Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 705: Robert Barron

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Robert Barron, Catholic bishop, brilliant communicator, and host of the Word on Fire podcast, joins the DTFH! You can learn more about Bishop Barron and his podcast, Word on Fire, on their site: WordOnFire.org. New Zealand family! Duncan is headed to Auckland August 19! And Australia family, he's coming to you next! Click to get tickets for his shows in Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth! Thank you, and we love you!! This episode is brought to you by: Minnesota Nice Ethnobotanicals wants to help you escape the matrix of stress and reconnect with the earth’s ancient wisdom—go to mn-nice-ethnobotanicals.com/duncan and use code DUNCAN20 for 20% off your first order of Amanita Muscaria Capsules! Elevate your closet with Quince. Go to Quince.com/Duncan for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Check Out Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, Squarespace.com/DUNCAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Welcome friends to the DTFH and what a special episode I have for you today. If you are a longtime fan of the DTFH, you probably know I've had people from so many different spiritual traditions on this podcast, shamans, practicing witches, practicing magicians. I've had rabbis. I've had Satanists. I've had people who practice Bhakti yoga, people who worship Shiva. I've had so many different spiritual worldviews on this podcast, but you know what I haven't had a lot of Catholics?

In fact, I've had zero. Zero in the years that I've done podcasting. I have given Christianity almost no representation on this show at all, which is kind of weird because I love Christianity. I love Jesus and I love reading the New Testament. I'm not going to go on and on about the experience I had, Book of John LSD. You've heard me say it a million times. But where are the Christians?

Why don't I have them on every once in a while? And so when someone told me that they could connect me with Bishop Robert Barron, I said, yes, right away. because Robert Barron, and I hope Bishop Barron's okay with me saying this, he's like a modern day Thomas Merton. He's somebody who is so good at articulating Christianity in a way that maybe people who are somewhat unfamiliar with it, people who have misunderstandings about it, people who feel hesitant, if not turned off by it, he has a way of communicating to get through that filter. And he's brilliant. He kept saying over and over again in our conversation,

he's not an expert on Buddhism. He's definitely an expert on Buddhism. And he's an expert in a lot of things. But most importantly, he's really, really, really good at answering what I would consider to be some fairly difficult questions about Christianity. And he helped me unravel some knots that had been tying me up for a while. the place where Buddhism and Christianity meet and the places where they don't meet. So listen, if you're somebody out there who has an immediate knee jerk, I'm not going to listen to some Christian stuff. I would invite you to practice a little bit of flexibility here and at least tune in for the first 10, 20 minutes. I think you're going to enjoy it. We talk about

demons, exorcists, and a lot of other incredible things that I think even if you are somebody who immediately is turned off by Christianity, you're still going to enjoy this conversation. And though I don't think I could say her name, a tremendous thank you for helping us make this connection. This was a wonderful conversation that really answered a lot of personal questions I've been having regarding my own faith and my own connection. to Christianity. So get ready, friends, to meet a brilliant bishop, host of an awesome podcast called Word on Fire, author of countless books on Catholicism, Christianity, faith, and someone who has the courage from time to time jump onto Reddit and get into theological

debates with atheists. And if that doesn't take incredible divine courage. I don't know what does. Everybody, welcome to the DTFH Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron, welcome to the DTFH. It's very nice to meet you. Thank you. Great to be on with you. Thanks for having me today. I'm so excited. I have so many questions for you. I know we were not going to be able to cover all of them. I've asked a lot of people, you know, if you could ask a bishop a question, what would it be? And the most common question I have is, is it in convenient to only be able to move diagonally. Yeah, I've heard that question.

I've no gotten used to it. I've no gotten used to it. I'm so sorry, so hacky. I'm so sorry. Forgive me. That's all right. You know, one of the things I really respect about you is you seem fearless when it comes to heading into the dark bowers of the internet and bringing your faith to audiences

that you know reject wholeheartedly reject Christianity see it as some kind of antiquated primitive vestigial mythology that is somehow dragging society down keeping us away from I don't know what some modern Star Trek future John Lennon no imagine there's no whatever God or anything and then what but what have you ever found yourself in any of these conversations where you realize like, oh, wow, I think they got me cornered here. The secularist argument against Christianity. Have you ever heard a good secularist argument against Christianity? Oh, I'm sure. There are a lot of arguments against Christianity, and some are quite good, and they're very ancient. But, you know, we've been around

for a long time. So we were a 2,000-year tradition. We've been an intellectual tradition from the beginnings. Think of, you know, St. Paul. So from the beginning, we've been entertaining objections. Think of, go back to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul on the Ariopagus in Athens. What's he doing but dealing with the philosophers of his time who were deeply skeptical? When he talked about the resurrection, they laughed and walked away. So my point is we're used to critics, and we've had this intellectual tradition for ages, and so we've dealt with these questions. It doesn't mean there aren't good objections. There are. The most powerful being the problem of evil. That's always the

biggest challenge to religion. If God exists and God's all powerful and all good, why is there so much evil? You know, maybe some evil, but there's an enormous amount of dysfunction in the universe. How do you explain that? Yes. That's a darn good argument. Thomas Aquinas, you know, our great intellectual hero, always had objections to his own position, right? And then he would deal with those. So the question is, does God exist? And objection Aquinas entertains is, Okay, if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be destroyed. If there were infinite heat, there'd be no cold. Right.

We call God infinite good. So if God exists, how could there be evil? Therefore, God doesn't exist. Well, may I say that's a darn good argument, and Aquinas brings it right up front, you know? Now, his answer famously is, God permits and allows certain evils to bring about a greater good that we might can't, we can't immediately see. I bring it up just to say, yeah, that's a very good argument, and every generation of believers has to wrestle with it.

Go back to the look at the, in the Bible, the book of Job is the best presentation of that problem. Oh my gosh. And it's in the heart of the Bible. So it's not like some alien enemy had to remind us of this problem. At the heart of our revelation is the book of Job, which is like, you know, it's like, you what the heck I'm a good man why is this being done to me you know so sure there are good arguments that's the best one but you know we've had a whole tradition of of dealing with them that to me

whenever I'm spending time thinking about Christianity and I spend a lot of time thinking about Christianity because my kids are Catholic my wife is Catholic and uh to me if I'm looking for some kind of proof of the veracity of Christianity or something that really sticks out that I don't understand, and maybe you could help me understand this. The persecution of Christians in the modern world just doesn't make sense to me. I go to mass with my wife sometimes. I was raised in Episcopalian. I'm around Christians all the time.

Nothing in anything I've encountered personally in Christianity. would in any way, shape, or form validate or justify the amount of persecuted Christians are the most persecuted religion on the planet. And this is something I think Jesus said from the get-go. If you decide to walk down this path, look what they're going to do to me. You think you're going to get it much easier? why do you understand why this happens what is going on there yeah no it's a it's a very fair observation first of all we can empirically verify that there's no question christianity is the most

persecuted religion and keep this in mind drunken go back you know two thousand years so from the early martyrs on the church has undergone persecution there are more martyrs christian martyrs in the 20th century than all the previous centuries combined. And it's continuing in the 21st century. We are clearly the most persecuted religion anywhere in the world. Well, a couple thoughts I have. One is simply, see, talking about God is always a dangerous business because God is the supreme good.

God is wonderful. It's good news. But we're all sinners. And so God is always going to be a challenge to us an affront to us. Wait a minute, I don't want to deal with it. It's a challenge. And so there's a resistance to that.

But press it further, because Christianity is not just talking about God, is talking about God became one of us. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. God entered into our human condition, right? Well, that's great news. It's the heart of evangelization, but it's at the same time for sinners very, very, very, difficult news, that God has come so close to us, and he's making such a demand upon us.

You know, in the Gospels, when it says that Jesus' disciples, they're following him, and it says, they were amazed, and they were afraid. And I've always loved that. So amazed, I get, you know, the wonder worker and the great teacher, and they're intuiting, he's even more than that, he's the word made flesh. But they were also afraid of him, and for good reason. And I think people that that hear the Christian message at least implicitly get that. And that's one reason why Christianity has always been persecuted.

But your description of why I agree with. But I think many of the people who have this sort of habitual, instinctual, distaste for Christianity, don't know anything about it. They don't know anything about it other than maybe they've. turn on some televangelists on late night TV or something and maybe not even that i know there's some people who were raised in christian homes that were abusive in christianity's there so some kind of psychological pairing has happened but quite often when i'm like reading some post on reddit or something that is railing against christianity it occurs to me that these people don't i don't think they've ever even looked at the new testament they haven't looked at the depth of

the thing and this you know again like i i know this a lot of people listening this is probably going to like turn you off but this is to me like forget the proof of god this is a proof of satan like why would there be an um a spiritual immune response yeah to something that is so implicitly sweet something that's so implicitly hopeful i get being afraid if i was i was nervous to interview you if i was around jesus i had freeze up. I probably wouldn't be able to say anything. But to me, no, I agree with you. That's a very fair point. And I wasn't willing to go there right away. But as long as you've opened that door, that's exactly right.

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and you have yet to try Amanitas, wow. are really, really awesome. Again, it's MNNicefno.com. Ford slash Duncan, use code Duncan, 22 for 22% off your first order. Thank you, Minnesota. Nice. Thanks, Christian. Look in the New Testament. The demons always know who he is. So when the ordinary people are kind of confused, and some say Moses, some say you're Elijah, I don't know who you are, but the demons always knew who he was, right? You're the Holy One of God. We know who you are. Have you come to destroy us, Jesus of Nazareth? They know who he is, and they react, you know, viscerally, vehemently. And so Paul said, St. Paul,

we do battle against flesh and blood, people that we can see, but we also battle against what he called powers and principalities. There are unseen powers that are against the church. And are they stirring up opposition precisely to this religion, right? Which, I mean, I say, look, as a Catholic, is the fullness of revelation. So that doesn't surprise me, given the fact that we're against dark powers, that they know who the enemy is. Right. And I guess if you're going to, I don't know, the personality of God, maybe an easier way to start, because I think humans are a little more familiar with suffering than they are with redemption. They're a little more familiar with the darkness than the light, sadly. You could sort of by looking at the antithesis, understand the, you know,

look at the antagonist. You can understand the protagonist, maybe. And in this case, it seems like what we're looking at, though certainly I've gone through my, forgive me, please forgive me or ask him to forgive me. I've gone through my satanic phases, Bishop, but my idea of Satan in those days was not what I think actually is, like foulness, rot, entropy, the personality of entropy, confusion, diffusion, and ultimately disintegration. It leads to nothing beautiful. And so there is something, and maybe that's why people don't like Christians, is because if we're going to dive into Christianity, at some point you have to reckon with a scientifically

unquantifiable biome consisting of something that is intentionally trying to ruin your life. Right. Look at in the scriptures, the two great characterizations of the devil would be. the scatterer and the accuser. And those smear are very telling. So diabolos, and our word like devil, diablo, comes from that, right? But the Greek behind it is diabolain, which means to throw apart. So the devilish is what divides.

Now that means among us, so whenever communities are divided, but also in here, and all of us sinners know what that feels like. When I'm divided, you know, my mind says this. but my will says that. And one passion goes this way, the other goes that way. My body goes here, my soul goes there.

Well, that's the diabolic, that I'm not an integrated whole. And that's Christian spirituality, is that I find integration around Christ, the center. When I lose that, I fall apart. And then when I fall apart inside, I tend to sow dissolution around me. Right, to make it work.

But the other name for the devil is all satanaz, right? And we get Satan from that. And that just means the accuser. You know, we hear in the book of Revelation, the accuser of our brothers is cast out who night and day accuse them before God. That's the satanic, the blaming instinct. And you see that all the time. In fact, many societies are predicated upon blaming. Yes. It's we all come together because we all hate him, or we all hate them. So that move to blame. and then the scattering, those are the signs of the demonic at work. You don't need the head spinning around.

I can tell you stories from exorcists I know that would curl your toes, but where you really see the demonic are in those two moves, the disintegration and the accusation. That's where the demonic is. Let me tell you one of my least favorite things about Catholicism, and it's to the point that you're making. Yeah, go ahead. know there's a lot of we live in capitalism you want to a lot of people want to I think with a

with some kind of good heart want to teach this path or that path this way or that way but sometimes the articulation of this path or that path I've certainly seen in Buddhism it gets warped to fit modernity and basically what you know you want to get you want to sell tickets man and the way you're not going to sell tickets starting off with with the like actual substance itself you're going to sell tickets making a softer sweeter version of this thing whereas in catholicism many time i go to the mass and i do not mean this in an accusatory way i mean i feel legitimately depraved like it i feel challenged it feels like out of some kind of like miraculous synchronicity something will come up in that is feels like it's talking directly to some secret

part of me that i don't want anybody to know and it doesn't feel good it doesn't make me feel good and maybe that's why people were afraid of jesus this sense of being polluted you know i i really don't like it and i'm curious you know help me understand the business you say when like you go to mass Yeah. You feel that, what, about yourself? Don't belong here. Don't deserve it. You don't belong there.

Okay. Not good enough. You know, this is, there's no way that I should be here. This is. No, but that, I mean, I think that's completely getting it wrong. I mean, the mass is designed to draw sinners in to the font of grace. I mean, that's the whole idea. Yeah.

It is to include saints and sinners, the rich and the poor. I don't know if you know. the name Dorothy Day. She was the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. It's really kind of radical movement for social reform. And when she was, she was a young atheist, fiercely anti-religious, and then kind of made her way slowly. And what she loved, this was like back in the 1920s, a long time ago. But what she loved when she came in the Catholic Church was rich people kneeling right next to poor people and those who spoke great English next to those who spoke no English. And she loved that about it, that it had this kind of inclusivity.

Well, I do see that, Bishop. I'm talking about there's a demand that I've sent. That's the part. It's like, listen, if you really want to get into this path, you're going to have to change. Yeah, but look, Buddhism, Buddhism has got that in spades. If you really want to walk the eightfold path and you really want to take the buddha seriously i mean there there's a moment of and all the great faiths of an invitation you know come and see yeah but um i think they all have that don't they all have a very demanding spiritual itinerary they they do you're right that's yeah and so that's okay it seems to me that the more you're drawn into it but it's like somebody it's like a kid that really wants to learn baseball that really wants to be a better golfer

that wants to play the guitar and and you you get you me discipline. I want it because I'm so attracted to it. That's the way it works. People are attracted to Jesus. But then what does he always say to them? Follow me. Follow me. And where am I going invariably to the cross? I'm going to the point of complete self-gift, right? Yes. So that's the demand. That's the, what did Bonhoeffer called, the cost of discipleship. I mean, it's always going to be a costly thing. And it's beautiful. And I'm not saying this anyway. denigrate it, I'm saying it to point towards its potency. And the, um, the, this, you know, sort of, I've had the sense a few times. And, you know,

I think, I think I've kind of given up trying to compare Buddhism to Christianity. I think I've given up. I tried for a bit to do some kind of interfaith. This is where the two connect. And obviously I think any lineage has some kind of connecting points. But, you know, I suffered. I went in there. and he, like, kind of unleashed on Buddhism. But he was sort of making a fair point, which was that, you know, this is a, Christianity's different. You can't look at it.

Don't try to make everything that don't try to fit everything in the same cubbyhole. Yeah, that's true. But, like, read Thomas Merton. Yes, sir, I have. I read Merton as a young man. And Merton, you know, I mean, Uber Catholic, he's a trappist monk, but then spent a lot of his life studying Buddhism. And especially, you know, Suzuki and,

Zen Buddhism, and found all kinds of points of contact. Now, Merton himself knew full well. It doesn't mean, oh, they're just the same and, you know, they're just climbing the sacred mountain by different routes. He would never have said that. But he did find, you know, important points of contact between the two. There's contact, but I think at least, I mean, maybe you could help me with this, where the two for me sort of slam into each other in a non-harmonic way. They do some in some ways, yeah. Interdependency. In other words, like this idea of the sort of, some sort of permanent nature to God runs directly against this conceptualization of interdependency, aware, the field of awareness.

Origination. Yes, sir. Right. Right. And that's what, again, I'm no expert on Buddhism. I'd never claim to me. Me either. But what I get from the reading I've done, you know, is that Nirvana, so the, the, blowing out the candle of desire and of egotistic preoccupation, open. you in deep meditation to this, what you just mentioned there, the interdependent co-origination of all things. So the jewel medevindra, right?

That all things are connected and reflect each other. Or I heard it described by a more philosophically minded Buddhist as contingency without ground. So pure contingency, everything dependent upon everything else. Now there I'd say is a major point of demarcation. Christianity would say the contingency of the world, old, which is absolute. Everything in the universe is contingent. So the jewel medevindra, I get it. That's the way the universe is, right? But contingency requires a ground, that you need a finally

non-contingent reality which grounds contingency. And then you get Exodus 314. God, what's your name? I am who I am. Well, it's that. That's the non-contingent reality. I think in Buddhism is there, but it's dependent on the contingent reality without a contingent reality if there's just non-contingent reality you don't have anything at all you need something that differentiates one from the other and because we know the contingent reality is subject to change if the non-contingent reality is in any way shape or form dependent on that contingent reality then it implies a an impermanence that is and you know this is a sort of logical breakdown of the problem that's where I sort of sort of run into a real interesting spot because I do buy that. But then also, I like to think

I've experienced Jesus Christ. And it just seems to fly in the face of that. Or it's sort of like a whatever. It doesn't matter. Sort of, you know, that experience, it doesn't matter anymore. That sort of thinking or that's that part of my mind. It sort of goes out the window in the presence of that, whatever that is. And then that's where I just like talk about the being divided inside. Woo. That's a real fun place to be where you have to try to like just deal with two seemingly separate experiences and you love both of them. Right. Well, yeah, again, I'm, I'm no expert. I never claim to be expert on Buddhism, but I've talked to a number of Buddhists over the years. I've been in some of these dialogues. And it does come down to God. I mean, as I talk to this series,

Buddhists, they'd say the main difference is we don't believe in God because it's interdependent co-origination. You don't have a creator who's the ground of all reality. And we do hold to God. That's a fundamental difference. Now, having said that, you know, something that some of the best Christians who do this dialogue find really intriguing is the darkness of Buddhism, by which I mean that sense of not being able to grasp and not being able to hold on to. Well, there's a very strong strain of that within Christianity, call it negative theology, you know, that we can never grasp God entirely. And even, you know, in the Bible, when God says to Moses, I'm going to go by you, but you can only look at me from behind.

It's a way of saying, you can't control this reality, you know. And so in the very darkness of the Buddhist sort of approach to ultimate reality, we would say there's something right in that. because ultimate reality is very dark to our consciousness, and we can't hang on to it. And we have to let go, and all of those wonderful kind of spiritual motifs. Right. I hear that from in these Buddhist-Catholic dialogues I've been in. Well, I'm wasting time talking to a bishop about Buddhism, so forgive me for that, because I have... No, right, I don't claim any expertise in it.

I have some Christian-related questions. Yeah, go ahead. One of my favorite aspects of Christianity is that God, when choosing representatives, really seems to pick miscreants. You know, Noah, the drunk, Moses, the stutter, Jesus, Carpenter's son in a manger. The list goes on and on and on. What's the explanation for that? Why is it always the bad news bears?

Why is it always the underdogs that God is choosing to carry these incredible burdens that, you know, are talked about every day around the planet? Paul said it. So people know the power is coming not from me, but from God, you know. So God chooses what's weak in the eyes of the world to manifest his strength. Now, it is true, though. It's not exclusively the case that he chooses only. So he chose, you know, King David and King Solomon and so on. So there are exceptions, but there is something really right in what you're saying.

And I think God does it to manifest his own power. That he's not reliant upon our capacities, but is showing forth his own power and working with the powerless. And Paul's a good example there. He was aware of his own weakness, admits, you know, when I'm among you, I'm very unimpressive. Yes, right. Even like the Blessed Mother, we'd say, at Lourd, appearing at a garbage dump. And so when the kids came back, say, hey, we saw the Blessed Mother at Massa Biel, they said, Masa Biel, it's a, it's a trash heap.

Why would the Mother of God appear there? Well, your right is suggesting, well, why wouldn't she appear there? Right. It's just quite beautiful. I mean, I do feel like you can get these sort of, I don't know, glimmers from some, you can get some sense of a personality here. like it's not it does not lack personality there is a sense of humor to some degree there is a wildness to it and this since you're mentioning paul i mean of course we're going to mention

paul in a discussion of christianity this is another thing i i think i'm confused about regarding christianity uh saul of tarsis he is persecuting christians as was basically like a a sport back then and this encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and becomes like the great teacher, but never met Jesus. And the epistles, please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems to be like a lot of the modern Christian church are based on, is there questions about how do we do this or that, or admonishments or suggestions or congratulations, they are all coming from. from someone who wasn't around Jesus in the flesh. And so I've heard that, I don't know if you'd call it a critique of modern Christianity

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So when he appears to him, who are you? And then he says, I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting. And that's where he met him. But also Paul had the great instinct to go back to Jerusalem, as he put it, to meet the pillars. He wanted to meet the apostles, and he wanted to meet James, the brother of the Lord. He wanted to meet people that did know Jesus in the flesh to make sure that his message. was on point. I think he had this immensely powerful experience of Jesus, which he then ratified and

verified through those that knew him directly in the flesh. I didn't know. He went back to meet them. Thank you for fixing that. That's why that was... He asked the apostles. It's a wonderful account, really, because all they knew, they knew this guy that had been viciously persecuting the church was now supporting us, and they thought, well, he must be

a spy or something. They were very wary of Paul in the beginning. I didn't know that either. Wow. But also, the cool thing about St. Paul is he took a long time. You know, he saw the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. He didn't start preaching in a serious way for 14 years. Well, I mean, he probably thought he's going nuts. Well, I think what he was maybe, maybe that was, but I think he was trying to fit this experience in the context of his Jewish background.

And what we call Christian theology is born with Paul. and that means this attempt to think Jesus in light of the Jewish revelation. That's called Christian theology in many ways. The experience, whatever happened out there must have been incredible. Right. You can, you get that sense reading it. But I feel like that road to Damascus experience is something, hopefully all of us have to contend with. and to me if you know i had been throwing rocks at christians and some puffed up pompous

violent sociopathic weirdo and then suddenly i have some divine vision that is going to wreck me that's going to wreck me like i am what do you do now and i'm curious only because i've never had a conversation with a bishop you when did it happen to you and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and, Or have you always had a connection with the divine? And if you did have some moment or series of moments, did you find yourself wondering if maybe you were losing it a little bit? Or how do I live like I've been living anymore? Or what do I do now?

Yeah. Well, it's a complex question you're raising. And I say in my case, probably it's like most people, I came of age as a Catholic. So I have Catholic parents who taught me prayers and taught me the basics of the faith when I was a little kid, and then brought me to Mass. So when you're brought to Mass on a regular basis, so you're going to church, you're seeing priests in the vestments, you're seeing this unfolding of a ritual.

When I first started, many, many years ago as a little kid, there was still a bit of the mass in Latin. And so you're a little kid and they were speaking English in something of this weird language. What is that? What is he even saying? Well, it got my attention, I must say, when I was a little kid. Then I go to Catholic school, so I had my regular classes, but also religion class. So I would have been introduced to the Bible and it's stories and all that. So you come of age with it and it becomes sort of second nature to you.

I see. Now what happened to me when I was in high school is I came across St. Thomas Aquinas. And Thomas Aquinas is a very rational thinker and he offered arguments for God's existence and it was a very kind of intellectually disciplined approach. And I love that because I didn't really get that as a kid. I got, you know, the basic instruction and the basic biblical framework. But then I got Aquinas who opened my mind up in a big way, you know. And then after that, soon after that, I read the guy I mentioned to you a few minutes ago, Thomas Merton.

Yes. And I read Merton's great book called The Seven-Story Mountain, which is all about his conversion to the faith. And I read that when I was like 16, and I can still have a... song comes on, the, you know, radio or something that was playing when I was reading that book, it triggers this enormously powerful memory. Because Merton's book is all about this guy kind of gradually falling in love with God. Yeah. And that book had a big impact on me, you know. And then my life unfolds and I, you know, I go through school. And there were there were moments in my, in my education when, you know, I had a lot of questions, a lot of

doubts. I was studying philosophy. You can't study philosophy without having all kinds of questions, right? Sure. So yeah, I had that, but I would say it's more, not so much Damascus road experience. It was more the gradual unfolding of my Catholicism or gradual entry into the full world of Catholicism. And we would say, you know, like at the mass, you don't have maybe lights flashing and all that in voices, but the mass is a mystical experience. I said mass this morning in my chance for you office a few hours ago you know and um that's always kind of a damascus road in a way because you're you're you're having a personal confrontation with the lord confrontation is the right word for it you know i can't remember going my friend took me to church

communion was happening and i can remember looking at the person handing the communion wafer and realizing this person is not symbolically giving me a piece of bread. This person thinks they're giving me the flesh of God right now. It was a very powerful moment because I don't think up until that point I'd ever made the connection with the reality of what's happening at Mass versus a sort of intellectualizing of what's happening at mass a kind of formal uh i don't know meditation a sort of i don't know no one really is both believing this but then when you realize every year catholics are putting themselves through a pretty brutal cycle man black friday the morning the grief

and it's when you see people they're really grieving every year for real yeah this is not an easy religion this is not a an easy path. Were you raised a Catholic or like you were brought to Catholic Mass by the friend or I don't know. My wife is Catholic. Your wife's Catholic. And I was raised Episcopalian, but you know, I was a kid. High liturgical tradition though. High liturgical tradition, but just didn't. I was a chubby kid. My belt was too tight. I wanted out. There was no sense of any, anything at that point. But may I say your instinct is really good, see on that point, that if we're just trading in, you know, a casual symbol, like this bread is symbolic of what Jesus did

long ago. Well, all right. But the Catholic theology is far more dramatic than that, and stranger, you know. Oh, strange. It's just the war. It's grounded in, it's in John Chapter 6. You know, when Jesus said, I'm going to give you my flesh to eat. And the people say, what is this guy talking about? It's flesh to eat. Is he crazy? And so he's given every opportunity to say, oh, no, listen, I just, I'm talking metaphorically here. But he doesn't. He said, unless you gnaw on my body, and that's the Greek term there. It doesn't mean eat. It means, unless you gnaw on my body and drink my blood, you have no life in you.

Wow. And so then everyone left. I find that very interesting in John chapter 6. Everyone left. If he's just trading in metaphors and symbols, well, heck, why would they all have left? They get that. I mean, Jesus taught metaphorically all the time. But they all left.

And then he's to turn to the apostles themselves. are you going to leave me? And it's Peter says, Lord, where are we going to go? You've got the words of everlasting life. So from that moment, this question of the real presence in the Eucharist is really pivotal to Catholicism. And it does have that kind of strange, mystical realism where I'm not just coming up to kind of casually remember what Jesus did long ago. I'm eating his body and drinking his blood. That's missing. I'm sorry to cut you off, Bishop. Please, God. to me that's to me when people are conceptualizing Christianity minus any attempt to like go to a mass go see what it's like they're missing that element to it and to me that is that's what

that's the hook in my mouth that that gets you and I don't think people understand what they're what you're looking at here is though not some domesticated well-pruned bush or something you're it's wild it is a it's like a nuclear reactor in there or something and i don't think people that's why i love chatting with people like you and i talk about on my podcast is because what a wild thing to exist in the world what oh that's happening every sunday people are eating god flesh every sunday and thereby becoming immortalized and so the early church fathers said god became here that humans might become God. And that's the way they summed up Christianity. So the word

becomes flesh, and that's very important, the word becomes flesh, that our flesh might become divinized. So, you know, talking about heaven is not like a platonic idea of the soul escaping from the body. It's the whole transfiguration of the body, the elevation. So like we say in the creed, we look forward to the resurrection of the body. We don't look forward to the escape of the soul to heaven. Most even Christians, I say, would be casual platonists. You know, so for Plato, that's the whole point, was let's get out of the body and get up into the pure realm of the forms and all that. Well, that's Plato, but it's not Christianity at all. Christianity is about bodies and about the body being resurrected. And so that's tied to the Eucharist because that's the way we

become immortalized. But let's hope it's a younger body, right? Do you get, you get to, you You get to choose which age you resurrect at, or how does that work? There's an answer in the tradition. Now, we're not obligated to believe us, but Thomas Aquinas thought we were resurrected to the age of 33, of Jesus' age, because he thought 33, pretty good. You're at full maturity, but you're not old. You're kind of at the peak of your powers. So he imagined it. Now, whatever, see, the glorified body is, I don't think we know.

we just we look with anticipation toward it yeah so i wouldn't want to get overly specific there i don't i don't really know i understand but aquinas followed your instinct though and say no i think you will be 33 when we uh have our resurrected bond i think i started smoking in my 20s i'd like to do 18 maybe bishop i i have a question for you that comes from one of the many people who love you in catholicism and i didn't ask if i could mention her name so i'm not going to um she first of all was when I told her I was getting a chance to chat with you she was just so excited you've changed your life you should know that you she owes her she attributes a lot of her growth in Christianity to your work and but her question was when have you when has your faith

most been challenged well a couple things I say one is when I was a young man and I was studying philosophy, and I was, you know, reading everybody from Sart to Nietzsche to Freud and to, you know, all the great critics of religion. And, you know, I took those books seriously and entertain those arguments. And there was a time when I was in college where I thought, well, I don't know, this whole religion thing, you know, makes any sense. And so, yeah, it was challenged there. And then I would say there are certain moments in my life. I won't go into all the details, but times of great suffering. And that's why that argument from evil is such a powerful one, where you say, I mean, how could God permit or allow or preside over such suffering?

So, yeah, I've had those experiences. I don't know any serious person of faith who doesn't have times like that, you know, moments when there's a hesitation or there's a doubt or there's a fear, you know. I don't know anybody. I remember once I was a young priest in the parish, so you're out there. they're dealing with, you know, people all the time. And there was a, um, a policeman in my parish who inexplicably one night, uh, got up and shot his son to death and then shot himself to death, right? And he's in my parish. So I go to, I'm 27 years old, maybe 28, and I go to the funeral parlor to visit, you know, with the family. And there's two coffins there. And, um,

the, the mother and the wife, I come in with the wrong. Roma cholera on as a, you know, representative of the church. And I remember she just went like this, like, what, what? Like, explain this to me. Yeah. And all I could muster, which I think really was kind of the grace of God, as I went like that too, like, look, I don't know. I can't explain this.

But sure, I see, people sometimes don't get this. When you're involved in pastoral ministry, you're dealing all the time with people at the worst moments. They're best moments too, you know, your wedding and all those great things. But you're often dealing with people at really, really tough times. And you go as a representative of the church and of faith at a time when they're in really deep darkness. And something we have to actually train, I taught in the seminary for a long time, you have to train these young guys entering the priesthood. You can't go so far down that you get stuck, you know, because

you can enter into someone's pain so deeply that you can't come out of it then. Yeah. So there are certain techniques, I think, for being as pastorally sensitive as you should without being completely overwhelmed by the darkness you're dealing with. Right. You know, so sure, I think anyone involved in pastoral work faces that stuff. Is it part? Is that... This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by my dear friends.

It's square space. Yeah, it's a square space. By that, I think they're referring to actually more of a rectangular space in the sense that your computer is kind of a rectangle. But I suppose that if someone had a square-shaped phone, then your website would show up as a square. But regardless of the shape, triangle, circle, whatever shape your website may be, if you made it with Squarespace, it's going to look good

and even better. It's going to be something you made yourself. You didn't have to go down to the docks and find a web designer. You didn't have to pleasure some miscreant web designer and some dark pungent alley so that you would build a website for you. That's what you used to do in the old days. I can't tell you how many drooling web designers I pleasured, satisfied. I did do what they wanted just to get my website made. And I don't mean paying money. folks. I'm not going to go further because it's a commercial, but sometimes it was fun. A lot of the times it was scary, and every time it was embarrassing, those were the dark days. Now you can just jump on Squarespace. You could make a beautiful website and you can do it quick.

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They've got all the other stuff. Paywalls, if you want to have content for your members. I know what your members want. I know what you guys want from me. They also allow you to send out great mass mails so that people don't feel like they're being scammed, that you're going to lift their identity. They're going to get stuck snat in their computer.

They've got everything you need. You've got AI that'll help you build the website. My God, it's next level tech. It's never evolving Swiss Army knife that's making the internet beautiful. Thank you for that Squarespace. And fine, you don't have to believe my yapping ass. You can go to Squarespace.com ford slash Duncan, try it out for free. I'll expect an apology if you didn't believe my pitch here.

And then when you're ready to launch, which you will be, use Offergo Duncan. To get 10% off your first order of, a website or a domain that's squarespace.com forward slash duncan offer code don't get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain thank you square space god bless you for all that you've done for the internet is it part of the path or those moments sort of like the pull-up bars of Christianity? Is it kind of built in? Is that in the design? I would say yes, because, see, at the heart of Christianity is the cross, right? We hold up Christ crucified. Paul says, I know one thing. Christ and him crucified. So the crucifixion is naming something. It's showing

something of central importance in Christianity. And it's something like this pattern of dying and rising, right? That somehow dying and rising is the great pattern. You know, we use the word Lagos. Christ is the word become flesh, the Logos. Logos can be word in Greek, but it also be pattern. He's the pattern that's become flesh. So what's the pattern, the gestalt, you know, is the German faith, that governs reality. And we would say it's the pattern of this paschal mystery, dying and the rising of Jesus. So that we go through suffering, and things are stripped away from us, and we have to go, like Merton said, you have to go all the way down before you can come up.

That's Dante as well, right? Dante goes all the way down to hell, and only then can he make the way up. That's the rhythm, and so to your point, yes, in a pastoral work, you see it all the time, is you you walk with people on that downward trajectory, but you walk with them knowing the great pascal mystery. Wow. What a job. Not to reduce it to a job, but whoa.

No, that's the right instinct. People that say, oh, you know, priesthood, it's just kind of nice, you know, domesticated, dull sort of thing. Not on the contrary. It's a pretty dramatic life. I've never thought it was a nice thing. never thought that. I've always felt pretty bad for y'all. It just seems brutal. No, but I don't want to overstay. I've been a priest for almost 40 years, and it's not

brutal in that way. It's demanding the way any, you know, any path worth walking has got a brutality to it. But it's this wonderful, liberating path and this life-giving path and, you know, all that. We need you. I mean, this is in, I don't know where I read this. It was some, it was actually referring to Buddha. It was, you know, Buddhism's full of these reminders. And one of the reminders is, remember, there was a time when there was no Buddha. There was a time when there was no eightfold bad. There was a time when this didn't exist. And there was a time when there was no Jesus. There was a time when there was no bishops. And, you know, the reason, and I, the reason I said, I feel bad for you guys is not just because of the difficulty of what you do, but you must know.

we need you what happens if you're all gone what happens if the rapture happens and god's just like i'm taking the bishops no and that's that's a very important point because like the new atheists go back 25 years when the new atheists were you know once again there's nothing really new about it people don't think this forever you know let's get rid of god let's get rid of religion and religion poisons everything you know hitchins and it's religion bad bad but you're dead right is imagine that world now where religion has disappeared that there's no anchor there's no frame of reference for deep meaning. There's no one to articulate the Pascal mystery to talk about the cross and resurrection. What would that world be like? Now, now, now we're

talking dull. Now we're talking a boring, well-lit, but dull space. That's where we'd be living if you get rid of religion. So all this Blythe talk about, you know, let's get rid of it and it poisons everything. Nah, no, no, no. And I think what younger people who are rediscovering religion today. They're understanding that, that the new atheists bequeathed to them, this dismal, bleak world. And a dull world, you know, a world without adventure. It's just, I'm turned in on myself. In this self-regarding, it's my choice and my freedom and my life. But, I mean, bore me to death with that. What makes life rich is when you're called up out of yourself and a great act of sacrificial love.

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but I have friends in AA, it's kind of nice because you know they're there. Like if it gets too bad, they're there. And I think that's kind of one of the roles you fill for us. It's like when we are in the downward part of the cycle, there's, always a sense of like, you know that, there's that place. You can go to that place and people are going to help you. And that's, I don't think a lot of people, even maybe people who think of themselves as an atheist, I wonder if they could honestly ask themselves, do you take comfort in at least knowing this place that you've characterized in all these dark ways is there for you regardless of your POV? You know, AA is a great thing. And I've often preached on this,

that A.A. in the 20th century was a way into the spiritual life for a lot of people. And it's deeply grounded in spiritual principles. Read Dante and A.A., and there's a lot of similarities. Dante, see, has to, Dante, go back now the 13th century, is this kind of cocky figure, and he's a leader in the society, and he's a famous poet and writer and all that. And then he hits bottom. And the poem, the Divine Comedy, opens with a guy at the bottom,

Because he says, midway in the journey of life, and that's often true, a lot of people that go through addiction and stuff, it's often at midlife. Midway in the journey of life, I awoke to find myself alone and lost in a dark wood, having wandered from the straight path. Well, that's everybody at some point, you know. And then it's the story of how having admitted his powerlessness, he has to be led by higher powers. So the saints send, it's the long story, but Virgil comes and guides him through hell,

and then purgatory, and then other saints and angels come and guide them through heaven. Well, that's the spiritual journey, you know, and it works that way for a lot of people. That's the AA journey, is that you have to admit, I'm powerless. I can't handle this addiction. I can't solve the problem. What do I do? I turn my life over to a higher power, and under the egos of that power, I'm now going to make this steady climb. And it's a tough climb, and it demands a lot of me.

But I need to have a sponsor. Think of Virgil who has to accompany Dante all the way down and all the way up. And without Virgil, he would have gotten lost. And Virgil keeps pressing him like, no, no, you've got to do this. And they come to Satan, which is a great moment in the poem, because that's the deep center of your dysfunction. So any addict knows about that. You have to climb all the way down to find where's this coming from?

What's the need or the hunger or the wound? or something in me that's producing it. Well then Dante and Virgil just they jump onto Satan and then they climb down. He has these hairy haunches and they climb down. And the point there is it's a beautiful thing is once you discover where the pain is coming from, you also realize it's powerless against you. If you open your eyes wide and look at it and you have the courage to climb right on its side, it can't stop you.

And then that's the way they start the march. of purgatory. Right. So that poem is all about these dynamics. And AA got that, at least implicitly. And that's why so many people, it's a door that opens to religion. I have so many things I'd like to ask you about that specifically. We only have 10 more minutes, and I've got to ask.

Yeah. You know, Hunter S. Thompson, I think you, in criticizing the president, said, it looks like he's using the book of revelations as the guidebook for the presidency. But having some familiarity with the book of revelations and looking at all the things happening in the world right now, specifically AI, I get a, I went through a love affair with it. It's so cool. But I'm starting to get legitimately uncomfortable, not with the tech so much as the effect, you know, judge a tree by its fruit, is the effect it seems to be having on people. And anytime one of the thrills I had with AI is I'd show

people some AI stuff and they'd be like their first response will be that's demonic. Like whatever that is is evil. And there's something fun about that until you really start looking at it. I'm sure you've heard about this. People are going nuts from interacting with this thing. What are your thoughts on AI? and have you gotten the sense that there seems to be like lines in the book of revelations that allude to this technology coming in the final days? Yeah, I wouldn't go that direction so much, because the book of Revelation, I don't think, is just about predicting the moment when the world ends because it has to have value to every generation that reads it.

What it's about is the breakdown of the old world and the emergence of a new one, which happens through the dying and rising of Jesus. So they appreciated that in the paschal mystery, the old world has broken apart. So all this stuff about earthquakes and fires and things breaking apart, that's the old world crumbling. And then a new world is being born. It's happening through Jesus, and I would say, and through the church and the Holy Spirit, is this new world is being born. So that means that every generation can read it and say, oh, yeah, I know what that's all about.

Having said that, though, I'm totally with you. Right, just before I sat down here with you, we were talking about this phenomenon. I do a lot of videos, right, that erupt on YouTube and stuff. Well, now all these weird AI-generated videos of me saying all kinds of strange things. People have created these. And some of them, gosh, I mean, they're clever in a way. One of them had me and the Pope in some Titanic struggle, and the Pope has called me to the Vatican to correct me and that I'm meeting.

This is a great story as I'm following. It has nothing to do with reality at all. I met the poll precisely once, you know. But these AI generated things are out there. And sadly, a lot of people in my audience, they believe them. I watched one, getting ready for this interview. I watched an AI version of you give, it wasn't the worst. It was actually good.

It was good, but I realized this isn't him. Yeah, I don't know. Some of them are just crazy. And people are expressing sympathy with me, like, oh, I'm sorry about you and the Pope having this disagreement. Oh, man. So anyway, all that I hate. The other thing I hate is making people stupid, you know, this whole chat, GPT thing, and that you can just generate your own, you know, I can generate a screenplay. You can put a handful of characters in and maybe one plot device, and suddenly this credible screenplay emerges.

Yeah. So I think all that stuff is really dangerous. And then I hate how it's taking jobs away from people. That's a real economic concern. Yes. Yeah. But, you know, heck, I remember as a kid watching 2001, and you've got the beginnings of he saw it.

I mean, Kubrick, intuitive this was coming. Yeah, yeah. What a challenging time to be a bishop. How are you going to deal with it? Like, what is that? What is the plan there? How does the Catholic, does the Catholic Church have a plan on how to contend with this? We're working on it.

In fact, Vatican's had several conferences already on it. The Pope, I don't know if you heard that. They asked him, why did you choose the name Leo? And he said, well, Leo the 13th was talking about the new things happening the end of the 19th century, industrialization and economic change. And he said, now we have all kinds of new things, especially AI. So he chose the name because he wanted to address this problem. Wow.

So we are thinking about it, and especially I think in America where it's, you know, that's the cutting edge. But it is a worry. I agree with that. Bishop Barron, for what it's worth, I might regret saying this. My wife's definitely going to watch this. I think you got, I'm going to start going to mass with the family after this conversation. You are amazing. Thank you for your time. I know you must be so busy. And thank you for your work. Likewise. Thank you. And I'm sure many people are going to want to find some of your content out there. There's tons of it. Do you mind directing people or they could find you? Yeah.

Just go to wordonfire.org or whatever it is. But word on fire is the name of my media ministry. And just put that in and all this stuff will come up. And you can get books and videos and films and all kinds of stuff. Beautiful. Thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you for your time, sir.

God bless you, Duncan. God bless you. Thank you. That was Bishop Robert Barron. Thank you so much, Bishop Barron, for taking the time to be on the show. Check out Bishop Barron. YouTube show, Word on Fire, read his books,

connect with the church if you feel called to do so. And thank you all so much for watching or listening. I love you. I'll see you next week.