# Will the Good of the Other Bishop Barron Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 23 Sep 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75250079/will_the_good_of_the_other_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you. Friends, I just finished reading a
[0:03] Speaker 1: really interesting book called Suicidal Empathy by a man with
[0:06] Speaker 1: a very poetic name. His name is Gad Saad. And
[0:09] Speaker 1: Gad Saad is a Canadian, let's call him social psychologist.
[0:14] Speaker 1: And the book, I think, along with Chris Rufo's America's
[0:20] Speaker 1: Cultural Revolution and James Lindsay's critical or cynical theories, I
[0:24] Speaker 1: think it's the best exposure and takedown of the lunacy
[0:28] Speaker 1: at the heart of much of the wokest philosophy that
[0:31] Speaker 1: dominates things today. And Saad's analysis focuses on empathy. Now,
[0:40] Speaker 1: what's empathy? Empathy is, you know, feeling the feelings of
[0:44] Speaker 1: somebody else, entering into the feelings of another person, and
[0:49] Speaker 1: let's say a desire not to hurt or wound those feelings.
[0:52] Speaker 1: That's empathy. Is empathy a good thing? Yeah, perfectly decent thing.
[0:58] Speaker 1: All things being equal, you know, you should be empathetic
[1:01] Speaker 1: with people. All things being equal don't hurt people's feelings.
[1:06] Speaker 1: Here's the problem, and I think he's right about this,
[1:09] Speaker 1: but empathy is not a supreme value. Empathy is not
[1:15] Speaker 1: something which is always and everywhere the right thing to do.
[1:20] Speaker 1: Empathy is not the center around which all of our
[1:23] Speaker 1: value system revolves. And see, in the measure that it's
[1:26] Speaker 1: become that, lots of mischief has happened. It's become so exaggerated,
[1:32] Speaker 1: in fact, that it threatens truth, reality, justice, and I'll
[1:39] Speaker 1: get to this, love. If you put empathy, so defined,
[1:43] Speaker 1: in the center of your preoccupation— truth, reality, justice, and love—
[1:49] Speaker 1: are going to be threatened. Now, cases in point abound.
[1:53] Speaker 1: All you have to do is look around the culture today.
[1:55] Speaker 1: What do you find? Well, so they won't feel bad
[1:58] Speaker 1: about themselves, we'll let biological men compete in women's sports
[2:02] Speaker 1: and frustrate the dreams of thousands of young women. So
[2:07] Speaker 1: as not to undermine the self-esteem of minorities, we'll allow them,
[2:11] Speaker 1: even if they're unqualified, to have positions in universities in
[2:14] Speaker 1: the corporate world. so that everybody might feel included, will
[2:18] Speaker 1: characterize the meritocracy as white privilege, etc. So, most of
[2:23] Speaker 1: the moves of wokeism are predicated upon the primacy of empathy.
[2:28] Speaker 1: Our supreme value is don't hurt the feelings of other people. Well,
[2:33] Speaker 1: but what if what we're doing is unjust? What if
[2:35] Speaker 1: it's unfair? What if it's not really good for people? Well,
[2:40] Speaker 1: that takes second place to empathy. It becomes so exaggerated,
[2:46] Speaker 1: Gad said, argues, that it becomes, in fact, suicidal, that
[2:51] Speaker 1: it undermines society itself. Now, as I was reading his
[2:57] Speaker 1: book— so he's not coming at this from a religious standpoint.
[3:01] Speaker 1: He's doing it more from the standpoint of social psychology.
[3:04] Speaker 1: But as I was reading his book, I kept thinking
[3:08] Speaker 1: of the distinction between empathy and love. Love is indeed
[3:15] Speaker 1: the supreme value taught to us by the Bible. Love
[3:19] Speaker 1: is indeed what stands at the heart of the moral life.
[3:22] Speaker 1: But love, everybody, does not mean primarily feeling the feelings
[3:28] Speaker 1: of somebody else. Love does not mean primarily not hurting
[3:33] Speaker 1: people's feelings. Love, as Thomas Aquinas teaches, means to will
[3:41] Speaker 1: the good of the other. Empathy is to feel the
[3:45] Speaker 1: feelings of the other and don't harm the feelings of
[3:48] Speaker 1: the other. Love is willing the good of the other.
[3:55] Speaker 1: Does that mean that sometimes loving involves hurting people's feelings?
[4:02] Speaker 1: You bet. You bet. I'll give you a couple simple examples.
[4:08] Speaker 1: You're a conscientious college professor. Someone turns in their work,
[4:13] Speaker 1: and it's pretty bad, mediocre at best. And so you
[4:17] Speaker 1: give that paper a C or C-. Will you hurt
[4:22] Speaker 1: the person's feelings? Yeah, undoubtedly. If I got a C,
[4:28] Speaker 1: I'd feel terrible. I'd probably be angry. My self-esteem would
[4:33] Speaker 1: be wounded. My feelings would be hurt, certainly. But what
[4:38] Speaker 1: would that conscientious professor be doing he would in fact
[4:42] Speaker 1: be loving that student. Why? He'd be telling him the
[4:46] Speaker 1: truth about the quality of his work and probably incentivizing
[4:52] Speaker 1: him to do better, encouraging him to become a better writer,
[4:58] Speaker 1: a better researcher, a more careful student. The C hurt
[5:03] Speaker 1: his feelings, to be sure, but that C was in
[5:06] Speaker 1: fact an act of love. How about a priest in
[5:11] Speaker 1: the confessional? Suppose someone confesses a very serious crime, and
[5:16] Speaker 1: the priest, of course, can't violate the seal himself, but
[5:19] Speaker 1: he could tell the penitent, look, you need to go
[5:22] Speaker 1: to the police, and you need to turn yourself in.
[5:26] Speaker 1: Is he hurting his feelings? I'm sure. Is he making
[5:30] Speaker 1: his life more difficult? No question about it. Is he
[5:34] Speaker 1: wounding his self-esteem? Probably. Probably. But is he loving that person? Absolutely.
[5:42] Speaker 1: By telling him to turn himself in, to do what's right,
[5:45] Speaker 1: to do the just thing, he's willing the good of
[5:47] Speaker 1: the other. He's loving him even as he hurts his feelings.
[5:53] Speaker 1: And look, any parent listening to me right now, you
[5:57] Speaker 1: get this. What if a parent truly said, my purpose
[6:02] Speaker 1: vis-a-vis my kids is never to hurt their feelings? My
[6:07] Speaker 1: purpose is so to empathize with my kids that I
[6:10] Speaker 1: never hurt their feelings, wound their pride, make them feel
[6:15] Speaker 1: bad about themselves. Well, welcome to being the worst parent
[6:18] Speaker 1: of the year, right? It's a disaster for you and
[6:23] Speaker 1: for them. No, no, every good parent knows to will
[6:27] Speaker 1: the good of your kids. In fact, frequently, you have
[6:31] Speaker 1: to hurt their feelings. Frequently, you have to wound their self-esteem.
[6:36] Speaker 1: because you're doing what's right, not what's empathetic. See, everybody,
[6:42] Speaker 1: upon that distinction, so much turns, so much rests. Now,
[6:49] Speaker 1: listen to St. Paul. It's our second reading for today.
[6:51] Speaker 1: We're still reading from Paul to the Romans, this master
[6:55] Speaker 1: text of our tradition. Listen to Paul. Owe nothing to
[7:00] Speaker 1: anyone except to love one another, For the one who
[7:06] Speaker 1: loves another has fulfilled the law. He's saying a mouthful there.
[7:13] Speaker 1: For a Jew of Paul's time, the law, the Torah,
[7:18] Speaker 1: it was everything. I mean, it was to walk the
[7:20] Speaker 1: path of the Lord. How do you fulfill the entirety
[7:24] Speaker 1: of the law? Paul says through love. Mind you, he
[7:28] Speaker 1: doesn't say through empathy. He doesn't say by not hurting
[7:33] Speaker 1: people's feelings. No, by loving, by willing the good of others,
[7:40] Speaker 1: I fulfill the law. Now, he gets more specific. Listen.
[7:44] Speaker 1: You shall not commit adultery. You shall not kill. You
[7:46] Speaker 1: shall not steal. You shall not covet. That's pretty hard-edged stuff.
[7:52] Speaker 1: He's not, you know, wishy-washy about, you know, what's good,
[7:54] Speaker 1: what's evil. No, these commandments that are delineating, you know,
[7:59] Speaker 1: what should be avoided, what should be pursued, these laws
[8:01] Speaker 1: that govern life. Yeah. Yeah. Follow those, and you'll be
[8:04] Speaker 1: expressing love. It's all summed up, Paul says, in the saying,
[8:10] Speaker 1: I'm quoting him, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Good. Now,
[8:18] Speaker 1: let's go back to wokeism for a minute. I know
[8:22] Speaker 1: the game that everybody plays, which is, oh, no, no, wokeism?
[8:25] Speaker 1: To be woke just means you're alert to social injustice
[8:28] Speaker 1: and you care about the suffering of the poor. Look,
[8:31] Speaker 1: just for the record— I'm for social justice. I'm for
[8:34] Speaker 1: caring for the poor. But that's not what wokeism means, everybody.
[8:38] Speaker 1: That's a kind of cloak put around it. Wokeism, and
[8:42] Speaker 1: I've read the avatars of wokeism, is a popularization of
[8:47] Speaker 1: critical theory, which is a postmodern theory coming up out
[8:50] Speaker 1: of the French and German academies, names like Max Horkheimer,
[8:54] Speaker 1: Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Herbert Marcuse, many others.
[9:02] Speaker 1: What's one of the marks now of this postmodern critical theory,
[9:05] Speaker 1: which has morphed into wokeism? One of the distinctive marks
[9:09] Speaker 1: of it is that there are no objective epistemic and
[9:13] Speaker 1: moral truths. In fact, claims to know the truth epistemically
[9:18] Speaker 1: or morally is seen by critical theory as a power play.
[9:24] Speaker 1: It's what's used by powerful people to keep marginalized people down.
[9:29] Speaker 1: And so what they do very often in this French
[9:31] Speaker 1: and German critical theory is they try to unmask and
[9:35] Speaker 1: deconstruct and get behind claims to objective moral and epistemic
[9:40] Speaker 1: truth to get at the oppressive power games that are
[9:43] Speaker 1: really going on. Now, any of that sound familiar? Because
[9:46] Speaker 1: it's all over the wokest rhetoric and literature today. But see,
[9:51] Speaker 1: watch what happens. If you say there are no objective
[9:55] Speaker 1: moral and epistemic values— Just my truth, your truth, what
[9:59] Speaker 1: I think is good. what you think is good, but
[10:00] Speaker 1: there's no objective truth or goodness. What's left? Empathy. You see,
[10:07] Speaker 1: what's left is empathy. There's no objective truth or good.
[10:11] Speaker 1: And so, well, let's just, you know, tolerate each other
[10:15] Speaker 1: and let's try not to hurt each other's feelings. It
[10:18] Speaker 1: makes perfect sense to me how empathy has moved into
[10:22] Speaker 1: the center, because these objectivities that Paul's talking about, adultery
[10:28] Speaker 1: and murder and stealing and so on, they've been marginalized.
[10:31] Speaker 1: And so what moves into the center is empathy. Now,
[10:39] Speaker 1: in light of all this, can you see why Jesus
[10:43] Speaker 1: didn't say, have empathy for one another? What he said was,
[10:48] Speaker 1: love one another. How St. John does not say, God
[10:55] Speaker 1: is empathy. No, he says, God is love. To get
[11:01] Speaker 1: upon that distinction, everybody, so much turns. If we allow
[11:06] Speaker 1: love to devolve into empathy, then we have this collapse
[11:11] Speaker 1: that we see all around us today. You know, I
[11:14] Speaker 1: think of... Chesterton's famous line, when men stop believing in God,
[11:19] Speaker 1: they don't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything, he says. Think,
[11:23] Speaker 1: you know, nature pours a vacuum. Same is true at
[11:26] Speaker 1: the intellectual level. When something moves out of the center, well,
[11:30] Speaker 1: something else is going to move in. I often wondered
[11:34] Speaker 1: whether wokeism is a result of Christianity losing its place
[11:40] Speaker 1: at the center of the culture. You know, go back
[11:43] Speaker 1: to even even 50 years ago, a consensus around the
[11:49] Speaker 1: great sort of moral and spiritual values that ought to
[11:52] Speaker 1: undergird a society. When people said, okay, will the good
[11:56] Speaker 1: of the other, they knew what that meant. They knew
[11:57] Speaker 1: what those goods were. But see, as that has receded,
[12:02] Speaker 1: as Christianity has become unsure of itself and has retreated
[12:06] Speaker 1: from the public square, what's moved in? This postmodern, wokest theorizing,
[12:13] Speaker 1: which has replaced— love with empathy. What orders our lives?
[12:22] Speaker 1: I had the same question for last week. You know,
[12:26] Speaker 1: Paul's talking about becoming a living sacrifice. What orders our wills,
[12:32] Speaker 1: our minds? What gathers us? Well, you see, there's always
[12:36] Speaker 1: something that's going to be in the center. There's always
[12:38] Speaker 1: some magnetic point. Wokeism says empathy. And Gad Saad is right,
[12:44] Speaker 1: it seems to me. In the measure that that becomes
[12:46] Speaker 1: the center, the society ends up committing suicide. We need,
[12:53] Speaker 1: I think, to reassert with biblical boldness that what stands
[12:59] Speaker 1: at the center of our society is not refraining from
[13:03] Speaker 1: hurting people's feelings, but is the kind of hard-edged language
[13:10] Speaker 1: of love. Remember, it was Dostoevsky who said, Love is
[13:14] Speaker 1: a harsh and dreadful thing. It's dead right. It's dead right.
[13:18] Speaker 1: Love is not sentimentality. Love is not refraining from hurting feelings.
[13:22] Speaker 1: Love is willing the good of another. And that can
[13:25] Speaker 1: involve something very demanding. Don't retreat, biblical people. Don't retreat
[13:31] Speaker 1: to the cultural sidelines. But bring this great teaching about
[13:35] Speaker 1: the centrality of love back into the cultural conversation. And
[13:41] Speaker 1: God bless you.

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