# Scapegoating in the Digital World - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 13 Jul 2026, 33 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733580/scapegoating_in_the_digital_world.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Look, everybody, Look how divided we are. Wouldn't it be
[0:03] Speaker 1: better for one, as tragic as that might be, for
[0:06] Speaker 1: one to die rather than we all be destroyed. That's
[0:09] Speaker 1: the old logic. What does the Gospel do is it
[0:12] Speaker 1: fractures that logic because God is not approving of scapegoating violence.
[0:17] Speaker 1: God is identifying with the victim of scapegoating violence. And
[0:22] Speaker 1: thereby this is Jarrar pulls back the veil on this
[0:26] Speaker 1: whole demonic process.
[0:37] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vat,
[0:41] Speaker 2: the host and the senior publishing director at Word on Fire.
[0:44] Speaker 2: Why are so many of us tempted to scapegoat people,
[0:48] Speaker 2: especially online? And how do we escape this trap? That's
[0:52] Speaker 2: what we'll be discussing today with Bishop Robert Baron, who
[0:54] Speaker 2: joins us from our new studio in Rochester, Minnesota. Bishop,
[0:58] Speaker 2: good to be with you as always.
[1:00] Speaker 1: Hey, Brandon, good to see you, and wondering is the
[1:02] Speaker 1: hurricane heading your way down there in Florida.
[1:05] Speaker 2: Oh, it's been a terrible hurricane season just for us
[1:07] Speaker 2: on Florida, record breaking number of them. But yeah, for now,
[1:10] Speaker 2: we're okay, all right, good good. We've been together a
[1:15] Speaker 2: lot of times over the last I don't know, two
[1:17] Speaker 2: three months. I was just with you a couple of
[1:18] Speaker 2: days ago there in Rochester. But last month the two
[1:21] Speaker 2: of us attended the annual GK Chester ten conference. This
[1:25] Speaker 2: is sponsored by the Society of GK Chester in and
[1:28] Speaker 2: it travels around the country, but this year it was
[1:31] Speaker 2: in Minneapolis, which is just over an hour away from
[1:33] Speaker 2: where you are, and so they invited you to come
[1:35] Speaker 2: give the keynote talk. Tell us about what you spoke
[1:38] Speaker 2: on and what the conference was like.
[1:40] Speaker 1: I love the conference. It was a lot of fun,
[1:43] Speaker 1: great people there. You know, Chestertonians have something in common.
[1:45] Speaker 1: They're they're like their they're master you know, they're bullyant
[1:49] Speaker 1: and joyful, and especially Dale Alquist, you know, who's the
[1:52] Speaker 1: head of that operation. And Dale's talk was so rich
[1:56] Speaker 1: and smart and funny and you know, just delightful. I
[1:59] Speaker 1: spoke on and it's the one hundredth anniversary of the
[2:02] Speaker 1: publication of Gk's book on Saint Francis, so that was
[2:06] Speaker 1: the focus of the conference. So I read that book
[2:09] Speaker 1: as a kid, you many years ago. But then once
[2:11] Speaker 1: I knew they invited me, I got the book again
[2:14] Speaker 1: and read it and it was like reading it for
[2:16] Speaker 1: the first time, and it had been so long, and
[2:18] Speaker 1: I was just, you know, massively impressed by it. So
[2:20] Speaker 1: I did a I think I called my talk looking
[2:22] Speaker 1: at Saint Francis with fresh eyes, you know, looking at
[2:24] Speaker 1: this text again. So I loved it. It was a
[2:27] Speaker 1: great fun conference.
[2:29] Speaker 2: We recorded your talk, so if it's not already on YouTube, right,
[2:33] Speaker 2: we'll be putting it up there soon. I'll quickly to
[2:35] Speaker 2: that I didn't know that good. Well, today I want
[2:38] Speaker 2: to talk with you about scapegoating. It's it's something you've
[2:42] Speaker 2: studied and reflected on a lot over the years, particularly
[2:45] Speaker 2: through the lens of the great philosopher Renee Gerard. Renee
[2:49] Speaker 2: Gerard was one of the most influential Catholic philosophers of
[2:53] Speaker 2: the past century. In fact, when he had died in
[2:55] Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, he was ninety one years old. You described
[2:59] Speaker 2: him as a modern church father. Tell us about Reneeser
[3:03] Speaker 2: Rard and the basics of his life before we get
[3:05] Speaker 2: to some of his key ideas.
[3:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, an extraordinary figure. Born nineteen twenty three. My mother,
[3:11] Speaker 1: who just passed away, was born in nineteen twenty two,
[3:14] Speaker 1: so he was writing in her generation. He was born
[3:16] Speaker 1: in that wonderful papal town of Avignol in the south
[3:19] Speaker 1: of France. Educated over in France and in Paris, but
[3:23] Speaker 1: his academic career really unfolded in our country. So he
[3:27] Speaker 1: came as a young man to these shores, and he
[3:28] Speaker 1: taught various places University of Indiana, New York State University
[3:33] Speaker 1: in Buffalo, also at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But then
[3:37] Speaker 1: he ended up his academic career at Stanford on the
[3:40] Speaker 1: West coast and spent about forty years there. So he
[3:44] Speaker 1: was an academic, a Frenchman of his generation, so Catholic,
[3:48] Speaker 1: you know, by heritage and by Baptism, but had become
[3:51] Speaker 1: basically an agnostic. And he was a student of French
[3:55] Speaker 1: language and literature, and a literary theorist, we probably would say.
[4:00] Speaker 1: In the course of his reading of many of the
[4:01] Speaker 1: great novelists and playwrights, he discovered the dynamics that he
[4:05] Speaker 1: spent his career really developing. And then at a key moment,
[4:10] Speaker 1: he read the Bible, and you know, he knew it
[4:13] Speaker 1: in a vague way, but as he looked into it
[4:15] Speaker 1: he found that it was as aware as all these
[4:20] Speaker 1: great novelists were of the basic problem. But the difference
[4:23] Speaker 1: was the Bible proposed a real solution, and that led
[4:26] Speaker 1: Gerard by some steady steps to become a Catholic. And
[4:30] Speaker 1: so he he dies a very ardent Catholic, and his
[4:34] Speaker 1: work came to the attention of religious people. I would
[4:38] Speaker 1: have come across it as a seminary and one of
[4:40] Speaker 1: my professors knew about him, and Father Steve, you know,
[4:43] Speaker 1: the CEO Were on Fire, has always been a big
[4:45] Speaker 1: Devotave Gerar, and I think he got me into it
[4:48] Speaker 1: more and more had a chance to meet him. He
[4:50] Speaker 1: came to Mundoline Seminary when I was a professor there
[4:54] Speaker 1: to give our Meyer lecture. So I spent, you know,
[4:56] Speaker 1: a few days with him. And he's massively impressive person,
[5:01] Speaker 1: not just as a thinker, but as a human being.
[5:03] Speaker 1: I loved his simplicity, is modesty, as humility, very pressive man.
[5:08] Speaker 1: As you say, died in twenty fifteen. I was saying,
[5:11] Speaker 1: the very year that I came out to California as
[5:13] Speaker 1: a bishop was the year that Gerard died. So that's
[5:16] Speaker 1: a little sketch of his life.
[5:19] Speaker 2: You could maybe sum up Gerard's thinking through his two
[5:23] Speaker 2: master ideas of mimetic desire and scapegoating, and I want
[5:27] Speaker 2: to talk about each one of those two. What's interesting
[5:30] Speaker 2: is how they fit together and inform each other. Let's
[5:34] Speaker 2: let's start off by talking about mimetic desire, sometimes described
[5:37] Speaker 2: as mimasis.
[5:38] Speaker 1: What does this mean, Well, Jurissa, the desire is hardly
[5:43] Speaker 1: ever straightforward where there's something good and I desire it. Rather,
[5:47] Speaker 1: desire typically has a triangular and mimetic quality. Now here's
[5:51] Speaker 1: what he means. Why do I want object you know X? Well,
[5:56] Speaker 1: not just because of qualities inherent and object X, but
[5:59] Speaker 1: because somebody else wants object X, And so I look
[6:04] Speaker 1: at the desire of somebody else and I imitate that desire.
[6:10] Speaker 1: So there's a triangularity about it. It's not just me
[6:13] Speaker 1: to the object. It's me to the object, but through
[6:17] Speaker 1: the person I'm imitating. Now, I know that can sound
[6:19] Speaker 1: very abstract, but any you know this, Brandon, from your
[6:23] Speaker 1: extensive experience with your own kids. Two toddlers in a
[6:28] Speaker 1: room pile of toys. Toddler A is completely indifferent to
[6:31] Speaker 1: a particular toy until what til toddler B wants it,
[6:36] Speaker 1: And the minute toddler B wants that toy, Toddler A
[6:39] Speaker 1: is intensely interested in it, and the desire is imitative
[6:44] Speaker 1: and triangular. And again, as any father would know, what's
[6:48] Speaker 1: the result of that triangularity conflict? Right, Hey, he has
[6:56] Speaker 1: that toy. Yeah, but you know, five minutes ago you
[6:58] Speaker 1: had zero interested in it. Yes, I know, but now
[7:00] Speaker 1: I'm intensely interested in it, and I don't want him
[7:03] Speaker 1: to have it. So conflict tends to come from the
[7:06] Speaker 1: triangularity and mimetic quality of our desire.
[7:11] Speaker 2: We had an interview about a year ago, you did
[7:14] Speaker 2: a Bishop Baron Present's interview with our friend Luke Burgess
[7:18] Speaker 2: about his recent book which was on Gerard's theory of
[7:22] Speaker 2: memetic desires called Wanting the Power of Memetic Desire every
[7:26] Speaker 2: Day Life. So I'll include a link both to that
[7:28] Speaker 2: interview and the book if you want to learn more
[7:30] Speaker 2: about this aspect of Gerard's thought. But let's start escapegoating.
[7:34] Speaker 2: And that's what I want to really spend the rest
[7:35] Speaker 2: of this episode. Discussing the theory of memetic desire in
[7:39] Speaker 2: some ways leads to the scapegoating mechanism. So introduce this
[7:44] Speaker 2: to us. How does the scapegoating mechanism work?
[7:46] Speaker 1: Well, here's the simple dynamic. So imagine that triangular setup
[7:51] Speaker 1: where now a conflict has occurred because of this imitative
[7:56] Speaker 1: quality of desire. Now begin to multiply that throughout a communities.
[8:00] Speaker 1: Let's say now you're a budget toddlers, but move from
[8:03] Speaker 1: the toddler realm to you know, any human community. And
[8:07] Speaker 1: as as person A wants the object because person B
[8:10] Speaker 1: wants it, and then person CE sees this conflict, and
[8:13] Speaker 1: then there's a contagious quality to it. Now now person
[8:17] Speaker 1: see also wants that object, and before you know it,
[8:20] Speaker 1: now there's a whole set of mimetically based conflicts within
[8:25] Speaker 1: the community. If this thing reaches a point of intensity,
[8:31] Speaker 1: it's called a mimetic frenzy. And you'll see this now
[8:35] Speaker 1: in a community both large and small. You can see
[8:37] Speaker 1: it geopolitically in certain societies. You can see it in
[8:40] Speaker 1: the in the smallest of you know, human grouping. If
[8:44] Speaker 1: it gets intense enough, Gerrar speculates by a basic instinct,
[8:51] Speaker 1: the group begins to look for escapegoat whom they can
[8:56] Speaker 1: blame for the problem and upon whom they can cast
[9:01] Speaker 1: all of the tension and anxiety of the community. So
[9:05] Speaker 1: here we are fighting like crazy. How did this happen? Well, see,
[9:09] Speaker 1: the mimetic quality of it is often hidden even to
[9:12] Speaker 1: those who are involved. Right, it's an often unconscious process.
[9:17] Speaker 1: How did this happen? How did this happen? She's the one.
[9:21] Speaker 1: It's when she came into our community. That's when we
[9:24] Speaker 1: started fighting. Or those people, those people over there who
[9:29] Speaker 1: kind of look funny and talk funny and they're not
[9:31] Speaker 1: like us, that when they came into our community, that's
[9:34] Speaker 1: when all this trouble came about. So what do we do?
[9:38] Speaker 1: We come together in casting our anxiety onto the scapegoat,
[9:43] Speaker 1: and thereby we find a kind of ersatz peace, at
[9:48] Speaker 1: least for the moment. We've all come together in casting
[9:53] Speaker 1: our anxiety onto the scapegoat, and so for the moment,
[9:56] Speaker 1: a kind of peace breaks out among us. But as
[10:00] Speaker 1: everybody knows, that kind of scapegoating move never produces real
[10:06] Speaker 1: or lasting peace, and before you know it, the mimetic
[10:09] Speaker 1: dynamics come back into play. So, Gerar, this is now
[10:12] Speaker 1: when Dostayevsky, Shakespeare, and all kinds of different people notice
[10:16] Speaker 1: this dynamic all the time. Can I say, can I
[10:21] Speaker 1: share a little terrible Maybe this occurred to me as
[10:24] Speaker 1: a story that might illustrate some of this I'll do it.
[10:27] Speaker 1: From my world of religion. Imagine there's a good holy
[10:33] Speaker 1: woman who, looking up to God, conceives the desire to
[10:41] Speaker 1: work for love and for justice and for peace and
[10:44] Speaker 1: to care for the poor. She's looking up at the
[10:47] Speaker 1: transcendent good of God. Now she starts doing your work.
[10:51] Speaker 1: And then four or five other young women looking at her,
[10:56] Speaker 1: looking at God, say I want to do that too.
[11:00] Speaker 1: That yeah, that's that's a beautiful life. And so they
[11:03] Speaker 1: join her. And now look all of them coming together,
[11:07] Speaker 1: looking together at the transcendent and inexhaustible good of God's
[11:13] Speaker 1: will you know we're working for love and justice and
[11:17] Speaker 1: peace and care for the poor. That knows something Brandon
[11:20] Speaker 1: about this very interesting to me. This is I mean,
[11:22] Speaker 1: your oars saw this. That good I just described is
[11:27] Speaker 1: transcendent and properly inexhaustible. Right, there's enough to go around
[11:34] Speaker 1: for the whole world that you can never exhaust the
[11:38] Speaker 1: work of love and justice and care for the poor.
[11:41] Speaker 1: We can all do that, right, There's no need to
[11:44] Speaker 1: have a conflict. That's inexhaustible.
[11:46] Speaker 3: Good.
[11:47] Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the little community. Everyone's happy. It's all
[11:50] Speaker 1: gone great. One day, let's call her sister Maria. She says, hey,
[11:58] Speaker 1: you know, Mother Superior, Mother General is getting older, she's
[12:01] Speaker 1: about seventy, and they'll have to be a successor to
[12:06] Speaker 1: Mother of General. And you know, I'm pretty smart and
[12:10] Speaker 1: I'm pretty accomplished, and you know, maybe that could be
[12:13] Speaker 1: me that watress happened. Originally, she looked at Mother Superior
[12:21] Speaker 1: and looked where she was looking up to the transcendent,
[12:24] Speaker 1: inexhaustible good. Everything's fine, But now her gaze has lowered
[12:31] Speaker 1: from that good to a very worldly, finite good being
[12:37] Speaker 1: Mother Superior of this community. Right, so now what does
[12:41] Speaker 1: she do? She begins to plot and plan and organize
[12:47] Speaker 1: her life in such a way as to put herself
[12:49] Speaker 1: in position to become Mother Superior. Not totally, I mean,
[12:55] Speaker 1: she's still a good nun and still doing her work,
[12:56] Speaker 1: but now mixed in with the transcendent desire is very
[13:00] Speaker 1: finite desire. Okay, they're Sister Maria. Now, Sister Brenda, who
[13:08] Speaker 1: has joined the community with the best intentions, and she's
[13:10] Speaker 1: been giving your life to love and peace and care
[13:12] Speaker 1: for the poor, begins to notice Sister Maria and she boy,
[13:17] Speaker 1: she's acting funny. How come Sister Maria is ingratiating herself
[13:22] Speaker 1: to the donors of this community. And how come she's
[13:25] Speaker 1: she's kind of in a cloying way, kind of being
[13:27] Speaker 1: nicely nicy to all of us, which she never was before.
[13:30] Speaker 1: And she seems to be like opera. You know what,
[13:34] Speaker 1: I think she wants to be Mother Superior. Ah. Now
[13:39] Speaker 1: they both looked down like this, and immediately what's going
[13:44] Speaker 1: to kick in? Mimetic desire. I'm desiring to be Mother
[13:48] Speaker 1: Superior because she wants it. I never thought about it before.
[13:52] Speaker 1: It never occurred to me to be Mother Superior, but
[13:54] Speaker 1: now I want it to. But look, only one of
[13:58] Speaker 1: us can be Mother Superior. The memetic desire has now
[14:02] Speaker 1: produced conflict. All right, keep going. Now a third sister,
[14:06] Speaker 1: sister Jane. She looks, she starts noticing these two are
[14:11] Speaker 1: bickering and they're fighting. And when the world's going on.
[14:15] Speaker 1: Ah ah, you know, I think what's going on? They
[14:19] Speaker 1: both want to be Mother Superior. But wait a minute,
[14:22] Speaker 1: I'm pretty smart, I'm pretty complished. Why can't I be
[14:26] Speaker 1: Mother Superior? I never thought about it ever, ever, until
[14:30] Speaker 1: I saw the two of them desiring you Mother Superior.
[14:34] Speaker 1: Now three of them have looked down to the finite good,
[14:38] Speaker 1: and now three of them are fighting. Now a fourth sister, now,
[14:41] Speaker 1: a fifth sister, now a sixth sister. And before you know,
[14:45] Speaker 1: what's happened, a mimetic frenzy has broken out, and this
[14:50] Speaker 1: community is now at odds. Now, look, I've been in
[14:53] Speaker 1: the religion business for a long time, and you see
[14:56] Speaker 1: this happening. You see this happening.
[14:59] Speaker 2: What happened?
[15:00] Speaker 1: They were so good, they were so happy. Look and
[15:03] Speaker 1: now they're like, oh these others throats, All right, let's
[15:06] Speaker 1: take the last step. My goodness, what happened to us?
[15:11] Speaker 1: What happened? Look a look at us. We're fighting all
[15:13] Speaker 1: the time. It's when that sister, Remember when sister Yvonne,
[15:19] Speaker 1: when she joined the group. And Yvonne, you know, she's
[15:22] Speaker 1: a little she's a little funny. You know, she's from
[15:24] Speaker 1: a different background than we are, and she's she talks
[15:27] Speaker 1: a little bit funny, and she's it's Yvonne Evan is
[15:31] Speaker 1: the one who caused all this trouble. And now the
[15:34] Speaker 1: whole group turns on Ivonne and maybe even accuses her
[15:40] Speaker 1: of something. Read Melville's Billy budd Now you'll see all
[15:44] Speaker 1: these details perfectly waid out. They accused her of something
[15:48] Speaker 1: and they cast her out and for the moment they
[15:51] Speaker 1: find a kind of Ersat's piece. Uh. To me, that
[15:54] Speaker 1: little parable, that's the Girardian dynamic. Uh displayed the key
[16:00] Speaker 1: thing I'm not even rambling to us here, but the
[16:02] Speaker 1: key thing is the lowering of the gays when together
[16:06] Speaker 1: we look up. There's a big light here in the studio.
[16:09] Speaker 1: So I'm looking up at the inexhaustible good, love, truth, justice,
[16:15] Speaker 1: God's will, whatever you want to call it, and together
[16:18] Speaker 1: we're looking at it, and it's inexhaustible. We can all
[16:20] Speaker 1: do it all the time without any conflict. You know,
[16:24] Speaker 1: I lower my gaze now to a finite good, and
[16:28] Speaker 1: it's fill in the blank, wealth, pleasure, on our power.
[16:32] Speaker 1: You know, I use example of becoming mother superior of
[16:34] Speaker 1: the community. But choose something else, money or it's influencer,
[16:38] Speaker 1: it's whatever I've lowered my gaze to that now almost
[16:44] Speaker 1: it is capably memetic. Desire will kick in and then
[16:48] Speaker 1: conflict will follow and scapegoating will result. You know, I'm
[16:53] Speaker 1: not going to say this is the be all and
[16:55] Speaker 1: the end all explanation of everything, but it's darn good.
[16:58] Speaker 1: It's darn good as an ext dolation of what goes
[17:01] Speaker 1: wrong with a lot of our communities.
[17:05] Speaker 2: As you say, it's maybe not the master explanation of
[17:08] Speaker 2: all things, but once you begin to understand Gerard's theories,
[17:11] Speaker 2: you see it everywhere. And I would argue, and I
[17:14] Speaker 2: want to discuss for the rest of this episode, it's
[17:16] Speaker 2: especially prevalent on the Internet, and recognizing it on the
[17:21] Speaker 2: Internet and understanding the dynamics of it is the first
[17:25] Speaker 2: step to avoiding it and breaking this chain of bad behavior.
[17:29] Speaker 2: So toward that, in let me ask you this question.
[17:31] Speaker 2: Gerard argues that scapegoats are not arbitrarily chosen. It's not
[17:35] Speaker 2: just the community just randomly focuses their attention on one scapegoat,
[17:42] Speaker 2: but that there are specific characteristics that make someone an
[17:46] Speaker 2: ideal scapegoat. For Gerard, what are some of these traits?
[17:51] Speaker 1: Well, in my little parable there, I was hinting at
[17:53] Speaker 1: some of them. So a person who's different, looks different,
[17:57] Speaker 1: has a funny accent.
[17:58] Speaker 3: You know.
[17:59] Speaker 1: A really good example that is in the Gospels, right
[18:01] Speaker 1: when there's the the people in the high priest courtyard
[18:05] Speaker 1: as Jesus is brought in for interrogation, and there's Peter
[18:09] Speaker 1: and the crowd becomes a mob turning on him. And
[18:13] Speaker 1: what's one of the things they say, Well, he's a Galilean.
[18:16] Speaker 1: His accent gives him away. He's an outsider, he's a weirdo.
[18:21] Speaker 1: He's not part of our gang. So it's the the
[18:25] Speaker 1: other quality you know in look, skin color obviously is
[18:29] Speaker 1: a massive thing in our society, accent, et cetera. So
[18:33] Speaker 1: that can be one. But now flip it around too,
[18:35] Speaker 1: and here's where Billy Bud comes into play. It can
[18:38] Speaker 1: be someone's beauty that gets everyone's attention and wow, look
[18:45] Speaker 1: at that guy or look at that lady, Look at
[18:47] Speaker 1: how beautiful, and that can stir up a mimetic resentment
[18:52] Speaker 1: and make that personal liable candidate. Look how often I
[18:56] Speaker 1: know this is when I was doing my second Samuel commentary.
[19:02] Speaker 1: In the Bible, being beautiful or handsome, it's trouble. It
[19:06] Speaker 1: almost always means trouble. Think of Absalom, think of David himself.
[19:10] Speaker 1: When people are described as beautiful Bathsheba, it usually is
[19:17] Speaker 1: a sign that trouble's coming. And I think it's the
[19:19] Speaker 1: Biblical authors being very sensitive to this dynamic of how
[19:24] Speaker 1: beautiful people can attract a scapegoating attention from a mob.
[19:31] Speaker 2: What a lot of religious people find fascinating about Gerard's
[19:35] Speaker 2: work is how these social theories of memetic desire and
[19:38] Speaker 2: scapegoating then collide with the world of the Bible. And
[19:43] Speaker 2: it's notable that Gerard started with the theories and then
[19:47] Speaker 2: saw them in the Gospels. In fact, he got them
[19:50] Speaker 2: from the literary masters of the West. You've mentioned Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Melville, Proust.
[19:55] Speaker 2: I think was another big way for him. But then
[19:58] Speaker 2: he came to the Christian scriptures study them for the
[20:00] Speaker 2: first time in a serious way and said he was
[20:03] Speaker 2: astonished and it changed his life. What did he see
[20:07] Speaker 2: in the gospels and how did it relate to his theories.
[20:11] Speaker 1: Here's what he saw, Brandon. It's a dimension that we
[20:13] Speaker 1: haven't talked about yet, but a curious thing, because the
[20:17] Speaker 1: scapegoat provides at least an ersat sense of peace. So
[20:23] Speaker 1: we've sacrificed this victim, we've gotten rid of this person,
[20:28] Speaker 1: and as a result, peace is broken out. Huh, maybe
[20:33] Speaker 1: there's something even sacred about that victim. There's something holy
[20:39] Speaker 1: about that that God or the gods are smiling upon
[20:44] Speaker 1: our scapegoating move. Read Shirley Jackson's the lottery. If you
[20:50] Speaker 1: want to see that, is there something deep, deep in
[20:54] Speaker 1: the deep magic? As CS. Lewis would say, of a
[20:57] Speaker 1: society that says, the gods are approving of this sacrifice,
[21:03] Speaker 1: that they need to sacrifice, and in Girardi in terms,
[21:08] Speaker 1: is because we have found a kind of relief in
[21:11] Speaker 1: the process. Okay, if that dynamic is true, what happens
[21:15] Speaker 1: in the gospels. The Gospels know all about these dynamics.
[21:20] Speaker 1: It's not that they're they're naive or they're blind to them,
[21:22] Speaker 1: because very often Gerardi says, the great myths are kind
[21:25] Speaker 1: of blind to this. They they're unaware of these dynamics.
[21:29] Speaker 1: The Bible shows it all the time. Think of the
[21:32] Speaker 1: woman caught adultery. It is a beautiful example of the
[21:35] Speaker 1: Gerardian dynamic. Right Peter being blamed in the courtyard of
[21:39] Speaker 1: the High Priests, et cetera, the Gerosene denemoniac and they're
[21:42] Speaker 1: all over the place Gerardian story. But here's the difference.
[21:48] Speaker 1: In the Gospels, God is not approving of scapegoating violence. Rather,
[21:55] Speaker 1: God is himself the victim of scapegoating violence. How do
[22:01] Speaker 1: you read Jesus. Jesus is as Caiaphas, wouldn't it be
[22:06] Speaker 1: better for one person to die rather the whole nation
[22:10] Speaker 1: be destroyed? That's gerardy and logic in a nutshell, that's perfect.
[22:15] Speaker 1: Look everybody, look how divided we are. Wouldn't it be
[22:18] Speaker 1: better for one, as tragic as that might be, for
[22:21] Speaker 1: one to die rather than we all be destroyed. That's
[22:24] Speaker 1: the old logic. What does the Gospel do is it
[22:27] Speaker 1: fractures that logic because God is not approving of scapegoating violence.
[22:32] Speaker 1: God is identifying with the victim of scapegoating violence, and
[22:37] Speaker 1: thereby this is yourar pulls back the veil on this
[22:41] Speaker 1: whole demonic process and discloses the truth of it and
[22:47] Speaker 1: shows the way out. So that's what he saw as
[22:51] Speaker 1: apocalyptic about the Gospels in the literal sense right of unveiling.
[22:56] Speaker 1: Something was unveiled that had been hidden since the foundation
[23:00] Speaker 1: of the world. This, this scapegoating farago, was hidden. And
[23:07] Speaker 1: he thinks, of the great myths of the world, what
[23:09] Speaker 1: you find is is the hiding, the purposeful hiding of
[23:12] Speaker 1: this dynamic. The Gospel ripped back the veil on it,
[23:17] Speaker 1: revealed the dynamics, and showed the way out.
[23:21] Speaker 2: It seems that in our digital age. The Internet has
[23:24] Speaker 2: only amplified this process of scapegoating. Many online platforms, and
[23:28] Speaker 2: I'm especially thinking of Twitter, which seems tailor made for scapegoating,
[23:33] Speaker 2: has allowed this to increase in our age. You know,
[23:37] Speaker 2: terms like Twitter mobs or cancel culture had become everyday linkedine.
[23:41] Speaker 2: We see it not just from one or the other
[23:43] Speaker 2: political party or ecclesial party, but everywhere by everyone. What
[23:48] Speaker 2: do you make of the Internet's role in contemporary scapegoating.
[23:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exacerbated it terribly, and it's funny, Brandon. I
[23:56] Speaker 1: think of Shira who dies in twenty fifteen, so the
[23:58] Speaker 1: Internet world was under way. I mean, he would have
[24:01] Speaker 1: known probably very little about it. But the fact that
[24:03] Speaker 1: he dies out in the Stanford so in the right
[24:06] Speaker 1: in like Silicon Valley has he lived in that There's
[24:10] Speaker 1: something that Gerar was like a like a prophet who
[24:14] Speaker 1: was sent right right before this world sort of opened up.
[24:18] Speaker 1: I think to tell us, these are the dynamics at
[24:21] Speaker 1: work everybody, and this Internet world has just it's like
[24:27] Speaker 1: gasoline on the fire is taken the fire of this
[24:30] Speaker 1: dynamic and thrown gasoline on it. You're exactly right. And
[24:34] Speaker 1: the language that we use is very Gerardian. Mobs can
[24:38] Speaker 1: break out like that online. It might have taken time
[24:41] Speaker 1: before the Internet for a mob even to form. Now
[24:45] Speaker 1: they can form it in seconds and minutes. Right, and
[24:49] Speaker 1: then scapegoats are you kidding? All over the place, someone
[24:54] Speaker 1: who makes a comment or says something that's maybe slightly
[24:57] Speaker 1: off of the politically correct, it can be just be
[25:02] Speaker 1: abused massively by the mob. All that is very gerardi In.
[25:07] Speaker 2: Well, let's wrap up with this bishop for Catholics, what's
[25:11] Speaker 2: the big takeaway from Gerard's theory of scapegoating and how
[25:14] Speaker 2: should Catholics respond when we see it, when we detect it,
[25:18] Speaker 2: how do we stop it or at least slow it down.
[25:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a very important thing in the
[25:23] Speaker 1: moral life. Once we see the dynamic, interrupt it, interrupt it. See,
[25:29] Speaker 1: mobs are formed because people are drawn into it. We're
[25:33] Speaker 1: drawn into mimasis, and it's a it's like a cloud forming,
[25:39] Speaker 1: like a storm cloud forming. So one thing you do
[25:43] Speaker 1: is actively step away from it when you feel you're
[25:45] Speaker 1: being drawn into a scapegoating mob now whether in person
[25:48] Speaker 1: or online, and then call it out, call out those dynamics.
[25:54] Speaker 1: Reread the story of the woman called adultery is perfect
[25:57] Speaker 1: illustration of all this. Right, So the mob forms because
[26:02] Speaker 1: people were looking for a scapegoat. They're looking for someone
[26:05] Speaker 1: to blame. And then what Jesus does is he interrupts
[26:09] Speaker 1: the process of mob formation. He turns their accusing a
[26:13] Speaker 1: glance toward themselves, and that causes the mob to dissipate.
[26:19] Speaker 1: And then he offers a word of forgiving love to
[26:21] Speaker 1: the scapegoaded victim imitate him. See there's the positive mimasis.
[26:28] Speaker 1: Imitazio Christi, imitation of Christ. Imitate the one whose whole
[26:33] Speaker 1: life was about breaking up these false kingdoms. Right, Jesus says,
[26:39] Speaker 1: I've come to announce the kingdom of God. We'll think
[26:42] Speaker 1: of that now as God's way of organizing our lives together.
[26:48] Speaker 1: What's God's kingdom? Together? We look with Jesus to the
[26:54] Speaker 1: will of his father. You know, when the Lord says,
[26:56] Speaker 1: I only do what I see the Father doing. My
[26:59] Speaker 1: food is to do the will of my father. Okay,
[27:02] Speaker 1: let's now look with him up to the will of
[27:06] Speaker 1: the Father. Will be great, will be fine if we
[27:09] Speaker 1: do that. When you start seeing those gazes lowered to
[27:15] Speaker 1: worldly goods, the red flag because a mimetic crisis is
[27:21] Speaker 1: going to break out almost automatically. So I think that's
[27:26] Speaker 1: what Christians and Catholics can do. Keep your own gaze
[27:30] Speaker 1: fixed at the transcendent, inexhaustible good, but then get in
[27:35] Speaker 1: the way of these mimetic rivalries that give rise to
[27:39] Speaker 1: mimetic frenzy, which then gives rise to escapegoating violence. Get
[27:44] Speaker 1: in the way of it. See, once you understand it,
[27:47] Speaker 1: then you can You're like a good surgeon who understands
[27:50] Speaker 1: the dynamics of anatomy and biology. Once you understand how
[27:54] Speaker 1: this body politic is working, then you can do surgery
[27:59] Speaker 1: when you have to, and you could bring hells to
[28:01] Speaker 1: the body.
[28:03] Speaker 2: Gerard wrote nearly thirty books, and I know it's sometimes
[28:06] Speaker 2: difficult for people to figure out where to start with
[28:09] Speaker 2: him if they haven't read anything. So as we wrap up,
[28:11] Speaker 2: let me recommend just three good books. The first one
[28:13] Speaker 2: is in anthology of his essential writings, collected by Cynthia Haven.
[28:17] Speaker 2: Cynthia was not only his biographer but a personal friend.
[28:21] Speaker 2: It's called All Desire Is A Desire for Being. It
[28:25] Speaker 2: was published in the UK, but you can get it online.
[28:28] Speaker 1: I just said that. Read that one. It's very good, Yeah,
[28:31] Speaker 1: very good.
[28:32] Speaker 2: If you want to focus especially on Gerard's the religious
[28:36] Speaker 2: implications of Gerard's theories, pick up I see Satan Fall
[28:40] Speaker 2: Like Lightning. It's one of his most important books and
[28:43] Speaker 2: also one that's usually recommended for beginners. And then finally,
[28:46] Speaker 2: the book I recommended earlier by our friend Luke Burgess
[28:49] Speaker 2: called Wanting the Power of Memetic Desire in Every State
[28:53] Speaker 2: of Life. So I'll include links to all three of
[28:55] Speaker 2: those books here and our show notes. Well, it's time
[29:05] Speaker 2: now for a question from one of our listeners. If
[29:07] Speaker 2: you'd like to ask Bishop Baron something, you can send
[29:10] Speaker 2: in your question at the website Askbishop Baron dot com.
[29:14] Speaker 2: Greg from Nebraska has done just that and he has
[29:17] Speaker 2: a question for Bishop about a new educational trend and
[29:20] Speaker 2: he'd liked Bishop's thoughts on it. Here's Greg's question.
[29:27] Speaker 3: Good Morning's Bishop Baron. This is a Greg Verpka con
[29:30] Speaker 3: from Nebraska. I'm in the Archdiocese of Omaha and I've
[29:35] Speaker 3: noticed a increase in the number of classic education schools,
[29:39] Speaker 3: particularly the elementary schools, and I'd like your thoughts of
[29:45] Speaker 3: these schools, maybe in comparison to the traditional Catholic education
[29:49] Speaker 3: God bless.
[29:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for the question. Brandon can answered better than
[29:52] Speaker 1: I could. He's a founder of a classical Catholic high
[29:55] Speaker 1: school in the Chesterton Academy. You know, family, I'm a
[29:59] Speaker 1: big support order them. When I was out in California
[30:02] Speaker 1: in Ventura, the Augustine Academy out there by my friend
[30:06] Speaker 1: Mike van Hecky, marvelous school, and I used to visit there,
[30:10] Speaker 1: and these fourth graders are reciting Shakespeare to me, and
[30:14] Speaker 1: sixth graders are reading Dante, and so, you know, really
[30:17] Speaker 1: impressive the way they don't dumb the tradition down and
[30:21] Speaker 1: they assume the kids are capable of great things. When
[30:24] Speaker 1: I first went there, with complete sincerity, I said to Mike, well,
[30:27] Speaker 1: you're screening like the best and brightest here, right, I mean,
[30:31] Speaker 1: you're only accepting the absolute top. And he said, no,
[30:34] Speaker 1: not at all. We accept anyone that wants to come.
[30:38] Speaker 1: But see, for so long we've dumbed it down and
[30:41] Speaker 1: lowered expectations for kids. So I'm massively supported of that,
[30:45] Speaker 1: especially at the time, as you well know, in Western
[30:48] Speaker 1: culture is under assault, and you know, the classics of
[30:51] Speaker 1: our tradition are being called in a question now, you know.
[30:54] Speaker 1: Having said all that, of course someone who's thoroughly educated
[30:58] Speaker 1: wants to be in dialogue not with just with the
[31:01] Speaker 1: classical tradition, but with you know, contemporary trends of thought
[31:05] Speaker 1: and what's going on in philosophy and politics and culture.
[31:09] Speaker 1: So I don't want to defend any sort of you know,
[31:11] Speaker 1: ghetto wising of the process. But I think it's so
[31:13] Speaker 1: important for our kids to be grounded in the great tradition,
[31:17] Speaker 1: which then enables them to enter creatively and intelligently into
[31:21] Speaker 1: the wider dialogue. So I suppose everything's got a dark
[31:24] Speaker 1: side to it. There's always always a said contra. As
[31:27] Speaker 1: Cardinal George used to say, the said contray is, you know,
[31:30] Speaker 1: if I just get in this very narrow space of
[31:32] Speaker 1: you know, Plato and Dante and Aristotle and Aquinas, but
[31:36] Speaker 1: I don't know how to engage the contemporary culture. Well
[31:39] Speaker 1: that's a problem. But I don't see that really as
[31:41] Speaker 1: a real issue with these schools. I think they're providing
[31:45] Speaker 1: just a very powerful foundation.
[31:49] Speaker 2: Well, as we wind to a close here, i'd like
[31:51] Speaker 2: to introduce the newest book from Word on Fire. It's
[31:53] Speaker 2: an extraordinary volume called Tolkien's Faith, a spiritual biography. It's
[31:59] Speaker 2: by Holly word Way, one of the fellows of our
[32:01] Speaker 2: Word on Fire Institute. If you've enjoyed reading The Hobbit
[32:04] Speaker 2: or The Lord of the Rings and you'd like to
[32:06] Speaker 2: know more about the ardently Catholic author behind them, this
[32:10] Speaker 2: is the book for you. It's the first ever biography
[32:13] Speaker 2: of J. R. R. Tolkien dedicated to exploring his deeply
[32:17] Speaker 2: held Catholic faith. Holly shows in her expertly researched and
[32:21] Speaker 2: richly illustrated study, which contains sources and photos that have
[32:25] Speaker 2: never before been published, that Tolkien's faith and his fiction
[32:30] Speaker 2: are intimately related, although in subtle and complex ways. So
[32:34] Speaker 2: check it out. Can be found at Word Onfire dot
[32:36] Speaker 2: org slash Tolkien Again, it's called Tolkien's Faith, a Spiritual Biography. Well,
[32:42] Speaker 2: thanks so much for watching and listening. We'll see you
[32:45] Speaker 2: next time on the Word on Fire Show.

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