# Stay With Us_ Evangelizing the Disaffiliated - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 20 Aug 2026, 1 h 27 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73920860/stay_with_us_evangelizing_the_disaffiliated.mp3



## Transcript

[0:11] Speaker 1: Greetings to everybody. This talk is two years delayed for
[0:14] Speaker 1: me because two years ago I was just about to
[0:17] Speaker 1: give this presentation at the University Series and I came
[0:20] Speaker 1: down with shingles. I wouldn't wish it in my worst enemy.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Then last year I was going to give the same
[0:26] Speaker 1: talk and COVID broke out. So now at least virtually
[0:29] Speaker 1: I can be with you for this presentation. As Bob mentioned,
[0:33] Speaker 1: the title stay with Us a reflection on the unaffiliated,
[0:38] Speaker 1: sometimes called the nuns, the nones, those who would check
[0:43] Speaker 1: none on the survey if they asked about their religion.
[0:47] Speaker 1: I think we all know what the number one problem
[0:49] Speaker 1: is facing the church today, but I think this is
[0:51] Speaker 1: the number two problem. If we're looking at our priorities,
[0:55] Speaker 1: the number two problem is this massive, frankly disaffiliate of
[1:00] Speaker 1: our own people, especially the young. So what I want
[1:03] Speaker 1: to do in the brief time we have tonight is
[1:05] Speaker 1: try to give at least a preliminary answer to three questions.
[1:09] Speaker 1: First of all, who are they? Secondly, why are they leaving?
[1:14] Speaker 1: And thirdly how do we get them back? So I'll
[1:16] Speaker 1: structure my talk that way. If you're keeping score, I'll
[1:19] Speaker 1: just be trying to answer those three basic questions. The
[1:23] Speaker 1: first one is for the statisticians, the empirically minded, who
[1:27] Speaker 1: are they? Second part of the talk is for the theoretician,
[1:30] Speaker 1: So what are the reasons they're leaving? The third, and
[1:33] Speaker 1: I hope most important part of the talk is for
[1:36] Speaker 1: all of us practitioners. What do we do? How do
[1:39] Speaker 1: we solve this problem? Okay, so first of all, who
[1:42] Speaker 1: are the unaffiliated? You know, A bit of good news
[1:46] Speaker 1: is we have actually a lot of data on this.
[1:49] Speaker 1: This issue has been studied a lot in recent years.
[1:52] Speaker 1: And let me share some of these statistics with you.
[1:55] Speaker 1: Here's one that I find really illuminating. Go back to
[1:58] Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, so when I was a little kid,
[2:02] Speaker 1: studies showed that about three percent of the country would
[2:08] Speaker 1: have said in the early seventies that they have no religion.
[2:11] Speaker 1: So ninety seven percent of our country would have claimed
[2:15] Speaker 1: some religious affiliation. Now I'm not saying they were all saints.
[2:19] Speaker 1: I'm not saying they were all, you know, practicing their
[2:21] Speaker 1: faith beautifully. But ninety seven percent of the country would
[2:24] Speaker 1: have claimed some religious identity. Now, fast forward to the
[2:29] Speaker 1: year nineteen ninety one. It's like twenty years later, the
[2:33] Speaker 1: figure has gone up one hundred percent to six percent.
[2:37] Speaker 1: So it's an increase, to be sure, but still in
[2:39] Speaker 1: absolute numbers, not an extraordinary increase. Still, ninety four percent
[2:44] Speaker 1: of our country would have claimed in nineteen ninety one
[2:47] Speaker 1: that they have a religious identity. But then go from
[2:50] Speaker 1: ninety one until today and you see an extraordinary increase.
[2:57] Speaker 1: Today the figure is twenty six percent. Twenty six percent
[3:02] Speaker 1: of our country now claims to be a nun to
[3:05] Speaker 1: be unaffiliated, no religious identity, over a quarter of the country.
[3:10] Speaker 1: So somewhere around eighty million people in our country would
[3:13] Speaker 1: now say they have no religion. And you know, I'm
[3:15] Speaker 1: old enough. Maybe some of you listening are old enough
[3:17] Speaker 1: to remember what it was like in the early seventies.
[3:21] Speaker 1: There was something different, I think in the social fabric
[3:27] Speaker 1: when you had a country that still was largely religious,
[3:30] Speaker 1: you know, many more practicing than do today. Things have changed.
[3:35] Speaker 1: And then when you look at younger people, the numbers
[3:38] Speaker 1: get even more disturbing. Look now at people under thirty,
[3:42] Speaker 1: that number rises from twenty six percent to forty percent.
[3:47] Speaker 1: Forty percent of Americans under thirty would now claim no religion.
[3:52] Speaker 1: And dare I say it? Looking at young Catholics. It
[3:55] Speaker 1: gets worse still Catholics thirty and younger, the number arises
[4:00] Speaker 1: to fifty percent. Let that sink in a little bit, everybody,
[4:05] Speaker 1: So we're all committed to the Catholic Church and Catholic
[4:07] Speaker 1: education and sacraments and everything. Fully one half of young
[4:13] Speaker 1: Catholics have now disaffiliated. Not encouraging number. Here's a stat
[4:19] Speaker 1: that stays in my mind. It's quite telling. For every
[4:22] Speaker 1: one person today joining the Catholic Church, six are leaving.
[4:28] Speaker 1: And by the way, that's the worst ratio of all
[4:30] Speaker 1: the major religions. So think of, you know, as you
[4:33] Speaker 1: see people and with great joy coming to the church
[4:35] Speaker 1: at Easter time. For everyone that joins, roughly six are leaving.
[4:41] Speaker 1: Another disturbing statistic. Read the work of Gene Twangy. She's
[4:46] Speaker 1: a sociologist at the University of San Diego. Wrote a
[4:50] Speaker 1: read the interesting book called Aegen meaning the generation that's
[4:54] Speaker 1: raised on iPads and iPhones, right the youngest set. She
[4:59] Speaker 1: has a chapter religion, and it's worth reading because she
[5:02] Speaker 1: says there was an old nostrum that said, well, sure,
[5:06] Speaker 1: a lot of young people disaffiliate from you know, official religion,
[5:09] Speaker 1: but they remain spiritual meaning, you know, belief in God,
[5:13] Speaker 1: belief in an afterlife, belief in you know, fundamental objective morality,
[5:17] Speaker 1: et cetera. She's showing and I'm not surprised that that
[5:22] Speaker 1: nostrum is now exposed as false because the longer people
[5:26] Speaker 1: stay away from institutional and formal religion, the less connected
[5:32] Speaker 1: to the spiritual they are, so they're both less religious
[5:36] Speaker 1: and less spiritual. Here's just one more read the Christian
[5:43] Speaker 1: Smith from the University of Notre Dame. He's one of
[5:46] Speaker 1: the most i think insightful commenters on this, this whole situation.
[5:52] Speaker 1: Most young Catholics, both affiliated and unaffiliated, will say something
[5:59] Speaker 1: like that. I'm going to give a quote, but it's
[6:01] Speaker 1: very representative. I'm so okay with uncertainty. I think uncertainty
[6:08] Speaker 1: is beautiful. I think the most beautiful works of art
[6:11] Speaker 1: are the ones that lead you to asking questions, as
[6:14] Speaker 1: opposed to those try and supply answers to what something is.
[6:19] Speaker 1: My point here is the number of people among the
[6:22] Speaker 1: young who are into the quest, not into the answers
[6:27] Speaker 1: provided by classical religion. Here's the last quote, and it's
[6:31] Speaker 1: from my colleague at Word on Fire, Brandon Vaught. By
[6:34] Speaker 1: the way, one of the more insightful commenters on this situation,
[6:39] Speaker 1: Brandon said, let's face it, the church is hemorrhaging young people,
[6:44] Speaker 1: and I think the stats certainly bear that out. Okay,
[6:48] Speaker 1: that's a little overview of some of the statistics on
[6:52] Speaker 1: who are the nuns? Who are those who are disaffiliating?
[6:56] Speaker 1: So second question, how come there now something I find
[7:02] Speaker 1: it's interesting when you bring up this question, and I
[7:06] Speaker 1: talk about this a lot on my online ministry. Everyone's
[7:10] Speaker 1: got an answer, everyone has got a response. There's a
[7:16] Speaker 1: lot of pontificating around this question. I know why they're leaving,
[7:20] Speaker 1: pairs why they're leaving well, and they're usually in complete
[7:23] Speaker 1: contradiction with each other, all these different pontifications. The good
[7:27] Speaker 1: news is, again there's a lot of objective data around this.
[7:33] Speaker 1: We don't just have to rely on people's gut feelings
[7:36] Speaker 1: and anecdotal stories. There's a lot of objective data, a
[7:41] Speaker 1: lot of studies in which young people are asked the
[7:46] Speaker 1: specific and blunt question well how come you left? And
[7:50] Speaker 1: they tell us? And so I think it's best to
[7:53] Speaker 1: stay with the objective data and not just with our
[7:55] Speaker 1: kind of private opinions. Let me draw your attention to
[8:00] Speaker 1: two pretty recent Pew Form studies that are very indicative.
[8:04] Speaker 1: So I'm deciding to here, but it's very typical of
[8:08] Speaker 1: the surveys done over the past many years. When asked
[8:11] Speaker 1: in the survey why they left a twenty sixteen Pew
[8:15] Speaker 1: Form study, fully one half fifty percent of the respondents
[8:21] Speaker 1: said lack of belief in religious teachings. So they were
[8:26] Speaker 1: given a number of options, like, you know, here's seven things,
[8:29] Speaker 1: check them off. You know why you left? Fully fifty percent,
[8:33] Speaker 1: by far the highest lack of belief in religious teachings.
[8:39] Speaker 1: In a twenty eighteen Pew Form study, same question asked,
[8:42] Speaker 1: it now rose to sixty percent checked off. I just
[8:47] Speaker 1: don't believe the teachings of the religion. You know, here's
[8:53] Speaker 1: the first observation everybody I find when talking about this issue.
[8:58] Speaker 1: Almost everybody reached for a kind of behavioral explanation. I
[9:03] Speaker 1: think young people leave because they were mistreated, they had
[9:06] Speaker 1: a bad experience at mass. Maybe they're leaving because of
[9:09] Speaker 1: the of the sex abuse scandals and all that, And indeed,
[9:13] Speaker 1: I'll get there. They do figure in these surveys, but clearly,
[9:18] Speaker 1: across many years now, the number one reason given is
[9:21] Speaker 1: a more intellectual reason. They just are not getting their
[9:26] Speaker 1: questions answered. They just don't believe what religion is teaching.
[9:32] Speaker 1: And this comes through in all the surveys. It's often
[9:36] Speaker 1: tightly correlated to the conflict between religion and science. See
[9:41] Speaker 1: because in the minds of many young people today, science
[9:45] Speaker 1: that the physical science, is the hard sciences, that's the
[9:48] Speaker 1: model of real knowledge. Well, religion seems out of step
[9:53] Speaker 1: with science. And if there's a conflict, guess which one's
[9:56] Speaker 1: gonna win in the minds of young people. So the
[10:00] Speaker 1: rationality of religion, at least in their minds, is a
[10:04] Speaker 1: major reason. Here's something from Christian Smith, again, the Notre
[10:09] Speaker 1: Dame researcher. He said fifty nine percent of the young
[10:14] Speaker 1: disaffiliated that he studied agree with the statement that religion
[10:19] Speaker 1: and science are in conflict with each other. Again, in
[10:23] Speaker 1: their minds, which one's going to win? You know, trust me,
[10:26] Speaker 1: it's not going to be religion. We'll get there when
[10:29] Speaker 1: I start talking about how to address this thing, but
[10:31] Speaker 1: this should be I think uppermost in our minds our
[10:34] Speaker 1: young people are. They're having a hard time getting their
[10:37] Speaker 1: minds around religion and science, and religion conflict is one
[10:41] Speaker 1: of the issues Here's just a quote from some of
[10:45] Speaker 1: Christian Smith's research. This is from a young disaffiliated person.
[10:50] Speaker 1: Now I wonder if God even exists. I mean, I
[10:54] Speaker 1: believe God was once used to explain phenomena which are
[10:57] Speaker 1: now explained by science. It's a young man. Here's not
[11:01] Speaker 1: one from a young woman. In all honesty, I feel
[11:05] Speaker 1: religion is a somewhat outdated notion, and now that we
[11:09] Speaker 1: have such scientific advances, we no longer need a higher
[11:13] Speaker 1: being to explain how we came to be. I now
[11:16] Speaker 1: put my faith in science again. A very very typical
[11:22] Speaker 1: among young people. Okay. Another reason why they disaffiliate religion
[11:29] Speaker 1: in the minds of the young seems to be associated
[11:32] Speaker 1: with violence. Now, keep in mind we're living in the
[11:36] Speaker 1: you know, post nine to eleven period. Nine to eleven
[11:40] Speaker 1: stirred up a very old argument coming up out of
[11:43] Speaker 1: the Enlightenment, namely, since religion is irrational, the only way
[11:49] Speaker 1: religious people can adjudicate their disputes is through violence. I mean,
[11:55] Speaker 1: is that a fair assessment of all of religion? Of
[11:58] Speaker 1: course not, but it gets deep into people's minds, especially
[12:01] Speaker 1: in the wake of something like nine to eleven. By
[12:03] Speaker 1: the way, it's no accident that the new atheists think
[12:07] Speaker 1: of Hitchens and Dawkins and Sam Harris, who, by the way,
[12:11] Speaker 1: have had a massive impact on young people. I hear
[12:14] Speaker 1: their rhetoric all the time. The new atheist emerge. It's
[12:18] Speaker 1: no accident right in the wake of nine to eleven,
[12:21] Speaker 1: because it stirred up this old idea about religion and violence.
[12:27] Speaker 1: Here's a third reason for disaffiliation, the conflict between the
[12:31] Speaker 1: claims of religion and what I call the culture of
[12:36] Speaker 1: self invention. The culture of self invention. Now you know
[12:42] Speaker 1: what this means. All you gotta do is watch the news,
[12:45] Speaker 1: listen to music, go to any movie, talk to most
[12:48] Speaker 1: young people because it's the default position I think of
[12:52] Speaker 1: most high school students and college students in America. Namely,
[12:56] Speaker 1: it's my prerogative to invent my life, to define my values,
[13:03] Speaker 1: to define my identity. My freedom determines who I am,
[13:09] Speaker 1: which you know is a is a very practical translation
[13:12] Speaker 1: of Jean Paul Sart's existentialism. When Sart defined existentialism, he said, well,
[13:19] Speaker 1: it's the view that existence precedes essence. For him, that
[13:23] Speaker 1: meant my freedom comes first, and then my freedom determines
[13:27] Speaker 1: who I am. Existence precedes essence sounds like high falutine
[13:31] Speaker 1: you know French philosophy. Well, it was in nineteen forty seven.
[13:36] Speaker 1: Now it's the default position of most young people, the
[13:39] Speaker 1: culture of self invention. Well, it does stand athwart religion,
[13:46] Speaker 1: which makes very objective claims about what's true and what's
[13:51] Speaker 1: morally right, and that sets up a conflict with young people. Now,
[13:59] Speaker 1: as I mentioned, you do indeed find in these surveys
[14:04] Speaker 1: references to you know, I was treated poorly by church,
[14:09] Speaker 1: you know, ministers, or by priests, or by parishioners. You know,
[14:14] Speaker 1: here's when I kind of broke my heart. I remember
[14:16] Speaker 1: when I first read it, someone said, you know, I
[14:19] Speaker 1: left my Catholic church and no one ever called me,
[14:25] Speaker 1: no one ever inquired how I was doing. No one
[14:28] Speaker 1: from the church ever reached out to say, hey, we
[14:31] Speaker 1: haven't seen you. So you do indeed hear that that
[14:35] Speaker 1: a lack of welcome in the community, of being treated poorly.
[14:40] Speaker 1: And then indeed, I'm not trying to under stress this.
[14:46] Speaker 1: It's just not the number one reason by any means,
[14:48] Speaker 1: but it's there. The scandals. You know, my almost my
[14:52] Speaker 1: whole priesthood's been under the shadow of the sex abuse scandals.
[14:56] Speaker 1: I mean, so I know all about that, and young
[14:58] Speaker 1: people they know all about that. It's gotten deep into
[15:02] Speaker 1: their minds and hearts, and that is indeed a block,
[15:05] Speaker 1: no question about it. I mean, I've referred to the
[15:08] Speaker 1: sex abuse scandal as the Devil's masterpiece because it's undermining
[15:12] Speaker 1: the church in practically every way, including this, you know,
[15:17] Speaker 1: including our capacity to reach out and engage young people.
[15:21] Speaker 1: So that is indeed a reason. And then finally, I'll
[15:26] Speaker 1: say this, survey after survey, the church's teaching on matters
[15:31] Speaker 1: sexual is a block for a lot of those who
[15:34] Speaker 1: have disaffiliated. Now, if you look at older disaffiliated Catholics,
[15:39] Speaker 1: it's almost always the issue of divorce and remarriage. It's
[15:43] Speaker 1: interesting to me the synod that produced Morsticia what twenty sixteen,
[15:48] Speaker 1: I guess that was the issue of divorce and remarriage
[15:52] Speaker 1: and communion and so on. That's very much the sort
[15:56] Speaker 1: of prime sexual concern of an older generation of Catholics,
[16:01] Speaker 1: pau France's generation. Now, as you get younger, what comes
[16:06] Speaker 1: into focus is the question of gays that the Church
[16:09] Speaker 1: is at least seems to be cruel and exclusive toward
[16:13] Speaker 1: gay people. Now, get even younger, get down to the
[16:16] Speaker 1: eye gen generation, it becomes the issue of transgenderism. So
[16:20] Speaker 1: that's true. As you look at these surveys, people will
[16:23] Speaker 1: say the church's attitude toward human sexuality is unrealistic, or
[16:29] Speaker 1: it's exclusive, or it's cruel. So those are indeed present. Okay,
[16:35] Speaker 1: so we know statistically, you know who the disaffiliated are,
[16:40] Speaker 1: We know their numbers, and we can tell from these surveys.
[16:44] Speaker 1: I've just gone through a few of them, but some
[16:46] Speaker 1: of the main reasons why they've chosen to disaffiliate. I
[16:51] Speaker 1: think as we push forward in different ways, it's just
[16:55] Speaker 1: wise to be aware of these objective data, so we
[16:58] Speaker 1: don't just go on our kind of, you know, gut
[17:00] Speaker 1: feelings about it. Okay. I went a little bit quickly
[17:07] Speaker 1: through those first two questions because I think this last
[17:10] Speaker 1: one is the most important and I want to spend
[17:12] Speaker 1: the most time with it, Namely, how do we get
[17:15] Speaker 1: them back? Or if I might suggest this thing cuts
[17:20] Speaker 1: in both directions, how do we get them back? But
[17:24] Speaker 1: also how do we prevent them from becoming nuns in
[17:28] Speaker 1: the first place? How do we interrupt this tendency toward disaffiliation.
[17:35] Speaker 1: So all the answers here are meant to cut in
[17:37] Speaker 1: really both those directions, and maybe I say this now
[17:41] Speaker 1: as a pastor, it's that second one that's maybe more important.
[17:45] Speaker 1: How do we keep how do we keep young people
[17:48] Speaker 1: from wandering away from us? Okay, so I would suggest
[17:53] Speaker 1: five things. There are many more things we could say,
[17:56] Speaker 1: but I'll just suggest five. And these two, mind you,
[17:59] Speaker 1: are based on a lot of statistical surveys. As you
[18:04] Speaker 1: listen to young people and say, well, you know what,
[18:06] Speaker 1: what do you remember fondly or what would bring you back?
[18:12] Speaker 1: It'll be reflected now in some of the answers I
[18:14] Speaker 1: give here. Here's the first one, Get young people involved
[18:21] Speaker 1: in the works of justice. Get young people involved in
[18:28] Speaker 1: the works of justice. So, as I said, there's a
[18:31] Speaker 1: lot of hesitation when it comes to the church's sexual teaching.
[18:36] Speaker 1: I am not arguing that we should jettus in our
[18:38] Speaker 1: sexual teaching, not at all. But I don't think when
[18:42] Speaker 1: trying to reach out to the disaffiliated, it's wise to
[18:45] Speaker 1: begin with the sexual teaching. It's what they find problematic.
[18:51] Speaker 1: But they will say in survey after survey, what I
[18:56] Speaker 1: remember fondly or what I feel passionate is the church's
[19:01] Speaker 1: commitment to social justice. They find that very attractive. Well,
[19:09] Speaker 1: it's a great part of our Catholic tradition. We have
[19:14] Speaker 1: a beautiful tradition around doing the works of justice, stretching
[19:19] Speaker 1: all the way back to the first years of the
[19:21] Speaker 1: Church's life, when precisely by its moral profile it stood
[19:26] Speaker 1: out against the environing culture. How these Christians love one
[19:30] Speaker 1: another to Tullian's famous line reporting what the Pagans were saying,
[19:35] Speaker 1: the fact that Christians wouldn't expose their infant children on
[19:39] Speaker 1: the mountain side if they were unwanted. The fact that
[19:42] Speaker 1: Christians included the poor and the hungry and the homeless,
[19:46] Speaker 1: that was a deeply attractive evangelical element from the earliest centuries.
[19:52] Speaker 1: And then look at this litany. We have this cloud
[19:58] Speaker 1: of witnesses, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Jacques Mertin, Reynold Hillenbrand,
[20:07] Speaker 1: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Rose Hawthorne, not to mention Frances Masseizi,
[20:13] Speaker 1: Vincent de Paul, Peter Clayver, or Martin de Poras, Bartolome
[20:17] Speaker 1: de las Casas. We have a wonderful, wonderful history and
[20:23] Speaker 1: tradition around justice and the works of justice. Well, highlight it,
[20:29] Speaker 1: announce it, boldly, proclaim it. Bring these people forward. Young
[20:35] Speaker 1: people find it very enticing good. We should use it
[20:40] Speaker 1: and even more importantly, get them involved. You know, I
[20:45] Speaker 1: deal not a lot with our confirmation prep programs. You know,
[20:49] Speaker 1: I confirm all these kids out here, and I love
[20:52] Speaker 1: talking to the teams that prepare them. I talk to
[20:55] Speaker 1: the kids themselves, and again and again they'll talk about
[20:59] Speaker 1: having that experience, sparience of going down and serving the homeless,
[21:02] Speaker 1: working in the soup kitchen, going over to Catholic charities
[21:05] Speaker 1: and feeding the hungry. Of course they do, of course
[21:09] Speaker 1: they do. It gets deep in their souls. Get them involved.
[21:14] Speaker 1: I love the stories from the ancient Church, the Great
[21:17] Speaker 1: Church Father Origin. A young man named Gregory came to
[21:22] Speaker 1: Origin and said, I'd like you to teach me the
[21:24] Speaker 1: Christian faith. Origin said, first come and live our life,
[21:31] Speaker 1: and then you'll learn our faith from the inside. Very
[21:35] Speaker 1: good advice. And that young man, Gregory is now known
[21:39] Speaker 1: in the Attrition as Gregory thaumaturgis Gregory the wonder Worker.
[21:44] Speaker 1: He himself became a saint. That's often how it works.
[21:49] Speaker 1: Come join our life, see how we live, see our commitments,
[21:53] Speaker 1: and that has an evangelical power. Or this from Jared
[21:58] Speaker 1: Manley Hopkins, the great Jesuit poet, appropriate now at the
[22:01] Speaker 1: beginning of Lent to tell the story because a young
[22:05] Speaker 1: struggling seeker came to him and said, I'm just having
[22:09] Speaker 1: trouble believing in God, and Hopkins said, give alms. He
[22:16] Speaker 1: didn't give him an argument, he didn't give him theology
[22:19] Speaker 1: or philosophy. He said, give alms. There's something about participating
[22:25] Speaker 1: in the works of justice, concrete care for the poor
[22:30] Speaker 1: that has an evangelizing power. It always has still does.
[22:36] Speaker 1: I want to just give you a couple of quotes here,
[22:37] Speaker 1: still under this rubric. I'm quoting here from a guy
[22:40] Speaker 1: named Stephen Boulevant, who's a wonderful researcher over in England
[22:44] Speaker 1: has looked very carefully at this issue of disaffiliation. I'm
[22:50] Speaker 1: quoting here from people who have left the church but
[22:54] Speaker 1: are recalling what they still savor. Listen, I admire the
[23:01] Speaker 1: fact that the Catholic Church is the biggest provider of
[23:03] Speaker 1: health and education after governments in the world. That's from
[23:07] Speaker 1: a lady sixty four who disaffiliated. Another lady says the
[23:13] Speaker 1: church has soft power. It reaches virtually ubiquitous and I
[23:17] Speaker 1: believe this could be important in various ways, for example
[23:20] Speaker 1: monitoring modern slavery. It also contributes greatly to education health worldwide.
[23:26] Speaker 1: It's so good for charity. Mind you as a disaffiliated
[23:30] Speaker 1: person speaking, but she's still savoring this element of the
[23:34] Speaker 1: church's life. And there are many more quotes I can
[23:36] Speaker 1: give you, but that's my first recommendation is start with justice.
[23:42] Speaker 1: I don't think especially wagging fingers around sexual matters is
[23:45] Speaker 1: a good place to start. Again. I'm not saying we
[23:48] Speaker 1: get rid of it, but I wouldn't recommend starting with that. Okay,
[23:52] Speaker 1: second recommendation, use what Pope Francis calls the via pul
[23:58] Speaker 1: cretudinous Latin for the way of beauty. Now I've been
[24:03] Speaker 1: on this theme for a while. In fact, you know,
[24:06] Speaker 1: I had the privilege just a year ago, right before
[24:08] Speaker 1: COVID hit. The California Bishops were over in Rome for
[24:12] Speaker 1: the Oddlimina visit and we had three hours with Poulpe Francis,
[24:15] Speaker 1: and he said basically ask me anything, and so I
[24:18] Speaker 1: kind of screwed up my courage and I actually asked
[24:21] Speaker 1: him a question in Spanish and I asked him about
[24:23] Speaker 1: this about the way of beauty, and he spoke very
[24:28] Speaker 1: beautifully about it. Here's my conviction. In our post modern culture,
[24:34] Speaker 1: when there is such skepticism about the true and the good. Right,
[24:39] Speaker 1: if you say well, here's what's true, you better believe it. Oh,
[24:42] Speaker 1: all the defenses go up or worse yet, if you
[24:46] Speaker 1: say well here's the way you ought to be behaving, Oh,
[24:50] Speaker 1: people get defensive. Okay, Well try the third transcendental right,
[24:55] Speaker 1: the good, the true, and the beautiful. Try the beautiful.
[25:00] Speaker 1: Show the Systeine Chapel, show sharp Cathedral. Show someone how
[25:07] Speaker 1: to read Brideshead Revisited, how to read the stories of
[25:11] Speaker 1: Flannery O'Connor, how to read the poetry of T. S. Eliot,
[25:15] Speaker 1: Show them the beautiful. It's not as threatening immediately, and
[25:20] Speaker 1: it draws people in and again everybody. We got a
[25:25] Speaker 1: great tradition around justice, We've also got a wonderful tradition
[25:29] Speaker 1: around beauty. It's the glory of Catholicism. You know. Protestantism
[25:35] Speaker 1: did go through a kind of iconoclastic period. When you
[25:38] Speaker 1: go back to Luther and the other reformers, they got
[25:41] Speaker 1: rid of a lot of beauty. To me, that's always
[25:45] Speaker 1: a sign of corruption the church. The Catholic Church has
[25:50] Speaker 1: hung on to the beautiful as a bearer of evangelical power.
[25:54] Speaker 1: And so we have art and architecture, in poetry and music.
[26:00] Speaker 1: Learn it, love it, savor it, and learn how to
[26:03] Speaker 1: communicate that powerfully to young people. You know. I think
[26:09] Speaker 1: here of Cardinal Martini, who died of what about ten
[26:12] Speaker 1: or fifteen years ago. Now, he was the Archbishop of Milan.
[26:15] Speaker 1: He himself was a Bible scholar, but he took advantage
[26:19] Speaker 1: of I don't know if you've been there. It's one
[26:20] Speaker 1: of the great sits in all of Europe, the Great
[26:23] Speaker 1: Cathedral Milan, and he would gather young people in the
[26:28] Speaker 1: plaza in front, and he would give a talk on
[26:31] Speaker 1: the Bible. But part of the power that was he
[26:34] Speaker 1: just gathered them in this gorgeous space looking up at
[26:37] Speaker 1: the facade of one of the most magnificent cathedrals. Or
[26:41] Speaker 1: I think of one of my heroes, Cardinal Lustige of Paris.
[26:45] Speaker 1: He was cardinal when I was a student in Paris.
[26:48] Speaker 1: His mother died in the Shoa. He was from a
[26:50] Speaker 1: Jewish family and was for his own protection given to
[26:55] Speaker 1: a Catholic family during the war. And during that period,
[26:59] Speaker 1: this young Jewish wandered into a cathedral and he was converted.
[27:05] Speaker 1: It wasn't an argument, It wasn't theology, though he became
[27:08] Speaker 1: a great theological mind. It was the beauty of the cathedral.
[27:14] Speaker 1: It changed his heart. I mean, I totally get that.
[27:18] Speaker 1: Listen now to a few quotes from Stephen Boulevant studies. Again,
[27:22] Speaker 1: these are people who have disaffiliated, but they're remembering what
[27:26] Speaker 1: they savored. Here's a man in his sixties. The Catholic
[27:31] Speaker 1: Church has been a major cultural force in European history.
[27:35] Speaker 1: It has a time supplied and necessary spiritual discipline. I
[27:38] Speaker 1: can respect it for that. Here's a young man in
[27:41] Speaker 1: his twenties who disfiliated. I find attractive the history of
[27:46] Speaker 1: the Church, our roots in the Middle East, our diversity
[27:50] Speaker 1: in the world of fine arts and music. Another young
[27:54] Speaker 1: man in his twenties disaffiliated, but said I love the
[27:58] Speaker 1: fine artistic and liturgical tradition of the Church. Just one more,
[28:03] Speaker 1: this not from a young woman. I love Catholic theology, liturgy, devotion,
[28:08] Speaker 1: art and music. Mind you, she's left the church, but
[28:13] Speaker 1: she's still It's like echoing in her soul the beauty
[28:16] Speaker 1: of the Church. Use it, learn it, share it. Know
[28:21] Speaker 1: how to read these great texts, know how to read
[28:23] Speaker 1: a Great Cathedral. I think our young people will be
[28:27] Speaker 1: enthralled by the beauty of our church. Okay, third recommendation,
[28:36] Speaker 1: so justice beauty. The third one. You probably guess this
[28:41] Speaker 1: from if you've been following my work at all over
[28:43] Speaker 1: the years, if you paid attention to what I said,
[28:45] Speaker 1: is clearly the number one reason why young people are disffiliating.
[28:49] Speaker 1: Clearly number one. I don't believe these teachings science and
[28:54] Speaker 1: religion all that. So my third recommendation is stop dumbing
[28:59] Speaker 1: down our faith. I know I've been banging podiums for
[29:03] Speaker 1: years on this, and maybe I've become tiresome, but I
[29:06] Speaker 1: don't care. I think it's such an important theme. Intellectual
[29:11] Speaker 1: objections are paramount in the minds of young nuns. Of
[29:16] Speaker 1: those who are disaffiliating. They're not getting their questions answered,
[29:20] Speaker 1: and they are being evangelized very effectively by atheists in
[29:27] Speaker 1: our culture who are giving them arguments. They're not hugging
[29:31] Speaker 1: them into atheism, they're arguing them into atheism. And we've
[29:35] Speaker 1: got this brilliantly illuminating intellectual tradition. But I'm not blaming
[29:41] Speaker 1: Vatican two. Vatgan two is produced by the smartest people
[29:44] Speaker 1: in the twentieth century Catholicism. But in the wake of
[29:47] Speaker 1: the Council, we entered into a program of dumbing down
[29:51] Speaker 1: the faith, and you know it, you know it. We
[29:54] Speaker 1: now had about two three generations in the name I
[29:58] Speaker 1: guess of relevance or whatever. We dumb down the faith,
[30:03] Speaker 1: we deemphasize the intellectual dimension, and it has been a
[30:08] Speaker 1: pastoral disaster. And you can see it everybody in the
[30:13] Speaker 1: armies of the disaffiliated who claim that they do not
[30:17] Speaker 1: have intellectual reasons for believing our faith. I'm not reducing
[30:21] Speaker 1: everything to the mind. You just heard me talk about
[30:23] Speaker 1: justice and beauty, you know so. I'm not saying it's
[30:26] Speaker 1: all about apologetics or about arguments, but by God, it
[30:30] Speaker 1: is about It is about intellectualism, at least to a
[30:34] Speaker 1: strong degree, something I found in my years of pastoral
[30:38] Speaker 1: work Chicago and here and elsewhere. I think we tend
[30:43] Speaker 1: to be pretty good when we form our kids in
[30:46] Speaker 1: prayer and spirituality. I think we tend to be pretty
[30:50] Speaker 1: good when it comes to the works of justice and
[30:53] Speaker 1: getting them aware of the needs of the poor, all terrific.
[30:57] Speaker 1: But I don't think we're particularly good at the intellectual dimension,
[31:02] Speaker 1: and it shows in the disaffiliation of many of our
[31:06] Speaker 1: young people. Again, I'm not casting I'm blaming all of us.
[31:11] Speaker 1: I am bishop's priest, catechist teachers, I mean all of us,
[31:14] Speaker 1: I think have to bear some of this responsibility, and
[31:17] Speaker 1: we all got to collectively pick up our game. Now,
[31:21] Speaker 1: here's some good news on this front. Precisely because of
[31:25] Speaker 1: the new atheists, there has been a sort of renaissance
[31:28] Speaker 1: in Catholic apologetics. There's a lot of good material now,
[31:33] Speaker 1: both in book form and video form, a lot of
[31:35] Speaker 1: them in social media on the Internet that will help
[31:39] Speaker 1: us answer the questions that people have, so take advantage
[31:43] Speaker 1: of it, I mean, learn it. I can give you
[31:46] Speaker 1: good recommendations teachers out there in catechus to help your
[31:50] Speaker 1: kids deal with the objections that come from the wider culture.
[31:53] Speaker 1: So that's some good news. But you know, gosh, I
[31:58] Speaker 1: think we so under to me what our young people
[32:01] Speaker 1: are capable of. I mean, I've told this story a
[32:04] Speaker 1: number of times, so if you've heard it, I apologize.
[32:07] Speaker 1: But this is many years ago now, when my niece
[32:11] Speaker 1: was starting her senior year in high school at a
[32:14] Speaker 1: well known Catholic high school outside Chicago, and my brother said, well,
[32:18] Speaker 1: there's her books on the table. So I went over
[32:21] Speaker 1: and she had Virgil in Latin. For her Latin class.
[32:26] Speaker 1: She had Shakespeare. They're reading Hamlet, I think it was
[32:29] Speaker 1: for English class. She had Einstein or some complex physicist
[32:36] Speaker 1: for science class. And then in religion she had this
[32:40] Speaker 1: like little paperback with a big picture on the cover,
[32:44] Speaker 1: this simple and that's her religion book. So I said,
[32:48] Speaker 1: what is the problem here? Why is this young lady
[32:51] Speaker 1: reading Shakespeare in English and Virgual Latin and Einstein and
[32:54] Speaker 1: science and she's reading a comic book in religion. Why
[32:57] Speaker 1: aren't we giving her Thomas Aquinas, GK. Chesterton, Bonaventure, Augustine,
[33:03] Speaker 1: you know anyway? End of Harangue. But I this theme everybody,
[33:08] Speaker 1: It's not just my little private hang up. It's in
[33:12] Speaker 1: the data. It's in the data that a dumb down
[33:15] Speaker 1: Catholicism has resulted in disaffiliation. So we got to pick
[33:20] Speaker 1: up our game. But we have resources. That's the good news.
[33:24] Speaker 1: There are resources now. But you know, for all of
[33:27] Speaker 1: us to learn our great intellectual tradition, learn all those
[33:31] Speaker 1: names I just mentioned, and then share it with our kids,
[33:34] Speaker 1: it's just hugely important. Okay, just a couple more because
[33:38] Speaker 1: I know I'm close to running out of time. Here's
[33:42] Speaker 1: my fourth you know, let me say this. So I
[33:44] Speaker 1: mentioned justice, beauty, and life of the mind. I did
[33:49] Speaker 1: the three transcendentals right, just as the good, the way
[33:54] Speaker 1: of beauty, the beautiful, and then the intellectual, the true,
[33:58] Speaker 1: the good, the true and the beautiful. Use the read
[34:00] Speaker 1: transcendentals in reaching out to our young kids. Okay, but
[34:05] Speaker 1: here's the fourth recommendation.
[34:07] Speaker 2: I have.
[34:09] Speaker 1: Turn every parish into a missionary society. You know, go
[34:15] Speaker 1: right back to Vatican two. Everyone. There's a clear line
[34:19] Speaker 1: Vatican two to Francis and all the popes in between.
[34:24] Speaker 1: The great impulse behind Vatican two was a missionary impulse.
[34:28] Speaker 1: My mentor at Cardinal George of Chicago always said that.
[34:31] Speaker 1: He said, the key to Vatican two is to read
[34:34] Speaker 1: it as a missionary council. It wasn't like Trent or
[34:38] Speaker 1: Nicea or Kelceeden trying to settle complex matters of doctrine.
[34:43] Speaker 1: That wasn't its main purpose. Its purpose was now to
[34:47] Speaker 1: get the church out from itself and out into the world,
[34:52] Speaker 1: to let out the life. Now that's the new evangelization
[34:57] Speaker 1: articulated by Paul Now say Paul sixth Saint John Paul,
[35:02] Speaker 1: the second Benedict France is of Churus. Read Evangelia Gaudium,
[35:07] Speaker 1: as I think the master text of Pope France's pontificate.
[35:10] Speaker 1: They're all about the same thing, which is a church
[35:13] Speaker 1: that goes out from itself in a missionary spirit. I
[35:19] Speaker 1: think though, and this is again Paupe France is real
[35:21] Speaker 1: strong on this. We have a tendency to stay within ourselves.
[35:27] Speaker 1: You know, No, I'm a good Catholic. If I go
[35:29] Speaker 1: to Mass and I receive the Sacraments, and maybe I
[35:31] Speaker 1: go to a program occasionally and I take in some formation,
[35:35] Speaker 1: and you know I'm a good Catholic. Well, all of
[35:37] Speaker 1: that's of course terrific. But as Delubac said, after the
[35:42] Speaker 1: words of consecration, the most sacred words of the Mass
[35:46] Speaker 1: are go the Mass has ended. Go and love and
[35:51] Speaker 1: serve the Lord. Go proclaim the I can never get
[35:55] Speaker 1: it right with unless I'm standing at the altar. Go
[35:58] Speaker 1: in peace, glorifying Lord, by your life. The whole idea
[36:02] Speaker 1: is it's it's an outward thrusting move evangelize. What are
[36:10] Speaker 1: our parishes. Are they places where we kind of gather
[36:14] Speaker 1: to hunker down, or are they mission societies, places where
[36:21] Speaker 1: people are being formed to announce the Gospel now to
[36:24] Speaker 1: the wider world, unless and until they become that. We're
[36:28] Speaker 1: not realizing. It seems to me the dream of Vatican two.
[36:35] Speaker 1: Are we satisfied Catholics that this is pre COVID pre
[36:39] Speaker 1: COVID twenty percent maybe of Catholics go to Mass on
[36:43] Speaker 1: Sunday twenty percent. If you had ask the fathers of
[36:47] Speaker 1: Vatican two at the time of Vatican two something like
[36:49] Speaker 1: sixty or sixty five percent of Catholics in our country
[36:53] Speaker 1: we're going to Mass. Well, and they thought that was bad.
[36:56] Speaker 1: They wanted a revolution, They wanted to now intensify are
[37:00] Speaker 1: liturgical lives. If you told them in the year twenty
[37:03] Speaker 1: twenty one, only twenty percent are going to Mass, we
[37:07] Speaker 1: shouldn't be satisfied with that. No, No, our job now having
[37:12] Speaker 1: been to Mass, now we go bring people in, Come on,
[37:15] Speaker 1: bring somebody back. The priests can't do it all, Bishops
[37:19] Speaker 1: can't do it all. I mean, it's up now to
[37:22] Speaker 1: the to the faithful. That's how you're sanctified. By bringing
[37:27] Speaker 1: others to sanctification. Turn every parish into a missionary society,
[37:35] Speaker 1: you know, the Great Megachurch Protestant Rick Warren, whom I
[37:40] Speaker 1: met a couple of years ago out here in California,
[37:42] Speaker 1: and I'd read him before, but i'd never met him,
[37:45] Speaker 1: and enjoyed talking to him. And what he told me
[37:47] Speaker 1: that stayed in my mind was he said, everyone knows
[37:51] Speaker 1: me as you know, friendly Pastor Rick. I got my
[37:54] Speaker 1: Hawaiian insured. You know, I'm not putting on of hers.
[37:57] Speaker 1: And he said all of that's designed to bring people in.
[38:00] Speaker 1: You know, he wants to attract them to his church. Good.
[38:03] Speaker 1: But they said, what we don't realize is once they're in,
[38:08] Speaker 1: I make demands on them. He said, they got to
[38:11] Speaker 1: go through a whole discipleship training program. If they don't,
[38:15] Speaker 1: they're out. Once they've been trained as disciples, now they're
[38:19] Speaker 1: set on mission, they don't want to go on mission,
[38:22] Speaker 1: they're out. In other words, he's demanding that they now
[38:26] Speaker 1: become trained missionaries. I just wonder how many of us
[38:31] Speaker 1: Catholics think along those lines. Because we should, we should.
[38:36] Speaker 1: That's the Vatican two vision. Having been sanctified, having been
[38:41] Speaker 1: Cristified at Mass, now go and cristify the world. I
[38:47] Speaker 1: like that line that says, when you walk out the
[38:51] Speaker 1: door of any church in the United States. You have
[38:56] Speaker 1: entered mission country. It's true. I mean, you don't need
[38:59] Speaker 1: to go to Africa or to Asia for mission country.
[39:02] Speaker 1: It's right outside the door of your church every time
[39:05] Speaker 1: you leave Mass. Do we see our parishes as training
[39:10] Speaker 1: centers precisely for evangelists, missionaries and disciples. Now again, we
[39:18] Speaker 1: can do a whole talk on that. That would be
[39:21] Speaker 1: a good focus for another forty five minute talk. What
[39:24] Speaker 1: would that look like? But start thinking about it, you
[39:28] Speaker 1: in the pastor together you and your friends in the Paris,
[39:31] Speaker 1: start thinking about that. What would that look like if
[39:33] Speaker 1: we were a missionary society. Okay, here's a fifth and
[39:38] Speaker 1: final recommendation. We have to be digital missionaries if we
[39:45] Speaker 1: want to reach young people. Let me take you back
[39:49] Speaker 1: to twenty eighteen. I had the privilege of being a
[39:53] Speaker 1: delegate at the Synod on Young People gathering of bishops
[39:58] Speaker 1: from all over the world with the Pope. It was
[40:00] Speaker 1: a marvelous experience. There was a whole month in Rome
[40:03] Speaker 1: with the Pope practically every day listening to talks from
[40:08] Speaker 1: the bishops that we had smaller you know, language group
[40:13] Speaker 1: sessions and all around this question really of young people
[40:18] Speaker 1: and how to re engage them. Well, I listened for
[40:21] Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, and what struck me was all
[40:24] Speaker 1: these very good people, but they were talking almost exclusively
[40:28] Speaker 1: about what I'd call parish programs. You know, how can
[40:33] Speaker 1: we make our parishes a better place where the young
[40:36] Speaker 1: people can be instructed, or how can we have a
[40:39] Speaker 1: program that will bring you know, young people in So
[40:41] Speaker 1: finally I stood up at the Senate and I said,
[40:45] Speaker 1: you know, I think this is the wrong way to
[40:47] Speaker 1: think about it. We have armies of the disaffiliated, so
[40:51] Speaker 1: we know that they're not likely to come to our parishes.
[40:57] Speaker 1: I mean, years ago that was true. We kind of
[40:59] Speaker 1: assumed the Catholics would come to be evangelized at our institutions,
[41:03] Speaker 1: at our schools and parishes and seminaries. But they're not.
[41:08] Speaker 1: We've got to go get them. We've got to go
[41:11] Speaker 1: out from our churches to get them. But I said,
[41:14] Speaker 1: the good news is precisely when we're experiencing this crisis
[41:19] Speaker 1: of disaffiliation, we've also been given, through God's providence, the
[41:25] Speaker 1: means to reach people who have disaffiliated. And I mean
[41:29] Speaker 1: here the social media, and you know I've said before
[41:33] Speaker 1: it's a revolution as remarkable as the Gutenberg Revolution. I
[41:37] Speaker 1: think it's comparable to that the way it's changed and
[41:42] Speaker 1: enhanced our capacity for communication. Precisely when they're not coming
[41:49] Speaker 1: to us, we can go out to them through the
[41:54] Speaker 1: social media and let's phase it. You know this. I mean,
[41:57] Speaker 1: the vast majority of people thirty nine under they live
[42:00] Speaker 1: on the Internet. That's where they live, and so we've
[42:04] Speaker 1: got to invade that space creatively, and we can we
[42:09] Speaker 1: can know through the social media. I've had a fair
[42:13] Speaker 1: amount of experience with this because of my We're on
[42:16] Speaker 1: Fire ministry, which began really as an experiment. You know,
[42:21] Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to evangelize. I had an instinct
[42:24] Speaker 1: that we could go beyond the classical kind of radio
[42:27] Speaker 1: and television approach, that we could start using these new media.
[42:31] Speaker 1: But when I started, like you know, in the early
[42:33] Speaker 1: two thousands, these things were in their kind of incipient stage.
[42:37] Speaker 1: I remember YouTube came into being in two thousand and six,
[42:42] Speaker 1: and it was February two thousand and seven that I
[42:45] Speaker 1: put out my first commentary on YouTube. Well, I mean
[42:50] Speaker 1: I didn't know, I had no idea if who was watching.
[42:53] Speaker 1: I didn't understand that world well at all, and I
[42:56] Speaker 1: was I was thrilled when like three hundred people would
[42:59] Speaker 1: watch one of my videos. My point is, you know,
[43:03] Speaker 1: we just kind of started small, and my instinct was,
[43:08] Speaker 1: don't begin with you know, finger wagging, or don't begin
[43:11] Speaker 1: with moral correction. It's likely not going to work well
[43:15] Speaker 1: with young people, but rather begin by looking out at
[43:18] Speaker 1: the culture and finding what the church fathers called semina
[43:23] Speaker 1: rbie right seeds of the word. It's going to be
[43:27] Speaker 1: something in that film, or in that book, or in
[43:30] Speaker 1: that news event, or something going on in the culture
[43:33] Speaker 1: that is redolent of the Gospel. There's something of the
[43:37] Speaker 1: Gospel there, and if you can see it and point
[43:40] Speaker 1: it out, it might be a way of drawing people in. Well. Again,
[43:45] Speaker 1: it was an experiment. I was just kind of hoping
[43:48] Speaker 1: against hope it might work. And the amazing thing is
[43:51] Speaker 1: I think it has over the years, had that effect
[43:55] Speaker 1: I got. I mean, so many stories I could tell
[43:58] Speaker 1: about people that you know, look, father Bishop, I was
[44:02] Speaker 1: an atheist, I'm an agnostic. I would never think of
[44:06] Speaker 1: coming to church. But I stumbled on your video. And
[44:10] Speaker 1: that's what they call it, the sticky quality of the internet.
[44:12] Speaker 1: You know that you start here, but it links to
[44:14] Speaker 1: here to hear, to hear, to hear, and before you
[44:16] Speaker 1: know it, you've you're watching something you never intended to. Well,
[44:20] Speaker 1: it happens a lot with the videos that I do.
[44:23] Speaker 1: Someone you know, they like Bob Dylan, and they find
[44:28] Speaker 1: out that I have a video on Bob Dylan. They
[44:30] Speaker 1: like the films of Clint Eastwood, and I got this
[44:32] Speaker 1: review of one of Clint Easwood's movies. They like history,
[44:36] Speaker 1: and that brings them to some commentary I did on
[44:39] Speaker 1: you know it works. I think it can work, and
[44:44] Speaker 1: I think perishes endeavoring to be missionary societies should get
[44:50] Speaker 1: young people who know how to use this world and
[44:55] Speaker 1: do it. Do it. They've they've got this in their
[44:58] Speaker 1: in their fingers. I mean, I don't. I I didn't
[45:00] Speaker 1: grow up with this stuff. I rely on these wonderful
[45:02] Speaker 1: younger people, a word on fire that know how to
[45:04] Speaker 1: use all this stuff. But heck, find them, find young people.
[45:09] Speaker 1: And then I've told my brother bishops this. If I
[45:13] Speaker 1: were a bishop of diocese, I would try to find
[45:15] Speaker 1: some really bright young priest, send them for doctoral studies,
[45:20] Speaker 1: but not to teach in the seminary, not to run
[45:23] Speaker 1: my education programs in the diocese. I would send them
[45:26] Speaker 1: to get a doctorate and then be my main person
[45:30] Speaker 1: for outreach through the social media. I'll tell you one
[45:33] Speaker 1: thing about it too, is you gotta be smart. You
[45:36] Speaker 1: got to know what you're talking about. You can't just
[45:38] Speaker 1: say I'm full of good will and I want to
[45:40] Speaker 1: reach out through the social media. Yeah, but you're going
[45:42] Speaker 1: to meet all kinds of questions and issues and objections,
[45:47] Speaker 1: and you got to be grounded in the great tradition
[45:49] Speaker 1: to respond. Let me give you one example of this.
[45:54] Speaker 1: I don't know if you know about this website called
[45:56] Speaker 1: reddit ridd it. I brought it up at the Youth
[45:59] Speaker 1: Cenator I remember, and I brought it up at the
[46:02] Speaker 1: USCCB meetings and some of the older bishops like, what
[46:06] Speaker 1: are they talking about. Well, Reddit is like a forum,
[46:09] Speaker 1: you know, for a discussion of issues. You bring up
[46:13] Speaker 1: different matters, everyone jumps on and shares their opinion. It's
[46:17] Speaker 1: kind of you know, rough and tumble. That's one thing,
[46:21] Speaker 1: you know, if you want to get involved in the
[46:22] Speaker 1: internet world, you gotta have some thick skin. People don't
[46:28] Speaker 1: just play around on the Internet. I mean there's some
[46:31] Speaker 1: pretty harsh language being used anyway. Reddit has a feature
[46:35] Speaker 1: called ama which means ask me anything. So I heard
[46:39] Speaker 1: about this from one of my Word on Fire people,
[46:41] Speaker 1: and he said, why don't you go on and try it?
[46:44] Speaker 1: So I did, and I just said, I am a
[46:48] Speaker 1: Catholic bishop who loves dialoguing with the non believers and
[46:52] Speaker 1: atheists and searchers or something like that.
[46:54] Speaker 2: You know.
[46:56] Speaker 1: Well, it turns out the first time I did it,
[46:58] Speaker 1: I was the third most most popular reddit ama of
[47:02] Speaker 1: that year. And I'm saying it not because oh they
[47:04] Speaker 1: think I'm so great. They didn't know who I was
[47:06] Speaker 1: from Adam, I'm sure, but that I was a Catholic
[47:09] Speaker 1: bishop willing to wade into this sort of dangerous space,
[47:15] Speaker 1: but enormous reaction. I did it a second time. This
[47:20] Speaker 1: is maybe a year ago. I was the second most
[47:22] Speaker 1: popular reddit ama of the year, and again not because
[47:25] Speaker 1: of me, they didn't know me, but that a Catholic
[47:29] Speaker 1: bishop would avail himself of this opportunity. They responded like
[47:34] Speaker 1: mad to it. You know, good, good. It shows the
[47:39] Speaker 1: power of this kind of outreach. And I think we
[47:42] Speaker 1: got to be willing and able to do it, you know.
[47:48] Speaker 1: And a word to the wise here, because many asked
[47:50] Speaker 1: me for advice about this, don't give up. Start so young,
[47:56] Speaker 1: priests said to me, how do I get going? I said,
[47:59] Speaker 1: just how about, you know, put your sermons up, how
[48:02] Speaker 1: about share some reflections, how about do a movie review
[48:06] Speaker 1: or whatever. Start well, only you know, one hundred people watch.
[48:10] Speaker 1: So what That's how I got going for a long time,
[48:12] Speaker 1: one hundred or two hundred people watch. Don't give up, okay,
[48:16] Speaker 1: let me bring it to a close in a little
[48:17] Speaker 1: bit over time. The last thing pray. And I don't
[48:21] Speaker 1: mean to sound like just a nice, pious guy when
[48:23] Speaker 1: I say that nothing in the Bible ever happens outside
[48:28] Speaker 1: of prayer. I mean it's just indispensable in the spiritual order.
[48:33] Speaker 1: The famous story of Monica praying for Augustine over many
[48:37] Speaker 1: many years before he was brought back to the faith.
[48:42] Speaker 1: Make this the focus of your eucharistic adoration in your parishes.
[48:46] Speaker 1: Bring it to the liturgy so it's in the prayers
[48:50] Speaker 1: of the faithful. Have groups in your parish that are
[48:53] Speaker 1: specifically geared to pray for the disaffiliated. Let people bring
[48:58] Speaker 1: forward names of particular people. This is my grandson, this
[49:02] Speaker 1: is my daughter, this is my mother. They've disaffiliated. Let's
[49:06] Speaker 1: pray for them. So above all these other recommendations. I
[49:10] Speaker 1: would put prayer and don't give up. It's a very
[49:15] Speaker 1: serious problem. We need to address it, but we can
[49:18] Speaker 1: address it relying on the grace of God. Thanks everybody.
[49:22] Speaker 1: Always good to be with the University series.
[49:31] Speaker 2: Thank you, Bishop Baron. We have a few questions from
[49:34] Speaker 2: the audience for you, going back to the data and
[49:39] Speaker 2: the list of reasons why young people are leaving Catholicism.
[49:43] Speaker 2: Where on that list is the item of all male clergy.
[49:48] Speaker 1: I must say it doesn't come up that much. The
[49:51] Speaker 1: ones I mentioned I think are the dominant ones. Certainly
[49:55] Speaker 1: you hear concerns about you know, women, priests, etc. Generally speaking,
[50:01] Speaker 1: but I must say, in my years of looking at
[50:03] Speaker 1: this particular set of data, I don't see that as
[50:07] Speaker 1: a major reason or disaffiliation. You know, people will be
[50:10] Speaker 1: upset with the institutional church. Usually it means the scandals,
[50:15] Speaker 1: or it means our sexual teaching. But I don't really
[50:18] Speaker 1: see that particular issue in regard to this question.
[50:24] Speaker 2: All right, Another question, then, the nuns are attracted to
[50:30] Speaker 2: social justice. Is there a link you think an explanation
[50:35] Speaker 2: for the increase in attitudes against abortion as part of that?
[50:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would certainly see it as a justice issue,
[50:42] Speaker 1: and if the church presents it that way, which I
[50:44] Speaker 1: think we do, Yeah, I think it would make perfect
[50:48] Speaker 1: sense that the commitment to ending abortion is just part
[50:54] Speaker 1: of our social justice outreach.
[50:57] Speaker 2: On the subject of beauty, you mention that we have
[51:00] Speaker 2: these beautiful churches of the past, the cathedrals, So why
[51:05] Speaker 2: are we today building churches that have no style or
[51:10] Speaker 2: any kind of art and they look like poor first
[51:12] Speaker 2: grade attempts.
[51:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big issue you bringing up there. I'm
[51:16] Speaker 1: somewhat sympathetic with you. I'm not a big fan of
[51:19] Speaker 1: Bauhause modernism, and we did in the years I was
[51:22] Speaker 1: coming of age, like in the seventies and eighties, we
[51:25] Speaker 1: built a lot of churches in that style, and I
[51:28] Speaker 1: don't think that style bears the weight of revelation very well.
[51:33] Speaker 1: You look back at you know, whether it's a Basilica style,
[51:36] Speaker 1: Romanesque style, Gothic style, let's say, a Victorian Gothic in
[51:40] Speaker 1: different forms that I think are able to bear the
[51:43] Speaker 1: weight of revelation better.
[51:46] Speaker 2: Now.
[51:46] Speaker 1: It's not to say that there's nothing in contemporary you know,
[51:49] Speaker 1: architecture that can do that. I think there are, But
[51:52] Speaker 1: I think we've got to be sensitive to that issue.
[51:54] Speaker 1: It's not like just trying to be trendy and stay
[51:57] Speaker 1: up with the times. The church, in its ours is
[52:00] Speaker 1: trying to express its own life in plastic form, and
[52:05] Speaker 1: certain forms of architecture bear that better than others, I
[52:08] Speaker 1: would say, But if you want details, read someone like
[52:12] Speaker 1: Dennis McNamara, who does a lot of work on theology
[52:15] Speaker 1: and architecture. But I'm somewhat sympathetic with the concern because
[52:21] Speaker 1: there was a tendency when I was a young man
[52:23] Speaker 1: to mute the beautiful, and I think it was a
[52:26] Speaker 1: somewhat protestantizing tendency, because that is in the Pestant Reformers,
[52:31] Speaker 1: they wanted to mute the beautiful, and we were imitating
[52:34] Speaker 1: that in a way in the years after the consol
[52:37] Speaker 1: and that wasn't helpful. But that's again, that's a big
[52:41] Speaker 1: topic for a whole other talk.
[52:45] Speaker 2: Absolutely, as part of the objections of the nuns that
[52:50] Speaker 2: science answers everything. Do you have any ideas, any thoughts
[52:53] Speaker 2: on how to integrate Catholicism with science.
[52:57] Speaker 1: Yeah? Good. In fact, I'm developing a paper right now
[53:00] Speaker 1: on that, and I think it's a hugely important issue.
[53:03] Speaker 1: Here's the first observation. I think it's important always to
[53:07] Speaker 1: ask meta questions because they get us closer to religion.
[53:10] Speaker 1: So someone's a scientists, right, there are a physicists, a
[53:13] Speaker 1: chemists there, astronomer or whatever, and they are so caught
[53:19] Speaker 1: up in the wonders of that science how much it
[53:22] Speaker 1: can know? Well, ask the meta question, namely, why should
[53:28] Speaker 1: the world be intelligible at all? So every scientist, physicist, chemist, astronomer,
[53:34] Speaker 1: whoever he or she is, has to assume that the
[53:38] Speaker 1: world she's going out to meet has an intelligibility or
[53:42] Speaker 1: a patterned quality that corresponds to an inquiring mind. Otherwise
[53:47] Speaker 1: the science would never get off the ground. Well where's
[53:50] Speaker 1: that come from? How do you explain the radical and
[53:54] Speaker 1: universal intelligibility of the world? And I think that opens
[53:59] Speaker 1: the door why to religion, because now you're looking at
[54:02] Speaker 1: well there seems to be then some kind of intelligence
[54:07] Speaker 1: behind radical and universal intelligibility, and I think that's a
[54:11] Speaker 1: way in to a religion science dialogue. The best person
[54:18] Speaker 1: I know on this is John Polkinghorn. I don't know
[54:20] Speaker 1: if anyone remembers that name. John Polkinghorn was a high
[54:25] Speaker 1: level Cambridge particle physicist, right, high level scientist who at
[54:30] Speaker 1: midlife left his profession to become an Anglican priest, and
[54:36] Speaker 1: he's ordained an anglic priest, and then did wonderful work
[54:39] Speaker 1: reconciling science and religion, science at the highest level, particle physics,
[54:45] Speaker 1: all that stuff, quantum mechanics, and linking it to religion.
[54:49] Speaker 1: So read him. But one of his observations is the
[54:51] Speaker 1: one I just made about radical and universal intelligibility. That's
[54:56] Speaker 1: his one suggestion.
[54:59] Speaker 2: Thank you. Apparently you have a great baseball analogy for
[55:03] Speaker 2: how to teach the beauty of our faith? Could you
[55:05] Speaker 2: share that please?
[55:07] Speaker 1: I've used baseball in different ways. It might be yeah,
[55:11] Speaker 1: I think. I think what they mean is, if you're
[55:13] Speaker 1: teaching baseball to kids, what you would never do is
[55:18] Speaker 1: begin with the infield fly rule. The infield fly rule
[55:23] Speaker 1: is a is a very particular, uh technical rule of baseball.
[55:30] Speaker 1: It's a good rule, by the way, if you understand
[55:32] Speaker 1: the infield fly rule, it's good. It makes the game better.
[55:35] Speaker 1: But you wouldn't dream of beginning with that, right you
[55:37] Speaker 1: begin as when I was learning baseball as little kid,
[55:41] Speaker 1: our coaches had us get down. I remember on our
[55:43] Speaker 1: knees and and feel the infield and and smell the
[55:48] Speaker 1: grass that they wanted us to like get. And then
[55:52] Speaker 1: they put the moves of the game in our in
[55:54] Speaker 1: our bodies. I mean, they taught us the basic stances,
[55:57] Speaker 1: and I still could stand on the plate, you know,
[56:00] Speaker 1: in the way that they taught me to. And then
[56:02] Speaker 1: they got us playing, got us hitting and running and throwing.
[56:06] Speaker 1: My point is they drew us into the beauty of
[56:09] Speaker 1: the game first, right that the rhythm of it, that
[56:13] Speaker 1: the wonder of it, the smell and the feel, the
[56:16] Speaker 1: texture of it. Then once you play for a while,
[56:20] Speaker 1: you begin to understand, oh, that's why we have these rules.
[56:23] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's that's cool. That rule makes sense because
[56:26] Speaker 1: if you do you know, if you don't do that,
[56:28] Speaker 1: then the game was going to fall apart. The rules
[56:31] Speaker 1: then emerge naturally and organically out of the beauty of
[56:36] Speaker 1: the game. Now here's the analogy. A mistake we make
[56:40] Speaker 1: in religion is we can commence with our version of
[56:44] Speaker 1: the infield fly rule. You know, let's commence with debating
[56:49] Speaker 1: details of sexual morality. Well, that's not going to draw
[56:54] Speaker 1: anyone into the game, you know, rather get them into
[56:58] Speaker 1: the beauty of Catholicism. And then then they will eventually
[57:03] Speaker 1: come to understand why we have rules, including rules about sexuality.
[57:10] Speaker 1: But I wouldn't recommend beginning with those. I begin with
[57:12] Speaker 1: the beauty and the rhythm and the texture of the game.
[57:15] Speaker 1: I begin with the saints. I begin with the liturgy.
[57:19] Speaker 1: I begin with prayer. I begin with the smell of incense.
[57:23] Speaker 1: I begin with stained glass windows. You know what I'm saying.
[57:26] Speaker 1: I begin with with Mother Teresa's sisters taking care of
[57:29] Speaker 1: the poor. And once you're into the game and you
[57:34] Speaker 1: played it for a while, the rules will naturally emerge
[57:39] Speaker 1: from the texture of the game. I think that's probably
[57:42] Speaker 1: the analogy there they're thinking of.
[57:46] Speaker 2: One person asks, do you think that fewer young people
[57:50] Speaker 2: say they're religious because they're allowed to be unreligious? In
[57:54] Speaker 2: the past, it was just not as accepted to be
[57:56] Speaker 2: non religious.
[57:58] Speaker 1: It could be, that could be, And maybe that's okay,
[58:01] Speaker 1: you know, because I don't want people to feel obligated
[58:04] Speaker 1: or to be you know, threatened, or to be browbeaten.
[58:08] Speaker 1: You know, So okay, if you've got greater range and freedom, fine,
[58:12] Speaker 1: But I'll say this too. This goes back several years.
[58:16] Speaker 1: I met a lady at the perish and she said,
[58:20] Speaker 1: you know, my son he's about seven. We're not making
[58:23] Speaker 1: him come to mass We're gonna let him decide what
[58:26] Speaker 1: he wants to do, you know, when he when he
[58:28] Speaker 1: comes of age. And I said to her, Yeah, but
[58:31] Speaker 1: would you accept that logic in any other area of life,
[58:35] Speaker 1: Like would you say, don't worry about practicing your violin,
[58:38] Speaker 1: just you know, pick it up when you feel like it,
[58:40] Speaker 1: or no, don't go to you don't go to baseball practice,
[58:43] Speaker 1: just you know when you decide to go. No. I mean,
[58:46] Speaker 1: we we compel young people to do all kinds of
[58:49] Speaker 1: things because we know that's a way they're gonna it's
[58:53] Speaker 1: gonna enhance their lives. And if we leave everything up
[58:56] Speaker 1: to freedom, we'd never really we'd never experienced much. We'd
[59:01] Speaker 1: settle for a very low level of attainment, you know.
[59:05] Speaker 1: So I'm skeptical of the it's a hyper modern you know,
[59:09] Speaker 1: the stress on freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, I mean, freedom's
[59:12] Speaker 1: overrated in that way. Some of the best things that
[59:15] Speaker 1: in my life came because I didn't have freedom. I
[59:18] Speaker 1: was told to do something and then it got into
[59:21] Speaker 1: me in such a way that it made an experience
[59:24] Speaker 1: possible that otherwise I wouldn't have had. So that's a
[59:27] Speaker 1: little editorial on the side about too much freedom.
[59:33] Speaker 2: And speaking of freedoms and intellectual freedom in colleges. One
[59:39] Speaker 2: attendee observes as a problem in the Catholic universities. Our
[59:43] Speaker 2: children go in Catholic and leave non Catholic. They are
[59:46] Speaker 2: taught values that do not align your teachings, especially in
[59:50] Speaker 2: liberal arts and social sciences. Is this a problem?
[59:53] Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, And I'm getting too old to you know,
[1:00:00] Speaker 1: irricate on this. It is a very serious problem, and
[1:00:02] Speaker 1: it's statistically backed up over and over again the number
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: of Catholics that come into Catholic universities and they disaffiliate,
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: they lose their faith. Now I'm not doing some blanket
[1:00:14] Speaker 1: condemnation of all Catholic universities, but there is a disturbing
[1:00:17] Speaker 1: statistical indication that this is true. And too many of
[1:00:22] Speaker 1: the Catholic universities have allowed their Catholic identity to even
[1:00:26] Speaker 1: s and they've adopted much more of a secular model
[1:00:30] Speaker 1: of education. And that's I mean, what's the point. My
[1:00:33] Speaker 1: thing is, we already got Princeton, and we already got
[1:00:36] Speaker 1: Yale and Harvard. We don't need more of those. We
[1:00:39] Speaker 1: need truly Catholic universities that honor our own intellectual tradition,
[1:00:44] Speaker 1: and it should bother us big time that way too
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: many Catholics are losing their faith, even at the Catholic universities.
[1:00:53] Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a problem.
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: And I have another question from someone that she and
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: her husband have three young children. They check all the
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: boxes for church attendance, parochial school, et cetera, and yet
[1:01:09] Speaker 2: they're having serious difficulty having their children baptized. They can't
[1:01:14] Speaker 2: find people to serve as god parents because they can't
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: get a letter from their church saying that they attend regularly.
[1:01:21] Speaker 2: The majority of their close family and friends have left
[1:01:23] Speaker 2: the church over the last decade.
[1:01:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I get that.
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: I have this barrier to baptism for their children.
[1:01:30] Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I get that. I don't have a good answer.
[1:01:32] Speaker 1: I have to really sit down and talk to them.
[1:01:34] Speaker 1: But I do understand that dilemma as we're looking for
[1:01:38] Speaker 1: god parents and looking for people to guide our young
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: people into the faith, and that generation has become not exclusively,
[1:01:45] Speaker 1: but to a large degree disaffiliated. So I get the frustration.
[1:01:49] Speaker 1: I'm not sure I've got a really good answer to
[1:01:51] Speaker 1: that one.
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: I can share some of those details with you after.
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: In the meantime, others are asking, are there any written
[1:02:00] Speaker 2: course materials, any information that would be good leave behinds
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: for this things to study further.
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: Get this book we just I mentioned Brandon Vaught earlier
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: from World on Fire. We've got a book called Return
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: and we just did a reissue of it, and it's
[1:02:18] Speaker 1: all about this issue. It's written for parents and grandparents
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: to try to bring young people back, and it's full
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: of a lot of practical advice. You know, I would
[1:02:30] Speaker 1: read Christian Smith to understand the phenomenon of disaffiliation, but
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: Brandon might be helpful to, you know, for like practical
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: concrete tips of how to bring people back and re
[1:02:42] Speaker 1: engage them.
[1:02:48] Speaker 2: Thank you. And also on the subject of resources, do
[1:02:51] Speaker 2: you have something recommended that discusses the transcendental values, the good,
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: the true, and the beautiful?
[1:02:57] Speaker 1: Well, the classic source is an Aquinas and people like that.
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: But let me think, no, right, I can't come up
[1:03:05] Speaker 1: something right off the top of my head, something that
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: more accessible or more contemporary on that. Dietrich von Hildebrand,
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: the great German phenomenologist, has a lot. It's a little
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: bit heavy, though, you know. Joseph Peeper, another German philosopher
[1:03:21] Speaker 1: who's pretty accessible. Those are a couple of places to look,
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: but I have to think a bit more about a
[1:03:27] Speaker 1: more accessible text. Aquainas is the classic place to look.
[1:03:34] Speaker 2: Thank you back to schools for a moment. How great
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: is the impact of the leftist progressive education educators, I
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: should say, of most Catholic schools from grammar to university
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: and their rejection of traditional Orthodox Catholic values.
[1:03:51] Speaker 1: Well, it does worry me. Yeah, I mean, and you know,
[1:03:55] Speaker 1: at all these different levels now and in California, some
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: of those moves that are still being a debate what
[1:04:01] Speaker 1: our schools will look like, and what curriculums, curriculum will
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: look like, especially at the university level, there is that,
[1:04:07] Speaker 1: you know. I've been a critic of this kind of
[1:04:09] Speaker 1: woke mentality which has become so dominant in the universities,
[1:04:13] Speaker 1: and it comes up out of a French theorizing of
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: the last century, people like Shaq Dari to Michel Foucol
[1:04:19] Speaker 1: and others who are not exactly friends of classical Catholicism.
[1:04:23] Speaker 1: So I get that. I mean, I think it is
[1:04:25] Speaker 1: a worry. And you know that we hold to certain
[1:04:28] Speaker 1: objective moral values. We hold to certain epistemic values, and
[1:04:33] Speaker 1: we do have a great intellectual tradition that bears those values,
[1:04:36] Speaker 1: and you know, we should be attentive to it and
[1:04:39] Speaker 1: not simply succumb to the whatever the trendy you know,
[1:04:45] Speaker 1: philosophy of the day is. So I do worry about that. Yeah,
[1:04:48] Speaker 1: and it's I do think it's creeping from the universities
[1:04:51] Speaker 1: down to lower levels of education too, in the high
[1:04:54] Speaker 1: schools and grade schools. So yeah, it's a worry.
[1:05:00] Speaker 2: Do you think shifting gears here? Do you think young
[1:05:03] Speaker 2: people see it as hypocritical when priests are anti abortion
[1:05:08] Speaker 2: and yet pro capital punishment.
[1:05:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an incorrect position. I mean, if you really are,
[1:05:14] Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I know many priests who are against
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: abortion but for capital punishment. No, I mean I'm with
[1:05:19] Speaker 1: John Paul the Second and PAULP. Francis and the Catechism
[1:05:22] Speaker 1: that would clearly see those, as you know, tightly related issues,
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: both involved in an attack on life. So no, I
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: think you're right, it would be inconsistent to be for
[1:05:32] Speaker 1: one and not the other.
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: Do you think there's something missing in our catechisis to
[1:05:44] Speaker 2: the very young in our Catholic schools?
[1:05:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, plenty, That's that's why I rail against this dumbing
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: down of the faith and at both the Catholic schools
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: and the catechetical programs. Yeah, there's a lot missing. I'd
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: say the intellectual is is where we're weakest. And I've
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: been beaten at run for a long time. I think
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: we're good at a lot of you know, as I say, prayer,
[1:06:04] Speaker 1: the works of justice were better at that building up community,
[1:06:08] Speaker 1: But I think the intellectual we are lacking in that.
[1:06:13] Speaker 2: And is there a way that we can communicate to
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: all Catholics and especially the LGBTQ that we love and
[1:06:22] Speaker 2: respect them even though we don't necessarily agree with their choices.
[1:06:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, and we have to do it all the time,
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: and that's the basic stance we should always be in
[1:06:30] Speaker 1: without exception. So you know, how we do that, that's
[1:06:34] Speaker 1: a good question, and I think that's a question of
[1:06:37] Speaker 1: prudential judgment. What are the best ways to communicate the
[1:06:40] Speaker 1: Church's care and concern and love. But absolutely we have
[1:06:44] Speaker 1: to do that.
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: And related to evangelization, how do you think COVID is
[1:06:49] Speaker 2: affecting evangelism and how can we get ahead of the restrictions.
[1:06:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's affecting it poorly obviously, and one of my
[1:06:58] Speaker 1: big worries. And I've been bringing every meeting I've had
[1:07:01] Speaker 1: in the Arts Diocese by zoom. I've brought this up.
[1:07:05] Speaker 1: We were already in trouble before COVID in terms of disaffiliation.
[1:07:09] Speaker 1: We're already in trouble with only twenty percent coming to Mass.
[1:07:13] Speaker 1: Now we've had a year where people have been kind
[1:07:15] Speaker 1: of in the practice of not going to Mass, so
[1:07:18] Speaker 1: that worries me a lot, and I think we've got
[1:07:20] Speaker 1: to be very proactive my own feeling now, we should
[1:07:23] Speaker 1: as an Arts diocese be very proactive about getting our
[1:07:27] Speaker 1: people to come back. I've been encouraging everyone that's still
[1:07:30] Speaker 1: coming to our restricted you know, COVID masses, make sure
[1:07:36] Speaker 1: you're a missionary that when we can open the doors again,
[1:07:39] Speaker 1: definitively you bring one or two people back with you.
[1:07:42] Speaker 1: So it's affected us negatively for sure. And we've got
[1:07:46] Speaker 1: to be proactive missionaries and bringing people back. And the
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: second part of that, again, Bob, was what it was
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: a second I can't hear you.
[1:07:58] Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm still on just getting ahead of the restrictions,
[1:08:01] Speaker 2: and I think you're touched on that already. With the
[1:08:04] Speaker 2: electronic media, the social media of the zooms.
[1:08:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, please God, this will be over.
[1:08:09] Speaker 1: I mean sometime soon. I've been saying that for months.
[1:08:12] Speaker 1: But with the vaccines, I hope and now now in
[1:08:15] Speaker 1: all of our counties here in LA we can at
[1:08:19] Speaker 1: least get a quarter of our people into inside church.
[1:08:23] Speaker 1: So that's a good thing up in my you know,
[1:08:25] Speaker 1: our region here. We've not been able to do that
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: for the past several months, So you know, keep pressing
[1:08:30] Speaker 1: and I hope in a few months we'll be back.
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: Amen. And you mentioned by way of social media Reddit,
[1:08:39] Speaker 2: Are there other online forms where we would be likely
[1:08:42] Speaker 2: to meet young people with questions?
[1:08:45] Speaker 1: Well, I see, I was sort of encouraging parishes to
[1:08:50] Speaker 1: do it themselves. You know, is you set up a
[1:08:53] Speaker 1: forum and it's easy as what I did on Reddit,
[1:08:57] Speaker 1: which is, you know, I am a Catholic priest eager
[1:08:59] Speaker 1: to dialogue with anyone's got a question, or you know,
[1:09:03] Speaker 1: they're atheists there that would like to ask me a question,
[1:09:05] Speaker 1: and believe me, they'll come out of the woodwork. I
[1:09:07] Speaker 1: think you'd be very surprised that you'll attract people to it.
[1:09:11] Speaker 1: Or you know, here's my sermon, or here's a review
[1:09:13] Speaker 1: of a movie, or here's this book I'm reading, or
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: so I think. I think priests and ministers in the
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: parishes should do it. And if you don't know how
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: to use the technology, get someone you know twenty or
[1:09:26] Speaker 1: younger to teach you and just do it. Launch out,
[1:09:30] Speaker 1: Duke and Altam, go out into the depths.
[1:09:34] Speaker 2: And speaking of depths, where can we go to educate
[1:09:38] Speaker 2: ourselves so that we don't dumb down our face.
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, as I say, a lot of resources available now
[1:09:45] Speaker 1: at the risk of self promotion. I mean Word on
[1:09:46] Speaker 1: Fire is all about that. I mean we keep bringing
[1:09:49] Speaker 1: out material both you know, in film and book constantly.
[1:09:54] Speaker 1: So go on the Word on Fire site and you'll
[1:09:56] Speaker 1: find all kinds of materials. But there are a lot
[1:09:59] Speaker 1: of good apology jetic sources today that are engaging the
[1:10:04] Speaker 1: new atheist. A guy I really like is William Lane Craig,
[1:10:07] Speaker 1: the evangelical philosopher who has debated Hitchens and Dawkins and
[1:10:12] Speaker 1: all the top atheists. He's got some wonderful material. No,
[1:10:16] Speaker 1: he's a I don't agree with him on every issue,
[1:10:19] Speaker 1: but he's very good I think in engaging the atheists.
[1:10:23] Speaker 1: I was just on a program. It's called Unbelievable. It's
[1:10:26] Speaker 1: it's based in England, and it's it's hosted by an
[1:10:29] Speaker 1: Evangelical Protestant, but he always has a believer and a
[1:10:33] Speaker 1: non believer on his program. So I was on it'll
[1:10:36] Speaker 1: air I think in April, but I recorded it a
[1:10:39] Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago with this young kid he's from Oxford,
[1:10:42] Speaker 1: super bright, Catholic of course, who's lost his faith and
[1:10:48] Speaker 1: is now a militant atheist. So I was on with
[1:10:51] Speaker 1: him and we had like a two hour debate. So
[1:10:55] Speaker 1: my point there is there's a lot of sights out
[1:10:57] Speaker 1: there now that that go into this whole issue of
[1:11:00] Speaker 1: atheism and belief.
[1:11:03] Speaker 2: Thank you. What kind of activities can the church do
[1:11:08] Speaker 2: to get young kids ten and over in that age
[1:11:11] Speaker 2: group involved in our faith in addition to just CCD classes.
[1:11:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, well you know about the real little kids. But
[1:11:18] Speaker 1: I mentioned the Works of Justice stuff is get them
[1:11:22] Speaker 1: in trips to Apalachia, or get them working with the homeless,
[1:11:25] Speaker 1: get them helping in soup kitchens, get them with Catholic charities.
[1:11:31] Speaker 1: I think young people respond to that very powerfully. We
[1:11:35] Speaker 1: have these retreats, of course out in our region that
[1:11:37] Speaker 1: young people, I think find attractive, you know, so that
[1:11:41] Speaker 1: kind of experience that the justice business, then the prayer,
[1:11:46] Speaker 1: and I think these these lively discussions about the issues
[1:11:52] Speaker 1: of life and death and meaning and God and science.
[1:11:56] Speaker 1: So I think all three of those, the good, the true,
[1:11:58] Speaker 1: and the beautiful, get them involved in justice, get them
[1:12:00] Speaker 1: around liturgical and prayer events, get them talking and critically
[1:12:06] Speaker 1: thinking about their faith. I think we do all those
[1:12:08] Speaker 1: things with young.
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: Kids and moving up just a little bit in age.
[1:12:14] Speaker 2: One of the attendees observes, it appears that many Catholic
[1:12:16] Speaker 2: parishes do not have any ministries that cater to young adults,
[1:12:20] Speaker 2: those up to age thirty. Why is this and how
[1:12:23] Speaker 2: can local parishes have groups that are aimed at this demographic?
[1:12:28] Speaker 2: And in addition, there should be ministries catering to middle
[1:12:31] Speaker 2: age thirty to fifty alas these this group doesn't seem
[1:12:35] Speaker 2: to exist in many local parishes. What are your comments on?
[1:12:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, and I would I guess I would
[1:12:42] Speaker 1: send the challenge out too. Is volunteer you start the group.
[1:12:45] Speaker 1: So I don't know what age the questioner is, but
[1:12:48] Speaker 1: you know someone in the parish, like in his or
[1:12:50] Speaker 1: her twenties, talk to the pastor and you start the group,
[1:12:53] Speaker 1: and it could be as simple as you know, an
[1:12:55] Speaker 1: announcement goes out and Sunday we're going to meet. Sunday night,
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: we're going to have a you know, gap or a discussion,
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: or watch a movie or something you started. In terms
[1:13:05] Speaker 1: of older people too, I've always loved the Catholic action model,
[1:13:08] Speaker 1: and I don't know why we dropped it after the Counsul.
[1:13:11] Speaker 1: Some of my great heroes in Chicago were priests involved
[1:13:14] Speaker 1: in Catholic action in the fifties, which involved typically, let's
[1:13:18] Speaker 1: get all the physicians and nurses in this parish, get
[1:13:21] Speaker 1: them in one room, Let's break open the gospel. Let's
[1:13:24] Speaker 1: do see, judge and act and see what we can
[1:13:27] Speaker 1: do to bring the Gospel to our world. Next week.
[1:13:29] Speaker 1: Bring the lawyers in following week, bring all the business
[1:13:33] Speaker 1: leaders in next week, bring whoever whatever group you want,
[1:13:38] Speaker 1: and do a see, judge and act around the gospel. Simple,
[1:13:43] Speaker 1: but some of the best and brightest people in the
[1:13:45] Speaker 1: Catholic Church in the nineteen forties and fifties were involved
[1:13:48] Speaker 1: in Catholic action. Revive it for people so in mid
[1:13:52] Speaker 1: middle age who are now in the full flight of
[1:13:54] Speaker 1: their careers. Good let's get them talking about the faith.
[1:13:58] Speaker 1: You know, I knew a group in Chicago, all very
[1:14:02] Speaker 1: high powered people at a kind of a wealthy parish
[1:14:05] Speaker 1: in the city. And these men would gather I think
[1:14:07] Speaker 1: one day week at six thirty am, and they would
[1:14:10] Speaker 1: have morning prayer together and then they do a c
[1:14:12] Speaker 1: judge and act about their work in high finance and
[1:14:17] Speaker 1: law and in government and good good And if it
[1:14:21] Speaker 1: doesn't exist, you started, get it organized.
[1:14:26] Speaker 2: Amen to that as well. Here's a question again referring
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: to someone in the LGBTQ community. LGBTQ community, they're young,
[1:14:36] Speaker 2: how would you advise them reconnecting with their face when
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: fundamentally of the Catholic teachings conflict with who they feel
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: they are as a person.
[1:14:46] Speaker 1: And again, these are super complicated things, and I'd much
[1:14:48] Speaker 1: rather talk directly to somebody, but I would say simply,
[1:14:51] Speaker 1: this is to realize that your deepest and most abiding
[1:14:56] Speaker 1: identity is not around your sexuality, around your relationship with God.
[1:15:02] Speaker 1: That what's deepest and most abiding and most important about
[1:15:06] Speaker 1: you is that you're beloved child of God. And begin
[1:15:10] Speaker 1: with that someone created by God, redeemed by Christ, loved,
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: loved all the way down because Christ went to the
[1:15:18] Speaker 1: cross to save you. That that identity is what's most
[1:15:23] Speaker 1: fundamental and is right at the heart of the church.
[1:15:27] Speaker 1: And it's only out of that more fundamental identity that
[1:15:31] Speaker 1: you'll come to understand something like your sexuality. But what
[1:15:35] Speaker 1: I would resist is the tendency to say that that
[1:15:39] Speaker 1: anyone's sexual identity is what's most basic about them. I
[1:15:44] Speaker 1: don't think that's true. I think it's that we're a
[1:15:46] Speaker 1: beloved child of God. That's what's most basic, and that's
[1:15:50] Speaker 1: what the church is fundamentally addressing all the time.
[1:15:54] Speaker 2: Thank you. A number of questions have pointed to the
[1:15:59] Speaker 2: media as a root of a problem with our children,
[1:16:02] Speaker 2: their influence starting from school and through television. Who we
[1:16:10] Speaker 2: put them with makes a difference in people who can
[1:16:13] Speaker 2: influence the media. What would you say about this whole
[1:16:17] Speaker 2: business of the influence of media versus influence of parents
[1:16:22] Speaker 2: and peers and such.
[1:16:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mentioned Gene Twingey, this professor from San Diego
[1:16:28] Speaker 1: and the book called Ie Gen. I recommend it. But
[1:16:32] Speaker 1: she talked a lot about the correlation between screen time
[1:16:37] Speaker 1: and depression. And I think it's very credible that we
[1:16:41] Speaker 1: have a generation now that's so attuned to screens, and
[1:16:46] Speaker 1: they see reality largely on screens rather than directly, and
[1:16:52] Speaker 1: that that's a problem. So you talk about the media,
[1:16:55] Speaker 1: you know, when I was growing up, I guess it
[1:16:57] Speaker 1: meant television with like four stations. But now the media
[1:17:02] Speaker 1: are so pervasive and the way they draw us addictively
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: into their influence is bad. So I would recommend, I mean,
[1:17:12] Speaker 1: to parents of young kids, I would keep them away
[1:17:16] Speaker 1: from those screens as much as you can. You know
[1:17:18] Speaker 1: what I mean. I don't mean the ones that are
[1:17:20] Speaker 1: important for their education and so on, but I mean
[1:17:22] Speaker 1: all these kind of addictive machines. What's that movie? Do
[1:17:28] Speaker 1: I remember what's the name of that movie about the
[1:17:30] Speaker 1: addiction of iPhones and everything. The Social Dilemma. Yeah, there's
[1:17:36] Speaker 1: a movie called The Social Dilemma, and highly recommend parents
[1:17:39] Speaker 1: watch it. I was fascinated by it, and it's it's
[1:17:44] Speaker 1: it's interviewing people who were very much involved with Facebook
[1:17:49] Speaker 1: and Instagram and YouTube and everything else, and they know
[1:17:53] Speaker 1: they designed all these machines to be addictive. They designed
[1:17:57] Speaker 1: them to draw us, you know, to themselves, and how
[1:18:00] Speaker 1: dangerous that is psychologically and I would say spiritually. So
[1:18:04] Speaker 1: I always say to parents watch that movie and be
[1:18:08] Speaker 1: wary of the amount of time your kids are spending
[1:18:11] Speaker 1: on them. And you know, the whole thing with teenagers
[1:18:14] Speaker 1: and low self esteem and the way that kind of
[1:18:18] Speaker 1: awful culture of backbiting and critique, and you know when
[1:18:26] Speaker 1: you go into comboxes and people put photos up and
[1:18:30] Speaker 1: then they're attacked, and there's something terrible about that world.
[1:18:34] Speaker 1: And so i'd be I'd be careful with it, wary
[1:18:36] Speaker 1: of it in regard to kids.
[1:18:42] Speaker 2: Yes, that Social Dilemmas. On social dilemma, that is a
[1:18:45] Speaker 2: really excellent picture.
[1:18:47] Speaker 1: You saw it, Yeah, it's it's quite good. I agree.
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, my stepchildren that have seen it said, oh, we
[1:18:53] Speaker 2: know all this stuff, but it is still shocking to
[1:18:56] Speaker 2: see it on the screen. Yeah.
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:18:59] Speaker 2: There's also a comment, since we've heard so many negative
[1:19:03] Speaker 2: things from one attendee, simple statement they went with their
[1:19:07] Speaker 2: UCSP granddaughter to Saint Mark's last night and so impressed
[1:19:12] Speaker 2: with the encouragement in reaching out to the college kids.
[1:19:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great parish. I don't know if it
[1:19:17] Speaker 1: was Father John Love who was there, but he's the
[1:19:19] Speaker 1: pastor Sat Mark. They do a wonderful job there, right,
[1:19:23] Speaker 1: So I would hold that up to as a great model.
[1:19:30] Speaker 2: Yes, And another question that we haven't seen yet tonight
[1:19:35] Speaker 2: is how is the church evolving with Francis's study of
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: possibly ordaining women deacons? And you feel this would positively
[1:19:44] Speaker 2: affect our church population, and if so, why.
[1:19:49] Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to happen. I just looking
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: at you know, Francis has his sponsored I think is
[1:19:55] Speaker 1: a two separate groups to kind of study the question.
[1:19:57] Speaker 1: The impression I have is that that's not going to happen.
[1:20:01] Speaker 1: And I think it would cause trouble for our theology
[1:20:06] Speaker 1: because of the way episcopacy and priestudent and the diacon
[1:20:09] Speaker 1: are linked together. That women should be drawn more and
[1:20:13] Speaker 1: more and more into the life and ministry and leadership
[1:20:16] Speaker 1: of the church. Absolutely, but there'd be an issue there
[1:20:19] Speaker 1: with our understanding of the clerical state, the understanding of
[1:20:23] Speaker 1: ordained ministry. So I think that would cause some theological issues.
[1:20:28] Speaker 1: I like a lot how Francis is reaching out I think,
[1:20:32] Speaker 1: very invitingly to women and bringing them into positions of
[1:20:36] Speaker 1: great leadership and responsibility. And I always emphasize too that
[1:20:41] Speaker 1: the most important thing in the church is being a saint,
[1:20:45] Speaker 1: and anyone man or woman can start being a saint tonight,
[1:20:49] Speaker 1: you know, and saints have by far the most power
[1:20:52] Speaker 1: in the church. We associate power with office, but that's
[1:20:57] Speaker 1: only one very limited kind of power, the real power. Look,
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: I mean, who is the most powerful Catholic in the
[1:21:04] Speaker 1: twentieth century. I mean, with the possible exception of John
[1:21:07] Speaker 1: Paul a second, it would have been Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
[1:21:11] Speaker 1: I mean, I think to say that without hesitation, she
[1:21:13] Speaker 1: was the most powerful influential Catholic of the twentieth century.
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: Of the nineteenth century, the little flower probably or burned
[1:21:22] Speaker 1: out of burned out of lourds, you know. So it's
[1:21:24] Speaker 1: the saints that's where it's happening, not so much in office.
[1:21:32] Speaker 2: And there's a question around it's not always our nuns
[1:21:37] Speaker 2: that are the issue. Many Christian churches pull in our
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: young people and show.
[1:21:42] Speaker 1: Them the beautiful Yeah.
[1:21:43] Speaker 2: COVID meantime has highlighted where our own parish liturgies, homilies
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: and services have been lacking. Now that we can mass
[1:21:50] Speaker 2: up as the virtual front pew, how can we help
[1:21:54] Speaker 2: our parishes to understand how important our worship is to
[1:21:57] Speaker 2: our youth?
[1:21:58] Speaker 1: Yeah it is. I could have given you a lot
[1:22:01] Speaker 1: more quotes tonight of disaffiliated people who still remember the
[1:22:04] Speaker 1: Mass very fondly and the mystical experiences they had, the
[1:22:09] Speaker 1: beauty of the mass, the community they experienced there. So
[1:22:12] Speaker 1: I quite agree with that we should be very attentive
[1:22:16] Speaker 1: to music, to homilies, to the beauty of our liturgies. Absolutely.
[1:22:21] Speaker 1: On the question of disaffiliation and non Christian churches, it's
[1:22:24] Speaker 1: interesting they've studied that some disaffiliate into into more evangelical
[1:22:33] Speaker 1: Christian churches, fewer disaffiliate into mainstream Protestant, but the overwhelming
[1:22:40] Speaker 1: majority disaffiliate into the ranks of the nuns. So it
[1:22:45] Speaker 1: is some some indeed go into other, you know, Christian churches,
[1:22:50] Speaker 1: but the overwhelming majority become nuns. They become unaffiliated. So
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: I think that's when we should put our main attention.
[1:22:57] Speaker 1: But I quite agree with the point about the liturgy absolutely.
[1:23:00] Speaker 2: And can you comment plays on how we can go
[1:23:06] Speaker 2: about handling this canceled culture.
[1:23:09] Speaker 1: Oh, I hate cancel culture, and I've been writing a
[1:23:13] Speaker 1: lot recently about I mentioned wocism. I hate that whole
[1:23:17] Speaker 1: approach and its roots are in very dubious philosophical perspectives,
[1:23:22] Speaker 1: but one of the ugliest faces of wocism, I think
[1:23:25] Speaker 1: is the cancel culture. I just wonder, I mean, who
[1:23:27] Speaker 1: are these perfect people that never think or do anything wrong,
[1:23:31] Speaker 1: that have the right to eliminate someone for making, you know,
[1:23:34] Speaker 1: a faux pas or saying the wrong thing. And see,
[1:23:38] Speaker 1: it's born too of an antagonistic social theory. And now
[1:23:43] Speaker 1: the roots of that are back in Nietzsche and people
[1:23:45] Speaker 1: like that, and they're behind a lot of the woke perspective.
[1:23:49] Speaker 1: Catholic social teaching is not an antagonistic social theory. But
[1:23:53] Speaker 1: when you've got an antagonistic social theory that rests upon
[1:23:56] Speaker 1: the us against them, think of Marxism, I mean, is
[1:24:00] Speaker 1: trying to foment social warfare, the warfare of classes and
[1:24:06] Speaker 1: so on. But when you have an antagonistic social theory,
[1:24:09] Speaker 1: the cancel culture becomes one of its flowerings, you know,
[1:24:14] Speaker 1: and it's particularly terrible. I think we have to resist it.
[1:24:18] Speaker 1: The problem is that we even though I think stats
[1:24:21] Speaker 1: show something like eighty five percent of Americans hate the
[1:24:24] Speaker 1: cancel culture, but yet we're also afraid of it, that
[1:24:27] Speaker 1: we succumb to it. I think the cancel culture people
[1:24:30] Speaker 1: are like bullies, and most bullies are cowards. And when
[1:24:33] Speaker 1: you stand up to them, they back down. And I
[1:24:35] Speaker 1: think as a culture though, we've been bullied, and we
[1:24:39] Speaker 1: should realize strengthen our numbers, and we should stand up
[1:24:42] Speaker 1: to bullies and not cave into them anyway. That to
[1:24:45] Speaker 1: talk for another day too.
[1:24:49] Speaker 2: Indeed, and the issue of Harry Potter books, they were
[1:24:55] Speaker 2: very popular and the films, and there were incantations in
[1:24:59] Speaker 2: the Is there some way that we can properly counsel
[1:25:04] Speaker 2: our children on the reading of those books?
[1:25:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't comment. I just don't know them. I
[1:25:10] Speaker 1: know a lot of people who are great defenders of
[1:25:12] Speaker 1: the Harry Potter books, but I must say I just
[1:25:14] Speaker 1: have never read them, so I can't say.
[1:25:18] Speaker 2: Then we'll stick with the social dilemma. There have been
[1:25:22] Speaker 2: several questions about resources, So I'll get a hold of
[1:25:25] Speaker 2: Noel tomorrow and see if we can put together a
[1:25:30] Speaker 2: reading list and then we can send that out to everybody.
[1:25:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll be fine, that'll be fine.
[1:25:35] Speaker 2: All right, Well, thank you very much. Bishop. I certainly
[1:25:37] Speaker 2: appreciate your time and the grilling that you took on
[1:25:40] Speaker 2: our questions. Here tonight's take all valid poise. I know
[1:25:45] Speaker 2: there are things that you know and love, so i'd
[1:25:50] Speaker 2: like to just say a couple of words in closing,
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: don't forget our presentation tomorrow everyone. It's at lunchtime twelve
[1:25:58] Speaker 2: fifteen Paul Ford from Padre Saram on the subject of
[1:26:04] Speaker 2: horizontal services in your home and how to turn them
[1:26:06] Speaker 2: into alters in actual daily life, and how your home
[1:26:11] Speaker 2: can be a holy place. That's twelve fifteen tomorrow. And
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: then a reminder that as soon as we close here,
[1:26:20] Speaker 2: please stay online for about thirty seconds and wait for
[1:26:24] Speaker 2: the evaluation to pop up. We look forward to what
[1:26:26] Speaker 2: you have to say, and meantime, thank you to Wall
[1:26:29] Speaker 2: who helped put this on tonight, the staff at Word
[1:26:32] Speaker 2: on Fire, the staff at the University series, my friend
[1:26:35] Speaker 2: Jonathan for standing by in case I needed him. Our webmaster,
[1:26:39] Speaker 2: Ross Gile has been on here too in the background.
[1:26:42] Speaker 2: So it does take a village, if not a perish,
[1:26:45] Speaker 2: to bring this to fruition. So thank you again, Bishop Baron.
[1:26:50] Speaker 2: We really appreciate it.
[1:26:52] Speaker 1: My pleasure. God bless you all.

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