Bishop Barron on Religious Liberty — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:05[Music]
2. 0:10Well, I'm just back from a wonderful
3. 0:12two-eek trip to England with my Word on
4. 0:14Fire team. We traveled from Durham in
5. 0:16the north to London in the south by way
6. 0:18of uh Leeds and Liverpool and Birmingham
7. 0:22and Oxford as well as some side trips to
8. 0:24Lindesfarn that great the kind of ruins
9. 0:26of a Benedict and monastery from long
10. 0:28ago and then to Ampleforth which is the
11. 0:30biggest um active Benedictan house in
12. 0:33England and finally to Castle Howard
13. 0:36which is u the place where they filmed a
14. 0:38lot of brides revisited one of my
15. 0:40favorite programs. So it was just a
16. 0:42great tour of of England and I was
17. 0:45giving lectures and talks and and so on.
18. 0:48And I was struck over and over again I
19. 0:50must say by the vitality of the church
20. 0:52in England. Certainly it's a society
21. 0:54which has become largely secularized
22. 0:56they say but the church I must say is um
23. 0:59is vibrant in many ways and I was very
24. 1:01moved for example by my talks to
25. 1:03seminarians in Birmingham and uh and
26. 1:05London. Uh gave some academic lectures
27. 1:08in Durham and London. So it was just a a
28. 1:09great you know uplifting trip. But you
29. 1:11know the other enduring impression I
30. 1:13have from that trip is how the 16th
31. 1:17century is still very much a living
32. 1:20reality. Now when I say 16th century of
33. 1:22course I mean that really terrible
34. 1:24period uh when we had the wars of
35. 1:27religion basically in England when um
36. 1:30the Anglican church had split off from
37. 1:31the Catholic Church and then under
38. 1:33Elizabeth I Catholics were pretty
39. 1:35brutally persecuted. What struck me was
40. 1:38how that's not just a distant event in
41. 1:40the past. That's still very much of a
42. 1:43lively reality. Give you some examples.
43. 1:46We went to Ushaw College, which is a
44. 1:48beautiful place. It was a seminary,
45. 1:50Catholic seminary near Durham for many,
46. 1:52many years. Just closed because the
47. 1:54numbers got too small. But they showed
48. 1:56us the treasures of of Ushaw. And they
49. 1:58included these little tiny lurggical
50. 2:01vessels, uh, chalicees and cruds and so
51. 2:03on. Why tiny? Well, they were used
52. 2:05during that recusent period when they
53. 2:07had to say mass very clandestinely, had
54. 2:10to hide vessels. They also showed, I was
55. 2:13very moved by this, a an altar stone.
56. 2:15So, a little stone that had the relics
57. 2:18of a saint in it. And they would say
58. 2:19mass on that altar stone, but it was the
59. 2:22size of a shingle and it was it was
60. 2:25carved as a shingle so that after mass
61. 2:27they just put it up on the roof to hide
62. 2:29it, you know.
63. 2:30Um, we went to Durham Cathedral,
64. 2:33magnificent building, and we saw there
65. 2:35the the ruins, a few little remnants of
66. 2:38these lively, colorful fresco, which had
67. 2:40been stripped away, of course, during
68. 2:41the iconic classic uh Protestant period.
69. 2:45I went back to Leeds where I was a few
70. 2:46years ago and we visited um the
71. 2:49cathedral there and I I did a video a
72. 2:50few years ago about this, the the skulls
73. 2:52of these two martyrs that are in the
74. 2:55altar at Leeds. It's a very moving story
75. 2:56about a young priest and his older
76. 2:59protector who were both arrested and
77. 3:02they were they were killed and their
78. 3:03skulls have found their way to to that
79. 3:06altar. I was at uh OSC College in
80. 3:09Birmingham. When I was there they showed
81. 3:11me the pulpit from which John Henry
82. 3:13Newman gave the great second spring
83. 3:15address. That was a talk upon the um
84. 3:18restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in
85. 3:21England so that they established
86. 3:23dasceses and bishops again after you
87. 3:25know 300 years of of repression. Um I
88. 3:29went to Allen Hall which is the Catholic
89. 3:31seminary in London. Where is it built?
90. 3:34Well, it's built right on the site of
91. 3:35Thomas Moore's great house uh by the
92. 3:38river in Chelsea. And uh there's
93. 3:40actually a malberry tree from the 16th
94. 3:43century that Thomas Moore would have
95. 3:45known still on the grounds. And of
96. 3:47course Thomas Moore who famously opposed
97. 3:49the um act of supremacy and paid for his
98. 3:53opposition with his life having been
99. 3:54beheaded in
100. 3:571535. I ended up a trip in uh St.
101. 4:00Patrick's in Soho which is a very lively
102. 4:02Catholic parish. And we rolled out the
103. 4:04series. I talked about the Catholicism
104. 4:06series and I gave a little talk and at
105. 4:09the end of that the pastor handed me a
106. 4:12reoquary with the relics of one of the
107. 4:13London martyrs from that period and
108. 4:16asked me to bless the crowd with it. So
109. 4:18over and over again you see the 16th
110. 4:20century alive this time of terrible um
111. 4:24repression. You know some of it was
112. 4:26summed up for me on a very brief visit.
113. 4:28One of the few downtimes I had, I went
114. 4:30to uh Westminster Abbey and many years
115. 4:33ago, I'd visited and visited the tomb of
116. 4:35Elizabeth the First, but this time I had
117. 4:37a little audio guide, you know, so I was
118. 4:39getting more information and I didn't
119. 4:41realize that in the very same grave as
120. 4:44Elizabeth the First is her halfsister,
121. 4:46Mary Tutor. And of course, Mary was the
122. 4:48daughter of Henry VIII. She was queen
123. 4:51for a short period and of course
124. 4:53instituted Catholicism in England and
125. 4:56then she died and was succeeded by
126. 4:58Elizabeth who then turned on the
127. 5:00Catholic Church. So it's very moving to
128. 5:02think of those two women in the same
129. 5:04grave and so much of history you know is
130. 5:07turned around that conflict. Now, I
131. 5:10bring all this up not to demonize
132. 5:12Anglicanism. As I mentioned, during
133. 5:15Mary's reign, brief as it was, there was
134. 5:17a a terrible kind of bloody war against
135. 5:19Protestants. And so, there's there's
136. 5:21plenty of blame to go around in terms of
137. 5:23this of terrible persecution. The reason
138. 5:26I bring it up
139. 5:27is to show the absolute centrality of
140. 5:31this issue of religious liberty. Now, I
141. 5:34know a lot of us have been talking about
142. 5:35it recently, but that's what was going
143. 5:38on in the 16th century was a massive and
144. 5:41very violent repression of religious
145. 5:44liberty. See, why is that so important?
146. 5:46I think it's why it haunts the English
147. 5:48imagination to this day. Because, as
148. 5:50John Paul 2
149. 5:51said, religious liberty is the most
150. 5:53fundamental of the rights that we have.
151. 5:56Think of the right to, you know, um,
152. 5:58assembly, the right to speech, etc.,
153. 6:00etc. Um the right to worship as one sees
154. 6:05fit and to live one's religious life as
155. 6:07one sees fit is the most fundamental of
156. 6:09the rights. Why? Because it has to do
157. 6:12with the most important relationship we
158. 6:14can possibly have that which with God
159. 6:16and it reaches down to the deepest level
160. 6:20of one's
161. 6:21personhood. We speak of the person is
162. 6:24inviable. You know well what's the
163. 6:26deepest level of the person? It's that
164. 6:28person in relation to God. And that's
165. 6:30why religious liberty is absolutely
166. 6:32fundamental, why it's basic. Something I
167. 6:35find fascinating, look at up and down
168. 6:36the centuries, tyrants, both ancient and
169. 6:39modern. Elizabeth was a tyrant, you
170. 6:42know, but tyrants, both ancient and
171. 6:44modern, first go after religious
172. 6:47liberty. See, because a tyrant wants to
173. 6:50reach into that place. That's what a
174. 6:51tyrant wants. They want not just to
175. 6:54dominate people's bodies, if you want.
176. 6:55They want to dominate the mind and the
177. 6:57soul. They want to get into that most
178. 6:59sacred place where God alone should
179. 7:02reign. Do you know? And that's why we'll
180. 7:04find it. Look at at the Soviet Union.
181. 7:06Look at at communist China. Look at any
182. 7:08tyranny. They go after religion first.
183. 7:11Do you know? That's what we saw, I
184. 7:13think, in um in England in the 16th
185. 7:16century and why it still haunts uh uh
186. 7:19the English church to this day. Now, as
187. 7:21I mentioned before in these videos, and
188. 7:23I don't want to over dramatize it, what
189. 7:25we're going through now is nothing like
190. 7:26the 16th century, nothing near anywhere
191. 7:28near as brutal as that. Nevertheless,
192. 7:31there is um an attack within the
193. 7:34secularist uh society against religious
194. 7:37liberty. What's interesting to me in
195. 7:39England is the old foes, by which I mean
196. 7:42Catholics and Protestants, are now
197. 7:44coming together because they both feel
198. 7:47the attack coming from a secularist
199. 7:49ideology that wants to kick religion off
200. 7:51the public stage. And of course, as I've
201. 7:53commented before, we do find in our
202. 7:56country now is a more secularist kind of
203. 7:58ideology does, it seem, want to exclude
204. 8:02um Catholicism from the public arena.
205. 8:05Here's my overall point, and I've I've
206. 8:07talked about this before, but um see
207. 8:09this ought to concern everybody in a
208. 8:11free society, not just Catholics, not
209. 8:13just religious people. It ought to
210. 8:15concern everyone because an attack on
211. 8:18religious liberty is an attack on the
212. 8:21most fundamental human right. And that's
213. 8:24dangerous for anyone in a free society.
214. 8:29[Music]