Fr. Robert Barron named Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles

Today the Holy Father Pope Francis named three Auxiliary Bishops for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Two of the Bishops-elect are priests of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Monsignors Joseph V. Brennan and David G. O'Connell. A third Bishop-Elect, however, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Father Robert E. Barron, Rector of Mundelein Seminary and founder of Word on Fire.

A media savvy man of great intellect, energy, and enthusiasm, Bishop-elect Barron is a great preacher and witness of the Catholic faith to the culture through his popular YouTube videos and through his Catholicism series. His is a clear and consistent voice seeking to demonstrate the reasonableness of the faith.

The appointment of Bishop-elect Barron to Los Angeles came as quite a surprise to me. I first learned of the appointment this morning after providing a Roman restaurant recommendation to a friend. I opened Twitter on my iPad and saw this tweet at the top of my feed:

BREAKING: #PopeFrancis appoints three auxiliary bishops to Los Angeles: http://t.co/KsQutd1GdF #NewLABishops #ADLA pic.twitter.com/jxXO5aAw83

— The Tidings News (@TheTidingsNews) July 21, 2015

I looked at the man on the left and thought, "Is that Bob Barron?" The picture looks like him, but it's a very poor photograph. After checking the daily bulletin from the Holy See, I learned it is indeed him.

Having been a student of Bishop-elect Barron when I studied at Mundelein Seminary, I am particularly pleased with his appointment and look forward to seeing how he presents the faith to the people of the City of Angels.

Why priests?

Father Robert Barron ably answers Gary Wills' question, "Why priests?":

Fr. Barron responds

...to the "Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus" video:

The Advent Revolution

The Catholic Church is not simply one church among many

My heart breaks whenever I hear of a Catholic who has walked away from the Church to join a Protestant denomination, regardless of their reason. Many people do not understand why, because they view the Catholic Church simply as one church among many, but this is not so.

Father Barron explains it thus:

Barron on More and the Pope

Fr. Barron on why God creates

Barron on the scandal and the Bible

In an article published in Our Sunday Visitor, Father Robert Barron reflects on the sexual abuse scandal in the light of the Bible.

His text follows, with my emphases:

Once again we’re living in scandal times.

The "Long Lent" that the American church endured in 2002 has now descended on the European church. A significant difference is that this time the Pope himself has come under scrutiny. Once again, the news media are in a frenzy – CNN has blanket coverage, the New York Times is running daily stories, and thousands of blogs are buzzing. In preparation for a television interview, I spent an entire day reading almost everything I could find in both the American and international press (I'm currently in Rome as a visiting professor) and found the process dismaying, depressing, and dispiriting. But what particularly struck me was this: though the scandal has been analyzed legally, institutionally, psychologically, and culturally, it has rarely been looked at biblically – even by church representatives themselves. And this is tragic, for the Bible, the Word of God, is the definitive lens through which the whole of reality is most rightly read, and church men and women above all should know this.

What does a Biblical reading of this never-ending scandal offer? First, we should not be surprised that people behave badly. The Bible clearly teaches that we human beings have been made in the image and likeness of God and that we are destined for eternal life with God; nevertheless it teaches with equal clarity that we are fallen, marked by the original sin which has compromised us in body, mind, and will. The Scriptural narratives are remarkably honest about this. They make reference to rape, theft, murder, jealous rages, palace intrigue, naked ambition, family dysfunction, political corruption, adultery, and yes, sexual abuse. More to it, many of these crimes are committed by God's chosen instruments: Saul, David, Solomon, Jacob, Peter, Paul, and John, to name just a handful. An interviewer asked me just a few days ago, "how could this (the scandal) have happened?" and I responded, "sin." I could have given a more textured answer, bringing in the psychological and institutional dimensions, but I believe I gave, from a Biblical perspective, the most fundamental and clarifying response.

Second, the Church has enemies. St. Paul reminded us long ago that the Church of Jesus Christ is the new Israel, carrying on in transfigured form the mission of Israel to be a light to the nations, the enduring sign of God's existence and love. But it is a commonplace of the Biblical narratives that Israel was not universally revered. Instead, it was enslaved by Egypt, harassed by the Philistines, overrun by the Assyrians, exiled by the Babylonians, conquered by the Greeks and the Romans. And Israel was often at war with itself: the prophets were regularly ignored, mocked, or even murdered by the people they were sent to address. The point is this: the message of God's love is not one that is necessarily received with enthusiasm by a sinful world, just the contrary.

Now only the blindest or most anti-Catholic of commentators would fail to see that, to a degree, enemies of the church are operative in the coverage surrounding this scandal. The sexual abuse of children is an international epidemic, and it is present in every aspect of society. In the United States alone, there are approximately 39,000,000 victims of child sexual abuse, and around 50% of these were abused by family members. In the decade between 1990 and 2000, nearly 300,000 children in the American public school system were abused by teachers or coaches. Social workers in Africa report that in many countries on that continent, the numbers concerning the sexual abuse of young girls runs from "very, very high to astronomically high." And this is to say nothing of the multi-billion dollar a year pornography industry in the United States, which disproportionately abuses young people, and the even more shocking – and highly profitable – sex trade involving kids.

Moreover, the John Jay study showed that, over a fifty year period, only 3-4% of Catholic priests were credibly charged with sex abuse, a figure below the national average, and in the past year, precisely six cases of clerical sex abuse, in a church of 65,000,000 were reported. Yet, to watch the television networks or read the newspapers, one would think that the sexual abuse of children is a uniquely Catholic problem, one indeed facilitated by a wicked cabal of priestly and episcopal conspirators. There are some in the mainstream culture who are unhappy with many of the positions the Catholic Church has taken on sexual issues, especially abortion, and who would like to marginalize the church's voice or eliminate it entirely from the public conversation. Biblically minded people should not find this the least bit surprising.

A third lesson provides a balance to the second. God regularly – and sometimes harshly – chastises his people Israel in order to cleanse them. On the biblical reading, God raises up figures who name the sins of the nation and call especially the leaders of the people to repentance and reform. Under this rubric, we might consider Samuel (who challenged Saul), Nathan (who called out David), Isaiah (who railed against the temple establishment), Jeremiah (who took the leadership of Israel to task), and Jesus himself (who had a few things to say about "whitewashed sepulchers"). Not everyone who brought the clergy sex scandal to light is an enemy of the church; many should be construed as instruments of God's vengeance, who compelled a reluctant church to come to grips with a problem that had been, for far too long, ignored, brushed under the carpet, or handled with pathetic incompetence. And for that matter, Yahweh sometimes used the enemies of Israel – Philistines, Babylonians, Romans, etc. – to work out his cleansing purposes. Might the Lord God be using the Boston Globe or the New York Times in much the same way?

I think that it's good to study this terrible phenomenon as thoroughly as we can, but we should never forget that the most clarifying perspective is the one provided by God's holy word.

Capello tip to the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Barron offers advice on vocations

Over at The Deacon's Bench, Deacon Greg Kandra points us to an interview with Father Rober Barron titled, "How to Build a Better Priest."

Deacon Kandra points us to these words of Father Barron, which are particularly good (with my emphases):

For too long we've had a preferential option for mediocrity in the priesthood. We almost embrace mediocrity as the norm. What's the difference between a doctor and a priest? As someone once answered long ago, there really is no comparison: one deals with matters of life and death; the other just deals with the health of the body.

Before the 18th-century Enlightenment, the greatest minds of the West gave themselves to soul doctoring. After the Enlightenment, the greatest minds tended to go into the physical sciences, especially into care for the body. The body is important: we respect our doctors, and we expect a great deal from them, and from our psychiatrists. We don't accept mediocrity.

So why do we accept mediocrity in the priesthood? Why do we say priesthood is less demanding than being a medical doctor? It should be an elitist sort of call, just as being a doctor is elitist. If I were the president of a medical school and you said, "This is an elitist place," I'd say, "Yes, it is-we only want the best." I think we should say that about priesthood, too.

Let's say you're a bright, spiritually engaged 18-year-old. Will you be a brain surgeon or a priest? A corporate lawyer or a priest? Which one is more challenging, more enticing? I want to make priesthood as exciting as being a brain surgeon, and as difficult and inspiring. My wager is that we would attract many more people by presenting priesthood this way, rather than trying to flatten it out and render it mediocre.

He couldn't be more right about this.

Fr. Barron on the Fall of Adam and Eve

Barron on the abuse scandal

From Rome, Fr. Robert Barron weighs in on the sexual abuse scandal. His text follows, with my emphases and comments:

"I'm just back from St. Peter's square, where I witnessed Pope Benedict's Sunday Angelus broadcast on large screens from Castel Gondolfo. The pontiff has spent the past week there, recovering from his grueling Holy Week schedule- and undoubtedly from the massively unfair press coverage he has been receiving of late. As I listen to the endless reportage dealing with the Holy Father's supposed negligence in matters of priestly sex abuse, I can only shake my head. I want to say, "don't they realize that they are going after the one man in the world who can do the most to solve this problem?" No one in the world understands the gravity of the situation more fully or has taken more practical steps to solve it as Joseph Ratzinger. On numerous occassions, he has stated how disgusted he is by the "filth" (his word) that has found its way into the ranks of the priesthood, and time and time again, he has taken firm steps to remove abusers and to chastise those who protected them. I would recommend to anyone who doubts Pope Benedict's resolve to read his recent statement to the Irish church.

I feel it is important to make two points in particular. First, the insinuation that by delaying or, as alleged, refusing to "defrock" a priest, Benedict is somehow obstructing justice or "looking the other way" is absurd. The formal removal of a man from the priesthood is the last and most drastic disciplinary action that the Church can take and it is done, appropriately, only after long consideration, consultation and due process. But there are many much more expedient ways, shy of "defrocking," to remove a priest from ministry or contact with children. In the Milwaukee and Oakland cases, for example, this was done even if the priests in question had not been "defrocked." The implication that Joseph Ratzinger was trying to find a way to "protect" abusers or to abet their abuse is simply a calumny. And the second point is this: it is extremely problematic and unfair to retroject what we currently know about the sexual abuse of children by priests or any other adult back twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years and use our current knowledge about the phenomenon to indict church officials of the time [quite right]. Prior to the early 1990's, most people in the Church and in the culture at large were unaware or only beginning to come to grips with the prevalence of this horror and the high rate of recidivism among abusers. Accordingly, many leaders- and not just in the Church- felt that sex offenders could be treated pharmacologically or therapeutically and then returned to their former lives and occupations. Many bishops throughout the 1970's and 1980's sent priest abusers to treatment centers and received reports from therapists recommending that priests could be safely returned to ministry. God knows that we have learned from painful experience how utterly inadequate this approach was, but it seems unfair to hold bishops to standards that developed much later. I find the suggestion that bishops and cardinals were intentionally and with malice aiding and abetting the sexual molestation of children to be an outrageous accusation. Were they uninformed, naive, imprudent, indecisive, and, in some cases, far too willing to trust psychological and legal counsel? Sure. Should those prelates whose lack of proper judgement led to the victimization of so many have to accept personal responsibility for their actions? Yes. But were they consciously fostering sex abuse? No.

Finally, and at the risk of sounding defensive, there are people in our society who have a vested interest in embarrassing and undermining the Catholic Church, and they will stop at nothing to achieve this end. The coverage of allegations against the Pope has been blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.

The sexual abuse of young people by priests is a crime that cries to heaven for vengeance. As I have said publicly many times, it has undermined the work of the Church in every way, and the Church must do all it can to address it. But these attacks on Pope Benedict are utterly counter-productive to that end."

Word on Fire also provides a host of helpful links to videos and articles, as well.

Fr. Barron on Lent

What is the Book of Revelation about?

Fr. Barron on healthcare and "pro-choice"

An anti-religious movie?

Fr. Barron on Independence Day

Fr. Barron on the Trinity

Capello tip to Patrick Archbold, who has posted several other videos of Fr. Barron.

Fr. Barron on Angels and Demons

Well worth a watch:



On the same topic, Ascension Press is offering a free e-book by Mark Shea, Answering Angels and Demons.

Fr. Barron on the genealogy of Jesus

News flash

Fr. Robert Barron of Word on Fire will be on ABC News Friday night at 5:35 p.m. CST. Tune in if you can.