields but don't let those other fields so dominate the discussion that we relegate the bible to the um to the margins so i think that's the space that he and i i think peterson i would both agree that's a space we have to move into as we approach the bible all right that takes us to about a half hour into the interview and by this point you have already talked about things like salvation justice the bible and now you're getting into good and evil so you guys of course stay on the surface here of these conversations um but here's where you and peterson had i think your major disagreement throughout the dialogue and i want to spend a little more time on this because i feel like during the discussion you didn't have enough time to unpack your view but here's the fundamental point you argued that people always pursue what they perceive to be the good and that if somebody does something evil it's not because they want to do evil per se but that they think the evil thing they're doing is a good that they're somehow deceived peterson viciously disagreed with that and he brought up the example of cain and abel in genesis so let me play his cain and abel argument and then we'll let you spend some more time talking about this you know cain is resentful he has his reasons his sacrifices were repudiated by god for reasons that aren't made clear in the text which is a great ambiguity because often our sacrifices are repudiated and cain is bitter and no wonder and he has able around to rub his nose in it as well but kane's reaction is i'm going to destroy what god values most and that now you might say well kane is conflicted and ambivalent about that and i believe that but yeah but i don't think he was seeking the good when he killed when he struck down he was he was he was shaking his fist at god yeah indeed he was objectively but he was seeking at least the apparent good for him in his twisted mind he thought that was the good i don't believe it i don't believe it i think you can get to a point where you're so resentful i really believe this that you're so resentful that you will do harm to yourself no but see in a way brandon this is a it to me it's not a controversial issue and i think we're probably talking past each other all i'm relying on there is the famous the mystic adage right that that even the most wicked person is seeking at least the apparent good and that's just because of the structure of the will so i'm not really making a psychological remark here it's a metaphysical remark or it's a remark of philosophical anthropology the will by its very structure seeks the good now objectively speaking it might be very bad what the will is seeking so we're all sinners we know about that cain is a sinner and he's he's seeking something objectively bad namely the the death of his brother but given the structure of the will the will can't choose what it doesn't see as in any way good otherwise it wouldn't be an act of the will so in a way it's i'm making a very minimalistic claim and i think he was taking in a very maximal way as though i was saying well there really can't be evil people no it's just the structure of the will you're always seeking what's at least apparently the good thing so for example in in the kane case um is getting back at god something that cain perceived to be a good yeah it would give him a sense of satisfaction now was he wrong about that of course was that in fact a bad thing to do of course but it was at least the apparent good for him you know so i i'm not making a grandiose sort of philosophical claim here or about you know the nature of good and evil it's simply a claim about the structure of the will now i do think you can draw a certain conclusion from that that's part of the imago dei in us right that we have this image of god in us and it's in especially the mind and the will our great tradition says so even the perverse will is still acting out of that imago because it's it's pursuing at least the apparent good so i'll cling to that i think there is something right in saying i never even hitler even the worst people i never want to relegate to just utter utter darkness because then you're involving yourself in some metaphysical contradictions as though evil has its own substance it it's in some ways a cousin of the question of of of the nature of evil we would say evil is always a provazio bony right it's a privation of the good so the the bad will is never utterly bad because if it were it wouldn't exist and there's no such thing as an utterly bad will in that sense it's it's always seeking at least the apparent good so in a way it's a it's not as grandiose a question is he's making it there it's it's more of a fundamental question but it does speak to a degree to the imago day i'll say that you know and is if you want a ground for hope where cinnabon grace abounds the more uh so doesn't thomas say something like in the end everybody from the greatest thing to the greatest center seeks happiness yeah and right that to your point even those people seeking evil destructive things are are in the end seeking their own happiness and we might raise the counter example of you know somebody who just wants to make themselves miserable they're masochistic or sadistic and they're pursuing unhappiness but then you could say even those people are aiming to find happiness in their unhappiness there's something destructive behavior right there's something attractive no he's perverse yes wrong-headed yes let's try to get him out of it of course but yeah they're seeking what at least appears to them to be the route of happiness even someone who commits suicide what are they seeking but but a a piece beyond the awful struggle that they're in they're trying they're seeking the good in that sense um so i'm just following thomas aquinas there all right this takes us to about the 45 minute mark and from about 45 minutes to an hour and a half you guys had a really good 45 minute discussion about jesus and i think this is what most viewers were waiting for um because peterson his views toward jesus i think have been developing over the last several months you're a catholic bishop it seems like peterson's kind of stuck on the historicity of jesus or his resurrection so the next few questions i want to play have to do with jesus and i want to give you some chance to unpack that so first of all we're going to talk about the cross here's peterson analyzing what he thinks happens on the cross and what the cross represents it's so christ is tortured by betrayal by by by physically and spiritually as well because the best way to torment someone is when is to punish them despite their innocence right yeah so right right or maybe worse than that to punish them because of their virtues that's even better and so that's that's intrinsic in this story as well christ bears up under that he doesn't repudiate god or doesn't repudiate his own essence it's something like that he but then what is the is the example of that is the example of bearing up under that exceptional duress and maintaining a moral stance is that the example that redeems the world is it that if you do that in your own life the world is de facto redeemed yeah you know what does a cross mean um we've been debating that and musing about it for 2000 years it's interesting to me brandon the church has never given a definitive interpretation that the cross of jesus saves us from our sins yeah that's the doctrine of the church now how does that happen well now pick your theory you've got theories from the christus victor theory of the church fathers through the famous atonement theories of anselm to all sorts of other theories that have arisen today uh is there something to this i call it psychodynamic reading of the cross that jordan peterson pursues sure sure is jesus in fact a great moral exemplar on the cross of course thomas aquinas says that you know if you want to see these like five great virtues look to the cross and does that contribute to our redemption salvation sure i would say think here of abelard you know who said the cross is love awakening love so we see in the love displayed on the cross and maybe using peterson's suggestion there that jesus love for the father despite all of these you know obstacles and opposition okay okay there's something to that it seems to me but i'd want to press it further i'm i'm a little wary of cross as moral example because it does seem to me a very modern way to do it and you were right earlier this i put my theologian's head on a bit here but the german philosopher lessing who famously said there's a gulf that yawns between the data of history and then the the absolute certitudes of reason right history's always ambiguous and who really knows and so on and then there's these high truths of reason and there's a gulf between them and so the point there is well the historical jesus and and you know what really happened who knows it's also murky and obscure but yet we want to make these sort of high definitive claims and how do you get past lessing's gulf that becomes a major preoccupation of modern theology i won't bore you but i think i think hegel and everybody else are trying to deal with lessing's gulf well one way to do that is uh khan's way and i've always felt that peterson is somewhat kanti in his approach kant would say they're historical jesus i mean who knows who knows what was going on back then but we have these great stories in the gospels that present to us the archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to god so this story of jesus who preaches and heals and is upright in every possible way and yes even goes to his death despite opposition because of his faithfulness to god what you see according to khan is there it is the archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to god and i look at that archetype saying hey i should be like that too right and that's how jesus saves well i mean okay but it's such a reductive approach and you know i say a plague on blessings gulf i mean i never i don't buy that and christianity is is unavoidably historical religion we're not just making abstract moral and philosophical claims it's in this jesus that we find the incarnation of the son of god it's in this jesus who really died and really rose from the dead that we find our salvation this jesus who founds a church which endures to the present day we can look around and see the extension of the mystical body through space and time my point is i'm not interested in blessings golf i don't think we have to deal with blessings gulf i think christianity is grounded credibly in historical realities that do yield to us these enduring truths now that's a long way of saying i i as i listen to jordan peterson i heard very much a kind of a kantian uh account of the cross and i'd want to say okay as far as it goes but we got to go a lot further well if you're just joining us we're talking with bishop baron about his recent two-hour long discussion with jordan peterson it was the second conversation the two men have shared we're going through it and analyzing some of the key moments and pivotal points throughout the discussion we've got a few more clips left here bishop sticking on the theme of jesus peterson next turn to the topic of christ and the eucharist which he describes as the great adventure that's not being given to young people i think i can't remember if i have it in the clip or not but at one point you kind of interjected and said i wish you would preach to our people about the eucharist and the power of the eucharist let me play that clip here yeah so now in orthodox christianity as i understand it there seems to me to be more emphasis on the idea that it's each human's obligation to become like christ that's the goal well that's that's that by definition we could say and we could speak psychologically about this as well that means to become the ideal the ideal that's beyond rationality even that's what you're aiming at that's what's hypothetically within your grasp for and it seems to me as well that that's what the mass symbolizes is that and i'd be happy to have it any objections to this i would be happy to hear the the incorporation of the host is the is the embodiment it's the incarnation of christ within that's what it's acting out that's the idea i mean in some sense it's it's the consumption of the saving element but the saving element is actually a mode of being and this isn't hit home it's like look what the church the church demands everything of you yeah absolutely everything and then the reason that that people are leaving is because that adventure isn't being put before them it's like look you can have your cars and your money and all of that but that's nothing compared to the adventure that you could be going on what do you think about jordan peterson the preacher there yeah and you know the two sections you're right what he was saying about the eucharist i would say is largely right i would refine the language a bit and it's again maybe tending in a more psychologizing direction but if you listen to him there and it was interesting for me to listen to him again it's pretty good he's pretty close to i'd say a healthy catholic objectivism about the eucharist but his real point i think is is the moral one and the spiritual one about the full implication if you say amen when when the priest says to you the body of christ and you ingest you eat and drink the body and blood of jesus you're not playing around there that's a very serious move because your internalizing spiritually psychologically even physically the the incarnate son of god and that means you are yes indeed being drawn into his power i would say grace and then the cooperation with grace and what he's saying there i think quite correctly is boy have we underplayed the proper demand of this we've not held out to our young people this high adventure moral and spiritual adventure of conformity with christ if a young kid just blandly says you know amen and puts the eucharist in his mouth and goes back and then starts daydreaming you're not beginning to sense the power of what you've done and yeah we're at fault i would say we we church men and women are at fault in not calling our young people too much higher ideals so i i like them there and see the thing is the fact that it's jordan peterson saying that who more than probably anyone in our culture right now is in fact calling younger people to a higher intellectual and moral adventure that's how i'd see his attractiveness so that's why you know this brandon a few years ago when i got up in front of all my brother bishops and i just said the peterson phenomenon is a sign of hope and that's what i meant was this serious man talking in a serious way about i call them psychological and spiritual manners and talking about the bible is attracting a giant audience of young people especially men i mean come on we're nowhere in that ballpark so i took it as a sign of hope that we can and should talk about our issues in a high serious way but you know that's look my generation we got the dumb down and namby pamby version of it and we were so convinced somehow that kids weren't up to it trust me i mean that's what i took in as a young man was a you know religion obviously they can't handle anything that's serious and if we get serious they're going to run away oh contraire right i think i think just the country what they ran away from was this wimpy namby-pamby religion of course they do because they grew up talk to people my generation i got the grace of discovering thomas aquinas when i was a kid that was a sheer grace that led me down a more serious path talked to my my colleagues though my age you know they were met with the banners and balloons and so they of course they ran away what peterson is saying there i think quite rightly is no the contrary give young people a high intellectual and moral challenge and they'll respond to it we got a couple more clips to go i mentioned we were on a whole kick around jesus so we talked about jesus on the cross then just now jesus in the eucharist this next one is the resurrection of jesus and again you see jordan grappling with on the one hand the psychological reading of the resurrection but then on the other hand the question of its historical reality did it really happen um so here's jordan but then there's the insistence on in the church of the bodily resurrection which is well let's call that a stumbling block to modern belief no no doubt about that that's something more than mere metaphor and so you might ask well why is it insisted upon why isn't the proposition that you you have a transcendent moral obligation to bear to to to operate for the good of all things regardless of your suffering a hard line no justification with the defeat of death necessitated i'm not trying to make a fundamental critique of the idea of the resurrection because i know there are things that i don't know i i know that for sure and god only knows how the world is fundamentally structured but but it seems and this is a nietzschean criticism in some sense tuna freudian criticism it's that seems in in some real sense too good to be true yeah so and and so what do you make of the what do you make of the resurrection how do you conceptualize it even as it's related in the gospels yeah i forget what i said to him that day but i i like the honesty of the question a lot and um even that acknowledgement of it's too good to be true there's a lot in that there's a lot in that because you know brandon this resurrection the bodily resurrection has been a stumbling block from the beginning it's not as though all those you know pre-scientific people they believed any old nonsense i mean that's for the birds you see it in the gospels themselves as they they're struggling to understand what it is they're they're seeing and taking in um there are all kinds of models for understanding what happened to someone after he or she died in jesus time and they were they were trying to to fit this novelty into those and they were the categories were breaking and so on my point is his struggle in the year 2021 is was their struggle in the year 30 you know so i don't want to domesticate the resurrection and say okay we'll explain it symbolically or psychologically or archetypally yeah we can do all that and there's something to it but gosh it makes the resurrection too easy it's it's meant to be something that is is uh challenging now why why because god is doing something in the resurrection namely he's remaking his creation uh the body matters and that's a jewish perspective see we're still very haunted by by plato it seems to me that the serious stuff is going on at the you know ideational level and the formal level and the abstract philosophical and then there's the body you know and i think it's plato i think it's a gnostic uh holdover but christianity is a jewish movement you know and the body that's me i i'm my body i'm not i'm a soul that's floating above or inside my body so the bodily resurrection of jesus means god is doing something new in fact that's as they mused on it a new heavens and a new earth are emerging that the fallen world is being remade and lifted up to a new place and those are some of the implications of the belief in the bodily resurrection is it um weird and strange hard to believe yeah i'm with kierkegaard who famously said the point of theology is to make doctrine hard to believe you know because it runs against every instinct we have from liberalism which is no no let's try to make it as credible as possible yeah but the trouble is you make it as credible as possible then you lock it into our little framework of understanding where the power of the bible is this sort of breaking of the old category something new and fresh has happened and so make it hard to believe you know so those great scenes in the gospels where they they see him they worshipped and they doubted you know their the gospels they're trying to communicate to us they were trying to figure out what in the world is this you know okay because god is making a new world in in jesus something new has broken in and so i i don't want to relegate the bodiliness of the resurrection to some kind of pre-scientific or primitive way of talking no no i say a plague on gnosticism i i'm for um a robustly biblical view of it you know i think one thing i might have said to jordan peterson was um take the archetypal language of jung which you know he loves and i love too i love jung and and yes indeed the archetype of you know death and resurrection and so on okay but what would it look like if an archetype came true that an archetype left the realm of just you know ideation and took flesh and indeed saint john will say the word became flesh and dwelt among us the word the the pattern the logos of god would archetypal psychology give us access in a way to the great logos of the world okay but what if the logos became flesh and dwelt among us now we're talking see now we're into the world of christianity so you know i get this is brandon attention as old as christianity itself call it if you want between liberalism conservatism or between relevance and distinctiveness or whatever term you want to use but to make the faith intellectually accessible but to keep the faith uh fascinating you know and that's the tension that liberal will always tend to let's try to make it understandable the other side would tend to say let's know let's keep it distinctive if it's so distinctive it becomes peculiar and irrational but if it's so accessible it becomes domesticated and boring and so the great theologians i think are are walking that ground so that's where i would maybe invite jordan peterson to keep walking that ground between total domestication and and irrationality well let's play one last clip this is from the very end of your discussion i think it starts at like the one hour 48 minute mark and they're kind of some cursory send-off words but i think they're really important it was a really important exchange that's where you and him were talking about his wife and jordan revealed that his wife tammy during her time of great suffering began praying the rosary uh religiously for lack of a better word and she fell in love with the ritual dynamic of that prayer and you gave him a little advice but i want to unpack that a little more because again it kind of happened at the end of the discussion and you didn't get a chance to say anything about it so i want to give you a chance here so let's play the clip tell your wife's name is tammy right yes tell her you know we did just came out with it it's on youtube a series of reflections i did on the rosary and i know with her interest in the rosary that she just go on youtube and check it out she might find that interesting yeah it's too bad we didn't have a chance to talk to that a little about that because yeah but just tell her that because i i love the rosary too it's a great prayer and it it works at so many different levels you can look at it psychologically and even physically you know what that does to you so have a look at those maybe and uh you know give her my best and i remember we were in rome right after you and i spoke the first time our team was in rome doing some filming and i think we i forget whom we sent it to someone in your office but we did a little video and i knew that your wife was very sick at the time i didn't know that you were on the verge of your issues you know but i just said we said mass in my room there in in rome which is the hotel room and said it for your wife so we sent that to you so let her know that we have been for a long time praying for the two of you well that's much appreciated and certainly all the care that people have shown including the care that you've shown has been extraordinarily helpful and she's listening to you on a regular basis and she certainly found the practice of the rosie tammy is quite a physical person and so she's it's practice for her rather than an intellectual endeavor not that she's incapable of intellectual endeavor but she's an adept practitioner so she's she does as well yoga in your hand matters you know it's a very physical thing yes well it was it was it was it was it didn't it helped her maintain peace while she was facing death essentially continually and and so the the that's the ritual element which we never talked about at all partly i suppose because you know we tend towards the abstract and the intellectual but the ritual next time the ritual shouldn't be yes exactly the ritual shouldn't be uh dismissed no i'm a catholic heck rituals are wholesome would you want to say a word about peterson's observation about the ritual power of the rosary sure he's right you know and uh maybe next time we can talk about it more the rosary you know works as i've said there at so many different levels and um from the physical i mean holding the the rosary and the beads you're breathing as you as you pray it um i find that just holding the rosary brings a sense of peace to me um and then the psychological dimension you know the the mantra-like repetition of the prayers the calming of the mind and so on but then the deepest thing and you know if we really had time to talk about it mary will always lead you to christ and so if jordan's wife has been drawn to the rosary um i i'll speak sort of as a spiritual director in a way it's only a matter of time before she's brought to christ because that's what mary always does so if you engage her in prayer you you ask her intercession that's what's going to happen you know you can ask for all kinds of particular things and and you may or may not get them that's always up to god but i can guarantee you that you'll be led closer to christ so you know uh i i wish her the very best as she continues along that path well it's time now for our question from our listener every episode we take one question from our listeners if you have one that you'd like to ask bishop barron send it in to us at the website ask bishopbarron.com today we have one from mary she lives in california where bishop baron is she's asking why catholics put the emphasis on the suffering and crucified christ instead of the resurrected christ here's your question hi my name is mary from campbell california and my question is how can i answer my protestant friend who claims catholics focus too much on suffering and jesus on the cross and not enough on his resurrection yeah it's a classic question and there's obviously always a play between the dying and the rising of jesus if jesus simply died on the cross that was the end of the story he'd be of very little interest to anybody so obviously we look at jesus crucified only because we know he's the risen lord that that cross led to the resurrection so first of all just make that point real clearly um why do we show jesus crucify jesus in his suffering i'll give you one little hint we did a series of videos on the rosary and we talked about the various mysteries you know the joyful mysteries and the luminous mysteries and the glorious mysteries what by far has the most views the sorrowful mysteries so look in this life in this world you know something we all have in common we all suffer and yes our great hope is for resurrection in the risen christ but i i don't find it at all puzzling that i think it's the piety of the people it wasn't so much a doctrinal imposition from above i would say that's the piety of catholic people over centuries that has put his stress on the suffering of jesus because we all have that in common in this valley of tears right we all suffer and so we naturally gravitate toward christ in his sufferings so i would see it less as a doctrinal imposition as more something that i think welled up very naturally from the piety of the people well thanks for that question mary and before we go here a couple of final updates one of them is to remind you to pick up your copy of our new book it's titled after humanity a guide to cs lewis's the abolition of man arguably c.s lewis's most important and prophetic non-fiction book the abolition of man and until now there has not been a good guide or commentary to that book but michael ward has written one for word on fire so pick it up when you order it you will also get a free copy of c.s lewis book the abolition of man so you get both books together also a little teaser i don't think we've shared this publicly yet but in one month on july 29th we're going to be releasing a book at word on fire titled jordan peterson god and christianity the search for a meaningful life it's the first book that analyzes all of peterson's work including his biblical lectures both of his best-selling books from a christian perspective it was co-authored by two professors uh dr chris kaser and dr matthew petruck one of them specializes in philosophy the other is a theologian so you get some good christian catholic perspectives on peterson's work i'm sure we'll be talking about that book as it comes out but given we are talking about peterson here i wanted to give you guys the the first chance to hear about that book well thanks so much for listening and watching we'll see you next time on the word on fire show thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video i invite you to share it and to subscribe to my youtube channel you

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 72,787

Rating: 4.8759122 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: MAexOYDBL7s

Length: 45min 47sec (2747 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021