# Is Christianity Making a Comeback - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 12 Aug 2026, 34 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73038751/is_christianity_making_a_comeback.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Patriusik,
[0:02] Speaker 1: senior director of the Word on Fire Institute, and the
[0:04] Speaker 1: hosts of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for
[0:07] Speaker 1: joining us. Is Christianity making a comeback? Some recent polling
[0:11] Speaker 1: suggests that the number of those who identify with no religion,
[0:15] Speaker 1: often referred to as the nuns, has hit a ceiling
[0:19] Speaker 1: and may even be declining. At the same time, a
[0:22] Speaker 1: number of high profile cultural influencers, some of them formerly
[0:26] Speaker 1: hostile to the faith, have either converted to Christianity or
[0:30] Speaker 1: announced that they now identify as cultural Christians. Moreover, religion
[0:35] Speaker 1: and politics, once considered verboten to mix, now seem to
[0:39] Speaker 1: find themselves deeply intertwined. Not only are politicians publicly acknowledging God,
[0:45] Speaker 1: there are also intellectual movements appearing on the political scene
[0:48] Speaker 1: that openly argue that a Christian worldview should be the
[0:51] Speaker 1: foundation of the political order. So how do we assess
[0:55] Speaker 1: these cultural and political developments from an evangelical perspective? Is
[0:59] Speaker 1: it really the case that society is becoming more receptive
[1:03] Speaker 1: to Christianity? If so, are all these developments positive for
[1:07] Speaker 1: the church, or perhaps should we take a more cautious
[1:10] Speaker 1: approach to evaluating what all this means for the future
[1:13] Speaker 1: of Catholicism in the US and the West. Here to
[1:16] Speaker 1: help us think through these and related questions is Bishop
[1:20] Speaker 1: Robert Baron. Welcome back to the studio, Bishop, and it's
[1:34] Speaker 1: going to be with you, all right. So today we're
[1:36] Speaker 1: talking about is Christianity making a comeback? But as always,
[1:41] Speaker 1: before we get into that, what's been on your plate?
[1:44] Speaker 2: Well, a lot of things.
[1:44] Speaker 3: But you know, recently, I think we talked before about
[1:46] Speaker 3: the new chancery office here in Rochester.
[1:49] Speaker 2: We moved from Winona to Rochester.
[1:51] Speaker 3: Well we're just dedicated the chapel and the chapel we'll
[1:55] Speaker 3: show pictures of it eventually are just magnificent. And the
[1:58] Speaker 3: growth window I'm a big road window guy, you know,
[2:01] Speaker 3: and so I supervised the creation of that. Matt McNicholas,
[2:04] Speaker 3: the wonderful architect you know, designed it. But it's a
[2:07] Speaker 3: beautiful window. And I'm just thrilled with the chapel, and
[2:11] Speaker 3: it's for the chance we office people, but it's really
[2:13] Speaker 3: for the whole diocese. I want it to be kind
[2:15] Speaker 3: of a symbol of our whole diocese. So I've been
[2:17] Speaker 3: really excited about that, well.
[2:19] Speaker 1: I can certainly say it's beautiful from the outside looking forward.
[2:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, and the building right inside and out, it's gorgeous.
[2:24] Speaker 1: So today's topic is Christianity making a comeback. The title
[2:29] Speaker 1: sort of presupposes that Christianity has been receding up until
[2:33] Speaker 1: at least relatively recent at least.
[2:34] Speaker 2: In the West. Right, we should always be careful, Right
[2:36] Speaker 2: in other parts of the world, it's not. It's growing
[2:39] Speaker 2: by leaps and.
[2:39] Speaker 1: Bounds, that's right, and we we'll actually touch on them
[2:42] Speaker 1: towards the end. It's a very important point. But so
[2:45] Speaker 1: before we get into some possible evidence of this resurgence,
[2:48] Speaker 1: and I want to say possible evidence, really emphasize that,
[2:51] Speaker 1: when do you sort of trace the in a very
[2:54] Speaker 1: general sense, sort of the beginning of the decline of
[2:56] Speaker 1: Christianity in the West. How long has this been going on?
[2:59] Speaker 3: To me mid twentieseve, And I think in Europe the
[3:03] Speaker 3: World Wars. I think they had obviously a devasiting effect
[3:06] Speaker 3: at the economic and political level, but I think they
[3:09] Speaker 3: also had a devasiting effect at the spiritual level. When
[3:13] Speaker 3: you have Stanley howerwash to say this, you know, the
[3:16] Speaker 3: World War one and two, you have Canadian Christians, killing
[3:19] Speaker 3: German Christians, killing Austrian Christians, killing Russian Christians, killing American Christians,
[3:24] Speaker 3: killing French Christians.
[3:26] Speaker 2: Since the Christian.
[3:27] Speaker 3: Jews and others involved the course, but mostly it was
[3:31] Speaker 3: this awful civil war among Christians. Now, if you go
[3:36] Speaker 3: down the total Horowas route, I mean, who were privileging
[3:39] Speaker 3: their national identity over their religious identity. I do think
[3:44] Speaker 3: there's something to the to the view that something happened
[3:47] Speaker 3: to the to the European spirit, something happened to the
[3:51] Speaker 3: Christian spirit in this orgy of violence in both World
[3:54] Speaker 3: War One, World War two, and had the Holocaust on there.
[3:58] Speaker 3: You know something now along with that would be this
[4:04] Speaker 3: withering critique coming from you know, a kind of post
[4:08] Speaker 3: Enlightenment rationalism, materialism, secularism which found its way from the
[4:13] Speaker 3: universities into the general population in our country. It's a
[4:17] Speaker 3: little bit delayed. We didn't have quite the same I think,
[4:20] Speaker 3: soul shattering quality of the world wars, but we did,
[4:24] Speaker 3: by the sixties and seventies begin to experience the after
[4:28] Speaker 3: effects of materialism secularism coming from the universities. And I
[4:33] Speaker 3: put a lot of a blame there actually that the
[4:36] Speaker 3: universities set the tone for a lot of the way
[4:38] Speaker 3: people thought about the world. I go back to my
[4:41] Speaker 3: mentor Robert Szakolowski, who said, circa nineteen fifty, in our country,
[4:46] Speaker 3: almost everybody had a Biblical vision of the world. And
[4:49] Speaker 3: that means that from the highest you know, academic people
[4:52] Speaker 3: to the least educated and everybody in between, almost everybody
[4:55] Speaker 3: assumed a Biblical view, starting let's say after nineteen fifty,
[5:01] Speaker 3: I'd say less and less, and that's been you know,
[5:03] Speaker 3: proven statistically, and then we begin to watch by the
[5:06] Speaker 3: late seventies and eighties, this disaffiliation from the churches which
[5:11] Speaker 3: has preceded apace. So I guess I would say, Matt,
[5:14] Speaker 3: roughly mid twentieth century, you begin to see this decline
[5:17] Speaker 3: in religion.
[5:18] Speaker 1: So it's a fascinating answer for many reasons. But one
[5:21] Speaker 1: thing that comes to mind is that oftentimes we look
[5:23] Speaker 1: at decline as a kind of gradually, but then all
[5:26] Speaker 1: of the sudden, and sort of the cliche there. But
[5:28] Speaker 1: by historical standards, this happened all of the sudden. I mean,
[5:31] Speaker 1: point to the nineteen fifties, yea, and to where we
[5:33] Speaker 1: are today.
[5:34] Speaker 3: And there, going to Charles Taylor, you know who said,
[5:37] Speaker 3: let's say around the year sixteen hundred, everybody in Europe
[5:41] Speaker 3: would have believed in God and that a good life
[5:44] Speaker 3: is in relation to God, and that there's a heaven
[5:46] Speaker 3: and the transcendent realm.
[5:49] Speaker 2: That's been true of all of human history.
[5:52] Speaker 3: It's really only in pretty recent times, in the Grand
[5:55] Speaker 3: scheme of things, that people began to question all that,
[5:58] Speaker 3: and that the what he calls the buffer self emmerged,
[6:01] Speaker 3: the self that has a buffer between self and anything transcendent.
[6:05] Speaker 3: So yes, in the Grand scheme, it's a very recent phenomenon.
[6:08] Speaker 1: So let's look at some possible reasons for hope here,
[6:11] Speaker 1: look at some evidence and start with some polling data.
[6:14] Speaker 2: Here.
[6:15] Speaker 1: The first piece of evidence is a series of recent
[6:17] Speaker 1: polling that seems to indicate that individuals who identify with
[6:21] Speaker 1: no religion, who are oftentimes categorized as the nuns, has
[6:25] Speaker 1: perhaps either peaked and might even be declining. Yeah, so
[6:29] Speaker 1: let me. I'll give some numbers from q research and
[6:32] Speaker 1: then it gets your response to them. So pere research
[6:35] Speaker 1: recently released pulling it show that those who identify as atheist, agnostics,
[6:39] Speaker 1: or nothing in particular dropped from a peak of over
[6:42] Speaker 1: thirty percent of the US population in twenty twenty one
[6:46] Speaker 1: down to twenty eight percent of the population in twenty
[6:50] Speaker 1: twenty three. Now, pew As rightfully says, we have to
[6:52] Speaker 1: be cautious about these numbers, but perhaps what's most significant
[6:55] Speaker 1: about them is that you see this very sharp rise
[6:59] Speaker 1: over time until about twenty twenty three, and then there's
[7:02] Speaker 1: a there's a drop. Now is that track with your
[7:04] Speaker 1: own sort of anecdotal experience of what's going on.
[7:06] Speaker 3: Yes, And you know, go back like five ten years,
[7:09] Speaker 3: a lot of people thought, oh, this is just going
[7:10] Speaker 3: to continue forever. You know that the nuns are increasing,
[7:13] Speaker 3: and they were. Indeed, I mean year up to year
[7:15] Speaker 3: you see it increase. In the early seventies, it was
[7:17] Speaker 3: something like three percent of our country would have claimed
[7:20] Speaker 3: no religion. Think of that now, so ninety seven percent
[7:22] Speaker 3: of our country would have said when I was a kid,
[7:25] Speaker 3: of course I believe in God.
[7:26] Speaker 2: I belonged to a church.
[7:27] Speaker 3: And then, as you say, up to twenty five twenty six,
[7:30] Speaker 3: about the thirty percent figure. Maybe, but it looked like
[7:33] Speaker 3: a steady decline or steady increase in disaffiliation. So the
[7:37] Speaker 3: fact that well, at least it's kind of stopped it
[7:40] Speaker 3: has not and maybe even gone down.
[7:42] Speaker 2: A little bit. Is remarkable. It is remarkable, and it also.
[7:47] Speaker 3: It also congrues with my own, as you say, kind
[7:51] Speaker 3: of anecdotal experience of talking to people and hearing especially
[7:54] Speaker 3: from younger people, where there's a there's like a renewal
[7:58] Speaker 3: of interest in these religious.
[7:59] Speaker 1: Mens about what you're seeing online.
[8:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I mean is gosh, when I started
[8:04] Speaker 3: out years ago, you had a lot of aggressive, you know,
[8:07] Speaker 3: disciples of the New atheists who are rehearsing all of
[8:10] Speaker 3: Dawkins and Hitchens and all those arguments and aggressively the
[8:13] Speaker 3: religions is not just.
[8:15] Speaker 2: Stupid, it's morally corrupt and it's horrible. And I have
[8:19] Speaker 2: those change.
[8:20] Speaker 3: I've noticed that younger people are are they're more curious
[8:23] Speaker 3: about religion, and we can go into some of the
[8:27] Speaker 3: personalities maybe who played a role in that of helping
[8:30] Speaker 3: us to see there's a there's a more serious dimension
[8:32] Speaker 3: to religion. The other thing too, man, I think the scandals,
[8:38] Speaker 3: it's always tricky to read the.
[8:39] Speaker 2: Impact of the scandals, but.
[8:42] Speaker 3: Now they are receding a bit into memory, and the
[8:46] Speaker 3: churches have responded to them, and I always want to
[8:49] Speaker 3: make that point. You know, we did respond at the
[8:52] Speaker 3: institutional level massively to the scandals, and the numbers have
[8:56] Speaker 3: declined dramatically. So I wonder those two things have allowed
[9:01] Speaker 3: the scandals a bit to recede, because you'd hear that
[9:04] Speaker 3: a lot like twenty years ago. How could you possibly
[9:07] Speaker 3: accept this crazy religion and these deeply corrupt people that
[9:11] Speaker 3: run it. So I wonder, as that has been addressed
[9:15] Speaker 3: institutionally and it is fading a bit more into memory,
[9:18] Speaker 3: is that.
[9:20] Speaker 2: Stopping this trajectory?
[9:22] Speaker 1: And that's really important to highlight. It's not just the
[9:23] Speaker 1: passage of time, it's that it was addressed, has been addressing,
[9:26] Speaker 1: continues to be addressed, and.
[9:28] Speaker 3: That the numbers have indeed radically fallen. There's no question
[9:31] Speaker 3: about that. You know, the sex abuse problems peaked late sixties, seventies,
[9:35] Speaker 3: early eighties. We can very clearly remark that, and there's
[9:38] Speaker 3: all kinds of reasons for that, and then it's the
[9:42] Speaker 3: scandal's break and then two thousand and two the church
[9:45] Speaker 3: begins its formal institutional response, which has continued to pace
[9:49] Speaker 3: for the past twenty some years, and the numbers have plummeted, right,
[9:53] Speaker 3: you know, So I think that's that's helped, yes, in
[9:57] Speaker 3: young people being willing to approach religion again.
[10:00] Speaker 1: So another interesting piece of data from another pulling firm,
[10:02] Speaker 1: This one is called the Survey Center on American Life,
[10:05] Speaker 1: shows that, in a sharp break from previous trends, men
[10:09] Speaker 1: are now much less likely than women to disaffiliate. Now,
[10:14] Speaker 1: there's different ways that we can read this and look
[10:15] Speaker 1: at it in two ways in just a moment, but bishop,
[10:19] Speaker 1: this does this fact, this empirical fact that now men
[10:23] Speaker 1: appear to be taking religion more seriously than women. One
[10:26] Speaker 1: is that track with your your own actual experience. In two,
[10:29] Speaker 1: how can we give an account for this, because it's
[10:31] Speaker 1: a reversal of sort of common wisdom for centuries.
[10:35] Speaker 3: Yes, it's a curious thing, and I don't have like
[10:36] Speaker 3: really great clear answer.
[10:38] Speaker 1: Sure I think anyone does.
[10:40] Speaker 2: It's new phenomenon.
[10:42] Speaker 3: Maybe here I'd bring in, you know, the the Jordan
[10:45] Speaker 3: Peterson's and the Jonathan Pagos and people like in his
[10:50] Speaker 3: circle who have begun to speak about religion in a
[10:53] Speaker 3: way that young men find compelling. And you know Peterson
[10:57] Speaker 3: comes most readily to mind are religious view that deeply
[11:01] Speaker 3: challenges men and calls them to heroism.
[11:05] Speaker 2: When I was coming of age.
[11:07] Speaker 3: To be honest about it, there was a great feminization
[11:09] Speaker 3: of religion, especially in the Catholic Church, more feminine styles
[11:13] Speaker 3: of relating and talking about the faith. The harder edges
[11:20] Speaker 3: tended to be kind of softened when I was growing up. Well,
[11:22] Speaker 3: I think Peterson, it's curious phenomenon because Peter's certainly my Catholic.
[11:27] Speaker 3: I don't even know if he would claim to be
[11:29] Speaker 3: a Christian. Certainly when he started speaking he wasn't. But
[11:34] Speaker 3: he was evoking the religious tradition in a way that
[11:37] Speaker 3: men found appealing, precisely because the more masculine elements. And
[11:42] Speaker 3: see's the interesting thing, Matt, that you're right people maybe
[11:45] Speaker 3: our age or I hear younger than I am, but
[11:48] Speaker 3: we did associate religion with femininity. That's not always been
[11:53] Speaker 3: the case over history, you know. And there's something been
[11:57] Speaker 3: recovered by some of these folks that men are finding
[12:00] Speaker 3: more appealing. And I think the answer there is yes.
[12:02] Speaker 1: So the reverse way of interpreting the stata is to
[12:05] Speaker 1: say that women now are disaffiliated leaving the church at
[12:08] Speaker 1: a higher rate. What kind of insights might you have
[12:11] Speaker 1: on why that might be take you.
[12:12] Speaker 3: Know, I don't know, And I'm kind of reluctant to
[12:14] Speaker 3: say because it's relatively new phenomenon. Now, maybe it's just
[12:18] Speaker 3: the flip side of what we were talking about that
[12:20] Speaker 3: the people who are opening up the religious door are
[12:23] Speaker 3: appealing more to men.
[12:27] Speaker 2: And you know, another thing too, is there's been a rebirth.
[12:29] Speaker 3: Of apologetics since the New Atheism within a lot of
[12:32] Speaker 3: the Christian churches, thinking of William Layne Craig, you know,
[12:34] Speaker 3: maybe most famously in the evangelical Protestant world. You know,
[12:38] Speaker 3: we're doing it with We're on Fire many other people.
[12:41] Speaker 3: And that means it's a more of a rational approach
[12:43] Speaker 3: to religion. And I do think that kind of approach. Again,
[12:47] Speaker 3: you're treading on dangerous ground here, but I think maybe
[12:50] Speaker 3: appeals more to the masculine spirit. And I wonder if
[12:55] Speaker 3: women aren't responding as readily to that approach to religion,
[12:59] Speaker 3: and they're probably not respond to the Peterson approach.
[13:02] Speaker 2: That's it, I'm guessing, though.
[13:04] Speaker 1: I sure, well, no, this this is all new, this
[13:06] Speaker 1: is even so. The survey for this survey Center in
[13:09] Speaker 1: American Life was speculating that perhaps some of the reason
[13:12] Speaker 1: could be ideological for women leaving the church or of
[13:15] Speaker 1: the well, progressive conceptions of feminism and progressive.
[13:21] Speaker 2: Consultants of gender stuff.
[13:23] Speaker 1: Patriarchy and things that that sort of has had a
[13:27] Speaker 1: impact on how they perceive religion.
[13:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, but also I guess.
[13:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, and that opens up all kinds of stuff, doesn't
[13:33] Speaker 3: that because the whole gender thing got so many ramification does.
[13:38] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[13:38] Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, to be continued, It is at least we
[13:43] Speaker 1: can say empirically it's happening, yes, and we think we
[13:45] Speaker 1: should note that another possible indication of Christianity making it comeback,
[13:49] Speaker 1: So this is admittedly anecdotal but still possibly significant. Are
[13:53] Speaker 1: some recent high profile conversions to Christianity or reversions and
[13:59] Speaker 1: endorsements of Christian moral values from non Christians. And these include,
[14:02] Speaker 1: and I'll just list some of them. I think it's
[14:04] Speaker 1: it's remarkably because they're all fairly recent. Is movie star
[14:08] Speaker 1: Shia Labouf, who entered the Catholic Church earlier this year.
[14:11] Speaker 1: Movie star Russell Brand who now publicly calls himself a
[14:14] Speaker 1: Christian and praised their rosary online. Actor and comedian Rob Schneider,
[14:19] Speaker 1: who also now calls himself a Catholic. This I learned
[14:22] Speaker 1: and doing research for the show Latin Music megastar Daddy Yankee.
[14:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know who Daddy is.
[14:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, well he's huge. I mean he actually actually has
[14:30] Speaker 1: one of the most watched videos in history, Desposito. I
[14:34] Speaker 1: think it is Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican, so he I
[14:38] Speaker 1: think in twenty twenty three and announcing his in a
[14:41] Speaker 1: concert that he was leaving his career and is it right, Yeah,
[14:46] Speaker 1: giving his life to Christ. This is a guy who
[14:47] Speaker 1: has billions of views of his work, so that's notable.
[14:52] Speaker 1: And in a different space, public intellectual ion Hersi Ali, Yeah,
[14:56] Speaker 1: and also public calls herself a Christian. I want to
[14:58] Speaker 1: add to that. Two who are not identify themselves with a
[15:02] Speaker 1: Christian Christianity, uh specific explicitly, but have said that they
[15:05] Speaker 1: call themselves cultural Christians Richard Dawkins, and we already discussed him,
[15:09] Speaker 1: but but Elon Musk recently recently that he calls himself
[15:13] Speaker 1: a cultural Christian. So we can we can sort of
[15:16] Speaker 1: set aside the individual faith journeys of each one of
[15:18] Speaker 1: these people. But do U se any cultural significance to
[15:23] Speaker 1: these conversions taking place?
[15:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think they.
[15:26] Speaker 3: I think it's good for the church that the people
[15:29] Speaker 3: of prominence, you know, and they're all different. You know,
[15:31] Speaker 3: I know Shy a little bit because I actually I
[15:34] Speaker 3: confirmed him just a few months ago, because I had
[15:37] Speaker 3: that interview with him. I met him mount in California.
[15:40] Speaker 3: They're all different, All the stories are unique. Uh.
[15:43] Speaker 2: You know, his was marvelous.
[15:44] Speaker 3: Is the padre Peo movie that he was preparing for
[15:48] Speaker 3: brought him into contact with the Cappush and Friars in California.
[15:51] Speaker 3: And he was a kind of a low ebb in
[15:52] Speaker 3: his life, and the Friars took him in and they
[15:55] Speaker 3: embodied the.
[15:56] Speaker 2: Christian spirits so beautifully that it started leading him there.
[16:00] Speaker 2: And then Ali.
[16:02] Speaker 3: You know, her story to me is fascinating, and hers
[16:05] Speaker 3: is maybe more of an intellectual kind of journey. I
[16:09] Speaker 3: think of someone like like Tom Holland, not Spider Man
[16:12] Speaker 3: Tom Holland. But the story and inisiction is right, and
[16:16] Speaker 3: he's a marvelous writer. Book called Dominion that came out
[16:18] Speaker 3: a few years ago which argued very cogently that the
[16:23] Speaker 3: values we take as sort of generic or enlightenment or
[16:26] Speaker 3: purely rational values about the human life and dignity and
[16:31] Speaker 3: you know, nonviolence and love and forgiveness, they're not general
[16:34] Speaker 3: values at all. They're deeply Christian values that have come
[16:38] Speaker 3: up out of the cross of Jesus, you know.
[16:41] Speaker 2: And so these I think the people have.
[16:42] Speaker 3: Begun maybe to see the beauty and integrity and indispensability
[16:47] Speaker 3: of Christianity. Within our cultural frame. There was such an
[16:51] Speaker 3: instinct to denigrate religion in general, Christianity in particular, and
[16:57] Speaker 3: these think of Douglas Murray comes to mind too, you know,
[17:00] Speaker 3: or public intellectual who've just noticed, you can't bracket Christianity
[17:06] Speaker 3: the very things that we hold. So dear, if we
[17:08] Speaker 3: have a passion of example for the underprivileged and for
[17:11] Speaker 3: the victim and all.
[17:13] Speaker 2: That, that's a Christian conviction.
[17:16] Speaker 3: You know, when Holland it was a great history of
[17:19] Speaker 3: ancient Rome, and you know, loves of the ancient.
[17:21] Speaker 2: Roman, the study of ancient Rome.
[17:23] Speaker 3: And he said, look, Julius Caesar when he conquered Gaul,
[17:27] Speaker 3: just he's casually killed a million people, and he said he.
[17:31] Speaker 2: Comes back to Rome. No one questioned it. That was great.
[17:33] Speaker 3: And the more the more victims you bring to Rome,
[17:36] Speaker 3: parade them in front of us so we can cheer
[17:37] Speaker 3: for you the better.
[17:39] Speaker 2: Never never know in Rome ever dreamed of.
[17:41] Speaker 3: Saying should he have killed a million? People and you
[17:45] Speaker 3: mean like men, women and children. Yeah, men, women and children.
[17:48] Speaker 3: And his point is we don't notice how weird that
[17:50] Speaker 3: is that we would say, well, that's what a monster,
[17:53] Speaker 3: you know, But that's because of Jesus. Something happened in
[17:57] Speaker 3: between Julius, Caesar and us, and it's Jesus. I think
[18:01] Speaker 3: that has played a role, you know in a number
[18:03] Speaker 3: of these people that we've talked about.
[18:04] Speaker 1: Do you think it's significant that they've that these conversions
[18:07] Speaker 1: and reversions have been so public that they that these
[18:10] Speaker 1: individuals have chosen to share this widely.
[18:12] Speaker 2: I do.
[18:13] Speaker 3: I think that has an impact. Then you know, it's
[18:15] Speaker 3: a it's a mixed bag. I get that there's a
[18:17] Speaker 3: shadow side to doing that, but I think there is
[18:20] Speaker 3: a value when people say, oh, well, like a schila above.
[18:22] Speaker 3: You know, it comes to mind again because you know
[18:25] Speaker 3: very well known figure, especially people with people under fifty
[18:28] Speaker 3: would know them very well. And a guy that's been
[18:31] Speaker 3: down a rough road, by his own admission, has has
[18:34] Speaker 3: hit bottom in many ways and then found I would say,
[18:38] Speaker 3: the redemptive power of Christ. Well, when you talk about
[18:41] Speaker 3: that in a public way and your well known figure, yeah,
[18:44] Speaker 3: that has evangelical power for sure.
[18:47] Speaker 1: So Christianity also seems to be holding its own, if
[18:50] Speaker 1: not expanding, in the political space as well. So a
[18:53] Speaker 1: little more data here again back to Pew. Just under
[18:57] Speaker 1: fifty percent and in some years the US population still
[19:01] Speaker 1: believes that the Bible should have some or a great
[19:04] Speaker 1: deal of influence on US laws. And that number has
[19:08] Speaker 1: held steady for several years. Does that surprise you that
[19:11] Speaker 1: number isn't isn't falling at the.
[19:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose it would surprise me a little bit.
[19:15] Speaker 3: Although you know, maybe we attend too much to the
[19:18] Speaker 3: kind of elite voices in the culture that people, by
[19:20] Speaker 3: a deep intuition know that the moral principles in our
[19:24] Speaker 3: culture largely come from the Bible, from this Judeo Christian tradition.
[19:29] Speaker 3: And you can talk about all those a secular laws,
[19:31] Speaker 3: but but what's undergirding even something as simple as as
[19:34] Speaker 3: the regulating the speed on a highway, Well, what's underneath
[19:38] Speaker 3: that is a concern for human life?
[19:39] Speaker 2: Right?
[19:39] Speaker 3: Well, why would that concern for human life? Well, it's
[19:41] Speaker 3: because you know of these great Biblical values. If the
[19:45] Speaker 3: Ten Commandments represent as a quintas said, you know the
[19:48] Speaker 3: basic principles of the natural law. So from the Bible
[19:52] Speaker 3: to the natural law to positive law. Yeah, maybe people
[19:55] Speaker 3: are intuiting that relationship without being able to articulate it fully.
[20:00] Speaker 1: Have been some intellectual currence gaining steam. This is primarily
[20:03] Speaker 1: on the on the conservative side of the political spectrum,
[20:07] Speaker 1: but they include common good, constitutionalism, post liberalism, and integralism
[20:12] Speaker 1: among others that all have They differ with each other,
[20:16] Speaker 1: and they're internally complex, but they all have a kind
[20:19] Speaker 1: of basis in a Christian understanding of reality and the
[20:23] Speaker 1: human person, and they appear to be, like I said,
[20:26] Speaker 1: gaining steam within the political world. Do you see any
[20:28] Speaker 1: significance in that taking place?
[20:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, I do, And I know if some of those
[20:31] Speaker 3: folks that have talked to them, you know, we have
[20:34] Speaker 3: Patrick deninan recently on our show, and we've had David
[20:38] Speaker 3: Schindler and you know other people. Yeah, I think if
[20:43] Speaker 3: we get to the very bottom of those of those theories,
[20:45] Speaker 3: you find something like the need for a moral undergirding
[20:50] Speaker 3: of our political society, and then underneath the moral something
[20:53] Speaker 3: like a properly spiritual or religious view.
[20:57] Speaker 2: Now.
[20:57] Speaker 3: I know we can have a whole discussion about this, right,
[20:59] Speaker 3: it's complicated, but that there is this kind of Russian
[21:02] Speaker 3: doll relationship.
[21:03] Speaker 2: You know that positive law.
[21:05] Speaker 3: This is Thomas Aquinas indeed ness in the natural law,
[21:09] Speaker 3: which in turn ness in the eternal law of God.
[21:12] Speaker 3: And you can't separate those out. If you want a
[21:14] Speaker 3: more up to date version of that, read Martin Luther
[21:17] Speaker 3: King letter from the Birmingham City Jail, where he makes
[21:19] Speaker 3: exactly that Tomistic argument that what's the matter with the
[21:22] Speaker 3: Jim Crow laws in the South is that they're out
[21:25] Speaker 3: of step with the moral law, which means they're out
[21:27] Speaker 3: of step with eternal law. And that's why he says
[21:29] Speaker 3: to his fellow ministers, I can't wait. You know, I
[21:32] Speaker 3: have to oppose these laws now. So that intuition, which
[21:36] Speaker 3: is very deep, that needs to make a comeback, or
[21:40] Speaker 3: it needs to be made more explicit.
[21:42] Speaker 2: And so that's how I.
[21:43] Speaker 3: Read some of those folks is they're trying to find
[21:45] Speaker 3: that relationship again.
[21:46] Speaker 1: There seems to be something important anthropologically happening as well
[21:50] Speaker 1: within these movements. Within conservative politics broadly, there seems to
[21:53] Speaker 1: be a wholesale rejection of the old libertarian market driven
[21:58] Speaker 1: conceptions of where all as sort of people who are
[22:02] Speaker 1: trying to make economic transactions. And that's how we should
[22:05] Speaker 1: define the state that seems to be now on the
[22:07] Speaker 1: outs in the conservative movement.
[22:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a tension within it, and that's been
[22:11] Speaker 3: around for a long time.
[22:12] Speaker 4: You know.
[22:12] Speaker 2: Go back to even to like.
[22:13] Speaker 3: The fifties in the beginning of National Review M. F.
[22:16] Speaker 3: Buckley and think of something like a Russell Kirk. I
[22:20] Speaker 3: take him as a as a load star in anyways
[22:22] Speaker 3: from my own thinking about He was not a libertarian
[22:26] Speaker 3: and did not like this sort of purely locky and
[22:29] Speaker 3: sort of you know, or a free market view of things.
[22:32] Speaker 3: He wanted a morally informed political ethos, and he wanted
[22:37] Speaker 3: the moral to be grounded in the religious, the spiritual.
[22:40] Speaker 3: That's where I stand. I go back to like Russell
[22:43] Speaker 3: Kirk and behind him Edmund Burke. That's the Trisian.
[22:46] Speaker 2: I'm meant.
[22:47] Speaker 3: There are other expressions of Conservatism that i'd be less
[22:50] Speaker 3: an amorate, and some of them have that libertarian form
[22:55] Speaker 3: that's not Catholic social teaching. So when people ask me,
[22:59] Speaker 3: what's what's your political point of view? As it's Catholic
[23:01] Speaker 3: social teaching, it's right. But I think people like like
[23:04] Speaker 3: Russell Kirk, who became a Catholic indeed represent that they
[23:09] Speaker 3: have those instincts.
[23:10] Speaker 2: You know.
[23:11] Speaker 1: The final example I'd like to look at, and this
[23:13] Speaker 1: is this is right when we're filming this, this just happened,
[23:17] Speaker 1: is your experience at the National Eucharistic Congress where you
[23:20] Speaker 1: spoke to over fifty thousand people in Lucas Oil Stadium. Now,
[23:24] Speaker 1: of course that's a momentous moment for the church. Do
[23:26] Speaker 1: you see he broader cultural significance for that?
[23:29] Speaker 4: You know?
[23:29] Speaker 2: I hope. So, we don't know, I hope. So.
[23:32] Speaker 3: I think the fact that so many responded to that
[23:34] Speaker 3: call is remarkable. I was there at the very beginning
[23:37] Speaker 3: when we were thinking about this idea.
[23:38] Speaker 2: We bishops were that's right, and you know, we didn't know.
[23:42] Speaker 3: We had the Pew Form study and others that got
[23:45] Speaker 3: our attention that there was a problem. And then we
[23:48] Speaker 3: brought it to our brother bishops and we went through
[23:50] Speaker 3: a couple of years of deliberation and consultation d with
[23:54] Speaker 3: the Holy See, and then we.
[23:56] Speaker 2: Launched this revival.
[23:58] Speaker 3: The long term goal of which is indeed, you know,
[24:02] Speaker 3: of Euchristic revival across the whole country, will it happen?
[24:06] Speaker 3: The gathering in Indianapolis is a good sign that there was,
[24:10] Speaker 3: you know, an interest in it. Think of those pilgrimage
[24:13] Speaker 3: of processions across the country.
[24:16] Speaker 5: That's powerful public procession, public processions. Yeah, and so I
[24:20] Speaker 5: take it as a very positive sign. Now it's up
[24:22] Speaker 5: to us in the local churches to make sure it continues.
[24:26] Speaker 5: So it's a hopeful sign.
[24:27] Speaker 1: Anyway, let's turn the into taking the remaining moments. We
[24:31] Speaker 1: have a more evaluative approach to this datu. So we've
[24:35] Speaker 1: looked at some empirical data, we look at some anecdotal
[24:38] Speaker 1: instances as well. What's your general sense, Bishop.
[24:41] Speaker 2: Are we are we at a better place?
[24:43] Speaker 1: Are we are we going in a better direction than
[24:45] Speaker 1: we have been? Or might this just be sort of
[24:46] Speaker 1: flashes in the pan.
[24:47] Speaker 3: No, I think it is. It is a better direction.
[24:50] Speaker 3: I mentioned Peterson earlier. I'll mention his name again because
[24:53] Speaker 3: to me, he's playing a very interesting role in our culture.
[24:56] Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson, he emerged, you know how many years ago now,
[24:59] Speaker 3: twenty fifteen or something around the whole pronoun issue up
[25:02] Speaker 3: and came.
[25:03] Speaker 2: But then people.
[25:04] Speaker 3: Began listening to him, and he talked in maybe a
[25:08] Speaker 3: broader context. But then he got into the Bible pretty
[25:11] Speaker 3: early on, and I think to his own great delight
[25:15] Speaker 3: and surprise found all of this richness. We would call
[25:19] Speaker 3: it the probably the moral sense of the scripture, you know,
[25:23] Speaker 3: to use the old Patristic language. That's what he found,
[25:26] Speaker 3: and how these stories and so on speak so deeply
[25:29] Speaker 3: to the reality of human experience, etc. And the fact
[25:34] Speaker 3: that it was coming from him, not from a cleric,
[25:36] Speaker 3: because you know, people were suspicious of clerics.
[25:39] Speaker 2: And scandals and all.
[25:40] Speaker 3: That it was coming from this layman who was outside
[25:43] Speaker 3: of the religious establishment completely, who was not preaching, he
[25:48] Speaker 3: was searching, he was thinking it through in a public way.
[25:53] Speaker 3: I think, I know, I know a lot of people
[25:57] Speaker 3: found that very compelling.
[25:58] Speaker 2: Here's a guy.
[25:59] Speaker 3: I remember telling my brother bishops this at one of
[26:01] Speaker 3: our when I was head of evangelization. I said, just
[26:04] Speaker 3: look at this phenomenon of this layman. At that point,
[26:08] Speaker 3: I don't know how I characterize his belief, but I said,
[26:11] Speaker 3: a layman who's getting up and tens of thousands of
[26:15] Speaker 3: young men are coming to listen to them. And I said,
[26:19] Speaker 3: I say, what you want about him, there's something we
[26:22] Speaker 3: should learn from this, you know. Well, I think it's
[26:24] Speaker 3: broaden out from Peter stut to a lot of other
[26:26] Speaker 3: people who begun to speak about religion and let's face it,
[26:31] Speaker 3: which has been around forever, you know, the conceit that, oh,
[26:37] Speaker 3: we've come up with some new arguments, you know, Richard
[26:39] Speaker 3: Dawkins has, and so religion therefore is over. You listen
[26:43] Speaker 3: to the new atheists now, they seem silly, pathetic that,
[26:48] Speaker 3: you know, this thing has been around forever. Some of
[26:50] Speaker 3: the greatest minds and spirits and artists and poets of
[26:54] Speaker 3: all time have been part of it. And well, you know,
[26:57] Speaker 3: it's just bronze as mythology, and let's move on the
[27:00] Speaker 3: other part of it too, I think, and I deal
[27:02] Speaker 3: again with a lot of younger people. You know what,
[27:05] Speaker 3: there's no God, there's no meaning, there's no purpose, there's
[27:07] Speaker 3: no objective value.
[27:08] Speaker 2: When you die, you die like a dog, you and
[27:10] Speaker 2: you rode away. That's your worldview.
[27:13] Speaker 3: That's Dawkins, Harris Hitchens, that's their worldview. Okay, who's finding
[27:20] Speaker 3: that compelling?
[27:21] Speaker 2: Yeah? Who says that's what I want?
[27:22] Speaker 4: Boy?
[27:23] Speaker 3: I want to fight for that. I think in the
[27:24] Speaker 3: beginning there was a fair amount of this oh yeah
[27:26] Speaker 3: in the face of religion, But then once they realize
[27:30] Speaker 3: that's what we're talking about here, and then you come
[27:32] Speaker 3: up against a tradition that goes all the way back
[27:35] Speaker 3: and concludes all these great figures, who, in very compelling ways,
[27:38] Speaker 3: once you listen to them, speak of a deeper, higher,
[27:42] Speaker 3: richer world, the world of value and meaning and purpose.
[27:45] Speaker 3: And I think Peterson and Company kind of stumbled onto
[27:49] Speaker 3: it as hey, hey, did you see this? And people
[27:52] Speaker 3: started listening again to it. I think that's a very
[27:55] Speaker 3: hopeful sign.
[27:56] Speaker 1: Also from any valuative perspective, do we want to take
[27:59] Speaker 1: it as an un qualified good any form of Christianity
[28:03] Speaker 1: we see resurging in the culture, or we want to
[28:05] Speaker 1: be careful that we get our understanding of Christianity right?
[28:09] Speaker 3: Well, sure, I'm a Catholic bishop. Catholicism is the right religion.
[28:13] Speaker 3: I mean, I want everyone to be a Catholic. That's
[28:15] Speaker 3: my perspective. But there's also the half empty or half
[28:18] Speaker 3: full I mean, so, is it a good thing that
[28:21] Speaker 3: people are interested in religion?
[28:22] Speaker 2: Again? Sure, let's build on that.
[28:25] Speaker 3: Are they interested in forms of Christianity I might find
[28:28] Speaker 3: less than perfectly adequate?
[28:29] Speaker 2: Okay, I can work with that.
[28:31] Speaker 3: So I prefer to say, let's do the glass half
[28:34] Speaker 3: full approach, you know, and then we can build on it.
[28:37] Speaker 3: But sure, I want everyone to be a Catholic. I'm
[28:39] Speaker 3: a Catholic bishop and a Catholic evangelist, and I think
[28:42] Speaker 3: Catholicism is the richest expression of Christianity. So of course
[28:45] Speaker 3: I want everyone to become Catholic. But heck, I'll reach
[28:49] Speaker 3: out to anybody. Did Quinids reach out to all kinds
[28:53] Speaker 3: of people who had inadequate views of things. But wherever
[28:56] Speaker 3: there's truth, there's God, And so I can build a bridge.
[29:00] Speaker 1: And finally, to circle back to a thing that briefly
[29:02] Speaker 1: came out right at the beginning of our conversation, you know,
[29:05] Speaker 1: we're here in the US, uh celebrating a two percent
[29:09] Speaker 1: drop in disaffiliation, which might be statistical noise. Meanwhile, in
[29:15] Speaker 1: Africa and many parts of Asia, the church is exploding.
[29:19] Speaker 1: What can we learn from that?
[29:22] Speaker 2: Grow? Yeah, and first of all, that that point is
[29:24] Speaker 2: very important.
[29:25] Speaker 3: I don't know if I've said this publicly before, but
[29:27] Speaker 3: at the Senate I was there last October, you know,
[29:30] Speaker 3: and it's a great preoccupation with the Church of Germany
[29:32] Speaker 3: because the Senate way and at one point I just said,
[29:35] Speaker 3: why are we listening to the church in Germany, which
[29:37] Speaker 3: is dying. Every people are leaving like mad. They have
[29:41] Speaker 3: a lot of money because of that, you know, taxes
[29:43] Speaker 3: and they have. But I said the church is dying.
[29:45] Speaker 3: I said, why aren't we listening to the Church of Nigeria.
[29:48] Speaker 3: Ninety five percent of the people go to Mass on Sunday.
[29:50] Speaker 3: The seminaries are bursting. Why are and they're under persecution.
[29:54] Speaker 3: Why aren't we listening to the Church of Nigeria. So, yes,
[29:57] Speaker 3: I think that we should attend to the explosion of
[30:00] Speaker 3: the faith there. But let me give you one answer
[30:02] Speaker 3: I think is the right answer. It's a supernatural religion.
[30:05] Speaker 3: It's the more you emphasize the supernatural, the more popular
[30:09] Speaker 3: and powerful.
[30:09] Speaker 2: The religion becomes.
[30:11] Speaker 3: My definition of liberalism is the tendency to naturalize the supernatural.
[30:15] Speaker 3: Liberalism and religion. Yeah, when you do that, you become
[30:19] Speaker 3: less compelling. I think that's true across the poor. When
[30:23] Speaker 3: you emphasize the supernatural element, you're more compelling. That's the
[30:26] Speaker 3: African churches. They emphasize the supernatural element now, which has
[30:31] Speaker 3: implications all over the place. We're not saying therefore, don't
[30:34] Speaker 3: worry about politics and the poor and all that.
[30:37] Speaker 2: No, but when the stress is on the supernatural.
[30:40] Speaker 3: The religion is compelling, and I think that's what's happening
[30:43] Speaker 3: in Africa.
[30:48] Speaker 1: Well, Bishop, now time for our listener question. Today we
[30:51] Speaker 1: have Rudy from Nashville who's asking for some pieces of
[30:55] Speaker 1: advice on how to evangelize his Protestant family and friends.
[30:59] Speaker 4: Okay, Hi, Bishop Baron, my name is Rudy and I'm
[31:03] Speaker 4: from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm a recent convert and I'd love
[31:07] Speaker 4: to share my faith more. But for my Protestant friends
[31:10] Speaker 4: and family, especially, Catholicism is overwhelming with all its symbols, traditions,
[31:15] Speaker 4: and theology. Even mentioning the Eucharist is daunting because it's
[31:19] Speaker 4: so mysterious. What's one small thing I can tell other friends,
[31:23] Speaker 4: Christian and secular about Catholicism to perhaps change their minds?
[31:27] Speaker 4: Thank you?
[31:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good searching question. Huh. A couple of
[31:31] Speaker 2: things come right in my mind.
[31:32] Speaker 3: One is doctor your cousins was a great theologian, became
[31:38] Speaker 3: a friend of mine some years ago. He said, the
[31:41] Speaker 3: great virtue of Catholicism is we never threw anything out.
[31:44] Speaker 3: He said, We're it's a grandma's addict thing that you've
[31:47] Speaker 3: got all these things you want intellectualism, we got acquaintance.
[31:50] Speaker 2: You want mysticism, we got John Leacrotsey.
[31:53] Speaker 3: You want spirituality, the friends, you want to care for
[31:56] Speaker 3: the pooriotor of the day.
[31:57] Speaker 2: I mean you have liturgy. We didn't thrown thing out.
[32:01] Speaker 2: It's there.
[32:02] Speaker 3: And I also think of Cardinal George's Great Land, which
[32:04] Speaker 3: I've repeated, the Catholic Church has all the gifts Christ
[32:09] Speaker 3: wants his people to have. So other Christian churches, he
[32:12] Speaker 3: felt sure have some or many of the gifts Christ
[32:15] Speaker 3: wants people to have. The Catholic Church has all the
[32:17] Speaker 3: gifts from Bible, liturgy, theology, mysticism, care for the poor,
[32:26] Speaker 3: all across the board, all the Mary, the papacy, apostolic authority.
[32:32] Speaker 3: And so that's maybe a way to present it, not
[32:34] Speaker 3: as like, wow, what a weird clutter of things, but
[32:37] Speaker 3: the Catholic Church has all the gifts Christ wants as
[32:39] Speaker 3: people to have.
[32:41] Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much, Rudy for your question. If
[32:44] Speaker 1: you would like to ask Bishop Baron a question for
[32:46] Speaker 1: a future Word on Fire show, please visit Askbishop Baron
[32:50] Speaker 1: dot com. That's ask Bishop Baron dot com. We'd love
[32:53] Speaker 1: to hear from you, Bishop. We're at the end of
[32:56] Speaker 1: another fantastic conversation. So many genres as usual, look forward
[32:59] Speaker 1: to having a.
[32:59] Speaker 2: Be always a pleasure. Thanks man that does it.
[33:02] Speaker 1: For us today. Thanks for joining us on the Word
[33:04] Speaker 1: on Fire Show. If you're interested in learning more about
[33:07] Speaker 1: how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ,
[33:10] Speaker 1: become a better evangelist with and for others, and work
[33:13] Speaker 1: for the common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute.
[33:16] Speaker 1: Check us out at institute dot Wordonfire dot org. That's
[33:20] Speaker 1: institute dot Word on Fire dot org. We'll see you
[33:23] Speaker 1: next time.

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