In my years as an observer of and commentator upon things religious, I’ve become rather accustomed to radical positions. There is just something about religion that can bring out the irrational in both its advocates and opponents. For the most part, therefore, over-the-top opinion pieces and Internet commentary just roll off my back, but occasionally something comes along that is so egregious and indefensible that I sit up and take notice. This happened twice last … [Read more...]
Father Robert Barron
Why Jesus and Religion Are Like Two Peas in a Pod
Every once in a while, a video unexpectedly becomes an internet sensation, garnering attention all over the place and spreading like wildfire through the virtual world. Just this past week, a phenomenon of this type has emerged in the form of a slickly produced video of a twenty-something-year-old man in a leather jacket half rapping, half speaking a poem about Jesus and religion—more specifically how the former came to abolish the latter. Incredibly, this five-minute … [Read more...]
Effective Evangelization Commences with Joy
By Rev. Robert Barron One of the great icons in the Catholic Church today is Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal) Timothy Dolan of New York making his way up the aisle to commence Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. While the congregation belts out the opening hymn, the good Archbishop thumps his episcopal crozier on the ground, beams at all and sundry, kisses babies, embraces young and old, calls out the names of friends he recognizes, and generally speaking, … [Read more...]
A Persecuted Church and Its Heroes
A recent survey has indicated something that should lift the hearts of Christians everywhere, namely, that the fastest growing religion on the planet is Christianity. This explosive growth is on particularly clear display in Africa and Asia, where churches and seminaries can’t be built fast enough to accommodate the need. It is especially important that we in the West become cognizant of this state of affairs, for with the rise of secularism and the fall-off in church … [Read more...]
Why I Loved to Listen to Christopher Hitchens
I have, over the years, playfully accused some of my atheist interlocutors of being “secret Herods.” The biblical Herod arrested John the Baptist but nevertheless took pleasure in listening to John preach from his prison cell. So, I’ve suggested, the atheists who come to my website and comment so acerbically and so frequently on my internet videos are, despite themselves, secretly seeking out the things of God. I will confess to having a certain Herod … [Read more...]
Why We Should Welcome the New Roman Missal
In just a few days, Catholics in this country will notice a rather significant change when they come to Mass. Commencing the first Sunday of Advent, the Church will be using a new translation of the Roman Missal. I would like to emphasize, at the outset, that this in no way represents a return to “the old Mass,” for the Latin texts that provide the basis for the new translation were all approved after Vatican II. So why the change? What had come increasingly to … [Read more...]
What Faith Is and What it Isn’t
The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich once commented that “faith” is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary. I’m increasingly convinced that he was right about this. The ground for my conviction is the absolutely steady reiteration on my Internet forums of gross caricatures of what serious believers mean by faith. Again and again, my agnostic, atheist, and secularist interlocutors tell me that faith is credulity, naïvete, superstition, assent … [Read more...]
One More Swing at the Catholic Straw-Man: A Review of Stephen Greenblatt’s “The Swerve”
In 2005, Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt published a wonderful book on Shakespeare called Will in the World. Witty, insightful and surprising, it caused thousands of people, including your humble scribe, to look at the Bard with new eyes. Thus it was with great anticipation that I opened my copy of Greenblatt’s latest The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Like its forebear, this new book is indeed lively, intelligent and fun to read, but as I moved through it … [Read more...]
