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Bishop Barron on The Last Acceptable Prejudice — Transcript

by Bishop Robert Barron · 1,849 words · 277 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00[Music]
0:10anti- Catholicism has long been a
0:12feature of American Life both in the
0:14high culture and the low culture go back
0:16to the uh 19th century and stretching up
0:18really to about World War II it was
0:21pretty much out in the open uh
0:22editorialists and writers cartoonist
0:25Shapers of public opinion were often
0:27just explicit in their dislike for the
0:30Catholic church now it went underground
0:32more or less let's say from World War II
0:35through the election of John F Kennedy
0:37uh it became in sort of bad form to be
0:39too explicit about your anti-
0:41Catholicism but in recent years I would
0:44say the old Dragon The Old Demon has
0:46reemerged in a very public way now there
0:49are reasons for it I think part of it is
0:51the general antipathy toward religion
0:54after September 11th so I've argued a
0:56lot of the new atheism and all that is a
0:57post September 11th phenomenon
1:00secondly it would be the um sex abuse
1:02scandal in the Catholic Church which has
1:04legitimately you know B smirched the
1:06reputation of of the Catholic church but
1:08you see now in a lot of different
1:10settings this very explicit and
1:12aggressive anti-catholicism just
1:15recently I was reading a book by James
1:17Miller called examined lives it's a
1:20study of 12 philosophers from Socrates
1:23to nche looking at their lives and I
1:26just finished his treatment of St
1:28Augustine and um here's the way Miller
1:31handles it in the early years of
1:33Augustine's life he was he was good he
1:35was a good philosopher following the
1:37truth rever LED he was in the more
1:39platonic Socratic style student of
1:41platinus all that was great but the
1:44tragic Fall From Grace was when
1:46Augustine made the terrible mistake of
1:48joining the Catholic church in that he
1:51joined this closed in system and the
1:54once adventurous intellectual becomes in
1:57Miller's reading a um censorious
2:00um
2:01sectarian here's the way the section on
2:03Augustine ended and I wanted to quote it
2:05directly he Augustine lay the conceptual
2:09grounds for creating perhaps the most
2:11powerful community of closed belief in
2:14world history the Catholic church that
2:16ruled over medieval western Europe as an
2:19all-encompassing if not quite
2:21totalitarian theocracy unrivaled before
2:24or since by any other religious or
2:26secular one party State be it Muslim or
2:29communist
2:30wow I mean that's a extraordinary claim
2:33that the Catholic church that St
2:36Augustine laid the foundations for at
2:37least
2:38conceptually is a worse and more
2:41oppressive dictatorship than the Taliban
2:44or the states fronted by uh Lenin and
2:46Stalin Ma and Paul
2:48pot I mean it's a little over the top
2:52you know but Miller's excursions into
2:55anti-catholicism um are nothing compared
2:58to the work of um
3:00Mark Warren who is the editorinchief of
3:03Esquire magazine he published a piece on
3:05his blog just very recently about um
3:10Scientology and it was uh his commentary
3:12on a piece that appeared in the New
3:13Yorker magazine that was an expose of um
3:17of Scientology by an ex Scientologist
3:20and he rehearses there all of the kind
3:22of you know Wild and Woolly Theology of
3:24the Scientology movement that's based
3:26upon the science fiction esque musings
3:29elron hubard so all this Wild and Woolly
3:32you know stuff that scientologists
3:33believe but see Warren says okay I'm
3:36glad that got exposed I'm glad you're
3:38you're going after them but come on that
3:41small fry compared to the great and he
3:45puts that in quotes the great religions
3:47whose mythology is every bit as cooky
3:50and Wild and Woolly and then he puts his
3:53finger course on Christianity now listen
3:55to this um summary he gives of Christian
3:59Doctrine his argument being look it's
4:01every bit as you know crazy as much
4:03mumbo jumbo as you find in Scientology
4:05listen to this though I grew up
4:08believing that every breath I drew sent
4:11a god-made man named Jesus Christ
4:13writhing on the cross to which he'd been
4:15nailed an execution for which he'd been
4:17sent to Earth by his heavenly father he
4:20goes on and yet I was born Not Innocent
4:23but complicit in this lynching
4:25incomprehensibly having to apologize and
4:27atone for this barbarism all my days and
4:31feel terrible about myself and all
4:34mankind he finishes and Jesus Spirit had
4:38risen on a cloud into heaven to rejoin
4:40the same Sky God who had sent him on
4:43this errand in the first
4:45place okay what you notice first about
4:48this I think is something you find in
4:50Bill Maher and in uh Christopher
4:52Hitchens and many of the new atheists
4:55namely a characterization of
4:57Christianity that is
5:00I mean childish to say the least
5:03informed by what seems to be a sort of
5:05half understood grade school catechism
5:08version of Christianity an almost
5:11willful reluctance or unwillingness to
5:15explore Catholic theology with any kind
5:17of seriousness I'll give you just you
5:20know a couple examples from this there
5:21are many more we could draw you'll find
5:23it in Hitchens you find it in Mar you
5:24find it here in Warren the belie the
5:27claim that we believe in a Sky
5:31God anyone that's the least bit familiar
5:33with Biblical interpretation knows that
5:36the biblical authors use uh metaphors
5:39and imagery to suggest truths that go
5:42beyond language one of them being that
5:44God the creator of all things is
5:46transcendent to the world can't be
5:49caught in any of the categories that
5:51name ordinary experience what's one of
5:53the classical metaphors for this radical
5:56Transcendence this otherness of God but
5:58the sky
6:00what we don't hold is that God is some
6:03being living up in the sky some being
6:06inhabiting the clouds some mythological
6:08fantasy when we speak of the sky or the
6:11heavens we mean this realm of
6:14transcendence to ordinary experience
6:16reducing this language to the level of
6:19the mythological and the childish is to
6:20say the least problematic but what I
6:23found really extraordinary in his
6:25characterization is this reading of the
6:27cross of
6:28Jesus I mean come on the correct
6:31Doctrine is that in Christ God enters
6:36into all of our limitation all of our
6:39pain all of our dysfunction out of love
6:42God so loved the world he sent his only
6:44son where did he send him he sent him
6:47into our finitude into our suffering
6:51into all the effects of sin into the
6:54power of death itself there to bring the
6:57light of the Divine life even even to
6:59those darkest places there to bring the
7:02saving power of God even to our sin
7:05alienation even to the fear of death
7:08there's the correct doctrine of
7:09atonement that the sky God needs to be
7:13satisfied by this terrible death of his
7:15son I mean is the worst kind of
7:17mythological reading of the atonement
7:20it's the language of Grace Jesus says
7:23I've come that you might have life and
7:26have it to the full St irenaeus the
7:29Great second century Master said the
7:31glory of God is a human being Fully
7:33Alive I don't know where Mr Warren
7:36received his formation in Catholic
7:37theology but I can assure him that none
7:40of his breaths is causing Jesus uh to
7:43rise on the cross that he has no need to
7:46spend his whole life apologizing or
7:47atoning for the death of Jesus the death
7:50of Jesus is itself an atonement meaning
7:53it's the way God out of love dealt with
7:56our sin and
7:57suffering okay now to get things more
8:01specifically uh anti-catholic we have to
8:03look at his recommendation
8:06that journalists should not go after the
8:08small fry of Scientology they ought to
8:10go after the really big fish namely the
8:12church of his youth the Catholic church
8:15and here he turns his attention to Pope
8:17Benedict the 16th whom he characterizes
8:20as a pretty u in his words creepy or
8:22nefarious figure here's some of the
8:24language he uses and then we hear the
8:26blatant anti- Catholicism we ought to
8:28Target at the Pope in his Palace in the
8:32Vatican who is protecting criminals and
8:35child molesters with the ruthless
8:37demeanor of the CEO of a massive
8:40Corporation lawyering up against the
8:42barrage of lawsuits to come now I know
8:45that might be a relatively common view
8:48uh but it's grossly unfair uh the sex
8:52abuse Scandal is real and it's
8:54devastating I'm not trying for a second
8:56to cover it up or to pretend it didn't
8:58happen it's real and it's devastating
9:00but I'll stay by this assertion that
9:03nobody in the church has done more to
9:06address this problem concretely than
9:07ysph rosinger Pope Benedict the 16th go
9:10back to the year 2001 John Paul II gives
9:14full responsibility to handle this
9:16problem to ysph rosinger every single
9:19Friday what he would do is read the
9:20dossier from all over the world of these
9:22cases and by all the accounts anyone
9:25that knew him and talked to him said it
9:27was the most heartbreaking heart-
9:29rending experience that he saw he knew
9:32these cases and then we see rotzinger
9:34taking very clear and direct action um
9:392002 John Paul II calls all the Cardinal
9:42of America over to the Vatican and says
9:45this problem is uh this situation is
9:48intolerable it has to be addressed June
9:51of 2002 the American Bishops meet in
9:53Dallas and they impose very strict uh
9:57conditions and um address the problem
10:01with very clear concrete uh moves and
10:05then we see in the wake of the Dallas
10:07chorus 2002 a precipitous decline in the
10:10number of clergy who are credibly
10:13accused of this crime in fact last year
10:16with 70 million Catholics 45,000 priest
10:19I think there were six credible cases of
10:22uh of child sex abuse my point there is
10:26ysph rotzinger and then people under his
10:28Direction
10:30did put in place
10:32enormous um practical and concrete
10:35changes that have address this problem
10:38more to it in 2005 when John Paul II
10:41died Cardinals got together and they
10:43elected yoseph rotzinger as the pope one
10:45of the reasons if you talk to the the
10:47electing Cardinals one of the reasons
10:49that they uh had for that election was
10:52this man more than anyone else could
10:54deal with the sex abuse problem
10:57therefore to identify him as one of the
10:59creeps and that's Warren's word uh that
11:01journalists should go after it's not
11:03only mean-spirited but it's U it's
11:05counterproductive because you're going
11:07after someone who is probably doing more
11:09than anyone else in the church to deal
11:11with the problem now here's the point
11:13that I want to make uh generally is that
11:15it's not just the the unintelligence of
11:18these claims I think is problematic but
11:20it's the um it's the rising of this Old
11:23Demon this old Dragon of uh of anti-
11:27Catholicism that
11:29has existed for a long time but is now
11:31explicit and I think when Catholics see
11:34that they do have to fight back they do
11:37have to complain lest this devolve into
11:39something uh even more
11:42[Music]
11:51dangerous

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