Category: Columns

On
Fr. Robert Barron

Surprising lessons from YouTube viewers

Just last month, my media ministry Word on Fire marked a milestone: 10,000,000 views on our YouTube channel.

This achievement fills me with gratitude both to God and to the many people who watched one or more of the videos I’ve produced. It also provides the occasion for me to reflect a bit on both the pitfalls and advantages of evangelizing through the new media.

An experiment

When we commenced our outreach through YouTube seven years ago, we did so in the manner of an experiment. YouTube had just come into being at that time, and it largely featured crude, homemade videos of cats jumping off the roof and babies gurgling for their mother’s camcorder.

I thought we should try to invade this space with the Gospel, and so I resolved to make short video commentaries on movies, music, current affairs, cultural happenings, etc.

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On
George Weigel

An extraordinary synod, indeed

According to Vatican-speak, a specially scheduled session of the Synod of Bishops is an “Extraordinary Synod,” meaning Not-an-Ordinary Synod, held every three years or so.

In the case of the recently-completed Extraordinary Synod of 2014, extraordinary things did happen, in the “Oh, wow!” sense of the word. And if this year’s Extraordinary Synod was a preview of the synod for which it was to set the agenda, i.e., the Ordinary Synod of 2015, that synod, too, promises to be, well, extraordinary.

How was the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 extraordinary? With apologies to the Bard, let me count the ways:

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Fr. Robert Barron

Have patience for ‘sausage-making’ synod

The midterm report on the deliberations of the Synod on the Family has appeared, and there is a fair amount of hysteria all around.

John Thavis, a veteran Vatican reporter who should know better, has declared this statement “an earthquake, the big one that hit after months of smaller tremors.”

Certain commentators on the right have been wringing their hands and bewailing a deep betrayal of the Church’s teaching. One even opined that this report is the “silliest document ever issued by the Catholic Church,” and some have said that the interim document flaunts the teaching of St. John Paul II.

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Janeen Otis

A ‘miracle baby’ is born

On March 3, 2013, I received a telephone call from a pretty distraught gentleman who was waiting in his car in the Planned Parenthood parking lot while his girlfriend had her abortion consult appointment.

Curtis kept referring to abortion as “intrinsic evil,” yet he felt that abortion was the only option to hide the fact that he had premarital sex.

Curtis had recently come to the Catholic faith and held a position on a board and was involved in prison ministry. He couldn’t imagine his peers knowing of his choice to engage in premarital sex.

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Jean Mueller

Are changes in taste normal with aging?

Q My mother has been a very healthy person, and her diet has been what I would call balanced.

She always had fresh fruit and vegetables, limited sugar, and watched her salt.

A short time ago, I noticed that she is eating less and less. She has also started to use quite heavy doses of salt on her foods.

When I ask her, she says things don’t taste the same, and she just gets full quicker.

Is this normal, or is it something to have checked out?

(A daughter in McFarland)

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Tony Magliano

Respecting life outside our comfort zone

True respect for life requires us to get out of our comfort zone. Oh, we might say, “I respect life, I vote for ‘pro-life’ politicians who claim they will work to end abortion.” However, in a democracy voting is usually easy and comfortable.

But are we willing to regularly stand outside of an abortion mill on a freezing winter morning or hot summer afternoon praying and witnessing to the humanity of our unborn brothers and sisters? That’s harder and somewhat uncomfortable.

War kills life

Now for those who are willing to get uncomfortable in support of the Catholic Church’s efforts to protect unborn human life, try to move into an even more uncomfortable zone: acknowledge the truth that war does much to disrespect life. War kills life — mostly innocent life.

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On
Fr. Robert Barron

Arguments for God’s existence

One of the unintended but happy consequences of the emergence of the new atheism is a renewed interest in classical arguments for God’s existence.

Eager to defend the faith that is so vigorously attacked today, Catholic apologists and evangelists have been recovering these rational demonstrations of the truth of God; and the atheists, just as eager to defend their position, have entered into the fray.

In the process, these ancient arguments, long thought by many to be obsolete, have found a new relevance and have been brought to greater clarity through the give and take of both critics and advocates.

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Fr. Robert Barron

The sciences and God

Given the ruminations of Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, one might have thought that the absolute limit of scientistic arrogance had been reached. But think again.

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, has asserted that “science” is on the verge of providing a complete understanding of the universe — an explication that precludes the antiquated notion of God altogether.

Limitations of the sciences

Before addressing the God issue, let me make a simple observation. Though the sciences might be able to explain the chemical make-up of pages and ink, they will never be able to reveal the meaning of a book; and though they might make sense of the biology of the human body, they will never tell us why a human act is moral or immoral; and though they might disclose the cellular structure of oil and canvas, they will never determine why a painting is beautiful.

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