# Modern Christian Martyrdom: The Cost of Standing Firm in Faith – Part 2

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 27 Oct 2026, 26 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75853495/modern_christian_martyrdom_pt_2.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusik,
[0:02] Speaker 1: Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and the
[0:03] Speaker 1: host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you, as always,
[0:06] Speaker 1: for joining us. In this episode, we'll conclude our conversation
[0:09] Speaker 1: with Dr. Todd Warner and Bishop Barron on modern Christian persecution.
[0:24] Speaker 2: So this, I want to quote from this book, What
[0:26] Speaker 2: Do Their Deaths Demand? You write, quote, There exists, and
[0:29] Speaker 2: this is what you just said, there exists a fallen
[0:31] Speaker 2: spiritual force that lies behind the dysfunctional structures of society
[0:35] Speaker 2: and the twisted wills of individual sinners. Jesus will indeed
[0:39] Speaker 2: address both personal and institutional sin, but he knows that
[0:42] Speaker 2: a successful engagement with those more obvious evils is predicated
[0:46] Speaker 2: upon the defeat of the awful, invisible authority that conditions them,
[0:50] Speaker 2: close quote. Now, Bishop, frankly, I'm just being very blunt.
[0:54] Speaker 2: How does a society that is scientistic, materialistic, distracted, incurious, cynical, skeptical.
[1:01] Speaker 2: How did they come to believe what you just wrote?
[1:03] Speaker 3: This is my first observation. I think anyone that's lived
[1:08] Speaker 3: a little while knows I can't explain the depth of
[1:14] Speaker 3: evil that I see simply by appealing to fallen human beings.
[1:19] Speaker 3: I think there's a level of evil that is so deep,
[1:24] Speaker 3: it's so profound that we say, Nah, there's something else
[1:28] Speaker 3: going on. You know, another small book I wrote, Letter
[1:33] Speaker 3: to a Suffering Church, I begin with that observation, that
[1:36] Speaker 3: it was the sex abuse scandal that reaffirmed my belief
[1:41] Speaker 3: in the personality of the devil. Because, and I still
[1:46] Speaker 3: affirm this, the sex abuse scandal was such a masterpiece
[1:51] Speaker 3: of evil. When you think of how that scandal continues,
[1:55] Speaker 3: but undermined the work of the church in every way.
[2:00] Speaker 3: It compromised the church in every way. It was devilishly
[2:06] Speaker 3: clever in its design, you might say. It convinced me
[2:11] Speaker 3: there's more here than bad human actors. Plenty of those around.
[2:15] Speaker 3: I'm not excusing anybody. Plenty of them around. And we
[2:19] Speaker 3: deal with them as best we can. But I don't
[2:22] Speaker 3: think that's enough. Now, that's the first observation. Here's the
[2:25] Speaker 3: second one. If you're a scientist, there's no serious scientist
[2:30] Speaker 3: that can do his work without mathematics, right? It's a
[2:32] Speaker 3: basic thing of physics and chemistry, biology, that there's always
[2:37] Speaker 3: the discovery of the mathematical intelligibility of reality. To say
[2:42] Speaker 3: mathematical intelligibility is to say the invisible, because math deals
[2:48] Speaker 3: not with the particular things. It deals with intelligible patterns.
[2:53] Speaker 3: We call them numbers or equations or relationships or whatever.
[2:57] Speaker 3: David Tracy said that, that the best access to the
[3:01] Speaker 3: invisible today would be the sciences, precisely in their mathematical dimension.
[3:07] Speaker 3: So the thing is, I'm a materialist, right? No, you're not.
[3:11] Speaker 3: We deal with the invisible all the time. We deal
[3:15] Speaker 3: with this, which Aristotle saw and Plato saw too, how
[3:17] Speaker 3: the invisible and the visible are interrelated, right? So there's
[3:22] Speaker 3: a principle. Now keep pressing it. God's made this wildly
[3:27] Speaker 3: variegated world of physical things, right? Think of the variety
[3:31] Speaker 3: of physical reality. We know about numbers and equations and relationships.
[3:36] Speaker 3: We know about the invisible. Isn't it likely, given God's
[3:41] Speaker 3: sort of fecundity and his effervescent creativity, that the invisible
[3:47] Speaker 3: world would also be richly variegated, right? So think now
[3:52] Speaker 3: of Terre de Chardin. What are the odds that between us,
[3:56] Speaker 3: and God, there just yawns this ontological abyss. Isn't it
[4:02] Speaker 3: more likely, and here he agrees with Thomas Aquinas, that
[4:05] Speaker 3: that area is filled, in fact, with, think of like
[4:07] Speaker 3: an ocean full of organisms. Think of our bodies with
[4:11] Speaker 3: the trillions of cells and so on. That that space
[4:14] Speaker 3: between us and the visible world and God is, in fact,
[4:17] Speaker 3: filled with a huge variety of the invisible. Now, take
[4:22] Speaker 3: it for another step. If some of those invisible things
[4:25] Speaker 3: realities are creatures. We call them angels, right? Pure intelligences.
[4:32] Speaker 3: Isn't it likely some are righteous? They've stayed in union
[4:36] Speaker 3: with God. Others have fallen. And that's, of course, the
[4:40] Speaker 3: claim of the great tradition, that there are fallen, invisible,
[4:45] Speaker 3: personal powers. Now, we'll call them the devil. The trouble is,
[4:48] Speaker 3: right away you think, you know, red suit and pointy
[4:51] Speaker 3: horns and all that. No, no, but we're signaling a
[4:55] Speaker 3: very serious level of reality, an invisible but personal and
[5:00] Speaker 3: fallen realm that has malicious intent vis-a-vis our world. Look,
[5:08] Speaker 3: I'm 60-something. I won't tell exactly. I find that completely credible.
[5:13] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[5:14] Speaker 3: I do. If you'd asked me when I was a
[5:16] Speaker 3: young kid, you know, studying philosophy, I'm very skeptical. It's
[5:19] Speaker 3: all symbolic language. No, no, no. Yeah. The more I'm
[5:23] Speaker 3: at it, the longer I'm at it, the more I
[5:25] Speaker 3: find that completely credible. There's this world that we can't
[5:29] Speaker 3: manipulate and control that yet has an impact on our world.
[5:33] Speaker 3: And some of that world, lower than God, higher than us,
[5:38] Speaker 3: some of that world is benevolent toward us. And some
[5:41] Speaker 3: of that world is not. And so those are the
[5:44] Speaker 3: powers that we're dealing with. And we invoke them in
[5:47] Speaker 3: the liturgy all the time. We're always talking about the
[5:49] Speaker 3: angels and we're asking deliverance from you know, temptation and
[5:54] Speaker 3: from evil. So no, no, no. The older I get,
[5:57] Speaker 3: the more credible I find that.
[5:59] Speaker 2: Segment three, what do their deaths demand? In what do
[6:04] Speaker 2: their deaths demand? Bishop Barron writes, quote, when one reads
[6:08] Speaker 2: history with the eyes of faith, he will easily see
[6:11] Speaker 2: that the red dragon seen in Revelation has expressed himself
[6:14] Speaker 2: through thousands of King Herods up and down the last
[6:17] Speaker 2: 20 centuries, all of whom have had the same purpose ever.
[6:20] Speaker 2: the snuffing out of the Christ life in the world.
[6:24] Speaker 2: The struggles against power seen and unseen has been a
[6:26] Speaker 2: mark of the Christian church from the beginning of its history.
[6:30] Speaker 2: So Bishop, in the 21st century, what role does the
[6:34] Speaker 2: Catholic church play in fighting the evils of Satan and
[6:38] Speaker 2: his acolytes? And why does it seem that in our
[6:40] Speaker 2: current state, we're still the underdogs?
[6:44] Speaker 3: Well, you know, look, I'm an Augustinian. In a way,
[6:47] Speaker 3: we're always the underdogs. So Augustine construed the church as
[6:50] Speaker 3: like a little Noah's Ark, and it's bobbing along this
[6:53] Speaker 3: great ocean of a dysfunctional world. I think that's totally credible.
[6:58] Speaker 3: So the church is, I mean, you can point to
[7:01] Speaker 3: certain eras and certain figures where the church seems triumphant.
[7:04] Speaker 3: But no, no, I think until the eschaton, the church
[7:07] Speaker 3: is more like Noah's Ark. It's a place of safety.
[7:10] Speaker 3: It's a haven, you know? where a microcosm of God's
[7:14] Speaker 3: good order is preserved, but it's bouncing upon the very
[7:18] Speaker 3: rough seas of a fallen world. So, no, we're underdogs,
[7:22] Speaker 3: and we have been, you know, from the beginning. That's why,
[7:24] Speaker 3: you know, even today, materialism and secularism are indeed threatening us,
[7:29] Speaker 3: but we've been threatened from the beginning. The waves of
[7:32] Speaker 3: culture have crashed against us. The amazing thing is that
[7:36] Speaker 3: we're still here. The amazing thing is that Noah's Ark
[7:39] Speaker 3: is still bobbing along, you know, Because look, at any
[7:43] Speaker 3: point in the history of the church, smart people did say,
[7:48] Speaker 3: could say, it's done. And go back to the ancient world,
[7:52] Speaker 3: people like Celsus, he's talking to Origen, and these early
[7:56] Speaker 3: dismissive figures. I mean, Christianity, what a hopelessly childish thing.
[8:00] Speaker 3: And then look at key moments in our history when
[8:02] Speaker 3: it looks like we were going under. We're still here.
[8:06] Speaker 3: That's a strange mystery. And our job is to be
[8:10] Speaker 3: a haven, yes. And also a source of resistance. Here
[8:15] Speaker 3: I think of John Paul II, young Karl Wojtyla, right?
[8:19] Speaker 3: Nazis have come in to conquer his country and his
[8:23] Speaker 3: beloved Krakow. And he goes to the underground seminary of
[8:28] Speaker 3: Cardinal Sapieha, he and his friends, some of whom were
[8:32] Speaker 3: killed because they were caught by the Nazis going to
[8:34] Speaker 3: or from the seminary. John Paul survives. And then the
[8:39] Speaker 3: communists come. Yeah. And then he continues in a little
[8:43] Speaker 3: more public way, but still to kind of hunker down.
[8:46] Speaker 3: Think of those kayaking trips with the young people. And
[8:49] Speaker 3: he was forming them in John of the Cross and
[8:52] Speaker 3: Thomas Aquinas and the great Polish literary tradition. That for
[8:56] Speaker 3: a long time, he was on Noah's Ark. He was
[8:59] Speaker 3: preserving something, right? And then to me, that splendid moment
[9:04] Speaker 3: when as Pope, against all expectations, as Pope, he speaks
[9:10] Speaker 3: the great truths of Christianity in the public square dominated
[9:15] Speaker 3: by a communist dictatorship, but he unleashed the power of
[9:19] Speaker 3: the gospel in a way that, this is in our lifetime,
[9:23] Speaker 3: the whole world changed because of that. That's how the
[9:26] Speaker 3: church operates, I think, is it preserves something and then
[9:31] Speaker 3: at key moments it resists evil and it announces this
[9:35] Speaker 3: great truth to the world and then The powers of
[9:38] Speaker 3: darkness have a way of regathering and they'll try again. Like,
[9:43] Speaker 3: you know, in the scene of the gospel when Jesus
[9:45] Speaker 3: confronts Satan and be gone Satan and Satan leaves, but
[9:49] Speaker 3: to return another time, you know, that's emblematic, I think,
[9:53] Speaker 3: of the whole life of the church, right? That we are,
[9:55] Speaker 3: we're battling these powers. We've won the victory in Christ.
[9:58] Speaker 3: And so with confidence, think about, think even like Max
[10:02] Speaker 3: von Kolbe going to his death at Auschwitz. I mean,
[10:05] Speaker 3: talk about someone in the absolute belly of the beast.
[10:08] Speaker 3: But what was he doing as he was still resisting
[10:11] Speaker 3: and he was witnessing to Christ? And where are the Nazis? Well,
[10:15] Speaker 3: they're long gone, thank God. Kolbe's influence, I mean, is
[10:18] Speaker 3: just beginning to to gather steam. That's the way it works,
[10:23] Speaker 3: I think.
[10:24] Speaker 2: The director of your doctoral dissertation, Jesuit scholar Michel Corbin,
[10:28] Speaker 2: once told you, quote, the only legitimate imperialism is that
[10:32] Speaker 2: of the martyrs, close quote. Tell us, what does that mean?
[10:35] Speaker 3: I remember that Michel Corbin is still alive. He's a
[10:38] Speaker 3: great guy. He's a Jesuit priest at the Centre Sauve
[10:41] Speaker 3: in Paris. And he gave seminars when I was a
[10:45] Speaker 3: young doctoral student. And I took a number of seminars.
[10:48] Speaker 3: And I was just really impressed by him. And so
[10:50] Speaker 3: I chose him as my thesis director. And he walked
[10:53] Speaker 3: me through that whole time. Great man. But one of
[10:56] Speaker 3: the debates at the time, this would have been like 1989, 1990, was,
[11:01] Speaker 3: is the church too imperialistic? Is the church imposing itself
[11:06] Speaker 3: in the grandiosity and all that stuff? And somehow that
[11:10] Speaker 3: came up in the seminar. And he used that line,
[11:12] Speaker 3: that the sole imperialisme, the only imperialism, is the imperialism
[11:17] Speaker 3: of the martyrs. And I love it because it catches
[11:21] Speaker 3: that paradox. It really is an imperialism. The martyrs are
[11:25] Speaker 3: witnessing to Christ the King. Yes, he's the King. He's
[11:30] Speaker 3: the kurios, as Paul said. He's the Lord, and he
[11:32] Speaker 3: wants to be Lord of the whole world. And so
[11:34] Speaker 3: go and preach to all nations. There is an imperialism
[11:38] Speaker 3: about Christianity. We're not meant to hide ourselves away, right?
[11:43] Speaker 3: As Karl Barth said, you know, we're not meant to
[11:45] Speaker 3: hide behind Chinese walls. Dead right, you know? No, no,
[11:49] Speaker 3: we go out. I always quote there Barth's counterpart, Paul Tillich,
[11:55] Speaker 3: in his Germany said, mit klingendem Spiel, we go out
[11:57] Speaker 3: with fife and drum.
[11:59] Speaker 2: And that's right.
[12:01] Speaker 3: That's the way the church goes out. So it's an imperialism,
[12:04] Speaker 3: but it's not the imperialism of the world that's backed
[12:07] Speaker 3: up by weapons and by threats and by violence. It's
[12:10] Speaker 3: backed up by the gospel, by love and by forgiveness
[12:14] Speaker 3: and by nonviolence. So he catches that paradox beautifully, the
[12:17] Speaker 3: imperialism of the martyrs. And see, that's why all these
[12:20] Speaker 3: victims of this anti-Christian persecution, they're the martyrs today who
[12:25] Speaker 3: are witnessing, as a martyr means, they're witnessing to this truth.
[12:30] Speaker 2: On that note, do you think that those who are
[12:34] Speaker 2: persecuting Christians recognize that they're almost playing, I don't want
[12:39] Speaker 2: to say they're playing into the Christians' hands, but I mean,
[12:41] Speaker 2: Christians recognize martyrdom. Christians recognize our Lord as the crucified Christ.
[12:47] Speaker 2: Do they realize that in killing Christians for their faith,
[12:52] Speaker 2: in a sense, it's going to lionize those victims in
[12:56] Speaker 2: the eyes of the faith? I'm just curious about, not
[12:59] Speaker 2: that evil is evil and it can be irrational, it
[13:02] Speaker 2: just wants to inflict harm and doesn't consider the consequences.
[13:05] Speaker 2: Maybe that's the answer, but what's your sense about that?
[13:07] Speaker 3: They never seem to get it, do they? The Tertullian principle, right?
[13:10] Speaker 3: That the the blood of the martyrs is the seed
[13:12] Speaker 3: of the church. He saw that a long time ago,
[13:15] Speaker 3: but they were convinced back then, oh, yeah, we'll get
[13:17] Speaker 3: rid of these people. Or I think of the Ugandan
[13:21] Speaker 3: king that killed Charles Luwanga and his friends. I often say,
[13:24] Speaker 3: you know, anyone watching that scene, here's these kids, these
[13:27] Speaker 3: young 20 teenagers and 20-year-olds who are being led out
[13:31] Speaker 3: to Namugongo, this place near the capital, and they were
[13:35] Speaker 3: speared to death or burned to death, right? Anyone watching
[13:38] Speaker 3: that would say, well, Christianity's done, you know. Well, I mean,
[13:43] Speaker 3: where's that king and his successors? No one knows. But
[13:46] Speaker 3: to that site, every year on June the 3rd, come
[13:50] Speaker 3: a million African Christians. They never seem to get it.
[13:55] Speaker 3: They never seem to get the principle that, you know,
[13:57] Speaker 3: the more you kill us, the more.
[13:59] Speaker 2: Guys, guys, yeah.
[14:00] Speaker 3: They don't get it. They don't get it. And that's, again,
[14:02] Speaker 3: you know, the devil, the devil is extremely intelligent. He's
[14:06] Speaker 3: a pure intelligence, as Aquinas would say. fallen, but a
[14:10] Speaker 3: pure intelligence. But in a way, talk to the Exodus
[14:14] Speaker 3: about that too. In a way, there's an opaqueness or
[14:18] Speaker 3: something about the devil. He doesn't get it. He does
[14:21] Speaker 3: the same thing over and over again without seeing this
[14:25] Speaker 3: actually isn't working.
[14:26] Speaker 2: I asked Father Steve this question once. I said, wasn't
[14:29] Speaker 2: the devil aware that in inflicting the passion and the
[14:33] Speaker 2: crucifixion of Christ on he would ultimately be resulting in
[14:38] Speaker 2: his own defeat. And Father Steve said something to the
[14:42] Speaker 2: effect that the devil hates so much that he, I
[14:45] Speaker 2: don't know, but he hates so much that it obscures logic.
[14:48] Speaker 3: No, I think that's right. I think that's right. The
[14:50] Speaker 3: hatred blinds him. So he's massively intelligent. And we all
[14:54] Speaker 3: know what that's like. You can be massively intelligent, but
[14:57] Speaker 3: be so blinded by your hatred. I think that's probably
[14:59] Speaker 3: the correct.
[15:00] Speaker 2: Way to put it. So there's a wonderful story you tell,
[15:04] Speaker 2: but I think it's actually visualized in the Catholicism series,
[15:08] Speaker 2: where Cardinal Francis George is musing from the Vatican balcony
[15:12] Speaker 2: just at the election of Pope Benedict XVI. And he's looking,
[15:15] Speaker 2: surveying the scene of all of the piazza of St.
[15:19] Speaker 2: Peter's Square and so on. And he was asked, in
[15:23] Speaker 2: that pensive moment, what were you thinking? Could you reflect
[15:25] Speaker 2: on that?
[15:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that story. He's standing next to Cardinal Pell,
[15:29] Speaker 3: who was a good friend of his. And the camera
[15:32] Speaker 3: sort of catches them. And right, he had this extremely
[15:35] Speaker 3: pensive expression on his face. And I think the photo
[15:39] Speaker 3: appeared in the Chicago papers. And so a lot of
[15:41] Speaker 3: people began to say, what were you thinking of? So
[15:43] Speaker 3: when he was asked, he said, well, I was gazing
[15:45] Speaker 3: out over toward the Palatine Hill. And from the balcony
[15:49] Speaker 3: of St. Peter's, you could kind of see over in
[15:51] Speaker 3: that direction where the Roman Forum, and that's where the
[15:54] Speaker 3: Imperial Palace was. That's where the emperor lived, the Palatine Hill.
[15:58] Speaker 3: The Circus Maximus was there on the other side. And
[16:01] Speaker 3: the emperor could go and watch the, you know, games.
[16:04] Speaker 3: So the glory of Rome, I mean, the grandeur of
[16:07] Speaker 3: the Roman emperor. And he was looking over there thinking,
[16:11] Speaker 3: where are you? Where's your successor?
[16:14] Speaker 2: Nowhere.
[16:15] Speaker 3: Your whole empire's turned to dust. There's no successor to you,
[16:19] Speaker 3: Julius Caesar or Augustus Caesar or, you know, Marcus Aurelius.
[16:23] Speaker 3: You're all gone. But The successor of Peter is right there,
[16:28] Speaker 3: and he's waving at the crowds and live and well.
[16:32] Speaker 3: And it is a remarkable thing. Even if you are
[16:35] Speaker 3: a total secularist, you don't believe in religion at all,
[16:39] Speaker 3: just that fact is interesting to think about. It really is.
[16:43] Speaker 3: How in the world has this institution survived? It's a
[16:47] Speaker 3: great Roman Empire. Bob Dylan in his song, it's about
[16:53] Speaker 3: the Jews, but All the empires that enslaved them are gone,
[16:57] Speaker 3: Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon. And it's that
[17:00] Speaker 3: idea of they've all come and gone. They've all come
[17:04] Speaker 3: and gone, but we are still weirdly here with all
[17:07] Speaker 3: of our flaws. I'm a bishop of the church. I
[17:11] Speaker 3: know the flaws of church people and my own better
[17:14] Speaker 3: than anybody, but we're weirdly here. And they've tried, God
[17:18] Speaker 3: knows they've tried to knock us out, you know? That's mysterious.
[17:24] Speaker 3: I don't care if you're the most secularist historian, that's
[17:26] Speaker 3: a mysterious thing to think about.
[17:28] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[17:28] Speaker 3: You know?
[17:29] Speaker 2: There's a great Belloq, Hiller Belloq quote, you might recall this,
[17:32] Speaker 2: where he says, the proof of the divinity of the
[17:34] Speaker 2: church is in the fact that with the way it's
[17:38] Speaker 2: run and all its knavish imbecility, it wouldn't have survived
[17:41] Speaker 2: without the Holy Spirit for a fortnight. Yeah.
[17:43] Speaker 3: No, that's exactly right. That's right. So, And so there's
[17:47] Speaker 3: some power.
[17:47] Speaker 2: No offense to the power.
[17:49] Speaker 3: No, I totally get it. There's some power, though, that's
[17:51] Speaker 3: sustaining us despite the persecution.
[17:53] Speaker 2: Yes. I wanted to reach in as we come to
[17:56] Speaker 2: the closing minutes. We thus far have answered a lot
[17:59] Speaker 2: of the how and the why of modern Christian persecution.
[18:02] Speaker 2: The next question is, what are we to do about it?
[18:04] Speaker 2: And you summarize some nice ideas. I just want to
[18:06] Speaker 2: throw six of them quickly to you. Pray for the persecuted.
[18:11] Speaker 3: Nothing great ever happens in the Bible apart from prayer.
[18:14] Speaker 3: It's not decorative. It's not secondary. It is essential. And
[18:18] Speaker 3: so I think anyone that becomes aware of this anti-Christian persecution,
[18:22] Speaker 3: pray on a daily basis for those who are under persecution.
[18:27] Speaker 2: Stay informed.
[18:28] Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's why I wrote the book. I do
[18:30] Speaker 3: think a lot of Christians don't know about it. Many
[18:34] Speaker 3: people have said to me now in the light of
[18:36] Speaker 3: this book, I had no idea. I never heard those stories.
[18:40] Speaker 3: And so find out, and there are a lot of
[18:42] Speaker 3: ways to find out. The internet makes things so easy now.
[18:44] Speaker 3: Go on anti-Christian persecution. You'll find out a ream of information.
[18:49] Speaker 3: So yeah, find out what's going on.
[18:52] Speaker 2: Persuade the government to take action.
[18:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, in the measure that it can. Not that governments
[18:56] Speaker 3: can solve this thing perfectly. They can't. I'm not calling for,
[18:59] Speaker 3: let's just go on a crusade or a war. But
[19:02] Speaker 3: I think there are some things that government can do. And,
[19:05] Speaker 3: you know, encourage your legislators, encourage the president, write to
[19:09] Speaker 3: your representatives and encourage them to take action.
[19:12] Speaker 2: Well, this is a lot of your good work on
[19:14] Speaker 2: the Religious Liberty Commission.
[19:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's one way. We are attentive. This would
[19:20] Speaker 3: be an extreme example of the violation of religious liberty,
[19:25] Speaker 3: but indeed it is. That's what persecution is, is a
[19:28] Speaker 3: violation of that principle. So yeah, we're trying to find
[19:30] Speaker 3: ways to use the legislative power of our country to
[19:35] Speaker 3: fight against this.
[19:36] Speaker 2: Provide aid to the persecuted.
[19:38] Speaker 3: And you can do it through all kinds of channels.
[19:40] Speaker 3: Go online, look up all sorts of organizations that are
[19:44] Speaker 3: rebuilding churches and are providing protection and providing food and
[19:47] Speaker 3: shelter and so on. And you can. So make a donation.
[19:50] Speaker 3: is a good idea.
[19:52] Speaker 2: We covered this a little bit. Respect religious liberty at home.
[19:54] Speaker 2: Any other comments on that? Yeah.
[19:56] Speaker 3: To me, that's interesting because, see, if our religious liberty,
[20:01] Speaker 3: which is a great American principle, First Amendment, you know,
[20:04] Speaker 3: if it's respected, it becomes a beacon to the rest
[20:07] Speaker 3: of the world. If they can say, look, America, the
[20:11] Speaker 3: leading superpower, the dominant nation of the world, they respect
[20:15] Speaker 3: religious liberty. They're going to battle against anti-religious persecution. Trust me,
[20:21] Speaker 3: when people around the world, they look to that, it's
[20:24] Speaker 3: like a beacon of hope. So when we allow it
[20:27] Speaker 3: to slip and we become less attentive to religious liberty here,
[20:32] Speaker 3: that's a bad thing for the rest of the world.
[20:35] Speaker 2: And finally, resist soft religious persecution.
[20:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, and we didn't, that'd be another show we could
[20:41] Speaker 3: talk about, you know, because these extreme examples of people
[20:43] Speaker 3: being killed and churches being burned down and all that.
[20:47] Speaker 3: But there are softer forms of it. And you see
[20:49] Speaker 3: it in forms of wokeism today, you know, when religion
[20:53] Speaker 3: is seen as on the bad side of the binary.
[20:57] Speaker 3: And it's superstitious and it's oppressive and it's disrespectful. And
[21:01] Speaker 3: so let's, in different ways, mock it, limit it, don't
[21:06] Speaker 3: provide conscious protections for it. don't allow Christians to dissent
[21:12] Speaker 3: from certain practices. And that's alive and well in our country.
[21:17] Speaker 3: That's one thing that we were really fighting on the
[21:18] Speaker 3: Religious Liberty Commission.
[21:20] Speaker 2: Two last questions. What can you say, given what you've
[21:24] Speaker 2: advised there, which is great advice, what can you say
[21:27] Speaker 2: to people who fear their prayers or petitions and even
[21:30] Speaker 2: the policies for the persecuted Christians go unanswered or insufficiently answered?
[21:35] Speaker 2: What can you say to those people?
[21:37] Speaker 3: Keep going. Don't give up hope if what you want
[21:42] Speaker 3: doesn't happen immediately. Things happen in God's time and God's way.
[21:46] Speaker 3: But you do what you can. Again, think of Maximilian Kolbe.
[21:49] Speaker 3: At the end of his life, he's at Auschwitz concentration camp.
[21:53] Speaker 3: It's 1942. The Nazis are on the march all over
[21:55] Speaker 3: the world. He must have thought, I've utterly failed. What
[21:59] Speaker 3: a waste of time. On the contrary, he becomes now
[22:04] Speaker 3: this great beacon to the whole world. don't give up.
[22:08] Speaker 3: Do whatever you can.
[22:10] Speaker 2: Finally, Bishop, how would you say the martyrs have informed
[22:13] Speaker 2: your own ministry?
[22:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question because it's probably relatively late
[22:20] Speaker 3: in my writing career and all that that I really
[22:23] Speaker 3: came upon these stories and they had a bigger impact
[22:25] Speaker 3: on me. For much of my time as a writer
[22:27] Speaker 3: and teacher, it wasn't all that central to me. But
[22:32] Speaker 3: as they became clearer in my consciousness. They had a
[22:35] Speaker 3: big impact on me. I think all these things we
[22:39] Speaker 3: talked about, the reality of evil at all levels, physical
[22:43] Speaker 3: and spiritual, but also that imperialism of the martyrs, this
[22:47] Speaker 3: power of the church that's true up and down the ages.
[22:52] Speaker 3: I do tell the story in there, I think in
[22:54] Speaker 3: the very beginning of the book, about this night at
[22:56] Speaker 3: Mundelein Seminary. I'm about 24 years old and second year theologian.
[23:03] Speaker 3: And we had this big banquet, I remember, that night.
[23:06] Speaker 3: And we're all there. And everyone's in a good mood.
[23:09] Speaker 3: And the guest that night was Bishop Alfred Abramovich, who
[23:12] Speaker 3: was actually a great man. He confirmed me when I
[23:14] Speaker 3: was in sixth grade. I still remember it very vividly.
[23:17] Speaker 3: And Alfie, we called him. But Bishop Abramovich was a
[23:20] Speaker 3: friend of Karol Wojtyla. He was a Polish Chicagoan, but
[23:25] Speaker 3: spoke Polish and was in Poland a lot. And he
[23:27] Speaker 3: was smuggling things into the country during the communist period.
[23:30] Speaker 3: So knew Wojtyla very well. Kind of a heroic figure. Well,
[23:34] Speaker 3: that night he was there. We were having our banquet
[23:35] Speaker 3: at a good time. He got up and he gave
[23:38] Speaker 3: his very moving speech. It was right after the death
[23:42] Speaker 3: of Jerzy Papawusko. You know that story? The young Polish priest.
[23:46] Speaker 3: The beginning of the Solidarity time. The communists are still
[23:49] Speaker 3: very much in charge, but inspired by John Paul II.
[23:52] Speaker 3: So the Warsaw We Want God speech was 1979. So
[23:56] Speaker 3: it was only a few years after that. Maybe it
[23:58] Speaker 3: was in 1984. And So Abramowicz told the story of
[24:05] Speaker 3: this heroic young priest who spoke the truth and challenged
[24:11] Speaker 3: the communists and then was killed for his troubles. I mean,
[24:13] Speaker 3: he was brutally put to death. But it sparked this enormous,
[24:18] Speaker 3: you know, spiritual reaction and revival in Poland. Well, he
[24:22] Speaker 3: told the story in very moving ways and the whole
[24:25] Speaker 3: room just went silent, you know. But what struck me
[24:27] Speaker 3: that night was I was 24 years Papa Ushko died.
[24:30] Speaker 3: Maybe he was like 35 or 36. I mean, not
[24:32] Speaker 3: much older than I. And it made everything so much
[24:37] Speaker 3: more real, like what the priesthood can mean. And, you know,
[24:42] Speaker 3: having banquets and being nice to people and all that
[24:44] Speaker 3: is great. But, well, there's the priesthood and its configuration
[24:50] Speaker 3: to Christ. So I remember that story had a big
[24:52] Speaker 3: impact on me when I was a young guy.
[24:55] Speaker 2: Bishop Robert Barron, shepherd, disciple, and champion of persecuted Christians.
[25:00] Speaker 2: Thanks so much for this conversation. It's been a pleasure
[25:02] Speaker 2: talking with you.
[25:03] Speaker 3: God bless you, Todd. Thanks.
[25:05] Speaker 1: That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us
[25:06] Speaker 1: on the Word on Fire show. If you're interested in
[25:08] Speaker 1: learning more about how Word on Fire can help you
[25:10] Speaker 1: grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist, and work
[25:14] Speaker 1: for others and the common good, consider joining the Word
[25:16] Speaker 1: on Fire Institute. Check us out at institute.wordonfire.org. That's institute.wordonfire.org.
[25:23] Speaker 3: And we'll see you next time.

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