# Bishop Barron – Heaven in Stone and Glass: A New Film About Faith and Beauty

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 27 Aug 2026, 37 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73911049/heaven_in_stone_and_glass_a_new_feature_film_by_bishop_barron.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show.
[0:01] Speaker 2: I'm Matthew Patristic, Senior director of the Word on Fire Institute,
[0:04] Speaker 2: the host of the Word on Fire Show.
[0:05] Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us.
[0:07] Speaker 2: We're delighted to announce that a new feature film by
[0:09] Speaker 2: Bishop Robert Baron will be hitting theaters, Yes theaters soon.
[0:13] Speaker 2: The full length documentary, entitled Heaven in Stone and Glass,
[0:17] Speaker 2: draws on the collective shock and sadness the world experience
[0:20] Speaker 2: watching Paris's Cathedral of Notre Dame burn in twenty nineteen
[0:24] Speaker 2: to explore the enduring philosophical, theological, esthetic, moral, and evangelical
[0:29] Speaker 2: significance of the great Gothic cathedrals of France. Recognizing the
[0:33] Speaker 2: potential destruction of Notre Dame, Happily it has since been restored.
[0:37] Speaker 2: As much more than the loss of a historic building,
[0:39] Speaker 2: Bishop Baron personally walks us through Gothicism's soaring architecture and
[0:44] Speaker 2: richly detailed symbolism to explain everything from the unity and
[0:47] Speaker 2: diversity of creation, the nature of the human person, the
[0:50] Speaker 2: objectivity of beauty, the meaning of the incarnation, the living
[0:54] Speaker 2: communion of saints, and the hope of the beatific vision
[0:57] Speaker 2: Heaven and how all of this meant more than ever
[1:01] Speaker 2: for a rapidly secularizing West at risk of losing it's
[1:05] Speaker 2: Christian civilizational identity. Here to share the story behind the
[1:08] Speaker 2: making of the film and what he hopes audiences will
[1:11] Speaker 2: take away from it, is Bishop Robert Baron.
[1:24] Speaker 1: Welcome back to the studio. Bishop, Thanks Matt.
[1:26] Speaker 3: Always good to be with you.
[1:27] Speaker 2: So today we're looking at your new soon to be
[1:30] Speaker 2: released feature film, feature film Heaven.
[1:33] Speaker 1: In Stone and Glass.
[1:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, but before we do, as we always do, we
[1:36] Speaker 2: need to ask you, Bishop, what have you been up
[1:38] Speaker 2: to recently?
[1:39] Speaker 3: Well, I see, I'm not sure when this show is
[1:41] Speaker 3: going to air, but as we record, just a little
[1:43] Speaker 3: while ago, I ordained three new men for the diocese
[1:46] Speaker 3: that were known in Rochester, which is you know, it's
[1:49] Speaker 3: the greatest privilege I have as a bishop is to
[1:50] Speaker 3: ordain priest. I did it, even though it's an auxiliary bishop.
[1:53] Speaker 3: But there's something very powerful and unique when you're the
[1:57] Speaker 3: ordinary of the diocese and you know that young and
[2:00] Speaker 3: puts his hands in your hands and I promise obedience
[2:03] Speaker 3: to you, know you and your successors. Well it's it's
[2:06] Speaker 3: a promise he's making. But it's also when you're the
[2:08] Speaker 3: Bishop ordaining. It's a promise you're making too. I mean
[2:11] Speaker 3: you're saying, Okay, I'm going to do all I can
[2:14] Speaker 3: to make sure you are a sign in such a
[2:18] Speaker 3: way you know that the Kingdom of God has built
[2:20] Speaker 3: up and it's a it's a very intense relationship between
[2:24] Speaker 3: the bishop that ordains and the men who ordained. And
[2:27] Speaker 3: three of them, you know, we've done. They're my seventh, eighth,
[2:30] Speaker 3: and ninth that I've ordained since I've been here. And
[2:33] Speaker 3: that's pretty good, especially for dicees are science as ordaining
[2:37] Speaker 3: more than a lot of the you know, big arch dioceses,
[2:40] Speaker 3: so it's always a special privilege anymore in the pipeline, right, Yeah,
[2:43] Speaker 3: we've got I believe this coming year will be at
[2:45] Speaker 3: twenty eight seminarians.
[2:47] Speaker 2: So that's again pretty good for dioceses are certainly as
[2:50] Speaker 2: praise God. So it's now a turn to your new movie,
[2:53] Speaker 2: Heaving Stone and Glass. Before we look at the film
[2:55] Speaker 2: sort of principal themes and you know, look at some
[2:59] Speaker 2: of its backstory, Bishop, take us back to the very
[3:02] Speaker 2: beginning of Word on Fire and the role that film
[3:05] Speaker 2: has played in your own life as an evangelists, not
[3:09] Speaker 2: only watching it and responding to it, but creating it.
[3:11] Speaker 1: Why has it been so essential to your approach?
[3:14] Speaker 3: It probably goes back to Kenneth Clark. I often, you know,
[3:17] Speaker 3: refer to that wonderful series called Civilization, which came out
[3:21] Speaker 3: in the seventies when I would have been a young teenager,
[3:23] Speaker 3: and I read his book and then the book accompanied
[3:27] Speaker 3: this series on PBS, and it was Clark at the time,
[3:30] Speaker 3: this old man, he's a little older than I am now,
[3:33] Speaker 3: was taking people around Europe for the most part to
[3:37] Speaker 3: show Western civilization. And that's where I first saw things like,
[3:41] Speaker 3: you know, the great Gothic cathedrals and Michelangelo being discussed
[3:45] Speaker 3: in a serious way, and Leonardo, and it opened my
[3:49] Speaker 3: eyes and my mind and my heart, you know, to
[3:52] Speaker 3: the beauty of the Western tradition. So that's always been
[3:55] Speaker 3: in the back of my mind. And so when Word
[3:57] Speaker 3: on Fire got going, first as a kind of standard
[4:00] Speaker 3: you're preaching, it was very word oriented, but very early on,
[4:04] Speaker 3: beginning with some of these filmed retreats that I did
[4:08] Speaker 3: and then YouTube, but then in a more Kenneth Clark
[4:13] Speaker 3: way with this Catholicism series, which was explicitly modeled after
[4:17] Speaker 3: the Civilization series. It's that whole idea, you know that
[4:22] Speaker 3: of the trends anddental's the good, the true, and the beautiful.
[4:25] Speaker 3: Maybe the beautiful is the most important because it's what
[4:28] Speaker 3: first gets your attention. That before this is D. C. Schindler,
[4:32] Speaker 3: you know, before you can even bother thinking about something
[4:36] Speaker 3: or bother seeking it as a good, right, true and
[4:39] Speaker 3: the good. Before those two moves, it has to get
[4:42] Speaker 3: your attention. It has to dazzle you in some way
[4:46] Speaker 3: and make you open your eyes and make you say, wow,
[4:49] Speaker 3: that's worth thinking about or worth pursuing. So the beautiful
[4:53] Speaker 3: is the spearhead, it's the way in it. It's what
[4:56] Speaker 3: first gets your attention. And that's been a deep of
[5:00] Speaker 3: mine all these years that if we say true things
[5:03] Speaker 3: I hope we are about the faith, it should be
[5:05] Speaker 3: accompanied by beautiful manifestations of it and our tradition. Gosh,
[5:10] Speaker 3: go back to John of Damascus, you know, in the
[5:14] Speaker 3: early those battles against the iconic class, that was a
[5:19] Speaker 3: very important moment. He's a little known figure, but that's
[5:22] Speaker 3: a very important moment in church history because no John
[5:25] Speaker 3: of Damascus, no Shark Cathedral, no John Damascus, no Michelangelo no,
[5:32] Speaker 3: even you know Flannery O'Connor, that you could use the
[5:35] Speaker 3: artistic to speak of sacred things, the iconic class that no, no, no,
[5:39] Speaker 3: it's idolatry and it distracts you. And that's got Platonic
[5:43] Speaker 3: roots as well. It's got Islamic roots, because Islam, you know,
[5:47] Speaker 3: was getting off the ground just before John Damascus. That
[5:51] Speaker 3: he stood up and said no to That was a
[5:54] Speaker 3: very important moment and I would be the very inadequate
[5:59] Speaker 3: represent of that tradition in showing the beauty of the faith.
[6:04] Speaker 2: How do in your own mind do you connect Heaven
[6:06] Speaker 2: in Stone and Glass to your other great film projects,
[6:09] Speaker 2: the Catholicism series of course, but also the pivotal players.
[6:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's related to them. I mean there are grander
[6:14] Speaker 3: projects in a way. They were you know, ten part series,
[6:16] Speaker 3: and I knew man once I became ordinary diocese, I
[6:19] Speaker 3: just wouldn't have the time to do those really extended
[6:24] Speaker 3: like Catholicism. I got permission from Cardinal George basically to
[6:28] Speaker 3: be off for two years and I taught a little
[6:30] Speaker 3: bit at the seminary, but he basically gave me permission
[6:32] Speaker 3: to travel around the world and we filmed that in
[6:35] Speaker 3: two years. Pivotal Players took us maybe four years, filming
[6:40] Speaker 3: just in the summer, so during the off season when
[6:43] Speaker 3: you're a bishop, you know, you don't go to the
[6:45] Speaker 3: meetings and all that during the summer, and I would.
[6:47] Speaker 3: I would exchange vacation time for just to go around
[6:51] Speaker 3: the world to film that. But I can't really do
[6:53] Speaker 3: that anymore. So this was a one shot thing. Last summer,
[6:57] Speaker 3: we went over to France for about ten days and
[6:59] Speaker 3: filmed what we needed to. Our teams had gone over
[7:03] Speaker 3: in advance to do what they call the b roll,
[7:05] Speaker 3: the attendant photography. I had recorded the whole thing on audio,
[7:10] Speaker 3: so if you know how these things work, a lot
[7:12] Speaker 3: of it is voiceover and then some I'm on camera,
[7:16] Speaker 3: so we're able to get a fair amount of it done,
[7:18] Speaker 3: you know, prior. But then I went over last summer
[7:21] Speaker 3: for about ten days. So it's a smaller version of
[7:24] Speaker 3: those earlier ones, but in the same spirit, it's.
[7:27] Speaker 2: More about what the origins of the project, what prompted it,
[7:30] Speaker 2: what led you to to start working on it.
[7:32] Speaker 3: Well, this was very clear. It was the Notre Dame
[7:35] Speaker 3: fire in twenty nineteen, which broke my heart because I
[7:38] Speaker 3: loved that building and knew it very well, gave tours there,
[7:41] Speaker 3: lived fifteen minutes from that building, went to it every
[7:44] Speaker 3: other day, probably when I was in France. So when
[7:48] Speaker 3: I heard it was burning, and when I saw the
[7:50] Speaker 3: extent of it, when I first got the word like
[7:52] Speaker 3: Notrenime's on fire, I thought, oh, okay, some part of
[7:55] Speaker 3: it or they're getting it out of control. When I
[7:58] Speaker 3: saw it, I got to my place in La I remember,
[8:02] Speaker 3: and it just broke my heart. So and then I
[8:05] Speaker 3: watched the world respond, and I thought, well, you know,
[8:09] Speaker 3: first Paris and then through TV the wider world galvanized
[8:14] Speaker 3: by this. What was it? You know, I asked myself
[8:17] Speaker 3: that question, is even this highly secularized time, people send
[8:22] Speaker 3: something in that building that was of great value? So
[8:25] Speaker 3: I wrote a script where I had the idea of
[8:28] Speaker 3: trying to explain what that was. Why was abillity let
[8:31] Speaker 3: Notre Dame so powerful for people? So I wrote that script.
[8:35] Speaker 3: So we're still in twenty nineteen, I think at that point, well,
[8:37] Speaker 3: then what happened twenty twenty COVID and so we couldn't travel,
[8:42] Speaker 3: and so that for the next what two maybe maybe
[8:44] Speaker 3: it was no two summers, And then I'm named bishop here,
[8:48] Speaker 3: and so that summer I was moving my whole life,
[8:51] Speaker 3: so we couldn't go. So we finally had the chance
[8:53] Speaker 3: last summer to go and film, and we got this
[8:55] Speaker 3: script that was sitting around in a drawer for a
[8:58] Speaker 3: few years. We finally got it made.
[9:01] Speaker 2: So say a little bit about your own personal connection.
[9:03] Speaker 2: Not only did it Totredam but to the great cathedrals.
[9:05] Speaker 2: It comes out in the film, but I think it's
[9:07] Speaker 2: really touching how you explain how meaningful these buildings are
[9:11] Speaker 2: to you as.
[9:11] Speaker 3: Well well, And it begins Kenneth Clark, that's true. But
[9:16] Speaker 3: also this course I took a Notredame was gonna say
[9:19] Speaker 3: Notre Dame, wh here's the American at Notre Dame University.
[9:23] Speaker 3: I spent my first year in college there, and there
[9:24] Speaker 3: was this marvelous guy, Robert Leeder. He was a well
[9:28] Speaker 3: known artist himself an art historian and taught history of art.
[9:32] Speaker 3: And there was it must have been at the time
[9:34] Speaker 3: a required course for freshman like it was a history
[9:36] Speaker 3: of Western art. Because in one of these big theater
[9:39] Speaker 3: rooms there were I don't know hundreds of us probably
[9:41] Speaker 3: in there. I'm a seventeen year old, squirrely you know, freshman,
[9:44] Speaker 3: and up comes this. I thought he was an old man.
[9:47] Speaker 3: He's younger than I am now by probably ten years.
[9:50] Speaker 3: And he was an extraordinary fellow. He was actually a veteran.
[9:55] Speaker 3: I think he was at ewo Jima, and then he
[9:58] Speaker 3: was one of the He's part of that generation like
[10:00] Speaker 3: when Hesberg was a young president and someone like Ralph
[10:03] Speaker 3: McInerney was there, these younger, really devout Catholic laymen who
[10:09] Speaker 3: gave their lives, you know, to teach it. Not her name,
[10:11] Speaker 3: and he was one of that generation anyway, and he's
[10:14] Speaker 3: a great teacher, wonderful teacher, and taught us the history
[10:16] Speaker 3: of art, and he would show us his pre computers,
[10:19] Speaker 3: he would show us slides that he had made from
[10:22] Speaker 3: his travels, right, and it was just really clear to me,
[10:25] Speaker 3: though we went all the way up to modern art,
[10:27] Speaker 3: it was very clear to me he loved the Gothic churches.
[10:30] Speaker 3: And he showed us, you know, the roses at Notre
[10:34] Speaker 3: Dame and the Towers of Shard and the interiors and
[10:37] Speaker 3: the crypts, and I could tell he loved it. And
[10:41] Speaker 3: he communicated to me this great enthusiasm for the Gothic churches.
[10:45] Speaker 3: So I've had it since then, and I'll tell you
[10:48] Speaker 3: the truth. One reason, when I was getting ready for
[10:50] Speaker 3: doctoral studies, Cardinal Burning who was my archbishop at the time,
[10:54] Speaker 3: wanted me to go to Rome. And I said to him, well,
[10:57] Speaker 3: you know you're reminis. I'll go wherever you want me
[10:59] Speaker 3: to go. But if I had a preference, I'd go
[11:01] Speaker 3: to Paris. And there are different reasons for that. And
[11:04] Speaker 3: he argued with me a bit, and we had several meetings,
[11:07] Speaker 3: and finally he agreed to let me go to Paris.
[11:09] Speaker 3: But one of the reasons, honestly, was I wanted to
[11:12] Speaker 3: be near the Gothic cathedrals and I wanted to get
[11:14] Speaker 3: to know them better, and I did. Indeed, when I
[11:16] Speaker 3: was there, I gave tours at Notre Dame, visited Shark
[11:19] Speaker 3: all the time, so I had a long association with them. Yeah.
[11:24] Speaker 2: The title of the film is both compelling and curious.
[11:27] Speaker 2: We have heaven and immaterial reality somehow being present in
[11:32] Speaker 2: stone and glass. It doesn't get more physical than that,
[11:35] Speaker 2: safe and more. Why did you choose this title?
[11:37] Speaker 3: Because the cathedrals are meant to be gateways to heaven,
[11:40] Speaker 3: That's how they understood themselves. You go to place like
[11:43] Speaker 3: Sharp for example. And this really struck me there because
[11:45] Speaker 3: the way it's designed the windows when you're inside sharp right,
[11:51] Speaker 3: and it's a bright day outside of it, the dark
[11:53] Speaker 3: interior and the walls and the dividing areas just seemed
[11:58] Speaker 3: very black. And then especially the rose just seems surrounded
[12:01] Speaker 3: by black, so it's like a black velvet background. And
[12:06] Speaker 3: then on it are the brilliant jewels. That's what the
[12:10] Speaker 3: windows look like to me, especially when the light's really
[12:12] Speaker 3: hidium like jewels displayed on black velvet.
[12:15] Speaker 2: Right.
[12:16] Speaker 3: Well, then you remember in the Book of Revelation that
[12:18] Speaker 3: the heavenly Jerusalem is described as the city with jeweled walls, right, Well,
[12:24] Speaker 3: they knew exactly what they were doing, is they were building,
[12:27] Speaker 3: in a way, an anticipatory replica of the heavenly Jerusalem.
[12:34] Speaker 3: And now remind you, the heavenly Jerusalem comes down from
[12:39] Speaker 3: heaven to earth. The Biblical vision is not Platonic, which
[12:43] Speaker 3: is to say, the story of the escape of the
[12:46] Speaker 3: spirit from matter, that's Plato. It's the Gnostics, it's the Zoroastrians,
[12:51] Speaker 3: it's the Manicheans, it's the Puritans. Watch that strain up
[12:56] Speaker 3: and down our intellectual history. That's not Biblical. It seems
[13:00] Speaker 3: to me the Biblical is the meeting of heaven and earth. Right,
[13:05] Speaker 3: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as
[13:07] Speaker 3: in heaven connection. We look forward not to the escape
[13:12] Speaker 3: of the soul from the body. We look forward to
[13:15] Speaker 3: the resurrection of the body. Right, It's the elevation of
[13:19] Speaker 3: the material to the spiritual. So Paul talks about spiritualized bodies,
[13:26] Speaker 3: right now, what do you mean by that? He didn't
[13:28] Speaker 3: mean Plato, you know, get that spirit out of the
[13:31] Speaker 3: body as quickly as you can. Nor did he mean, well,
[13:34] Speaker 3: there is no such thing as soul. No, the body
[13:38] Speaker 3: itself becomes spiritualized. Now, heaven and stone and glass is
[13:43] Speaker 3: heaven in an anticipatory way. Hinted at in these great buildings,
[13:50] Speaker 3: see that are yes of this earth, but they participate
[13:54] Speaker 3: in the heavenly. And that's what I think happens when
[13:58] Speaker 3: you go in those buildings. Always for me, it's like
[14:01] Speaker 3: you're lifted up out of this world, or better, this
[14:05] Speaker 3: world is transfigured and lifted up into a higher place.
[14:08] Speaker 2: And one of your consistenty frames in the film is
[14:11] Speaker 2: Christianity is an embodied really.
[14:13] Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, God made the material world, and he made
[14:16] Speaker 3: it good, and the ensemble of it he called very good.
[14:19] Speaker 3: And that's a revolution. That's a revolution because in the
[14:22] Speaker 3: ancient world, the world itself could be deified, right, or
[14:26] Speaker 3: things in it are deified, or you say, you know,
[14:30] Speaker 3: the world's fallen. That's the gnostic thing has played. Oh,
[14:32] Speaker 3: the world's fallen, and we have to get out of it,
[14:34] Speaker 3: escape from the cave and get up into the light.
[14:37] Speaker 3: That's not biblical. The biblical is no. The material world
[14:40] Speaker 3: is good, indeed very good. And what God wants is
[14:44] Speaker 3: the elevation and transfiguration. Now, think of tom As aquinas
[14:49] Speaker 3: gratzia prefecia at supponentnataurum. Right, Grace supposes and perfects nature.
[14:55] Speaker 3: That's how it works. It doesn't negate nature. Think of
[14:59] Speaker 3: Carl Barr here, typically a Protestant view that nature is
[15:04] Speaker 3: the crater left behind by the explosion of grace. No, No,
[15:09] Speaker 3: that's not Catholic. Catholic is no. Grace elevates nature, it
[15:13] Speaker 3: perfects nature. So think of the cathedrals as an image
[15:16] Speaker 3: of perfected nature. Right.
[15:19] Speaker 2: One of the film's central themes is the exploration of
[15:22] Speaker 2: the full meaning of a church, what a church is
[15:26] Speaker 2: and as you know, at one point of the of
[15:28] Speaker 2: the film. Some theologians have argued that a church means
[15:32] Speaker 2: the people and only the people, and therefore that means
[15:35] Speaker 2: that the building in which they gather really has no
[15:38] Speaker 2: or very little theological and moral significance. Your whole film
[15:42] Speaker 2: really is is an argument against that. So say a
[15:44] Speaker 2: little bit about why that's not right to the conceiv.
[15:47] Speaker 3: Of Viker's argument against the way I was formed as
[15:50] Speaker 3: a young man. So look, yes, Biblically, the church at
[15:56] Speaker 3: Claysia is the Greek word there, which comes from out
[16:00] Speaker 3: of Collein called right. The ecclesia is that community of
[16:06] Speaker 3: people who've been called out of the world of sin
[16:10] Speaker 3: and death into this new world right of grace. Okay, good,
[16:14] Speaker 3: The church is the people, Yes, I get it. But
[16:18] Speaker 3: my generation hard nothing but that. And the result was
[16:23] Speaker 3: that the church building was de emphasized. And again I
[16:27] Speaker 3: want to be picking up my Protestant fronts, but it
[16:29] Speaker 3: was a protestantization of it that the church building doesn't
[16:33] Speaker 3: matter that much. Decorationism. In fact, that's a distraction from
[16:36] Speaker 3: the word windows and images and saints and angels and no, no, no,
[16:41] Speaker 3: we don't want that, we want this. It's the word
[16:44] Speaker 3: or in our orchestral of it, it's the people we
[16:46] Speaker 3: are of the church. And there's a document, a really
[16:48] Speaker 3: bad document came out in the seventies and it was
[16:52] Speaker 3: art an Environment and Catholic Worship. And one of the
[16:55] Speaker 3: lines in that document was the church building is but
[16:59] Speaker 3: the in of the worshiping assembly like a tent. See
[17:03] Speaker 3: a tent, Well, what's a tent. It's ephemeral. It's there
[17:07] Speaker 3: for a second, then you knock it down and maybe
[17:09] Speaker 3: put it up again. What matters is the pilgrim people
[17:12] Speaker 3: on the move. Right. That's stupid, that's just stupid. It's
[17:15] Speaker 3: not our tradition. No. From the beginning, church buildings were
[17:21] Speaker 3: seen as themselves sacramental, as themselves evocative of the new
[17:26] Speaker 3: world into which people were called. So yes at Clacia,
[17:31] Speaker 3: at col yes, you're called out of the world into
[17:34] Speaker 3: what into this new space which is defined by the
[17:39] Speaker 3: church building, you know. In other words, it's there's not
[17:42] Speaker 3: a conflict between these two ideas of we are the
[17:45] Speaker 3: church and the building is also the church. More to it,
[17:48] Speaker 3: pressed it a little bit, why are Catholic church buildings
[17:52] Speaker 3: so beautiful? Because they're not just housing us. We're not
[17:56] Speaker 3: that important what's the most important. They're housing Christ. There
[18:00] Speaker 3: are a place where Christ is really present. Now you
[18:03] Speaker 3: don't believe in the real presence, right, well, then the
[18:05] Speaker 3: church needn't look like a tabernacle. It can look like
[18:09] Speaker 3: a place where people gather. Okay, welcome to the way
[18:12] Speaker 3: a lot of our churches. Look, but if you really
[18:14] Speaker 3: believe in the real presence, No, this is the house
[18:17] Speaker 3: of God the Domost day, right, well, then I want
[18:21] Speaker 3: it to be as beautiful as possible, and you know
[18:24] Speaker 3: you want me biblical the Old Testament. Look at the
[18:27] Speaker 3: Temple in Usalem. They're very interested in the beauty of
[18:31] Speaker 3: the temple, the decorations of the temple, how the transformed
[18:37] Speaker 3: Cosmos is symbolized by it. So we stand in that tradition,
[18:42] Speaker 3: and you know it's no accident. Of course, a lot
[18:44] Speaker 3: of the cathedrals are constructed according to instructions from the
[18:48] Speaker 3: Book of Exodus and from Ezekiel and descriptions of how
[18:52] Speaker 3: the temple was built, because they wanted these to be
[18:55] Speaker 3: our version of the Temple, which in turn is evocative
[18:58] Speaker 3: of the heavenly Jerusalem, right, the heavenly city. That whole tradition.
[19:04] Speaker 3: Trust me, when I was a young guy was completely
[19:07] Speaker 3: muted in favor of we're the church and we have
[19:10] Speaker 3: the skin of the tent around us, but the tent
[19:14] Speaker 3: doesn't matter. We matter, Nana, don't play this either. That's
[19:17] Speaker 3: an either or game. We're both and religion.
[19:20] Speaker 2: A related theme in the film is how church buildings
[19:22] Speaker 2: should reflect a robustly Catholic theological and philosophical view of
[19:27] Speaker 2: the meaning and purpose of creation and of course human
[19:30] Speaker 2: beings a relationship to creation, both individually and a whole.
[19:34] Speaker 2: So Bishop sort of connected to this previous question, they
[19:36] Speaker 2: just asked you say a little bit about the theology
[19:39] Speaker 2: that grounds and animates the great cathedrals of France, especially
[19:43] Speaker 2: in comparison to the theology maybe lack of theology that
[19:47] Speaker 2: explains the Modernists and even brutalist structures that we've seen
[19:50] Speaker 2: since the nineteen sixties.
[19:51] Speaker 3: And we've been doing some of it already. You know
[19:53] Speaker 3: that these motifs, these symbolic motifs, are informed by a
[19:57] Speaker 3: deep theological perception. So one is the cathedral as a
[20:00] Speaker 3: heavenly Jerusalem Cathedral, as the New Temple Cathedral, as heaven
[20:05] Speaker 3: on Earth or a gateway to Heaven. Think too of
[20:08] Speaker 3: the cathedral itself as as the body of Christ. So
[20:13] Speaker 3: the way they're displayed in cruciform of the nave, and
[20:16] Speaker 3: then there's the you know, transept coming across and the
[20:18] Speaker 3: appse up here, so it looks like across indeed, but
[20:22] Speaker 3: even like a body with apps is like the head,
[20:26] Speaker 3: the transit of the arms and the torso, and so
[20:28] Speaker 3: it's the body of Christ. Now are we the body
[20:32] Speaker 3: of Christ? Yes, the people, but the church itself is
[20:36] Speaker 3: meant to be an image of the mystical body. Now
[20:39] Speaker 3: read someone like you, Henry Adams, who is a scion
[20:43] Speaker 3: of the Great Adams, you know, political family. Monsamt. Michelle
[20:48] Speaker 3: on Chard is one of the best books on the
[20:50] Speaker 3: Middle Ages written by an American, you know, Protestant, kind
[20:54] Speaker 3: of secularized Protestant. But boy did he get the Middle Ages,
[20:58] Speaker 3: you know, well, mon Saiet Michel and Shart. And what
[21:02] Speaker 3: he knows about Shart is it's the body of the
[21:04] Speaker 3: blessed Mother. And indeed that's a legitimate way to see
[21:07] Speaker 3: it too, because they're all dedicated to note Tre Dame, right,
[21:12] Speaker 3: our lady, and the building itself was seen as her
[21:15] Speaker 3: dwelling place or even her body. And I remember his
[21:21] Speaker 3: thing about the West ROAs window like a brooch on
[21:24] Speaker 3: her breast, or the I'm gonna do shark this way.
[21:28] Speaker 3: Here's the knave apps the transept. Right on this west facade,
[21:33] Speaker 3: you have the great Rose. When the sun comes through there,
[21:37] Speaker 3: and it comes down at a certain point of the
[21:38] Speaker 3: day as exactly the same size as the labyrinth, which
[21:42] Speaker 3: is right about like waste level if you want, of
[21:45] Speaker 3: the torso right, and it's an exact same size, and
[21:50] Speaker 3: when the light comes down, it plays, it illuminates the labyrinth. Well,
[21:56] Speaker 3: what do we have here? If the church is the
[21:58] Speaker 3: body of the blessed Mother, the labyrinth is at the
[22:02] Speaker 3: level of the womb, And what happens but the light
[22:05] Speaker 3: of the Holy Spirit that comes at the annunciation and
[22:09] Speaker 3: impregnates her and makes her the tabernacle, Well, the cathedral
[22:14] Speaker 3: is now a tabernacle that holds the body of Christ
[22:17] Speaker 3: the same way her body did. Well, all of that,
[22:20] Speaker 3: see they're playing with then the jeweled walls, and we
[22:23] Speaker 3: can look at Ezekiel describing the temple, the Book of
[22:26] Speaker 3: Revelation describing the heavenly Jerusalem, and they used all that right.
[22:30] Speaker 3: Another one is sacred geometry, which really fascinates me because
[22:36] Speaker 3: keep in mind. These cathedrals sharks a good example. There
[22:39] Speaker 3: was a cathedral school, right, the Great schools Paris is
[22:43] Speaker 3: another one grew up in association with the cathedrals. And
[22:47] Speaker 3: what do they teach there but the liberal arts we
[22:50] Speaker 3: call them today they call them the trivium and the quadrivium.
[22:54] Speaker 3: But one of those things they were really interested in
[22:56] Speaker 3: was was geometry and mathematics, arithmetics. Indeed, astronomy is kind
[23:01] Speaker 3: of number as it displays itself in the heavens. Music
[23:05] Speaker 3: which they studied was number in time, right, But geometry,
[23:11] Speaker 3: mathematics all over the cathedrals are signs of sacred geometry.
[23:17] Speaker 3: Ratios and relationships and so on. Well, what's going on
[23:20] Speaker 3: there but God, who makes the world through his lag
[23:24] Speaker 3: afs his mind. Therefore, all of nature is stamped by intelligibility,
[23:29] Speaker 3: which you know, again is the condition for the possibility
[23:32] Speaker 3: of science. That's why it's no accident that the science
[23:34] Speaker 3: has immerged out of the universities which emerged out of
[23:38] Speaker 3: the cathedral schools at which sacred geometry is being taught.
[23:42] Speaker 3: The cathedrals are the result of sacred geometry. Right. So
[23:46] Speaker 3: everything I've been saying now for the past five minutes
[23:48] Speaker 3: is all the theology that informs these buildings when we
[23:53] Speaker 3: walk into them and say, oh, it's nice. So it's pretty,
[23:55] Speaker 3: you know, but we're not immersed in the biblical world
[23:59] Speaker 3: above all, but also the world of ancient wisdom and
[24:02] Speaker 3: philosophy and mathematics, astronomy.
[24:05] Speaker 2: We're not going to get these buildings properly. I hear
[24:07] Speaker 2: this description you just gave. It's intoxicating, it's enchanting. And
[24:12] Speaker 2: then I remember my education of being told that the
[24:16] Speaker 2: medieval period is the Dark Ages. It just seems like
[24:20] Speaker 2: how that emerged.
[24:21] Speaker 3: Yes, I did this course for the Jordan Peterson Academy
[24:24] Speaker 3: on Aquinas, and my opening lecture was on that, and
[24:27] Speaker 3: I said, please do not believe this nonsense propagated by
[24:32] Speaker 3: largely nineteenth century Protestant and storiographers that saw, you know,
[24:36] Speaker 3: the ancient world with all this wonderful stuff, and then
[24:38] Speaker 3: the fall of Rome, and then the Dark Ages set
[24:40] Speaker 3: in and they last until either you know, Descares or
[24:44] Speaker 3: Michelangelo or something. Give me a break. There was indeed
[24:48] Speaker 3: a dark age after the Fall of Rome, as Chesterman said,
[24:52] Speaker 3: though the only light during the Dark Age was the
[24:54] Speaker 3: church because it produced the monasteries that can conserved ancient
[24:58] Speaker 3: wisdom and then provided the kind of political structure around
[25:03] Speaker 3: which the city's immerged and all that. But the Dark
[25:07] Speaker 3: Ages end with the Great twelfth century Renaissance. Long before
[25:10] Speaker 3: the sixteenth century Renaissance. There's the twelfth century Renaissance in Europe,
[25:16] Speaker 3: and the cathedrals emerge at that time, as does scholasticism.
[25:20] Speaker 3: Let's say someone like like Ansel. It reaches a climax
[25:24] Speaker 3: in the thirteenth century. Now you get figures like Thomas Aquinas,
[25:27] Speaker 3: and you get the building of the great cathedrals. Most
[25:31] Speaker 3: of them are finished. They culminate the thirteenth century. Say
[25:35] Speaker 3: what you want about the era that produced Dante, Aquinas
[25:38] Speaker 3: and Sharp Cathedral. The one thing you can't say about
[25:42] Speaker 3: it is it's dark. That was one of the most
[25:44] Speaker 3: brilliantly illuminated periods in Western history, and the cathedrals are
[25:50] Speaker 3: still living examples of that.
[25:53] Speaker 2: Another fundamental theme of the film, and this has been
[25:56] Speaker 2: central to the whole identity of Word on Fire since
[25:58] Speaker 2: its inception, is that, contrary to the claims of postmodernity,
[26:02] Speaker 2: beauty is not subjective. Yeah right, So Bishop say a
[26:05] Speaker 2: little bit about that theme in the film and how
[26:07] Speaker 2: it plays out.
[26:08] Speaker 3: You see, No one would have believed that in the
[26:10] Speaker 3: classical period, because go back to the transcendentals, the good,
[26:13] Speaker 3: the true, and the beautiful. Would you say truth is relative?
[26:16] Speaker 3: And a lot of people today say that, But anyone
[26:18] Speaker 3: who's serious say that. No, And the minute you're serious
[26:21] Speaker 3: about something, you don't hold that kind of relativism. Does
[26:25] Speaker 3: any real astronomer think that truth about the planets the
[26:29] Speaker 3: stars is relative? No? No serious astronomers says that. Any
[26:33] Speaker 3: serious mathematician think that math is just a structure of
[26:36] Speaker 3: our patriarchy or our racist hierarchy or something. Well, no,
[26:40] Speaker 3: if you're serious about math, of course you recognize its objectivity.
[26:44] Speaker 3: The same is true with the good. So a lot
[26:46] Speaker 3: of people today want to say, of course the good
[26:48] Speaker 3: is relative. Yeah, but not until you come to something
[26:50] Speaker 3: they feel strongly about. Tell someone today who says slavery
[26:55] Speaker 3: is a terrible thing. Yeah, you're right, it is this
[26:57] Speaker 3: a terrible thing? Oh no, No, that's just a relative view.
[27:01] Speaker 3: That's your view now, and it's your subjective opinion. But
[27:04] Speaker 3: you know, other people think slavery's okay. Would you be
[27:06] Speaker 3: at home with that? I don't know anyone any great
[27:09] Speaker 3: opponent of slavery or racism. You know, yes, indeed, racism
[27:13] Speaker 3: is objectively bad, I would say, would the advocate of
[27:16] Speaker 3: anti racism ever think to say, oh, that's relative, it's subjective, Well,
[27:21] Speaker 3: of course not. If you take something seriously, you hold
[27:24] Speaker 3: to objectivity. Same is true beauty, right, So I know
[27:27] Speaker 3: it's very tempting to say beauty is the eye of
[27:30] Speaker 3: the beholder. Beauty is that it's beautiful for you, not
[27:32] Speaker 3: for me. That's your private opinion. Why would that be
[27:35] Speaker 3: different than the good and the true? Why would it
[27:37] Speaker 3: beautiful be different? Thomas Aquinas, who was theorizing at the
[27:42] Speaker 3: time when the great cathedrals were going up, said, the
[27:46] Speaker 3: beautiful occurs at the intersection of three things, integritas, consonancia,
[27:50] Speaker 3: and clariitas. Integritas means wholeness, consonancia harmony, clari test means radiance. Now,
[27:59] Speaker 3: I always think when I when I teach this of
[28:03] Speaker 3: a Gothic rose window, you want a wholeness integritized. It
[28:08] Speaker 3: hangs together as one, there's a unity to it. Consonancia
[28:12] Speaker 3: the play of the elements within a rose window, the
[28:15] Speaker 3: harmonious play right, and then radiance, the brilliant luminosity of it.
[28:21] Speaker 3: But Aquita says, really, it's the radiance of form, it's
[28:23] Speaker 3: the it's the intelligibility becomes splendid. That's what makes something beautiful.
[28:29] Speaker 3: That's not subjective. Now people can appropriate that to varying degrees.
[28:35] Speaker 3: They can be really perceptive to varying degrees. That's more subjective,
[28:39] Speaker 3: but not the beauty itself. Beautiful itself is is as
[28:43] Speaker 3: objective as mathematical truth or ethical truth.
[28:46] Speaker 2: Something that that surprised me while watching the film is
[28:49] Speaker 2: the depictions and you point them out of scenes that
[28:52] Speaker 2: we might consider frightening or perhaps even body or even
[28:56] Speaker 2: obscene on many of the cathedral So as you say
[28:59] Speaker 2: a little bit about the role that the depiction of
[29:01] Speaker 2: the world lean even the profane, plays on these great cathedrals.
[29:05] Speaker 3: I love that. And Chris, you're talking about the you know,
[29:06] Speaker 3: the gargoyles and they sort of grotesques that are all
[29:10] Speaker 3: over the cathedrals. Now, some were built in the nineteenth
[29:13] Speaker 3: century and all that, but they do indeed go back
[29:15] Speaker 3: to the medieval times. This idea that on these most
[29:19] Speaker 3: sacred buildings, which are evocative of the heavenly Jerusalem, that
[29:23] Speaker 3: they are portals to heaven all of that. They felt
[29:26] Speaker 3: perfectly fine putting these obscene sometimes body characters. Now go
[29:32] Speaker 3: back to someone like Chaucer writing just maybe after the
[29:35] Speaker 3: time of the cathedrals. They had a lot of body
[29:37] Speaker 3: ans in Chaucer, look at Shakespeare even, you know, but
[29:42] Speaker 3: go back to someone like Dante. You can't go through
[29:44] Speaker 3: the divine comedy and not find it, rather at least
[29:48] Speaker 3: are rated. Right. What were they seeing? I think a
[29:52] Speaker 3: couple of things, several things really. One is that God
[29:56] Speaker 3: has allowed in his creation, which is indeed good and
[29:59] Speaker 3: very good, and beauty full and harmonious and all those
[30:01] Speaker 3: great things. But God has allowed clearly lack of harmony,
[30:05] Speaker 3: and lack of proportion and strange and ugly things. Are
[30:12] Speaker 3: they somehow ingredient in his great plan? You know that
[30:15] Speaker 3: God permits evil to bring about a greater good, as
[30:18] Speaker 3: Thomas would say, Yeah, And so they belong on the
[30:22] Speaker 3: cathedral too. They're part of this great work of art
[30:27] Speaker 3: that has both light and darkness in it, right, and
[30:31] Speaker 3: I think to the savability of even that's what is
[30:36] Speaker 3: most grotesque and off kilter. Can they be drawn in
[30:41] Speaker 3: thinking like a Quasimoto or something like that, you know,
[30:43] Speaker 3: can they be drawn into the way of salvation. Yeah,
[30:49] Speaker 3: but the one I highlight in the film because I
[30:51] Speaker 3: used to point it out on my tour in Notre Dames.
[30:54] Speaker 3: You're in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. You're the main portal.
[30:56] Speaker 3: You're a very sacred place. People entering the building. In
[30:59] Speaker 3: the Middle Age, there's a depiction on the female devil
[31:03] Speaker 3: and she's sitting on a bishop and a king and
[31:06] Speaker 3: they're both kind of grimacing underneath her. And then we
[31:09] Speaker 3: live more closely. You see she's spreading her legs to
[31:12] Speaker 3: urinate on them. Well, here's the portal of Notre Dame
[31:15] Speaker 3: and she's right there. And in the Middle Ages these
[31:18] Speaker 3: would have been vividly painted, these images, So there vividly Well, okay,
[31:24] Speaker 3: that's that's the medieval mind. You know. Part of that
[31:28] Speaker 3: was the delight that ordinary people would have taken in
[31:31] Speaker 3: seeing this reversal of you know, hey, you know the
[31:33] Speaker 3: king and the bishop they're getting theirs, you know, if
[31:36] Speaker 3: they're and again fair enough, there's a healthy suspicion of
[31:42] Speaker 3: powerful figures. If they go bad, you know, they get
[31:45] Speaker 3: what they deserve. So there she is, right at the
[31:48] Speaker 3: main entrance. I like that quality of the cathedrals.
[31:51] Speaker 2: Perhaps this is a bit speculative, but do you think
[31:54] Speaker 2: that there's a kind of sense of humor also operative
[31:56] Speaker 2: in them?
[31:57] Speaker 3: Absolutely, and in the medievals. You know, look, go back
[32:00] Speaker 3: to ancient times, certainly medieval times. People always loved bathroom
[32:07] Speaker 3: humor and sexually, you know, suggestive humor they always have.
[32:12] Speaker 3: That's in the classical authors, you know. And yes, there
[32:15] Speaker 3: was that kind of playful bodiness that the Middle Ages was.
[32:19] Speaker 3: And I do think it's related to belief in God
[32:22] Speaker 3: that you can laugh at the world even in its tragedy,
[32:27] Speaker 3: because you know, ultimately it's a divine comedy. I think
[32:29] Speaker 3: that's the reason why they can have that sort of
[32:32] Speaker 3: humor in these sacred places.
[32:35] Speaker 2: Bishop, you aregue at one point that the elements of
[32:37] Speaker 2: our current secular cultural paradigm, and you highlight specifically materialism
[32:42] Speaker 2: and deism, blind us to all that these cathedrals have
[32:47] Speaker 2: to offer. So what's your proposal for how we can
[32:50] Speaker 2: overcome this blindness.
[32:52] Speaker 3: Well, one thing is to recover these places and to
[32:54] Speaker 3: appreciate them again and hear them explain. So you say, ah,
[32:58] Speaker 3: now I get what they're Look, it happened to me,
[33:01] Speaker 3: you know when I knew about these places through photographs,
[33:04] Speaker 3: but then when I was over there and living in Paris,
[33:08] Speaker 3: I tell the story often them. My very first day
[33:10] Speaker 3: in Paris, I put my bags down in my house
[33:13] Speaker 3: and I walked to Notre Dame. I just wanted to
[33:15] Speaker 3: see it right away, first day, and Shart Sharp changed
[33:19] Speaker 3: my life. There's no exaggeration being at chart and just
[33:25] Speaker 3: taking the whole thing in change my life. So realize
[33:29] Speaker 3: what these buildings can do, and then let's build some
[33:32] Speaker 3: versions ourselves, you know, maybe make bold to do something
[33:36] Speaker 3: at least in the tradition of these great buildings.
[33:38] Speaker 1: And connected to that bishop.
[33:39] Speaker 2: Finally, before we turn to our listener, question something that
[33:41] Speaker 2: you and father Steve Granno, the CEO of Word on Fire,
[33:46] Speaker 2: always emphasizes we are not producing faith based entertainment. So
[33:50] Speaker 2: say a little bit of some some partying words on
[33:52] Speaker 2: how you would like the audiences not only to respond,
[33:54] Speaker 2: but to use this film to evangelize, including Europe, the
[33:58] Speaker 2: home of these creak Yeah.
[34:00] Speaker 3: Which maybe words needed the most because they've allowed them
[34:03] Speaker 3: to become for most people just tourist destinations. And no,
[34:08] Speaker 3: I hope people could see the film themselves and be
[34:10] Speaker 3: evangelized by it and then distribute it or encourage people
[34:13] Speaker 3: to see it. I do believe that that I think
[34:17] Speaker 3: of you know, the great Cardinal lucij was our special
[34:19] Speaker 3: of Paris when I was a student there. A Jewish
[34:22] Speaker 3: kid was sent to a Christian family for protection during
[34:25] Speaker 3: the Holocaust. His mother died in the Holocaust. It's a
[34:28] Speaker 3: terrible story in many ways, but when he was like
[34:31] Speaker 3: a fifteen year old kid, he wanders into one of
[34:33] Speaker 3: the cathedrals, not one of the big famous ones, and
[34:36] Speaker 3: he was converted by it. He was this young Jewish
[34:39] Speaker 3: kid converted by the cathedral. I totally get that, totally
[34:44] Speaker 3: get that. Some people, I'm a good example, are converted
[34:47] Speaker 3: more by ideas and arguments. He was converted by a place,
[34:53] Speaker 3: by the beauty of it, and they still have that
[34:56] Speaker 3: effect on people. They can.
[35:02] Speaker 2: So have time for our listener question today, we have
[35:04] Speaker 2: Jamie from Florida asking for your advice Bishop on how
[35:08] Speaker 2: the laity can advance the creation of good art, both
[35:13] Speaker 2: in the church and for the church.
[35:15] Speaker 4: Okay, your excellency, my name is Jamie from Jacksonville, Florida,
[35:20] Speaker 4: and my question is what would be a way a
[35:22] Speaker 4: layperson could advance beauty within the sacred arts. In an
[35:24] Speaker 4: age where the commissioned artist for the church feels dead,
[35:27] Speaker 4: there is no demand signal in the church for new
[35:29] Speaker 4: paintings of saying through Bible stories, and no way to
[35:32] Speaker 4: get any additional training if we're beyond our undergraduate years
[35:36] Speaker 4: or have a family. I know there are plenty of
[35:38] Speaker 4: us out there with some humble skills that have something
[35:40] Speaker 4: to give in a small way if we could just
[35:42] Speaker 4: find a path. Thank you.
[35:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good. There are some places in our country
[35:46] Speaker 3: where you can study the ecclesiastical arts, so you might
[35:50] Speaker 3: want to look into that a bit more carefully. There
[35:52] Speaker 3: are places you can go. I know in our diocese
[35:54] Speaker 3: we had a synod you know, recently, and it was
[35:57] Speaker 3: on vocations and evangelization. And I didn't tell them to
[36:02] Speaker 3: say this. It came up spontaneously the role of beauty
[36:05] Speaker 3: and to beautify our churches and so on. So one
[36:08] Speaker 3: thing we've done here is we've put together a list
[36:11] Speaker 3: of resources the places you can go if you want
[36:14] Speaker 3: to renovate a sanctuary or an altar, or you want
[36:17] Speaker 3: to rebuild something, or you want to work on that steeple,
[36:19] Speaker 3: and to give people options. Here are places that still
[36:23] Speaker 3: do this work, so I would look around for those.
[36:25] Speaker 3: We're able to find a lot of them, and increasingly
[36:29] Speaker 3: there's an interest in creating beautiful churches, so I would
[36:34] Speaker 3: just dig around and fine. Well, thank you Jamie for
[36:37] Speaker 3: reaching out to us.
[36:38] Speaker 2: If you would like to ask Bishop Baron a question
[36:40] Speaker 2: for a future Word on Fire show, please visit ask
[36:43] Speaker 2: Bishop Baron dot com. We always love to hear from
[36:46] Speaker 2: you again. So much more to say, Bishop, but we
[36:49] Speaker 2: just hope everybody sees the movie. It's fantastic. God yeah,
[36:52] Speaker 2: and I know it'll have a big impact.
[36:55] Speaker 3: All right. Thanks Matt.
[36:56] Speaker 1: That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us
[36:58] Speaker 1: on the Word on Fire Show.
[36:59] Speaker 2: If you're interested and learning more about how Word on
[37:01] Speaker 2: Fire can help you grow closer to Christ, become a
[37:03] Speaker 2: better evangelist with and for others, and work for the
[37:06] Speaker 2: common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute. Check
[37:09] Speaker 2: us out at Institute dot Word on Fire dot org.
[37:12] Speaker 2: That's Institute dot Word on Fire dot org.
[37:14] Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.

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