# Bishop Barron's Sermon - Are You Calling It Love, When Its Really Just Empathy

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 26 Sep 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75250072/bishop_barron_s_sermon_are_you_calling_it_love_when_its_really_just_empathy.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you. Friends, I just finished reading a
[0:03] Speaker 1: really interesting book called Suicidal Empathy by a man with
[0:06] Speaker 1: a very poetic name. His name is Gad Saad. And
[0:09] Speaker 1: Gad Saad is a Canadian, let's call him social psychologist.
[0:13] Speaker 1: And the book, I think, along with Chris Rufos, America's
[0:19] Speaker 1: Cultural Revolution, and James Lindsay's cynical theories, I think it's
[0:24] Speaker 1: the best exposure and takedown of the lunacy at the
[0:28] Speaker 1: heart of much of the wokest philosophy that dominates things today.
[0:32] Speaker 1: And Saad's analysis focuses on empathy. Now, what's empathy? Empathy is,
[0:42] Speaker 1: you know, feeling the feelings of somebody else, entering into
[0:46] Speaker 1: the feelings of another person, and let's say a desire
[0:49] Speaker 1: not to hurt or wound those feelings. That's empathy. Is
[0:53] Speaker 1: empathy a good thing? Yeah, Perfectly decent thing. All things
[0:58] Speaker 1: being equal, you know, you should be empathetic with people.
[1:01] Speaker 1: All things being equal don't hurt people's feelings. Here's the problem,
[1:06] Speaker 1: and I think he's right about this. But empathy is
[1:09] Speaker 1: not a supreme value. Empathy is not something which is
[1:15] Speaker 1: always and everywhere the right thing to do. Empathy is
[1:20] Speaker 1: not the center around which all of our value system revolves.
[1:24] Speaker 1: And see, in the measure that it's become that, lots
[1:27] Speaker 1: of mischievous happen. It's become so exaggerated, in fact, that
[1:32] Speaker 1: it threatens truth, reality, justice, and I'll get to this, love.
[1:40] Speaker 1: If you put empathy, so defined, in the center of
[1:43] Speaker 1: your preoccupation, truth, reality, justice, and love, are going to
[1:48] Speaker 1: be threatened. Now, cases in point abound. All you have
[1:52] Speaker 1: to do is look around the culture today. What do
[1:53] Speaker 1: you find? Well, so they won't feel bad about themselves,
[1:57] Speaker 1: we'll let biological men compete in women's sports and frustrate
[2:02] Speaker 1: the dreams of thousands of young women. So as not
[2:05] Speaker 1: to undermine the self-esteem of minorities, we'll allow them, even
[2:09] Speaker 1: if they're unqualified, to have positions in universities in the
[2:12] Speaker 1: corporate world so that everybody might feel included and will
[2:16] Speaker 1: characterize the meritocracy as white privilege, etc. So most of
[2:21] Speaker 1: the moves of wokeism are predicated upon the primacy of empathy.
[2:26] Speaker 1: Our supreme value is don't hurt the feelings of other people. Well,
[2:31] Speaker 1: but what if what we're doing is unjust? What if
[2:33] Speaker 1: it's unfair? What if it's not really good for people? Well,
[2:38] Speaker 1: that takes second place to empathy. It becomes so exaggerated,
[2:44] Speaker 1: Gad said, argues, that it becomes, in fact, suicidal, that
[2:49] Speaker 1: it undermines society itself. Now, as I was reading his book,
[2:56] Speaker 1: so he's not coming at this from a religious standpoint.
[2:59] Speaker 1: He's doing it more from the standpoint of social psychology.
[3:02] Speaker 1: But as I was reading his book, I kept thinking
[3:06] Speaker 1: of the distinction between empathy and love. Love is indeed
[3:13] Speaker 1: the supreme value taught to us by the Bible. Love
[3:17] Speaker 1: is indeed what stands at the heart of the moral life.
[3:20] Speaker 1: But love, everybody, does not mean primarily feeling the feelings
[3:25] Speaker 1: of somebody else. Love does not mean primarily not hurting
[3:31] Speaker 1: people's feelings. Love, as Thomas Aquinas teaches, means to will
[3:38] Speaker 1: the good of the other. Empathy is to feel the
[3:42] Speaker 1: feelings of the other and don't harm the feelings of
[3:45] Speaker 1: the other. Love is willing the good of the other.
[3:52] Speaker 1: Does that mean that sometimes loving involves hurting people's feelings?
[3:59] Speaker 1: You bet. You bet. I'll give you a couple simple examples.
[4:05] Speaker 1: You're a conscientious college professor. Someone turns in their work,
[4:10] Speaker 1: and it's pretty bad. Mediocre at best. And so you
[4:14] Speaker 1: give that paper a C, or C-. Will you hurt
[4:19] Speaker 1: the person's feelings? Yeah, undoubtedly. If I got a C,
[4:25] Speaker 1: I'd feel terrible. I'd probably be angry. My self-esteem would
[4:30] Speaker 1: be wounded. My feelings would be hurt, certainly. But what
[4:34] Speaker 1: would that conscientious professor be doing he would in fact
[4:39] Speaker 1: be loving that student. Why? He'd be telling him the
[4:43] Speaker 1: truth about the quality of his work and probably incentivizing
[4:49] Speaker 1: him to do better, encouraging him to become a better writer,
[4:55] Speaker 1: a better researcher, a more careful student. The C hurt
[5:00] Speaker 1: his feelings, to be sure, but that C was in
[5:03] Speaker 1: fact an act of love. How about a priest in
[5:08] Speaker 1: the confessional? Suppose someone confesses a very serious crime, and
[5:13] Speaker 1: the priest, of course, can't violate the seal himself, but
[5:15] Speaker 1: he could tell the penitent, look, you need to go
[5:18] Speaker 1: to the police, and you need to turn yourself in.
[5:22] Speaker 1: Is he hurting his feelings? I'm sure. Is he making
[5:27] Speaker 1: his life more difficult? No question about it. Is he
[5:31] Speaker 1: wounding his self-esteem? Probably. Probably. But is he loving that person? Absolutely.
[5:39] Speaker 1: By telling him to turn himself in, to do what's right,
[5:41] Speaker 1: to do the just thing, he's willing the good of
[5:43] Speaker 1: the other. He's loving him even as he hurts his feelings.
[5:50] Speaker 1: And look, any parent listening to me right now, you
[5:53] Speaker 1: get this. What if a parent truly said, my purpose
[5:58] Speaker 1: vis-a-vis my kids is never to hurt their feelings? My
[6:03] Speaker 1: purpose is so to empathize with my kids that I
[6:06] Speaker 1: never hurt their feelings, wound their pride, make them feel
[6:10] Speaker 1: bad about themselves. Well, welcome to being the worst parent
[6:14] Speaker 1: of the year, right? It's a disaster for you and
[6:19] Speaker 1: for them. No, no, every good parent knows to will
[6:23] Speaker 1: the good of your kids. In fact, Frequently, you have
[6:27] Speaker 1: to hurt their feelings. Frequently, you have to wound their self-esteem.
[6:31] Speaker 1: Because you're doing what's right, not what's empathetic. See, everybody,
[6:38] Speaker 1: upon that distinction, so much turns, so much rests. Now,
[6:44] Speaker 1: listen to St. Paul. It's our second reading for today.
[6:47] Speaker 1: We're still reading from Paul to the Romans, this master
[6:50] Speaker 1: text of our tradition. Listen to Paul. He's saying a
[6:55] Speaker 1: mouthful there. For a Jew of Paul's time, the law,
[7:01] Speaker 1: the Torah, it was everything. I mean, it was to
[7:03] Speaker 1: walk the path of the Lord. How do you fulfill
[7:08] Speaker 1: the entirety of the law? Paul says, through love. Mind you,
[7:23] Speaker 1: he doesn't say through empathy. He doesn't say by not
[7:28] Speaker 1: hurting people's feelings. No, by loving, by willing the good
[7:32] Speaker 1: of others, I fulfill the law. Now, he gets more specific. Listen,
[7:39] Speaker 1: you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you
[7:41] Speaker 1: shall not steal, you shall not covet. That's pretty hard-edged stuff.
[7:47] Speaker 1: He's not wishy-washy about what's good, what's evil. No, these
[7:50] Speaker 1: are commandments. that are delineating what should be avoided, what
[7:55] Speaker 1: should be pursued, these laws that govern life. Yeah, follow
[7:58] Speaker 1: those and you'll be expressing love. It's all summed up,
[8:04] Speaker 1: Paul says in the saying, I'm quoting him, you shall
[8:07] Speaker 1: love your neighbor as yourself. Good. Now, let's go back
[8:13] Speaker 1: to wokeism for a minute. I know the game that
[8:17] Speaker 1: everybody plays, which is, oh, no, no, no, wokeism, to
[8:20] Speaker 1: be woke just means you're alert to social injustice and
[8:23] Speaker 1: you care about the suffering of the poor. Look, just
[8:25] Speaker 1: for the record, I'm for social justice. I'm for caring
[8:29] Speaker 1: for the poor. But that's not what wokeism means, everybody.
[8:33] Speaker 1: That's a kind of cloak put around it. Wokeism, and
[8:37] Speaker 1: I've read the avatars of wokeism, is a popularization of
[8:41] Speaker 1: critical theory. which is a postmodern theory coming up out
[8:44] Speaker 1: of the French and German academies. Names like Max Horkheimer,
[8:49] Speaker 1: Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Herbert Marcuse, many others.
[8:56] Speaker 1: What's one of the marks now of this postmodern critical theory,
[8:59] Speaker 1: which has morphed into wokeism? One of the distinctive marks
[9:03] Speaker 1: of it is that there are no objective epistemic and
[9:07] Speaker 1: moral truths. In fact, claims to know the truth epistemically
[9:12] Speaker 1: or morally is seen by critical theory as a power play.
[9:18] Speaker 1: It's what's used by powerful people to keep marginalized people down.
[9:23] Speaker 1: And so what they do very often in this French
[9:25] Speaker 1: and German critical theory is they try to unmask and
[9:29] Speaker 1: deconstruct and get behind claims to objective moral and epistemic
[9:33] Speaker 1: truths to get at the oppressive power games that are
[9:36] Speaker 1: really going on. Now, any of that sound familiar? Because
[9:40] Speaker 1: it's all over the wokest rhetoric and literature today. But see,
[9:45] Speaker 1: watch what happens. If you say there are no objective
[9:49] Speaker 1: moral and epistemic values, just my truth, your truth, what
[9:53] Speaker 1: I think is good, what you think is good, but
[9:54] Speaker 1: there's no objective truth or goodness, what's left? Empathy. You see,
[10:00] Speaker 1: what's left is empathy. There's no objective truth or good.
[10:05] Speaker 1: And so, well, let's just tolerate each other and let's
[10:09] Speaker 1: try not to hurt each other's feelings. It makes perfect
[10:12] Speaker 1: sense to me how empathy has moved into the center
[10:17] Speaker 1: because these objective The objectivities that Paul's talking about, adultery
[10:21] Speaker 1: and murder and stealing and so on, they've been marginalized.
[10:25] Speaker 1: And so what moves into the center is empathy. Now,
[10:33] Speaker 1: in light of all this, can you see why Jesus
[10:36] Speaker 1: didn't say, have empathy for one another? What he said was,
[10:42] Speaker 1: love one another. How St. John does not say God
[10:48] Speaker 1: is empathy. No, he says God is love. So again,
[10:55] Speaker 1: upon that distinction, everybody, so much turns. If we allow
[10:59] Speaker 1: love to devolve into empathy, then we have this collapse
[11:04] Speaker 1: that we see all around us today. You know, I
[11:07] Speaker 1: think of Chesterton's famous line, when men stop believing in God,
[11:12] Speaker 1: they don't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything, he says. Think,
[11:16] Speaker 1: you know, nature pours a vacuum. Same is true at
[11:19] Speaker 1: the intellectual level. When something moves out of the center, well,
[11:23] Speaker 1: something else is going to move in. I often wondered
[11:27] Speaker 1: whether wokeism is a result of Christianity losing its place
[11:33] Speaker 1: at the center of the culture. You know, go back
[11:36] Speaker 1: to even 50 years ago. A consensus around the great
[11:41] Speaker 1: sort of moral and spiritual values that ought to undergird
[11:45] Speaker 1: a society When people said, okay, will the good of
[11:48] Speaker 1: the other, they knew what that meant. They knew what
[11:50] Speaker 1: those goods were. But see, as that has receded, as
[11:54] Speaker 1: Christianity has become unsure of itself and has retreated from
[11:58] Speaker 1: the public square, what's moved in? This postmodern, wokest theorizing,
[12:05] Speaker 1: which has replaced love with empathy. What orders our lives?
[12:16] Speaker 1: They have the same question from last week. You know,
[12:18] Speaker 1: Paul's talking about becoming a living sacrifice. What orders our wills,
[12:24] Speaker 1: our minds? What gathers us? Well, you see, there's always
[12:28] Speaker 1: something that's going to be in the center. There's always
[12:30] Speaker 1: some magnetic point. Wokeism says empathy. And Gad Saad is right,
[12:36] Speaker 1: it seems to me. In the measure that that becomes
[12:38] Speaker 1: the center, the society ends up committing suicides. We need,
[12:45] Speaker 1: I think, to reassert with biblical boldness that what stands
[12:51] Speaker 1: at the center of our society is not refraining from
[12:55] Speaker 1: hurting people's feelings, but is the kind of hard-edged language
[13:01] Speaker 1: of love. Remember it was Dostoevsky who said, love is
[13:05] Speaker 1: a harsh and dreadful thing. It's dead right. It's dead right.
[13:10] Speaker 1: Love is not sentimentality. Love is not refraining from hurting feelings.
[13:14] Speaker 1: Love is willing the good of another. And that can
[13:17] Speaker 1: involve something very demanding. Don't retreat, biblical people. Don't retreat
[13:23] Speaker 1: to the cultural sidelines. But bring this great teaching about
[13:26] Speaker 1: the centrality of love back into the cultural conversation. And
[13:32] Speaker 1: God bless you.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.