Addressing a packed audience of approximately 1,000 on the campus of Harvard University on Sunday, Bishop Robert Barron offered those in attendance a window into the “Catholic intellectual tradition” by emphatically proclaiming: “The glory of God is man fully alive!”
The founder of the Catholic media apostolate Word on Fire, Barron is one of the most outspoken American prelates against the errors of “secularism” and its ever-increasing presence in Western society. Harvard, the first college established in the American colonies, was originally founded to train and educate Puritan clergy members in the New World and is completely secular today.
Barron said in his lecture that secularism is a reaction to what others perceive as a “threatening God” but said that “the world is most itself when it has found a relationship to the supreme good, which is God.”
Barron, who serves as bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, spoke at the school’s Memorial Church, an interdenominational Protestant church dedicated in 1932.
Deacon Tim O’Donnell, executive director of the Harvard Catholic Center — which co-sponsored the event — told CNA that “Harvard’s church” was the chosen destination for the lecture because it would attract “more non-Catholics, seekers, and inquirers” than St. Paul’s Parish, the Catholic church where Barron celebrated Mass and offered a homily earlier in the day.
Memorial Church’s larger capacity, he said, is better suited for the “spoken word.” What’s more, its location was highly symbolic.
“We wanted to place Bishop Barron’s message about the Catholic intellectual tradition right in the center of the secular university, and in the center of Harvard in particular,” O’Donnell said.
Barron began his talk by saying that the “most fundamental claim” of the Catholic intellectual tradition is that “Jesus Christ is epistemically basic.”
In other words, Barron said, Jesus Christ is the “privileged lens through which the whole of reality is read….”
Before answering several questions from the crowd, Barron concluded his lecture by saying that the Catholic intellectual tradition “stubbornly looks at God, the world, ourselves, and the way we organize our societies through the lens of Jesus Christ, and it sees them according to a divine light.”
And yet the Catholic Church in the U.S. is in a tailspin. Pews are mostly empty on Sundays during Mass. Those who do go to Mass are largely over age 65. The young are hardly to be seen. It’s looking like the Catholic Church will go the way of Blockbuster Video stores.
No.
Yeah, well, dioceses are closing and merging parishes. That’s because the number of practicing Catholics has decreased significantly.
You’re wrong because Jesus is true to His promises. It’s reported that Napoleon Bonaparte once threatened a Catholic cardinal with “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” To which the cardinal is reportedly to have replied, “Your Majesty, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”
To paraphrase the American sceptic Mark Twain, reports of the death of the Church have been greatly exaggerated.
If you could ask them, you could ask Nero, Julian the Apostate, Marx, Mao, Stalin, and a host of others.
You and I will be gone the way of VHS long before the Lord returns for His Church, which will still be here.
(She may not look the same, but she will certainly be here.)
“[The Church] may not look the same, but she will certainly be here,” is quite a euphemism for a church that looks to be imploding in the U.S. When the Baby Boomer generation finally dies, Mass attendance is going to collapse. Boomers are about the only thing keeping many parishes afloat. That can’t last more than another fifteen years.
Boom, You’ll see in 2038, if you’re still here. The Church will be, even if underground. If we weren’t anonymous, I’d like to make a hefty bet on it and meet you to collect. By any chance, are you a Catholic?
And what are you doing about it?
I’m a music director at a parish. I’m introducing chant at Masses. Boomers are opposing it, but it’s attracting the young people. Boomers have nearly ruined the church.
So, what are you doing about it, wise guy?
That depends in the region. In the northeast, that is an accurate description, the “old line” is dying off.
But in the south and southwest…the Catholic Church is booming.
Booming is hardly the word. Better off, perhaps, but still staring at a bleak future if trends are not reversed.
I’ve attended four Catholic churches in Texas recently. Booming might be accurate. Large numbers in attendance, including many (if not mostly) young families with children. Besides, fidelity to Christ is not about numbers. May we all be faithful to Him.
Parishes in Texas serve a much, much larger geographic area than in most other parts of the country. A Texas parish might be serving an area that 10 or 20 parishes in Southern California would serve. Apples and oranges.
If you’re talking life, vibrancy and growth; there are several parishes in Texas I recommend visiting. I’m not talking about only numbers, let alone geography. Do parishes in Southern California have the percentage of young families as do those in Texas? If so, thanks be to God. Never bothers me to hear a baby cry or see children, teens and young adults. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself.
Bottom line: parishes are not dying equally everywhere. Nor are they growing equally everywhere.
Bishop Barron is seeking to revive and restore important Christian beliefs, faith and morality, and the Catholic intellectual tradition, in our highly secularized, Godless, immoral, liberal-leftist-indoctrinated academia– including Harvard University, one of our Nation’s leading academic institutions. Since the highly destructive, immoral, mindless, dope addiction and promiscuity-drenched late 1960s, the highly important institution of marriage and children has collapsed– and after the 1973 legalization of abortion, promiscuity and abortion skyrocketed. Today, nearly half of all babies who are born, are born to unmarried mothers– and many grow up in unstable, immoral, fatherless homes, with very little good influences, of religious faith and morality, nor even a decent education, nor good and decent influences, in their communities. The American population has been steadily decreasing, since the collapse of marriage and family, and millions of aborted babies– as well as use of birth control, to prevent children from being born. The Catholic Church underwent a huge crisis and upheaval, after Vatican II ended, since the late 1960s. Today, there are many good, responsible young Catholic married couples, raising children in the Church, practicing the Faith at home. This number is steadily growing. Many are either homeschooling, together in Catholic homeschooling groups, or else educating their children in good Catholic parish schools. Also, many devout Protestant families are doing the same thing. This is the future, bountiful, excellent crop of good seeds, of the Culture of Life– excellent though small, and growing —– being sown, planted and nurtured in good soil, which will eventually provide a good future for our country, with a good, faith-and-family oriented, future group of citizens, with devout Christian beliefs and morality, and a good, solid, traditional education. Catholic churches someday will be filled again, with good, practicing, traditional, devout Catholics– regardless of what form of the Mass they attend. And their young men will become better, devout Catholic priests, too. Good parents of all faiths, seek to exit very expensive, deplorable, dangerous, and immoral conditions, in highly urbanized areas, seeking a better quality of life for their families.
Word on Fire merchandise is overpriced. A book that should only cost $20 costs $50 from Word on Fire.
“Barron said, Jesus Christ is the “privileged lens through which the whole of reality is read….”” The inclusion of the adjective “privileged” leads me to ask, are there in Barron’s thinking other less privileged lenses by which to see and understand reality? In the days of “white privilege,” the idea of privilege has gotten a rather bad name. In light of the preeminence of Divine Mercy in the salvation of people, in what sense does the word privilege apply? Thanks for anyone who can enlighten.
It’s the teaching of Gaudium et Spes. It means that a purely rational approach to understanding human beings and the world is insufficient. Faith in Christ adds a necessary component to understanding our existence correctly. Without Christ, we cannot hope to be human beings in full actuality. Any philosophy or ideology or morality or belief system that lacks Christ is going to be inadequate. That’s why Christ is the privileged lens through which the whole of reality is read/understood.
Privilege definition: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
Did Bishop Barron perhaps mean that it is a tremendous privilege to know, to love, and to follow Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, and Second Person of the Blessed Trinity? What a tremendous privilege we have, as Christ’s devout followers, in the Catholic Church, which He instituted, more than 2,000 years ago!
I find Bishop Barron very confusing too.
The first quote “The Glory of God is man fully alive” really does not make any sense outside of the context.
It is from St. Irenaeus” Against Heresies”.
People who have read it will understand but others, like me, just say “Wha…?”
There are nice people who have posted it online.
I have seen that quote used to justify people’s worldly ambitions.