# Bishop Barron on Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 31 Jul 2026, 8:45.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73269766/bishop_barron_on_why_i_hate_religion_but_love_jesus.mp3



## Transcript

[0:11] Speaker 1: Well, every once in a while, in the kind of
[0:12] Speaker 1: extraordinary way, a video will just explode. It will make
[0:15] Speaker 1: its way all over the country. It'll sweep like wildfire
[0:18] Speaker 1: through the virtual world. And the most recent example of
[0:22] Speaker 1: this phenomenon is a video, kind of slickly produced video
[0:26] Speaker 1: of a young man in a leather jacket and he's
[0:29] Speaker 1: kind of half wrapping half of speaking a very simple
[0:33] Speaker 1: poem about Jesus and religion, more precisely, why Jesus came
[0:38] Speaker 1: to abolish religion, how Jesus stands over and against religion. Well, this,
[0:44] Speaker 1: you know, short five minute simple video with a very
[0:48] Speaker 1: simple argument, has inexplicably, in my judgment, become this overnight sensation.
[0:54] Speaker 1: As I record these words, I think it's around thirteen
[0:57] Speaker 1: million views on YouTube. Well I first heard about it
[1:02] Speaker 1: through a student of mind at the seminary. He said, Hey,
[1:04] Speaker 1: there's this video going around, maybe you should comment on it.
[1:07] Speaker 1: So I watched it, and I remember thinking, this video
[1:09] Speaker 1: has gotten so much attention, go figure. But then I
[1:12] Speaker 1: got flooded with requests on my side on the Facebook page. Father,
[1:16] Speaker 1: you got to say something about this video, So here
[1:20] Speaker 1: goes here's my reaction to it. But what it represents
[1:24] Speaker 1: is a kind of simplistic expression of evangelicalism. It's a
[1:32] Speaker 1: view that has its roots in the thought of Martin Luther.
[1:34] Speaker 1: You go back to the sixteenth century Reformation, and what
[1:37] Speaker 1: do you find in Luther well as a central idea
[1:41] Speaker 1: that we are justifying or we're saved not by our works,
[1:47] Speaker 1: rather through faith, by grace accepted in faith. So there's
[1:50] Speaker 1: the center of Luther's Reformation. We're not saved through the church.
[1:56] Speaker 1: We're not saved through institutions, liturgies and sacraments or moral effort.
[2:00] Speaker 1: We're saying by accepting in faith the grace of Christ. Now,
[2:04] Speaker 1: this basic idea led Luther, in some of his texts anyway,
[2:07] Speaker 1: and certainly a lot of his followers, to demonize much
[2:11] Speaker 1: of ecclesial life. So things like sacraments and liturgies and
[2:16] Speaker 1: masses and even the call for good works were kind
[2:19] Speaker 1: of demonized as a distraction from the grace that comes
[2:23] Speaker 1: from Christ alone. So all of this constitutes the religion
[2:28] Speaker 1: that many evangelicals to this day are against, including this
[2:31] Speaker 1: young man. So here's the militancy in favor of Jesus
[2:35] Speaker 1: and his grace and against religion. Now, you know, what's
[2:39] Speaker 1: interesting are the political and cultural implications of this view,
[2:42] Speaker 1: because it begins as a theological perspective, but and as
[2:47] Speaker 1: huge ramifications in the world beyond the world of religion.
[2:52] Speaker 1: It is absolutely no accident that freedom becomes the great
[2:57] Speaker 1: watchword of modern politics. Think of our own country, you know,
[3:01] Speaker 1: as the land of the free. If there's one value
[3:03] Speaker 1: we cherish as freedom, we'll trace it back behind Jefferson
[3:07] Speaker 1: and Rousseau and those people. Go right back to Martin Luther.
[3:11] Speaker 1: His maybe most revolutionary text is called the Freedom of
[3:15] Speaker 1: a Christian. So as the Christian stands free of all
[3:18] Speaker 1: this religious institutionalism. So now it morphed into the political
[3:23] Speaker 1: view that we should stand free of oppressive political and
[3:27] Speaker 1: cultural institutions. So our own country, for example, is born
[3:31] Speaker 1: in this great act of anti institutional revolutionary violence. Helping
[3:37] Speaker 1: to explain, by the way, why this video has had
[3:39] Speaker 1: such great play in America, because this idea of freedom
[3:44] Speaker 1: from the institution appeals very deeply and profoundly to the
[3:48] Speaker 1: American and modern soul. Okay, so what does a Catholic
[3:53] Speaker 1: make of all this? I would say, actually not very much.
[3:59] Speaker 1: Go right back to through his central idea. I mean
[4:01] Speaker 1: to be blunt about it. Luther conveniently overlooked a plethora
[4:07] Speaker 1: of Biblical texts that militate against his position on justification
[4:12] Speaker 1: by grace through faith. In fact, as Cardinal Avery Dallas
[4:14] Speaker 1: pointed out, the only time justification by grace through faith
[4:18] Speaker 1: alone is mentioned in the Bible, it's explicitly condemned. Look
[4:21] Speaker 1: in the Letter of James for that. But you know,
[4:24] Speaker 1: for example, Matthew twenty five, the great parable of the
[4:27] Speaker 1: sheep and the goats. What do you find salvation? Depending
[4:30] Speaker 1: not really on faith so much, but on the quality
[4:33] Speaker 1: of our love, especially our love toward the poorest and
[4:36] Speaker 1: most marginalized. And thing two of Paul himself, whom Luther
[4:41] Speaker 1: claimed is his principal inspiration. The same Paul who spoke
[4:44] Speaker 1: about justification by grace and apart from the law, also said,
[4:50] Speaker 1: if I have faith enough to move the mountains but
[4:54] Speaker 1: have not love, I'm nothing. An extraordinary claim, isn't it.
[4:58] Speaker 1: In First Corinthians, the same Paul, who had a very
[5:02] Speaker 1: intense personal experience of conversion through Christ, also spoke very
[5:08] Speaker 1: eloquently of our participation in the mystical body of Jesus,
[5:13] Speaker 1: by which he meant the densely textured life of the church.
[5:17] Speaker 1: It's not a sort of privatized individualism that Paul's advocating.
[5:21] Speaker 1: But it's a very rich ecclesial sensibility. And let's go
[5:27] Speaker 1: to Jesus himself now, because a young man claims in
[5:29] Speaker 1: this video that Jesus is against religion. Well, okay, the
[5:33] Speaker 1: same Jesus who railed against the Pharisees against certain violations
[5:39] Speaker 1: and misuses of religion in his own time, That same
[5:43] Speaker 1: Jesus who railed against the Pharisees also said, I've come
[5:47] Speaker 1: not to abolish the law, but I've come to fulfill it.
[5:51] Speaker 1: The same Jesus who yes overturned the tables in the
[5:54] Speaker 1: temple and said I'm going to tear down this place
[5:56] Speaker 1: also said in three days I will rebuild it. See
[6:00] Speaker 1: here's my point. Was Jesus against the corruptions of religion
[6:06] Speaker 1: in his own time? Sure, in fact, often bitterly so.
[6:11] Speaker 1: Did he know about the ways that institutional religion goes bad,
[6:14] Speaker 1: of course, and that that's how he explained all these
[6:18] Speaker 1: polemics against the Phariseas and so on. But but, but
[6:21] Speaker 1: Jesus was not simply against religion. In fact, he was
[6:25] Speaker 1: a loyal, law abiding Jew. Jesus in fact said I
[6:31] Speaker 1: don't want to abolish it. I want to fulfill it.
[6:34] Speaker 1: In other words, he took the very best of Israelite religion,
[6:38] Speaker 1: took the best of Jewish institutionals. If you want, think
[6:41] Speaker 1: of law, covenant, temple, sacrifice, priesthood, all of that. He
[6:45] Speaker 1: didn't abolish it. He fulfilled it. He brought it up
[6:49] Speaker 1: into a new and higher synthesis. So the young man
[6:55] Speaker 1: in the video, if he's against the corruptions of institutional
[7:00] Speaker 1: religion up and down the ages of the present day,
[7:03] Speaker 1: he's got an ally in me. I'm with him. You know,
[7:07] Speaker 1: here's the thing. Finding corruptions in the religious institution of
[7:11] Speaker 1: Christianity over two thousand years, he's like shooting fish in
[7:14] Speaker 1: a barrel. I mean, that's not very hard to find,
[7:17] Speaker 1: and being against it is kind of like being against
[7:19] Speaker 1: rotten eggs. I mean, who isn't against institutional corruption. But
[7:24] Speaker 1: if he's advocating a kind of individualist spirituality that ignores
[7:28] Speaker 1: the thousands of ties that bind us sacramentally, liturgically, and
[7:32] Speaker 1: institutionally to each other, if he's trying to divorce Jesus
[7:35] Speaker 1: from his mystical body, to church. Then he does not
[7:38] Speaker 1: have an ally in me. He has a pretty fierce opponent.
[7:41] Speaker 1: In fact, the mainstream of the Catholic tradition for two
[7:45] Speaker 1: thousand years stands strongly against him. You know, here's something
[7:48] Speaker 1: that strikes me. There are a lot of New age
[7:50] Speaker 1: people today famously who want spirituality without religion, and they're
[7:55] Speaker 1: evangelical Christians who want Jesus without religion. The problem is
[8:00] Speaker 1: both those views end up with an abstraction. But the
[8:03] Speaker 1: one thing the real Jesus is not is an abstraction.
[8:07] Speaker 1: The Word became flesh, and now that incarnation is prolonged
[8:11] Speaker 1: over space and time, precisely in and through the church, sacrament, liturgy,
[8:17] Speaker 1: the mystical body, the lives of the saints, the love
[8:20] Speaker 1: we have for each other. That's precisely where the real
[8:23] Speaker 1: Jesus is apparent to us. So I would say, against
[8:27] Speaker 1: this young man, Jesus did not come to abolish religion.
[8:30] Speaker 1: Jesus came to fulfill religion.

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