# Bishop Barron on Why I Loved to Listen to Christopher Hitchens

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 26 Aug 2026, 9:21.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73911053/bishop_barron_on_why_i_loved_to_listen_to_christopher_hitchens.mp3



## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: Well, over the years, I've accused some of my atheist
[0:14] Speaker 1: interlocrators on YouTube and a kind of a playful spirit
[0:17] Speaker 1: of being secret herods. And what I mean is Herod
[0:21] Speaker 1: arrested John the Baptist, he was opposed to him, but
[0:24] Speaker 1: then the Bible tells us he loved to listen to
[0:26] Speaker 1: John the Baptist preach. So I've kind of teased my
[0:29] Speaker 1: atheist interlocrators who come on my sites all the time
[0:32] Speaker 1: and leave all sorts of acerbic remarks and so on,
[0:35] Speaker 1: that actually you're a secret herod, that you claim to
[0:38] Speaker 1: be opposed to religion, but you like secretly to listen,
[0:41] Speaker 1: you know, as I speak about the things of God. Well,
[0:44] Speaker 1: I'll confess that there was kind of a reverse Herod
[0:48] Speaker 1: syndrome for me in regard to Christopher Hitchins, who just
[0:52] Speaker 1: died a few days ago, a great polemical writer. Though
[0:57] Speaker 1: Hitchins was the most outspoken opponent of Religon in the
[1:00] Speaker 1: last twenty five years. Though I was often infuriated by
[1:04] Speaker 1: him because of his cavalier and insulting dismissal of what
[1:08] Speaker 1: I hold most dear, I will confess that I love
[1:12] Speaker 1: to listen to him. I think I watched every Hitchins
[1:16] Speaker 1: debate that was available on YouTube, and there were a
[1:18] Speaker 1: lot of them. I've read, I think most of his books.
[1:21] Speaker 1: In fact, when he died, one of the books I
[1:23] Speaker 1: was reading was Arguably, which is this brick sized collection
[1:28] Speaker 1: of essays from Hitchins. I subscribed to Vanity Fair magazine
[1:33] Speaker 1: pretty much because Hitchins wrote for it on a regular basis.
[1:37] Speaker 1: Whenever I could see him or read him or Peru's ideas,
[1:43] Speaker 1: I would, so I love to listen to him. Part
[1:46] Speaker 1: of that was what the Romans called gaudium de stillo,
[1:49] Speaker 1: which is the joy that we take simply and in style.
[1:53] Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a better writer on
[1:55] Speaker 1: the scene today than Christopher Hitchins. No matter what he
[1:59] Speaker 1: was talking about, it could be about, you know, politics
[2:02] Speaker 1: in Greece. It could be about defending his friend Sam
[2:04] Speaker 1: and Rushti. It could be trying to convince people that
[2:08] Speaker 1: their belief in God was childish. No matter what it was,
[2:11] Speaker 1: Hitchins always wrote with extraordinary intelligence, perceptiveness, grace, wit style.
[2:19] Speaker 1: So that was part of it, was just the joy
[2:21] Speaker 1: in style. The other thing I liked about him so
[2:24] Speaker 1: much was that his self was always massively there and
[2:29] Speaker 1: I mean this is now in a positive way, that
[2:30] Speaker 1: there was nothing detached about a Hitchin's essay or speech.
[2:34] Speaker 1: His acerbic, you know, witty cocksure self was always there.
[2:39] Speaker 1: You knew you were dealing with this personality, and I
[2:43] Speaker 1: kind of appreciated that in his writing. Also, we had
[2:46] Speaker 1: a very similar interests. He hated religion, but man was
[2:51] Speaker 1: he interested in religion. He came back to it all
[2:53] Speaker 1: the time. He loved contemporary politics as I do. He
[2:58] Speaker 1: also loved Evil in Waw, the great Catholic novelist, as
[3:00] Speaker 1: I do. And maybe above all, he loved Bob Dylan.
[3:03] Speaker 1: He's one of my great heroes, and so we often
[3:06] Speaker 1: had similar interest I also loved watching Hitchins over the
[3:10] Speaker 1: years on TV programs, news programs, because he was very
[3:14] Speaker 1: hard to pin down ideologically. Just when you think, oh,
[3:17] Speaker 1: he's a man of the left, he'd say something remarkably
[3:20] Speaker 1: conservative and vice versa. So I used to love watching
[3:22] Speaker 1: him with kind of befuddled newscasters trying to get a
[3:26] Speaker 1: handle on this absolutely unique personality. Now here's the main reason, though,
[3:33] Speaker 1: why I like Christopher Hitchins. All that's just kind of preliminary.
[3:36] Speaker 1: The main reason was because of his deep religiosity. And
[3:41] Speaker 1: now I realized that requires a little bit of explanation,
[3:45] Speaker 1: and I'll begin with what I think was Hitchins's great
[3:47] Speaker 1: mistake when it comes to God. I've done other videos
[3:51] Speaker 1: about this, so you might look at those for more detail.
[3:53] Speaker 1: But like Dawkins and Sam Harris and many others, Hitchins
[3:57] Speaker 1: consistently misconstrued what serious religious people mean when they say God,
[4:03] Speaker 1: time and again. Christopher Hitchins and now his millions of disciples,
[4:08] Speaker 1: I hear from them almost every day refer to God
[4:11] Speaker 1: as you know, a sky fairy, your invisible friend of
[4:15] Speaker 1: the flying spaghetti monster, meaning some crazy mythological fantasy for
[4:20] Speaker 1: which there's absolutely no evidence. They would also excoriate. Hitches
[4:24] Speaker 1: did it all the time, excoriate religious people for what
[4:27] Speaker 1: they call the God of the gaps. You know that
[4:29] Speaker 1: there's a gap in our present scientific explanation, so let's
[4:32] Speaker 1: put God in there, and then as science advances, God
[4:36] Speaker 1: retreats to every smaller gaps in the explanatory system. So
[4:40] Speaker 1: over and over again you hear that criticism from Hitchins.
[4:43] Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing. All of that is wide
[4:45] Speaker 1: of the mark, all of that misses what we mean
[4:49] Speaker 1: when we say God. God is not a being in
[4:53] Speaker 1: the world, The creator of the entire universe, is not
[4:57] Speaker 1: ingredient in the universe. It's not an item of among
[5:00] Speaker 1: many within the universe. God is not some reality for
[5:04] Speaker 1: which there may or may not be evidence. You know,
[5:06] Speaker 1: is there a moon around Jupiter? Well, moons around Jupiter.
[5:10] Speaker 1: Let's check and see are or there aren't? See? God
[5:13] Speaker 1: isn't like that some being in the world. Thomas A.
[5:17] Speaker 1: Quietas made the decisive distinction when he said God is
[5:19] Speaker 1: not en sumum highest being, but ipsum essay, the sheer
[5:25] Speaker 1: act of to be itself. God is the reason why
[5:28] Speaker 1: there's something rather than nothing. God is the reason why
[5:31] Speaker 1: there is the nexus of condition causality at all. And
[5:36] Speaker 1: see what it means is God is not a true thing,
[5:40] Speaker 1: but the truth itself. God's not a good thing among many.
[5:45] Speaker 1: God is goodness itself. God is not one just state
[5:50] Speaker 1: of affairs. God is justice itself. And see, once we
[5:55] Speaker 1: get this clear, we can see what I mean when
[5:58] Speaker 1: I say Christopher Hitchins is profound or was profoundly religious
[6:03] Speaker 1: something you see now book after book, essay after essay,
[6:07] Speaker 1: speech after speech. Christopher Hitchins was passionate for justice. Go
[6:13] Speaker 1: back to his earliest book on Greece and Cyprus. You know,
[6:16] Speaker 1: as he advocates the position of the oppressed. Look at
[6:20] Speaker 1: his writings on Palestine, look at his writings on sam
[6:23] Speaker 1: and Rushti, look at his writings on the Iraq War.
[6:26] Speaker 1: Whatever it was, it was this deep and abiding passion
[6:30] Speaker 1: to set things right. He was a profoundly moral man,
[6:34] Speaker 1: I would say, even moralizing, intense sense of what's right
[6:39] Speaker 1: and what's just. And here's the point. That is the
[6:44] Speaker 1: sign that someone has been grasped by the unconditioned. Just see,
[6:51] Speaker 1: think about this for a second. If there's no God
[6:54] Speaker 1: at all, there's no God, we're just dumbly here by
[6:57] Speaker 1: by vague chance, the universe looks, just spins along in
[7:04] Speaker 1: utter indifference to human cruelty, human nobility. One day, this
[7:09] Speaker 1: whole earth will just be incinerated. All of us just
[7:12] Speaker 1: live for a short time and then we fade away.
[7:15] Speaker 1: If that's the case, truly, why would you care about justice?
[7:20] Speaker 1: Why would you care? Ultimately? Would in? In fact, Dostoevsky
[7:24] Speaker 1: be right in saying, if there is no God, then
[7:26] Speaker 1: anything is permitted. Those who burn with a passion for justice.
[7:32] Speaker 1: I would argue, have a keen sense of an absolute,
[7:37] Speaker 1: unconditioned criterion of justice, which I would call God. The
[7:42] Speaker 1: unconditioned just is what we mean by God. And see
[7:46] Speaker 1: I saw that on display in practically everything that Christer
[7:50] Speaker 1: Hitchins wrote. He was battling sky fairies and flying spaghetti monsters. Fine,
[7:57] Speaker 1: I'd battle those two. He claims there's no evidence for
[8:00] Speaker 1: some mythological supreme being. I agree with him, But see
[8:03] Speaker 1: what I caught behind his rhetoric always was this passion
[8:08] Speaker 1: for God. Not to put too fine a point on it,
[8:12] Speaker 1: just a last observation. It was right after his cancer
[8:16] Speaker 1: dignosis became public. I did a piece for the CNN
[8:20] Speaker 1: blog and I urged my fellow Christians to pray for
[8:24] Speaker 1: Christopher Hitchins. Is see the enemy of religion, Yes, I said,
[8:27] Speaker 1: but we should love our enemies. You know, he's a
[8:29] Speaker 1: fellow human being and we should pray for him. Okay.
[8:32] Speaker 1: I thought it was a very benign article. It was
[8:35] Speaker 1: met with this avalanche of negative commentary, thousands of people
[8:40] Speaker 1: telling me, you know, to lay off of Christopher Hitchens
[8:42] Speaker 1: and not to cover him up with my medieval mumbo jumbo,
[8:46] Speaker 1: and keep your prayers to yourself, et cetera. Well, I
[8:49] Speaker 1: can happily say I didn't agree with any of that.
[8:51] Speaker 1: I didn't follow it. I did pray for Christoph Hitchins
[8:54] Speaker 1: all during his illness. When I heard of his death,
[8:56] Speaker 1: I was saddened, and I prayed for him that day
[8:59] Speaker 1: and have continue you to. I'm praying for him not
[9:03] Speaker 1: just as someone I admire as a writer, but someone
[9:05] Speaker 1: who I think was, despite himself, a religious man.

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