Word on Fire – Page 21 – Madison Catholic Herald

In my capacity as theologian, teacher, and culture commentator, I’ve been reading articles on ethical matters for years and have grown relatively inured to the expression of even the most outrageous points of view.

But a few years ago, I came across a piece that was so shocking that I was compelled, as I read it, to put the magazine down several times and just shake my head in disbelief.

‘Reducing’ a pregnancy

It was an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine called “The Two Minus One Pregnancy,” dealing with the phenomenon of “reducing” (love the Orwellian language) a pregnancy from two children to one.

On November 12, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

Revisiting spiritual welfare

In the sixth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, we find the account of Jesus sending out the Twelve, two by two, on mission.

The first thing he gave them, Mark tells us, was “authority over unclean spirits.” And the first pastoral act that they performed was to “drive out many demons.”

The reality of evil spirits

When I was coming of age in the ’60s and ’70s, it was common, even in seminaries, to dismiss such talk as primitive superstition — or perhaps to modernize it and make it a literary device using symbolic language evocative of the struggle with evil in the abstract.

On November 5, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

John Henry Newman at the synod

Controversies surrounding the recent Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family have put me in mind of Blessed John Henry Newman, the greatest Catholic churchman of the 19th century.

Newman wrote eloquently on many topics, but the arguments around the synod compel us to look at his work regarding the evolution of doctrine.

The development of doctrine

When he was at mid-career and in the process of converting from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, Newman penned a masterpiece entitled On the Development of Christian Doctrine.

On October 30, 2014

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.

On October 23, 2014

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.

On October 16, 2014

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.

On October 9, 2014

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.

On October 2, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

Parable of the talents revisited

The attendance at our Mass at Mundelein Seminary on Labor Day weekend was sparse. Many of the students had gone home while others were on a special tour of Chicago churches.

The celebrant and preacher for the Sunday Mass was Fr. Robert Schoenstene, our veteran Old Testament professor. Father Schoenstene offered the best interpretation I’ve ever heard of a particularly puzzling parable of the Lord, and I wanted to make sure his reading got a wider audience.

Rich man gives talents to servants

The parable in question is the one concerning the rich man who gives talents to three of his servants and then sets out on a journey. Upon his return, he assesses the situation and discovers that the servant to whom he had given five talents had invested them fruitfully and that the servant to whom he had given three talents had done the same.

On September 25, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

Calvary: portrait of a priest-shepherd

St. Pope John Paul II said that a priest should have the heart of Christ the Good Shepherd.

Far too many saccharine paintings of effeminate Jesuses in the midst of delicate lambs have conduced toward a misconstrual of this image as something sentimental and harmless.

But shepherds not only had the smell of their sheep (to use Pope Francis’ language), but they also wielded a stick to bring back strays and fend off threats. Real shepherding was, and is, a dirty, hard-edged business.

John Michael McDonagh’s film Calvary shows, with extraordinary vividness, what authentic spiritual shepherding looks like and how it feels for a priest to have a shepherd’s heart.

On September 18, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

The Gospel according to The Hobbit

Like Star Wars, The Divine Comedy, and Moby Dick, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is the story of a hero’s journey. This helps to explain, of course, why, like those other narratives, it has proved so perennially compelling.

The hero’s tale follows a classical pattern: a person is wrenched out of complacency and self-absorption and called to a great adventure, during which he (or she), through struggle, comes to maturity and vision.

Summoned to adventure

The Hobbit begins, humbly enough, with this line: “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Tolkien is quick to clarify that this is not a nasty or unkempt hole, but rather a cozy place, filled with fine furniture, doilies, and a well-stocked kitchen. This is the homey space from which Bilbo Baggins (the hobbit) will be summoned to adventure.