# Mind, Meaning, and the Materialist - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 8 Jul 2026, 34 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733588/mind_meaning_and_the_materialists.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: If you are a strict determinist and you don't believe
[0:02] Speaker 1: in free will, you have zero business praising anybody for
[0:07] Speaker 1: moral excellence or blaming anybody for moral wickedness. There isn't
[0:11] Speaker 1: anything like moral wickedness, really, so you have to say
[0:16] Speaker 1: it seems to me you can't condemn Hitler.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vatt,
[0:32] Speaker 2: the host and the senior publishing director at Word on Fire.
[0:35] Speaker 2: Can everything in the world be reduced to adams bumping
[0:39] Speaker 2: against each other and chemical reactions in our brains? Or
[0:43] Speaker 2: is there something more to reality than its material elements. Well,
[0:47] Speaker 2: a new book argues that there is more and that's
[0:50] Speaker 2: what we'll be discussing today with Bishop Baron, who joins
[0:53] Speaker 2: us from Rochester. Bishop, good to see you.
[0:55] Speaker 1: Hey, Brandon. Always enjoy to see you.
[0:58] Speaker 2: I was just with you for the last three days.
[1:00] Speaker 2: I got one last night, but we were in Rochester,
[1:03] Speaker 2: your diocese, there for an extraordinary conference called the New
[1:07] Speaker 2: Resource MoDT Conference, which Word on Fire Academic hosted. Tell
[1:12] Speaker 2: us about that we're launching.
[1:14] Speaker 1: A new journal called the New Racesource. And people that
[1:17] Speaker 1: have followed me know that as you survey the different
[1:20] Speaker 1: theological movements over the past many years. I kind of
[1:23] Speaker 1: tend in this direction of what's called classically the race
[1:26] Speaker 1: source Samal, or the going back to the sources movement.
[1:30] Speaker 1: Think of Delubach, think of Donnie Alou, think of baltasar
[1:33] Speaker 1: think of Ratzinger, think of Voititiwa, all those people from
[1:37] Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century who impacted Vatican two in a
[1:40] Speaker 1: big way. Think of the Catechism of ninety two is
[1:43] Speaker 1: very much influenced by the race source samal, sometimes called
[1:46] Speaker 1: the Nouvelle de logi the new theology. It was new
[1:50] Speaker 1: back in the fifties. You know, well, I think what's
[1:52] Speaker 1: what's needful today is a kind of new resource to mall.
[1:56] Speaker 1: It's a revisiting of that movement, but now in a
[1:58] Speaker 1: fresh waysing particular issues we have today. So we launched
[2:03] Speaker 1: the journal in a lovely way by having a conference
[2:06] Speaker 1: up here with I think some of the very best
[2:08] Speaker 1: people writing today in Catholic theology. We had about a
[2:12] Speaker 1: three or two and a half day conference. I gave
[2:14] Speaker 1: a keynote at the beginning, despite my horse voice from
[2:19] Speaker 1: the trip to Rome, talking about what I mean by
[2:22] Speaker 1: a new resource of all, and then there were just
[2:24] Speaker 1: a whole slew of papers that were really good, and
[2:26] Speaker 1: I was able to take in a lot of it.
[2:28] Speaker 1: I was still trying to run my diocese, but I
[2:30] Speaker 1: was able to get over for a number of the talks,
[2:33] Speaker 1: so it was a great joy.
[2:34] Speaker 2: Big thanks to Jason Payone, the editor of World on Fire,
[2:38] Speaker 2: Academic Rachel and Jason Bollman who helped coordinate it, and
[2:41] Speaker 2: Doug Cummins and our excellent production team helped put it on.
[2:44] Speaker 2: Mary Emily as well helped with the logistics. So big success.
[2:48] Speaker 2: We'll have a lot coming from that conference soon. Videos
[2:51] Speaker 2: of the talks. The talks themselves will be published in
[2:54] Speaker 2: the initial issues of the new Resource Modent Journal, which
[2:57] Speaker 2: will debut in twenty twenty four.
[3:00] Speaker 1: Forward to that.
[3:01] Speaker 2: Well, Today, Bishop, let's wrap up our discussion on Justin
[3:05] Speaker 2: Brierlee's new book, which I'm just a huge fan of.
[3:08] Speaker 2: I encourage people to pick it up. It's called The
[3:09] Speaker 2: Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Why New Atheism grew
[3:14] Speaker 2: old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. Today we're
[3:19] Speaker 2: going to focus on one of the final chapters, titled Mind,
[3:23] Speaker 2: Meaning and the Materialists, which compares two dominant ways that
[3:27] Speaker 2: people view the world today. On the one hand, you
[3:30] Speaker 2: have materialism, which maintains that the natural world is all
[3:34] Speaker 2: that there is and everything can ultimately be explained in
[3:37] Speaker 2: terms of physical stuff, and Christianity, which sees a transcendent
[3:42] Speaker 2: God behind and above our material world and a God
[3:47] Speaker 2: who imbuse it with purpose and meaning. So let's start
[3:50] Speaker 2: with materialism. Brierley claims that materialism is the background assumption
[3:57] Speaker 2: that most people in the West live by today, that
[4:00] Speaker 2: nature is a machine and that we're insignificant cogs within it,
[4:04] Speaker 2: That there's no ultimate value to the choices we make,
[4:07] Speaker 2: that we are simply being herded along by a vast, undirected,
[4:12] Speaker 2: uncarrying universe. Would you agree that this is the default
[4:16] Speaker 2: view among most people today? And either way, what's the
[4:20] Speaker 2: problem with materialism?
[4:22] Speaker 1: Well, first, I think yes, for a lot of young
[4:24] Speaker 1: people it is and I've called it scientism, right, which
[4:28] Speaker 1: is not the view that science is a good thing.
[4:31] Speaker 1: We all hold that scientism is the view that reality
[4:34] Speaker 1: can be reduced to what the sciences can investigate. So,
[4:39] Speaker 1: and I think that's born of the great success of
[4:41] Speaker 1: the sciences. People legitimately say sciences are great. Look what
[4:45] Speaker 1: they've given us the technology, look at their accuracy, how
[4:48] Speaker 1: they predicted things, and how they've helped us with our health.
[4:52] Speaker 1: And so we're so impressed by the sciences that we
[4:55] Speaker 1: take that extra step, which is really an illogical step,
[4:59] Speaker 1: to say, well, therefore that's all there is to reality.
[5:02] Speaker 1: Science has an exhaustive command of reality. So I do
[5:07] Speaker 1: think indeed, it's a default position of a lot of people.
[5:11] Speaker 1: And if the scientists can't talk about it, well then
[5:13] Speaker 1: it's this old nonsense, it's old pre scientific superstition. Right,
[5:17] Speaker 1: So then religion gets swept away, but they often don't
[5:21] Speaker 1: realize you start making that move. It's not just religion
[5:24] Speaker 1: gets swept away. It's almost everything else we hold to
[5:27] Speaker 1: be valuable get swept away. How about ethics. You can't
[5:31] Speaker 1: determine ethics by scientific investigation. How about beauty? What makes
[5:35] Speaker 1: something beautiful? Why do you bother making something beautiful? If
[5:39] Speaker 1: everything just comes down to what the sciences can affirm justice,
[5:44] Speaker 1: questions of justice right and wrong, What makes a city
[5:47] Speaker 1: just or unjust? That can't be determined scientifically. So the
[5:51] Speaker 1: trouble with the scientism is it ends up brushing aside
[5:54] Speaker 1: much of what makes life wonderful. That's the first thing,
[5:57] Speaker 1: by the way, that's wrong with it. The more fundamental
[6:00] Speaker 1: thing is it's a contradictory view. When I was a
[6:04] Speaker 1: young philosophy student, we all read aj Err, who is
[6:08] Speaker 1: the father of what was called logical positivism, best the
[6:12] Speaker 1: view that only things that can be verified empirically are meaningful.
[6:19] Speaker 1: So you make a statement like you know, I'm sitting
[6:22] Speaker 1: here in the Word on Fire studio, Well, that's a
[6:24] Speaker 1: meaningful statement because I can empirically verify it or falsify it,
[6:29] Speaker 1: or there were you know, so many people at our
[6:31] Speaker 1: Word on Fire conference last week. Oh, that's a meaningful
[6:34] Speaker 1: statement because I can verify it empirically. Things like that's
[6:38] Speaker 1: not the right thing to do, or no, I think
[6:41] Speaker 1: that city is unjust, or God said something. Those aren't
[6:46] Speaker 1: so much wrong as meaningless statements for the logical positivists.
[6:50] Speaker 1: They they're just it's like gobbledegook because they can't be
[6:53] Speaker 1: verified empirically. Okay, what's the problem. The problem is where
[6:58] Speaker 1: do you empirically verify it? The principle that only empirically
[7:02] Speaker 1: verifiable things are true. I'll wait for my answer, because
[7:07] Speaker 1: obviously you can't. There's an operational self contradiction in saying
[7:12] Speaker 1: all that can be, all that's meaningful are empirically verifiable statements.
[7:16] Speaker 1: That's not an empirically verifiable statement. And there's a similar
[7:20] Speaker 1: problem Brandon always with forms of radical materialism, because the
[7:26] Speaker 1: very act of making that statement moves you beyond a
[7:31] Speaker 1: purely materialistic view. If I say all realities reducible to
[7:36] Speaker 1: the material, well, I've just made a philosophical statement which
[7:40] Speaker 1: cannot be verified empirically or with reference to the material world.
[7:45] Speaker 1: So in denying there's something beyond the material, I've affirmed
[7:50] Speaker 1: there's something beyond the material. That's the operational contradiction involved
[7:54] Speaker 1: in forms of radical materialism.
[7:57] Speaker 2: A very closely related view to materialism is determinism, sometimes
[8:02] Speaker 2: described as the stepchild of materialism, and a lot of
[8:05] Speaker 2: these new atheist figures that we've been covering in our
[8:08] Speaker 2: discussions were big proponents of determinism. Determinism holds that everything
[8:14] Speaker 2: that is happening in the world is completely determined by previous,
[8:18] Speaker 2: existing causes. So this implies that free will is an illusion,
[8:22] Speaker 2: that we're not really free to think or to act
[8:25] Speaker 2: as we choose. Everything we do or believe is determined
[8:29] Speaker 2: by outside factors. As a Catholic, you obviously reject determinism.
[8:33] Speaker 2: You believe in free will. But why what's troubling about determinism?
[8:39] Speaker 1: Well, a lot of things, you know, And it's born
[8:41] Speaker 1: of a kind of Newtonian version of this materialism. So
[8:46] Speaker 1: some of the Newtonians would have said, you know, take
[8:48] Speaker 1: any object in the universe, give me its position, give
[8:51] Speaker 1: me its speed, you know, give me certain factors. I
[8:54] Speaker 1: will tell you infallibly where that thing's going to be
[8:57] Speaker 1: in ten thousand years. Right. So yeah, within a sort
[9:01] Speaker 1: of materialist Newtonian view of things, determinism seems to hold sway.
[9:07] Speaker 1: One problem, Brandon, is that it's so scientifically dated that
[9:10] Speaker 1: stuff Newton we're talking about eighteenth century. But the quantum
[9:14] Speaker 1: people today read someone like John Polkinghorn, who keeps pressing
[9:18] Speaker 1: this point that the quantum world is much more open
[9:21] Speaker 1: ended world than the one Newton gave us. And even
[9:24] Speaker 1: if you want to look at it just materialistically, the
[9:27] Speaker 1: quantum world leaves so much room for indeterminacy and for
[9:31] Speaker 1: possibility and probability and so on. Seems to like that
[9:35] Speaker 1: open up these cracks into which something like indeterminism or
[9:39] Speaker 1: something like freedom or even God's intervention could be understood.
[9:45] Speaker 1: So in a way, it's bad science. But here's another perspective.
[9:50] Speaker 1: If you are a strict determinist and you don't believe
[9:52] Speaker 1: in free will, you have zero business praising anybody for
[9:57] Speaker 1: moral excellence or blaming anybody for moral wickedness. There isn't
[10:02] Speaker 1: anything like moral wickedness, really, So you have to say
[10:06] Speaker 1: it seems to me you can't condemn Hitler. You can't.
[10:11] Speaker 1: You're a strict determinist. There's no free will. Hitler does
[10:15] Speaker 1: this poor guy that was determined for the time he
[10:17] Speaker 1: was born to act the way he did. You can't
[10:20] Speaker 1: praise mother Teresa. You can't praise any Let's say you're
[10:26] Speaker 1: not even a religious person, but pick a hero of
[10:28] Speaker 1: yours that you really admire. You can't praise that person.
[10:31] Speaker 1: You shouldn't. It's a category error. Well that's just so
[10:35] Speaker 1: deeply counterintuitive, right. Our instinct is that no, of course,
[10:39] Speaker 1: moral praise and blame canon should be assigned. So there's
[10:44] Speaker 1: a there's kind of a I think dated science problem
[10:48] Speaker 1: with it. And then there's this this repugnance we have
[10:52] Speaker 1: to the view that I can't morally blame or morally praise.
[10:57] Speaker 2: In his book, Justin Brierly traces a lot of these
[11:00] Speaker 2: prominent materialists and determinists, a group that overlaps with the
[11:04] Speaker 2: new atheists we've been discussing. But then he shows how
[11:07] Speaker 2: interestingly a lot of high level thinkers have recently changed
[11:11] Speaker 2: course and have abandoned materialism. This includes the psychiatrist Ian Macgilchrist,
[11:18] Speaker 2: the philosopher Thomas Nagel, and the novelist Philip Pullman. Now
[11:22] Speaker 2: none of those men are now religious, but they've each
[11:26] Speaker 2: recognized that materialism fails to account for many facts of
[11:30] Speaker 2: the world. And I want to talk about some of
[11:32] Speaker 2: these facts with you. One of them is consciousness. That
[11:35] Speaker 2: was a big one for a lot of these figures.
[11:37] Speaker 2: Consciousness seemed to be what undercut their materialism. What is
[11:42] Speaker 2: consciousness and why does it present a problem for materialists?
[11:47] Speaker 1: Call it a reflexive self awareness of both inner and
[11:50] Speaker 1: outer states might be a definition of consciousness. We all
[11:53] Speaker 1: experience it right, refer to it very readily, but you
[11:58] Speaker 1: might characterize it that way. But here's the thing brettan about consciousness,
[12:01] Speaker 1: which is, it's very interesting. It's a very old problem.
[12:06] Speaker 1: If all we've got going on in the mind or
[12:08] Speaker 1: just atoms buzzing around, or just states of chemical and
[12:12] Speaker 1: physical states within the brain. Things like judgment. I don't
[12:17] Speaker 1: mean moral judgment so much here, but intellectual judgment can't
[12:21] Speaker 1: be made sense of. When someone makes a judgment, you're
[12:25] Speaker 1: considering a variety of scenarios. You're trying to explain something.
[12:30] Speaker 1: You say, well, here's scenario ab CD. I've considered them,
[12:34] Speaker 1: and now I've made a judgment, a determination that I
[12:37] Speaker 1: think that one is most correct, that one's in line
[12:40] Speaker 1: with reality. There has to be something in your mind
[12:45] Speaker 1: that transcends these merely physical states if you're able to
[12:49] Speaker 1: make a judgment in regard to them. Secondly, there has
[12:54] Speaker 1: to be a freedom in regard to that judgment. If
[12:57] Speaker 1: I'm just determined I have to decide that's the right scenario, well,
[13:01] Speaker 1: then why would I have confidence that I've made a
[13:04] Speaker 1: correct judgment. But if I have a certain freedom these
[13:08] Speaker 1: of these various scenarios, and I say freely, having looked
[13:12] Speaker 1: at the evidence, I say that's the right one. Now
[13:15] Speaker 1: I'm in possession of a real act of consciousness. I've
[13:21] Speaker 1: made a real rational judgment, and I can say this
[13:25] Speaker 1: really is my opinion on the matter. It's hard to
[13:28] Speaker 1: make sense of that move unless we can find some
[13:32] Speaker 1: distance between the merely physical scenarios under consideration and this
[13:40] Speaker 1: one who makes the judgment, you know, this conscious self
[13:45] Speaker 1: that makes the judgment. A quitness wouldn't play it exactly
[13:50] Speaker 1: that way, Aquas would put a great stress on the
[13:53] Speaker 1: mind's capacity for pure intellection. So the mind takes in
[13:58] Speaker 1: the physical world through the sense. You know, these hands
[14:02] Speaker 1: and these eyes, which are just extensions of the body
[14:06] Speaker 1: right out into the world. So it takes in the
[14:08] Speaker 1: data of the senses. But then the mind is capable
[14:12] Speaker 1: of abstracting from sense data what he would call form
[14:19] Speaker 1: or intelligible pattern. So when I say, you know, look
[14:23] Speaker 1: at you, I say, well, Brandon is a human being,
[14:26] Speaker 1: and he has his humanity in common with lots of
[14:29] Speaker 1: other human beings that I could name. What's the mind
[14:32] Speaker 1: done there. It's not simply seeing you or seeing other
[14:36] Speaker 1: human beings. It's abstracted from what Thomas calls the phantasm
[14:40] Speaker 1: that means the kind of the memory of a perception.
[14:45] Speaker 1: It's abstracted from the phantasm an intelligible pattern. Now, the
[14:50] Speaker 1: intelligible pattern cannot be reduced to matter. If it could, well,
[14:56] Speaker 1: then it wouldn't apply to all these different instances. If
[15:00] Speaker 1: I identify you with humanity, well that's all I'm going
[15:02] Speaker 1: to see. You're in the fullness of humanity. What I've
[15:06] Speaker 1: done is I've abstracted from my experience of you and
[15:09] Speaker 1: a variety of others, this pure intelligible pattern that's not material.
[15:17] Speaker 1: I think when I always this strikes me as interesting
[15:19] Speaker 1: because we do it all the time. Is you're moving
[15:21] Speaker 1: through your day and you're reading signs, traffic signs, or
[15:26] Speaker 1: there's something on your computer, or you're well, none of
[15:30] Speaker 1: those letters, all those letters A or L or M
[15:34] Speaker 1: that you see, none of them is in the same
[15:37] Speaker 1: physical configuration. They're all different fonts, we would say, different colors,
[15:41] Speaker 1: different sizes, different styles. Right, the M I might see
[15:45] Speaker 1: on a traffic sign, the M I would see on
[15:48] Speaker 1: my computer screen, the M I would see in the newspaper.
[15:51] Speaker 1: They're all different. But yet, weirdly, because I couldn't read otherwise,
[15:57] Speaker 1: I recognize an intelligible pattern that I call the letter M.
[16:01] Speaker 1: But that pattern is not any of those particular ms.
[16:06] Speaker 1: It's a pure intelligible pattern. The mind is able to
[16:11] Speaker 1: entertain and hold onto those and that says A quitness
[16:15] Speaker 1: is the sign that the mind, at least in those
[16:17] Speaker 1: higher faculties, has an immaterial dimension. It's not reducible to sense,
[16:23] Speaker 1: experience or memory. And so that would be his way
[16:27] Speaker 1: of saying that consciousness in its full ramification indicates the
[16:32] Speaker 1: immateriality of the mind.
[16:35] Speaker 2: You hint that at this a moment ago when talking
[16:38] Speaker 2: about judgment. But we might situate judgment under the more
[16:41] Speaker 2: general category of rationality. And what briarly covers in his
[16:45] Speaker 2: book is the number of former materialists who abandoned materialism
[16:50] Speaker 2: because they could not therefore make sense of rationality. How
[16:55] Speaker 2: we freely come to believe certain things? He gives this
[16:58] Speaker 2: famous quote from C. Lewis C. S. Lewis himself, who
[17:01] Speaker 2: was a materialist and then became a Christian. Later on,
[17:05] Speaker 2: Lewis says, suppose there was no intelligence behind the universe,
[17:09] Speaker 2: no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain
[17:13] Speaker 2: for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when
[17:16] Speaker 2: the atoms inside of my skull happen, for physical or
[17:20] Speaker 2: chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way. This
[17:24] Speaker 2: gives me, as a byproduct, the sensation that I call thought.
[17:29] Speaker 2: But if so, how can I trust my own thinking
[17:32] Speaker 2: to be true. It's like upsetting a milk jug and
[17:36] Speaker 2: hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you
[17:39] Speaker 2: a map of London. But if I can't trust my
[17:42] Speaker 2: own thinking, he says, of course, I can't trust the
[17:45] Speaker 2: arguments that lead to atheism, and therefore I have no
[17:48] Speaker 2: reason to be an atheist or anything else. Unless I
[17:52] Speaker 2: believe in God. I cannot believe in thought, so I
[17:56] Speaker 2: can never use thought or rationality to dis believe in God.
[18:01] Speaker 2: What do you make of that line of reasoning?
[18:03] Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot there, and as you know, there's
[18:05] Speaker 1: a whole literature around that argument that Lewis kind of
[18:09] Speaker 1: sums up a lot that came before him, and in
[18:13] Speaker 1: his typical with his typical verve, you know, he sums
[18:15] Speaker 1: that up. And there's been a lot of debate since then.
[18:19] Speaker 1: Elizabeth Anscomb, the famous Catholic moral philosopher, super smart lady,
[18:24] Speaker 1: went to the Socratic Club when Lewis laid out a
[18:27] Speaker 1: version of that argument, and she took issue with it,
[18:29] Speaker 1: you know. And some say it had a big impact
[18:32] Speaker 1: that Lewis, Others say it really didn't, but she took
[18:36] Speaker 1: issue with it. What would I say, I think there's
[18:39] Speaker 1: something right if by rationality as he's pursuing it, there
[18:43] Speaker 1: you mean these higher timistic moves that I was just referencing.
[18:47] Speaker 1: I'm not sure, because I think the materialist might say
[18:49] Speaker 1: an answer to that, the brain is not just random
[18:52] Speaker 1: firings of Adams, but rather it's this developed organ that
[18:57] Speaker 1: has evolved through the evolutionary demands of time and space
[19:01] Speaker 1: and all that, into being an organ capable of discerning
[19:06] Speaker 1: and responding to the real world now in its higher functions.
[19:11] Speaker 1: I think the Lewis argument holds more water if you
[19:14] Speaker 1: get to the higher forms of rationality that involve real
[19:19] Speaker 1: abstraction and involve the real perception of intelligible patterns. I
[19:23] Speaker 1: think that's much harder to explain through simple recourse to
[19:27] Speaker 1: brain function. There's something qualitatively different going on in the
[19:33] Speaker 1: mind when it does something like make a judgment or
[19:36] Speaker 1: into it an intelligible pattern. I think these higher realms
[19:42] Speaker 1: that Lewis and Vokes I think are are legitimately at play.
[19:46] Speaker 2: Another difficulty for materialism that pops up among these new
[19:50] Speaker 2: thinkers that Brierly covers is beauty right up our alley
[19:53] Speaker 2: here word on fire. Bradley quotes a young Australian man
[19:57] Speaker 2: named Robbie who abandoned his faith in college thanks to
[20:00] Speaker 2: the new Atheists. But then Robbie had a transcendent experience
[20:04] Speaker 2: that he couldn't make sense of. On materialism, he says,
[20:08] Speaker 2: I remember one occasion when I nearly lost my atheism
[20:12] Speaker 2: simply while listening to a Beethoven symphony and watching the
[20:15] Speaker 2: sunrise over Sydney Harbor. I couldn't understand how such an
[20:19] Speaker 2: experience could be explained by a material world. What is
[20:24] Speaker 2: it about beauty that suggests there's something more to this
[20:27] Speaker 2: world than its physical components.
[20:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of people talk about that. Go
[20:33] Speaker 1: back to Dj von Hildebrand that the beautiful within this
[20:37] Speaker 1: world and Plato saw the same thing. The beautiful in
[20:40] Speaker 1: this world opens us up to it triggers an awareness
[20:45] Speaker 1: of the source of beauty. Now, how come we'll keep
[20:48] Speaker 1: it anchored in what we've been talking about, you know,
[20:50] Speaker 1: intelligibility and form and so on, Because what is beauty?
[20:53] Speaker 1: It's not just a sentiment like, oh, that's what a
[20:56] Speaker 1: pretty site that is? Think of a quinness, right, integritas,
[21:00] Speaker 1: So no claritas that when you you see something as one, well,
[21:05] Speaker 1: that's that's a movement of a high rational function to
[21:08] Speaker 1: see something as one as as united consonancia is to
[21:13] Speaker 1: see that the play of parts, how the parts harmoniously
[21:17] Speaker 1: make up a whole. Right. But then maybe most intriguingly,
[21:21] Speaker 1: claritas and we say brightness would be a literal sense
[21:26] Speaker 1: of it. But as all the commentators point out, what
[21:29] Speaker 1: Thomas really means is is the splendor of form. Having
[21:34] Speaker 1: seen the form, and I now see the splendor of
[21:37] Speaker 1: the form, I've seen deeply into the intelligibility of something
[21:43] Speaker 1: in such a way that its splendor becomes apparent to me. Well, see,
[21:47] Speaker 1: those are very high moves of the mind. That's way
[21:51] Speaker 1: beyond like oh, what a pretty picture, or oh that
[21:53] Speaker 1: glittery thing caught my attention. That would be at a
[21:56] Speaker 1: very primitive level of the senses necessary often get your attention.
[22:01] Speaker 1: But then as you meditate upon a beautiful thing, you're
[22:05] Speaker 1: moving into these very high levels of intellection because you
[22:09] Speaker 1: have to be able to see constancia and claritas, both
[22:13] Speaker 1: of which involve perception of a form. And so in
[22:17] Speaker 1: that sense, yeah, it triggers an awareness of this higher world,
[22:24] Speaker 1: the form on display in this particular face or particular
[22:29] Speaker 1: person or particular move in sports, is what a beautiful
[22:35] Speaker 1: golf swing that is, or what a beautiful fast break
[22:37] Speaker 1: that was? What are you noticing but a splendor of form? Well,
[22:42] Speaker 1: that means your mind's been engaged at a very high level. Right,
[22:47] Speaker 1: and then do the whole platonic thing where the splendor
[22:49] Speaker 1: of form here below then leads us to a contemplation
[22:53] Speaker 1: of the light in which all intelligibility appears. Read Lanergan
[22:58] Speaker 1: now on that school. So that makes sense to me.
[23:02] Speaker 1: And it's not just what a pretty scene, I have
[23:05] Speaker 1: nice feelings about it. See, That would be a way
[23:08] Speaker 1: of reducing it to sentimentality. But when you see, as
[23:11] Speaker 1: he mentions, there the sunset or what was the other one,
[23:14] Speaker 1: the Beethoven? Right, that's what's happening, is your consciousness, your intellection,
[23:23] Speaker 1: is being engaged at a very high level.
[23:26] Speaker 2: Well. Finally, Briarlee turns to the topic of meaning. He
[23:30] Speaker 2: tells the story of several atheists who experienced moments of
[23:33] Speaker 2: transcendent meaning, whether it be through love or beauty, and
[23:38] Speaker 2: they couldn't account for these experiences on materialism. One example
[23:42] Speaker 2: he gives is our longtime friend Jennifer Folweiler, who converted
[23:46] Speaker 2: to Catholicism back in two thousand and seven, at the
[23:48] Speaker 2: height of the New atheism. Similar to Dorothy Day, it
[23:52] Speaker 2: was Jennifer's experience of having a child that poked a
[23:55] Speaker 2: hole in her materialism. She recounted, I looked down and
[24:00] Speaker 2: I thought, what is this baby? And I thought, well,
[24:04] Speaker 2: from a purely atheist materialist perspective, he's a collection of
[24:08] Speaker 2: randomly evolved chemical reactions. And I realized, if that's true,
[24:13] Speaker 2: then all the love that I feel for him, it's
[24:15] Speaker 2: nothing more than chemical reactions in my brain. And I
[24:19] Speaker 2: looked down at him, and I realized that's not true.
[24:22] Speaker 2: That's not the truth. Why can't chemical reactions in our
[24:26] Speaker 2: brain fully explain these experiences of deep love or meaning?
[24:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course that's the way the atheist would
[24:33] Speaker 1: want to do it. The materialists would say, it's just
[24:35] Speaker 1: you know, endorphins released by the brain and grounded in
[24:39] Speaker 1: in the push toward you know, reproduction, and so when
[24:43] Speaker 1: a child is born, we get we're flooded with these
[24:45] Speaker 1: endorphins and so on. The only thing Brandon in regard
[24:50] Speaker 1: to those things is to say, it's just not adequate
[24:53] Speaker 1: to the experience. As Dorothy Dave, you know, put it,
[24:56] Speaker 1: I felt a gratitude so great that it didn't correspond
[25:01] Speaker 1: to anything in this world. So it wasn't I just
[25:03] Speaker 1: a good feeling? Was it was a gratitude? And then
[25:08] Speaker 1: she knew there's nothing in the universe that could adequately
[25:12] Speaker 1: receive the gratitude that she felt. So am I grateful
[25:16] Speaker 1: to the evolutionary process, grateful to my body, and grateful
[25:19] Speaker 1: to you know, my husband? Yeah? Sure, sure, but there's
[25:23] Speaker 1: something more in the experience that I'm grateful finally to
[25:29] Speaker 1: the giver of being. And I would say with a
[25:31] Speaker 1: mother or father, you know, in a mitigated way, but
[25:35] Speaker 1: they have given being to something and it triggers a
[25:40] Speaker 1: connection to the giver of being itself, you know, the
[25:44] Speaker 1: Creator God, and the gratitude can only find rest in
[25:49] Speaker 1: relation to that highest giver of being. So I think
[25:53] Speaker 1: that's how that stuff works. It's just the quality of
[25:56] Speaker 1: the experience. It just doesn't fit into a materialistic framework.
[26:00] Speaker 1: Is too big? Is too big for that framework to
[26:02] Speaker 1: fit well?
[26:04] Speaker 2: As we close here, I want to mention another example
[26:09] Speaker 2: of this meaning problem among the atheists. Briarley quotes the
[26:13] Speaker 2: psychologist John Vervaki, who I know, I think you've shared
[26:16] Speaker 2: a dialogue with John before, but it was Verveaki who
[26:20] Speaker 2: coined the term meaning crisis. Verveaki says that this crisis
[26:24] Speaker 2: emerged when people move through life feeling disconnected from each
[26:28] Speaker 2: other and from the world, but especially when they have
[26:31] Speaker 2: a loss of a sense of purpose or a story
[26:34] Speaker 2: that makes sense of who they are. And Vervaki sees
[26:37] Speaker 2: a range of symptoms to this meaning crisis, the rise
[26:41] Speaker 2: in suicide, even notably suicide independent of clinical depression. People
[26:46] Speaker 2: not killing themselves because they're depressed, but for other reasons, depression,
[26:51] Speaker 2: anxiety disorders, the addiction crisis, the opioid crisis. Brierly argues
[26:56] Speaker 2: that this meaning crisis is primarily explained by the materialist
[27:01] Speaker 2: story that's winning the day in most people's minds and hearts.
[27:05] Speaker 2: Would you agree with that assessment.
[27:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, quite right. I come from nothing, I'm going to nothing.
[27:10] Speaker 1: My life has no meaning. I'm just just you know,
[27:13] Speaker 1: Adams bouncing around. And of course it's depressing and it's
[27:18] Speaker 1: repugnant to our deepest spiritual instincts. Now, let's construct, if
[27:21] Speaker 1: you want, metaphysical arguments against that view, which I think
[27:24] Speaker 1: we can, indeed, and we can explore the question of teleology,
[27:30] Speaker 1: and I know materialism wants to eliminate teleology. There's no
[27:33] Speaker 1: such thing as purpose. We're not existing for something. But again,
[27:37] Speaker 1: that's repugnant, brandon to our instincts that we know as
[27:41] Speaker 1: we seek even the simplest thing, we seek it, but
[27:45] Speaker 1: then it exists within a higher context. We seek that
[27:47] Speaker 1: good because of a higher good, and we seek that
[27:50] Speaker 1: one because of even a higher good and a higher good. Everybody,
[27:54] Speaker 1: everybody in the world that seeks any particular good is
[27:58] Speaker 1: in cotly seeking a bonum, the highest good. And now
[28:02] Speaker 1: what is that? What is that? Well, let's be honest
[28:05] Speaker 1: about it. It's it's to be happy, utterly all the
[28:12] Speaker 1: time and in every possible way. It's a desire for
[28:15] Speaker 1: complete peace and satisfaction. Now put that in religious terms,
[28:20] Speaker 1: we are by nature ordered to God. We're ordered to
[28:24] Speaker 1: the summum bonum and every bonum, every good that we
[28:28] Speaker 1: seek from the simplest thing. Are having this conversation now,
[28:32] Speaker 1: I'll have lunch in a few minutes. You know those
[28:35] Speaker 1: goods that I seek, but I can put every one
[28:37] Speaker 1: of them in the context of a higher good and
[28:39] Speaker 1: a higher good and a higher good. You got to
[28:41] Speaker 1: come to the sumum bonum. Finally, and if we're honest
[28:44] Speaker 1: about it, the summum bonum is is God is the
[28:48] Speaker 1: infinite good. That's what I want. I'm not going to
[28:52] Speaker 1: rest till I find it. Now that now, go back
[28:55] Speaker 1: to Augustine and the Bible. You know, only in God
[28:57] Speaker 1: is my soul at rest. That's not just poetry. That's
[29:00] Speaker 1: a very very strictly logical statement about human anthropology. It's
[29:07] Speaker 1: only in God that my soul will be at rest.
[29:09] Speaker 1: It's not gonna be rest by anything in this world.
[29:11] Speaker 1: I know that anyone's lived beyond the age of ten
[29:14] Speaker 1: knows that that nothing in this world satisfies that longing.
[29:18] Speaker 1: So follow it all the way. Don't let the material
[29:22] Speaker 1: is shut down the natural aspiration of the soul outward
[29:26] Speaker 1: toward the zumombonum. You know. That's I think what a
[29:30] Speaker 1: lot of these people are intuiting is that is materialism
[29:33] Speaker 1: shuts them into this little, tiny, narrow space and their
[29:36] Speaker 1: own soul it just wars against that, and I'd say, good,
[29:42] Speaker 1: bring on that fight.
[29:51] Speaker 2: Well, it's time now for our question from one of
[29:53] Speaker 2: our listeners. If you have one for Bishop Baron, you
[29:55] Speaker 2: can record it and send it to us at the
[29:57] Speaker 2: website Askbishop Baron dot com. Today we have one from Michael,
[30:01] Speaker 2: who lives in Georgia. He's asking Bishop about contrition. Here's
[30:05] Speaker 2: his question.
[30:09] Speaker 3: My name is Michael and I'm from Georgia. My question is,
[30:13] Speaker 3: if we suppose feelings are not acts of the will,
[30:17] Speaker 3: what is contrition a feeling or an act of the
[30:20] Speaker 3: will or both or neither?
[30:23] Speaker 1: Yeah? Thanks, it's both. I would say contricio in Latin
[30:26] Speaker 1: means crushing. When you feel contrition, you feel crushed by
[30:33] Speaker 1: the weight of your sin. Does that have an affective dimension? Yeah,
[30:36] Speaker 1: I think it does. I think when we've done something
[30:39] Speaker 1: wrong and we know it, there's a negative feeling associated
[30:42] Speaker 1: with that. But I'd also say it has this more
[30:45] Speaker 1: cognitive dimension. When I know I've done something wrong and
[30:49] Speaker 1: I'm crushed by the shame and the guilt and the
[30:53] Speaker 1: responsibility of that, that's when you bring a confession. I
[30:57] Speaker 1: don't think you have to worry so much about the
[30:59] Speaker 1: feeling side. Feelings come and go, they may not be there.
[31:04] Speaker 1: But the contrician the sense of I'm crushed under the
[31:08] Speaker 1: weight of my moral responsibility. Yeah, bring that to confession,
[31:13] Speaker 1: and that's what you in the act of contrition, right,
[31:16] Speaker 1: which you're kind of obliged in some form to say
[31:19] Speaker 1: in confession. That's what's meant to do. It's meant to
[31:23] Speaker 1: call that explicitly to consciousness that yes, I am under
[31:27] Speaker 1: the weight of my responsibility. So I would say it's both.
[31:32] Speaker 1: It can be both, but I put the weight on
[31:34] Speaker 1: the cognitive dimension.
[31:38] Speaker 2: Well, as we wrap up here, we are excited to
[31:40] Speaker 2: share with you yet another new book from Word on Fire.
[31:43] Speaker 2: This one's really cool and special. It's called Popcorn with
[31:46] Speaker 2: the Pope, A Guide to the Vatican Film List, and
[31:49] Speaker 2: it's by David Paul Baird, Andrew Pettiprin and Michael Ward.
[31:53] Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, which was exactly one hundred years
[31:57] Speaker 2: after the birth of cinema in Paris, a Vatican appointed
[32:01] Speaker 2: commission compiled a list of forty five significant films. It's
[32:05] Speaker 2: come to be known as the Vatican Film List. The
[32:08] Speaker 2: entries range widely from lighthearted favorites like The Wizard of
[32:12] Speaker 2: Oz to challenging art house features such as The Seventh Seal.
[32:17] Speaker 2: This list, which was released under Pope Saint John Paul
[32:20] Speaker 2: the Icond, was an important milestone in the dialogue between
[32:23] Speaker 2: the Church and the wider culture, especially the arts. Yet
[32:27] Speaker 2: for many Catholics and Cinophiles alike, it remains undiscovered or unclear.
[32:32] Speaker 2: What was the list for and why did the commission
[32:34] Speaker 2: choose these particular movies. Well, in this groundbreaking study, the
[32:39] Speaker 2: authors walk through the entire Vatican Film List, and they
[32:43] Speaker 2: show that its aim was not to serve as a
[32:45] Speaker 2: best ever list of films, but rather to guide people
[32:49] Speaker 2: in their appreciation of cinema as an artistic language and
[32:52] Speaker 2: as a bearer of spiritual and moral messages. So pick
[32:56] Speaker 2: up this book again. It's beautifully produced and includes film stills, quotations,
[33:01] Speaker 2: and formed commentary and much more. It's elevated, it's entertaining again.
[33:06] Speaker 2: It's called Popcorn with the Pope. You can find it
[33:08] Speaker 2: at the website Wordonfire dot org slash popcorn. Well, thanks
[33:13] Speaker 2: so much for watching and listening, and we'll see you
[33:15] Speaker 2: next time on the Word on Fire Show.

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