← The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
WOF 486: Celebrating 25 Years of Word on Fire
00:41:09
Word on Fire is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. That’s twenty-five years of proclaiming the Gospel, evangelizing the culture, and working hard to bring people to—or back to—Christ and his Church. It’s worth pausing to look back to...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Patrucyk, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. Word on Fire is celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. That's 25 years of proclaiming the gospel, 25 years of evangelizing the culture, 25 years of working hard to bring people to or back to Christ and his church. Having reached this milestone by the grace of God, it's worth pausing to look back at the past quarter century to remember in appreciation where it all began and how the ministry has grown along the way. So what is Word on Fire's origin story? When, where, and why did Bishop Barron, then Father Barron, first conceive of the idea of founding Word on Fire? What were the early years like? What have been some of the major developments along the way? What obstacles has the ministry encountered and what have we learned from them? How has Bishop Barron and his team kept the fire for evangelization alive? And what, to the best of our lights, does the future look like for the next 5, 10, and even 50 years? Here to share his memories of Word on Fire's past and his vision for the ministry's future is Bishop Robert Barron. Welcome back to the studio.
- [01:24]
B
Bishop MATT Always great to be with you.
- [01:26]
A
Today we're marking, we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of Word on Fire and looking to the past as we also look forward. Before we get started, though, what have you been up to recently?
- [01:36]
B
Well, see a lot of things in the diocese, but one thing we do every year, the Minnesota bishops visit the Capitol. We go up to St. Paul, and the Capitol building here in St. Paul is beautiful, beautiful dome. It's a bit like St. Peter's dome and Rome. And it's right next to practically the, I think, the most beautiful religious building in America, the Cathedral of St. Paul. But we go up there once a year and we meet with the leaders of the government. So we had a meeting with Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota, who just, you know, ran for vice president. And we met with the speaker of the House and the top leadership. And what we do is we share some of our concerns as bishops. So each one of us takes one of the topics. I did the whole in vitro fertilization question, and then we share our views with them and then we hear from them and we have a bit of a dialogue. And it ends with one of us praying to start the session. I did that a couple of years ago. Bishop Felton of Duluth did it this Year, but it's a good day. It's an interesting day. And I think it's, you know, I think it's helpful for them and for us.
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A
How do you feel you're received as bishops there in the Capitol?
- [02:40]
B
I would say, well, you know, and I'm under no illusions that, you know, therefore they're all convinced of our point of view. Many up there do share our point of view, but generally, whether it's Republican or Democrat, they, you know, receive us very warmly and genuinely.
- [02:56]
A
Let's now turn to today's topic, the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Word on Fire. So we're going to be looking at the past and also looking at the future, but we oftentimes get questions, Bishop, about sort of biographical questions. So take us back to the beginning of your priesthood, its early days. Where did you imagine you would be working, and what kind of work did you imagine you'd be doing?
- [03:18]
B
Not this.
- [03:19]
A
Not this.
- [03:20]
B
I would say. No, if you go back to the very beginning. I was a parish priest for three years at a great parish called St. Paul the Cross, near O' Hare Airport. But I'd been approached. I always loved books and ideas, Life of the Mind. And we have this great seminary in Chicago, Mundelein Seminary, which needs faculty. So very early on, when I was still a student, I was approached by some officials there saying, would you ever be interested in going on for doctoral work? So I signaled an interest in that. So after three years in the parish, I was sent to Paris to the Institut Catholique, and I did my three years of doctoral studies, and then I came back to teach. So I was only ordained, what, about six years at that point? And I began my career as a professor at Mundelein. If you were to ask me, then, I probably would have said, I'll teach at Mundelein for 10 years or so, and then, you know, maybe get a job at a university. That's probably the trajectory I saw for myself. Seminary for a substantial time and then a university. There were indications in that direction, but things took a different direction under the leadership of Cardinal George, because, look, I'm a priest first and foremost, so priests do what they're told and they do what their bishop tells them. And that's what I've done my entire priesthood. I did what my bishop told me until the Pope intervened and he told me to go to California as a bishop and then here. But I probably would have seen myself teaching at the seminary and then going to a university.
- [04:44]
A
You know, when people hear that you spent A substantial amount of time in Paris, you know, they often wonder, how did that form you? Was it just that you were doing your studies in Paris? Was there something specific about the environment there that really, really informed who you are and how you teach?
- [04:58]
B
Well, I think so, yeah. I mean, I wanted to go to Paris for a lot of reasons. One was I had an interest in French and had some French already. I wanted to perfect a foreign language. And most of the guys who go for advanced studies to Rome don't really learn Italian that well. So I wanted to go to a French speaking house and really do it. So I did that. And then I'm a Thomas Aquinas man and I just think of Paris as very much Thomas City and medieval Catholicism. That always attracted me. And then it just gave me a chance to. I traveled all over the place. I was a young guy at the time. I had no money. I would hop on trains and stay in these little hostels and stuff. But I traveled around Europe and I loved that part of it. And my professors I had the great Michel Corbin was my thesis director, who was an expert in Aquinas and Anselm, but also Hegel and contemporary thought. Per G, who was the head of the doctoral program at the time, had been at Vatican ii. He was a Paretus, a liturgist at Vatican ii. Herve Legrand, who then took over the doctoral program I ran into again at the Senate. He's now in his 90s, but Herve Le grand was a professor there at the Ansout Catholique. So all those people, yeah, shaped me in a big way and gave a certain flavor. Corbin especially introduced me to Balthazar and to Dulubach and that whole tradition, which to this day has a big impact on me.
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A
Perhaps we're jumping the gun a little bit here, but you're headed back to France. So tell us a little about what kind of project you're working on.
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B
Well, this is the now long delayed Cathedral project, delayed because of COVID for two summers and then delayed because I was sent to Minnesota. So I had to move here. But I'd written a script based on the Notre dame fire from 2019. Just trying to explain why this galvanized the world. And so I did a script that talks about the kind of spirituality, theology implicit in those buildings. And so we're going back this summer finally to like Reims and Amiens and Paris and Chartres and other places to film and talk about these great buildings.
- [06:59]
A
Yeah, we're all really looking forward to that production.
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B
Yeah, good.
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A
Let's now go back to the past and the origin story of Word on Fire. So where, to the extent it's possible to pinpoint any sort of specific time, would you locate the beginning of Word on Fire?
- [07:12]
B
I would locate it when I went to Sacred Heart Parish in Hubbard woods, which is north shore suburb of Chicago. I was helping out on weekends there at the time, and I wanted to get on the radio with a sermon program. And I was told that WGN, which is the big Chicago radio station for $50,000 would let me have a year at 5:15 on Sunday morning for 15 minutes. So I got up at all the masses, the pastor gave me permission, and I asked for that money. I said, I need $50,000 everybody to get on the radio at 5:15. And they all laughed, you know, but I think they liked me well enough that they gave me the money. And so I would say that's the beginning of it. When I got on the radio, started doing those sermons and then we began to house them on a website. So this is way back when websites. I barely knew what a website was, but a website was established and we needed a name for it. And I didn't want it to be called, you know, Bishop or Father Barron's Sermons or something. So eventually it was Father Steve and the great Paul Murray, you know, my Dominican friend, the spiritual writer and great poet Father Steve. We were playing with Light of Fire on the earth. I've come to light a fire, the word. So finally Father Steve said, word on Fire. And Paul Murray said, you won't do any better than that. And that's where the name came from. And so it was to name the website. So that's the very beginning. That's around the year 2000 when all that was going on.
- [08:41]
A
What were your expectations when you purchased this time at 5:15 in the morning in a Chicago media market?
- [08:47]
B
You know what it was? It was just to do something. I knew it was like a comically bad time. I mean, I understood that of course, but I thought, all right, it's something. And I just felt a certain call, I suppose, that the church wasn't doing enough with the media and it would be a start. It was a foot in the door. It was something, it was a seed. That's how I thought about it, that maybe would grow and maybe we could get a better. I remember even from the beginning, kind of trying to negotiate for a better time. We were right before, as I remember, the Lutheran hour. So I was on for 15 minutes. Then there was a Lutheran and they Had a whole hour later in the morning too. Yeah, right. So I probably was aspiring to a better time, but it was just that sense of I felt called to it more. That to me is a big part of Word on Fire is I just felt called to do these things without a super clear sense of, oh, here's how it's going to go and there's our distribution plan and that's my trajectory. I didn't really know. I was kind of inspired to do it and so we just did it.
- [09:50]
A
Is there something similar in the origins of the Catholicism series as well? Oh, yeah, let's just go do this.
- [09:55]
B
Yes, absolutely. And that was prompted by a board member way back when saying, what's your dream project? Because I was doing little things here and there and they were all good and they said, that's terrific. But like, hey, go crazy, what's your dream project? So I laid out the Catholicism series, go around the world, do a 10 part documentary, talk about the faith, but show it in its beauty. And they said, all right, great, let's do that. So we had to get the cardinal's permission, Cardinal George at the time, and we needed about $3 million, which is a shoestring budget. Anyone. Even at that time, that was a shoestring budget. But you know, we managed to get both. We got the cardinals permission and then we had the harder job of getting the money. And we scraped and scraped and scraped and begged and bagged in Chicago first and then around the country. And when we got enough money to go on a trip, we went and we managed to get, in the course of about two years, the 10 episodes filmed. But same thing there. You're right, I did that. And people would say to me, what? Well, what's your distribution strategy? And I would think, I didn't say this out loud. I think, what's a distribution strategy?
- [11:00]
A
What's your market research? Bishop?
- [11:01]
B
I had none. I had none of any kind at the time. But we all felt, all of us who were involved, a small group all around the same age, myself and Father Steve with the rest lay people, we all kind of felt this summons to do it and to do it at a high level and that it might make a difference. But beyond that we didn't know. We didn't know.
- [11:26]
A
You've mentioned the late Cardinal George of Chicago a few times. Say a little bit more about his role in the founding and spirit, animating spirit of the ministry to this day.
- [11:35]
B
It was just that, you know, a couple of things he knew. Certainly. Keep in mind this is the church in like, 2005, 2006, right in the wake of the sex abuse scandals, diocese is going bankrupt. Chicago didn't go bankrupt. But, you know, the church was in tough shape financially. He knew the church was not able to bankroll this project. And to this day, I've never gotten a pending money from the church. And I don't say that with an ounce of reproach, not at all. I mean, I totally understand the church had its difficulties. He encouraged us to be independent. He encouraged me. He said, set this up as something independent. I think he intuited the church wasn't able the time to really get it going. And he thought it would, I think, be more efficacious if we had our own kind of identity, our own fundraising, et cetera. So practically, he made a big difference. But more importantly, he was the animating spirit, as you say, behind it, from John Paul ii. He got this strong sense of evangelizing the culture. And then he turned to me at a certain point and said, I want you to do that in Chicago. And together we kind of thought that through what that would look like in the beginning in Chicago. I love these. Actually, I did talks at these clubs in downtown Chicago. University Club and Union League Club, great places downtown. And the conceit was we will invite business people to come at their lunch hour. They'll come at noon. We'd serve them a quick but nice lunch, and then I would speak for 20 minutes, and then they'd all go home. And that was the idea. And people came in good numbers and filled up these cool rooms at these clubs, you know, And I spoke on a whole slew of different things about God, about Jesus, about the church, about the moral life, you know. So we did that, I think, very successfully. But I remember going to him afterwards, after a couple years of this, and said, you reminisce. This is great. I think what we're doing, it really is. I think it's good for the church. It's good for our, you know, for the people who come. But there's something very 19th century about it. I'm gathering people in ornate rooms and giving them formal lectures. I said, that's great, but Newman could have done that in the 19th century. But we now have. And this was right at the moment when the new media are just coming into existence. Now it's our whole universe. But in those days, YouTube and Instagram and all that were just coming into being. I said, we now have a means to communicate so much more widely. Well, he didn't get that world. It was totally alien to him. He loved, like me, he loved books and he loved writing, scribbling and, you know, margins of Newman's sermons and all this. But he understood, okay, that is the wave of the future. And so then we kind of transitioned out of gathering people in ornate rooms to using the new media. And then he saw, he got the Catholicism series as, okay, there's a prime example of how to do this. So he was behind it all the way.
- [14:31]
A
You've also mentioned Father Steve a few times. Yeah. Who's the current CEO of Word on Fire. Say a little bit about how the two of you began to work together.
- [14:39]
B
Well, it began at Mundelein Seminary. I'm in my second year of teaching, I think, because I'm only about 32 years old. I was older than or younger than a lot of my students in those days. Father Steve was in that first year class when I was in my second year of teaching. So he was a student of mine and he just stood out as the brightest student I've taught. So I knew he was this rather extraordinary figure. And then when he was ordained after that, we became friends. So he was there with me from the beginning. So he was ordained in 97, I think it was. So then just a few years later, I get started and everything I was doing, I would talk to him about it, I would work it through with him. And he's a person of extraordinary creativity. And, you know, almost every major step we've taken institutionally at Ward on Fire is his idea. So from the beginning, in his quiet way, he's kind of directed the work. And I came to rely very much on his wisdom and, you know, insights. So that's how it started. He was my student.
- [15:43]
A
Let's look now at some of the major developments in the history of Word on Fire, one of them. And you haven't been able to do it recently, but it made a major impact is your outreach to the secular culture on your Ask me anything or AMAs on Reddit, which, for those in our audience who don't know, Reddit is a huge kind of social media site, especially a gathering place for young people, and has a, let's say, highly irreverent, irreligious even kind of reputation. But you decided, I'm going to go on that site.
- [16:13]
B
I loved it.
- [16:14]
A
Yeah. So what was that like?
- [16:15]
B
I didn't know anything about it. And I think it was Brandon Vaught, who's very much younger than I am and more plugged in to that world. He told me about it. And I said, oh, it's like the quad liberal questions in the Middle Ages.
- [16:26]
A
Just like that?
- [16:26]
B
Yes, because in the Middle Ages, quad libet means whatever you want. And so people, you know, the teacher would come in and then in some of these sessions, he'd just say, okay, what's on your mind? Ask me anything. So when I heard about this Reddit thing, I said, it's like what Thomas Aquinas did. University of Paris. Now, I'm sure the people that talked to Aquinas were at a little higher level of sophistication, but the same idea. And here, you know, I would just go in there and say, I'm Bishop Robert Barron. I love dialoguing with atheists and non believers, something like that. And people, they didn't know who I was from Adam, but I think the years I did it after, maybe, like Jordan Peterson and Bernie Sanders, it was the most popular of the year. And it just. People are interested in religion and, you know, you couldn't begin to answer everything. But I had fun. I loved it. I would stay for several hours on the site and people would just come up with questions and you have to kind of give a quick answer. But I enjoyed it very much, and it was very informative to me because I've written about it. You could discern pretty quickly. You have to work through all the obscenity and the silliness, but you could discern pretty readily. All right, here are the five major questions people have. And it's like having a good public opinion poll. And I'm not just, you know, blowing smoke. Here's concrete evidence of what's on the minds. And on that side, it's mostly younger men, I would say. What are they concerned about? And I can tell you. So I like that about it. It was very informative. And I just, I have a bit of the French call the joie de combat, you know, the joy of getting into the fight. Yeah, I enjoy that. And there's this famous one, someone asked me, do you think your religion is better than all the others? And I said yes. And it's become one of these memes. They have me on there, like the hard guys saying yes, you know, but I sort of got a kick out of it.
- [18:24]
A
Are you surprised now that sort of fast forwarding to the future that that contingent young men who are highly online, who used to be very enamored with the new atheists, have now become sort of the source of a religious revival, specifically in Christianity?
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B
Very interesting.
- [18:37]
A
Does that surprise you?
- [18:38]
B
Yeah, it surprises me, but I find it really interesting. And that's the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and lots of other people.
- [18:43]
A
Well, you were there, too.
- [18:45]
B
Yeah, I suppose, in my own way. But no, that's been kind of a delightful surprise.
- [18:50]
A
Let's now turn to your Sunday sermons. So they have their roots going all the way back to the Chicago media market, but they've grown exponentially and are oftentimes cited by people as being the fundamental reason why they've come back to the church or started taking Catholicism seriously. So a couple questions there. How have your sermons sort of developed over time? And two, how do you keep the material fresh? That's a question we very frequently get.
- [19:14]
B
Yeah, you know, I've been preaching for my whole priesthood, so it's 38 years now I've been preaching. Oh, I suppose they've changed in a lot of ways. And going back to my earliest days as a preacher, I've always loved preaching. I've been a student of great preachers over the centuries. I used to teach a course at the seminary called the Christology of the Poets and Preachers. So I take that very seriously. I don't know. I'd have to think more about that, how they've evolved. You know, when I was trained as a young guy, it was very much in the. What we call the experiential expressivist model, which means you begin with human experience and you find doctrines that correspond to that and you kind of move into the doctrine through the experience. I probably shifted away from that in my own theological thinking. I've done so. And I think in preaching, too, I become more Barthian. So Carl Barth said, the point is not to translate the Bible into accessible language. The point is to take people on a great journey into the jungle. So come with me and let me show you this thicket of people and events and weird happenings and characters, and through. And above all of it is this ultimately weird character called God. And let me introduce you to the biblical world. I think that's become much more my style of preaching. I get the experiential thing. When I was trained to preach, it was begin with a grabber. And the grabber meant something right out of people's experience that will get their attention and. And then move toward the Bible as kind of an explicitation of that or a more thematic expression of it. Fair enough. But something I found, Matt, when I was researching the great preachers, and I mean from the Fathers through Fulton Sheen. No one preaches like that, not one of them. And it struck me with extraordinary power. We're talking, like, from the 2nd century until the 21st century, none of the preachers. So think of Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Anth, Aquinas, Newman, none of them preach that way. Look at Newman's sermons. Newman does not begin with a grabber and then back his way toward the Bible. It's a thicket of the Bible. Aquinas. We have his preaching. So that struck me, and I think that changed my own preaching.
- [21:40]
A
That's really illuminating. I think that's why you're. Your preaching has become so popular. Say a little bit about the COVID period of the ministry, because that's when your sermons really, they exploded in terms of their exposure.
- [21:51]
B
They came from that. Because you're right in saying word on fire, in a way, begins with preaching. And I've been doing it all this time. But see, Covid, I remember the day, it was St. Patrick's Day. We had just shut down the whole country. And so I was with Father Steve, and I think Doug was there and some others, and we said, what are we going to do now? We can't go anywhere. How are we going to carry this forward? And again, it was Father Steve, which is typical. He said, well, we should just record Mass every day. We should have mass from your chapel, and we'll get that out. And so we started, and the guys came. I remember we put the lights and the cameras. My chapel was about as big as this table. You know, it was a tiny chapel, and they would bring that stuff in there. And Father Steve would preach, too, sometimes say the Mass. But I prayed in most of them. And then those proved to be very popular because people were starving and they were isolated from each other and from the church. I hear it all the time that I started following you with COVID Your Mass during COVID got my attention. So when Covid calmed down and the churches reopened, I said, look, we should stop doing this because I don't want people coming on tv. They should be going to church. But then again, it was Father Steve. He said, yeah, but let's continue with the preaching. So not Mass every day, but do a Sunday sermon. So that's where they came from. And I think what happened was we had this audience now built in. And then I continued every Sunday with the sermon, and then the audience built up. And it's a very strong audience now.
- [23:23]
A
On many platforms and continues to grow exponentially. Let's look at the Bishop Barron Presents series. What's the origins of that?
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B
The origins of that? I always loved William F. Buckley's firing Line. So as a kid, I used to watch him, and it was Buckley, you know, just in this sort of swivel chair, and there's some. One other person. And for an hour they would talk about very serious things. And it's hard to imagine a show like that making it today, but it was on for like 35 years.
- [23:56]
A
It was, yeah.
- [23:57]
B
And I used to be fascinated by Buckley because his use of language and all that and his very quirky personality. But it was just a fascinating sort of format. And so what I wanted to do was we operate at different levels at Word on Fire. We've got the sermons, we've got podcasts, we have a program like this. I've got articles that I write. I wanted to do something that was at a very high level of conversation to bring in some very serious people. And that was the idea behind it. And it was experimental, like everything we've done. But I've just grown to love those shows. And we have a bit of a variety. We get people. I just had Trevor Williams in this room, the baseball player. And we've had philosophers and ethicians and metaphysicians. So I love that one on one conversation format. And that's where that came from.
- [24:46]
A
Do you have a short list of some interviews or conversations you'd still like to have? Some people?
- [24:50]
B
Oh, I'd like to have. Bob Dylan would be number one. If he's listening. Bob, if you're listening. I'd love to talk to him. You know, I'd love to talk to the Coen brothers, my favorite filmmakers. I think the. The most spiritually alert filmmakers. Tarantino as well, I mean, is a great filmmaker, but the Coen brothers are really plugged in. I think. I'd love to talk to them about their movies. I don't know. Those are a few on my mind.
- [25:17]
A
Well, just the. Those names that you've. You've identified really captures the spirit of Bishop Barron Presents that the kinds of conversations that people are talking to are not explicitly religious, and yet all kinds of.
- [25:30]
B
Look at Shia LaBeouf. I'm one of the most popular we've had. We did talk about religion quite a bit, but beginning with him, and it was a grace. I met him out in California and then he was willing to come on and tell his story. And that's proven to be so powerful for a lot of people, that little conversation.
- [25:48]
A
Well, we're part of the Word on Fire show right now. That's what we're recording. Say a little about its origins and what you wanted to accomplish with that.
- [25:55]
B
Yeah, I remember very distinctly it was your predecessor, Brandon Vaught, who's still, of course, our publication director. But Brandon came to me, it was right around the time I became a bishop. And he said, you know, you do these weekly articles every 10 days. And he said, you know, what's really popular right now is this sort of podcast format. And this is the, you know, probably when Joe Rogan and those people were just kind of getting going. And I didn't know much about it, but he said, the idea is, you know, like two people to sit down. And he said, what we could do is talk about your article and just develop it and get new perspectives on it. And right away I just said, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do that. Well, then I'm named a bishop and I'm sent out to California. And I remember the very first one was, yeah, Brandon was. I think he was there. Maybe I have that wrong, but it was at my desk in my little room at the LA Cathedral. And I had just become a bishop. And that was our very first Word on Fire show. And then, gosh, we've done how many? You would know.
- [26:57]
A
We're close to 500. Close.
- [26:59]
B
Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. But that began with Brandon's idea, and then he did it for a long time. And then you've taken over beautifully from Brandon. But no, I love this sort of podcast format.
- [27:10]
A
So over the course of your ministry, you've also had the opportunity to speak at some very high profile venues. What are some of them that stick out in your memory and what you feel like you accomplished being in those venues?
- [27:21]
B
I loved at the Library of Congress, at the invitation of Representative Tom Suozzi. We'll be doing, in fact, Bishop Baron presents with him.
- [27:30]
A
Oh, good.
- [27:31]
B
Yeah. But Suozzi's a wonderful guy and invited me. He's been following me for a long time. His wife followed me, I think. And he said, would you ever come to Washington and speak to, you know, the world of government and Congress? And I said, yeah, sure. So he got it set up and it was at the Library of Congress and loved that. It was a great opportunity. I spoke, I've done it twice now, but in Parliament in London. And that was a thrill. Both times in rooms, kind of. One was the Churchill Room, which is in the House of Commons. One was in this sort of room overlooking the Thames. That was an amazing experience. I love that. I think of last summer, the biggest crowd I ever talked to live was in Indianapolis at the Eucharistic Congress, at the. What was it called? The oil Stadium. And I followed Jesus. I say, Jonathan Roumie came out right before me, right, to address the people. And then I walk out there and I've spoken to big crowds before, but never 50,000. That was amazing. That was an extraordinary venue.
- [28:34]
A
So, yeah, this was some time ago. But you've also been on the campuses, right, of Google and Facebook and Amazon?
- [28:40]
B
I have.
- [28:41]
A
Sort of in the belly of the beast.
- [28:42]
B
Yeah. But they were great to me and they invited. When I was in California, both Google and Facebook invited me and I loved them. We were not in big rooms. I maybe spoke to, I don't know, a couple hundred people at those places, but of course they were filmed and then they went up on YouTube all over the place. And they were very kind to me, very good to me. And what I did there on purpose, I didn't talk about like hot button issues. I talked about the one was religion and the opening of the mind. My point there was, and I think it's true in all of our great people, is the quest for God means that your mind never stops searching for truth. It's always higher, higher, higher. It is nothing against any legitimate form of reason. You know, I was trying to get over this prejudice that somehow religion is this cramped superstition that's opposed to reason. On the contrary, it's the opening up of the mind. Then wasn't the. The other one was something about how to have a religious argument and just making the point? You know, it's not just people shouting at each other. It's not like you people deal with reason and we deal with something else. There's a way to, to have an argument about religion in public. And it looks like the following. So they're very much designed to engage those more skeptical secular audiences.
- [30:00]
A
Well, you mentioned that you spoke now twice in the UK and specifically in Parliament. This is part of a larger initiative that you have to expand our presence. Written on Fire's presence in the uk Say a little more why that's important to you.
- [30:14]
B
I just want this thing to grow. Jesus said speak to preach to all nations. And so I don't see a limit to it. I'd love to see the model that we've developed here happen around first. The English speaking world. That's a great thing, Matt. I never would have dreamed that 25 years ago when I was sitting in the basement of the administration building at Mundelein and a little microphone and articulating my sermon for 5, 15 in the morning. I wasn't thinking that someday, because of the Internet and the English language, these words could go out to the whole world, but they do. And that struck me most recently when I was at the synod in Rome, and I'm in the room with 400 bishops and others from all over the planet, and people coming up to me that they listen to my sermons or their priests follow what I do. And it's a marvelous grace that's been the grace of Word on Fire, that it goes out to the whole world. And so I want that in an institutional way to continue. So you. The UK is to establish a headquarters, an office over in London as a base of operations, but I'd love that in all the major cities of the world.
- [31:21]
A
So two major pillars now of the evangelical work we do are the publishing arm of Word on Fire and of course, the Institute as well. So say a little bit more about each one of those. What did you hope to accomplish in founding the publishing arm, and what do you hope to accomplish with the Institute, especially as we're looking towards the future now?
- [31:37]
B
Yeah, well, the institute 2018, I think we founded that. And, you know, in a way, think of some of the great orders begin usually with a men's order, the first, then a women's order, the second, then a third order, which is the laity associated with the charism. Right. It's like a third order Franciscan or a third order Dominican, in a way. We kind of started the other way that we started with the laity. The idea there is Word on Fire is meant to evangelize directly, but also to train evangelists, the laity, if Vatican II is right, you know, the universal call of holiness, every baptized person is priest, prophet and king. Therefore, they're obliged to evangelize. Well, what most laypeople say when I bring that up is some version of bishop. I don't know how to do that. How do I evangelize? Well, that's the point of the institute, is to train laypeople, help them to evangelize. And so we try to give them, through these courses, various tools, theological, spiritual, practical, that will help them evangelize. So that's where the Institute started. Very proud of it. It's still largely an online reality. I'd like to ground it and really get it established on the ground and get people in direct communication with each other. But that's where that started the publication. I give Brandon Vaught all the credit there. We started, I don't know, several years ago now. I think one of my Books. The Seeds of the Word maybe was the first one that we actually published. And, you know, in the beginning, it's funny, you know, we said, oh, we better talk to publishers and see if we can get something published. But then it just dawned on all of us, like, you know, we could do this. Instead of farming it out to other people, we could do it. We could actually employ people to, you know, to print these things and create. And we have creative people. And so we started. And by God, I'll say it proudly, I think they're the most beautiful books out there. I think they outdo the other publishing houses in terms of the beauty of the book, the quality of what we're publishing, the range of titles, and they've been selling, I mean, like a hotcakes. So Word on Fire Publishing became almost overnight, one of the most, I don't know what the exact numbers are, but one of the most prominent Catholic publishing houses in the English speaking world. And it was born of that conviction. Like, you know, I think we could actually do this ourselves. And they've done it, I think, beautifully.
- [34:01]
A
That's a very deeply word on fire instinct there. Why don't we just do this?
- [34:05]
B
Why don't we just do it?
- [34:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah. We'll say a little about the Bible project in particular. That's been one of the most beautiful offerings.
- [34:12]
B
One of the things we've done that I'm proudest of, that Bible. And again, that was born many years ago. The idea which was, you know, the Bible's the soul of theology, the Bible is the soul of evangelization. But a lot of Catholics don't know the Bible very well at all. All the years I've said Mass, you know, at different places and sitting up there in the chair and the first reading is going on and how often I'm thinking, you know, I bet 99% of the people out there don't know what's going on. And I don't say it to make fun of people at all. I'm just saying, do they know any context for this reading? But you can't understand Jesus apart from the Old Testament. So I had this conviction we got to get better at the Bible. And of course, it's a Vatican II idea. Right. Well, how do you do it? We had this idea that, yeah, we could publish another edition of the Bible in tiny print and double columned and lots of footnotes. Or we could do it beautifully, that the text is beautifully printed, relatively easy to read. Some we don't really have footnotes in the Books, but commentary around the text from the great fathers and from the saints and from the popes and so on that help to illuminate us. So you're reading a passage and you're like, I don't kind of know what that means. Well, right there, right on the page is one of the great masters of the tradition, telling you, you know, or giving you an angle on it. But then the third step is to make the book itself beautiful. So they're beautifully printed, the leather covers, but also the artwork inside of them. All of that coming together produces the effect of those books. When the first one came out. I love this. They're printed in Italy. It was during, if I remember right, it was during COVID And Covid hit northern Italy really badly, if you remember. And it affected the printing house and all this. I think we called for 50,000 copies, thinking it's like in the summer. Oh, well, you know, I mean, maybe by Christmas time, maybe we'll sell somewhere near that amount. They sold out in like two weeks, I think it was. And the trouble is, there we were, suddenly we had no more copies. And we couldn't just go like, hey, you know, give us 100,000 more. They said it'll take us weeks to do that. So we had to wait, I think two months maybe for these books to be made, and then Covid raging and then shipped across the ocean. But that volume one, the Gospels I sold, I don't know, I mean, huge numbers. And then we've done. Heck, is it five? I think so far, the whole project is seven. I've been working on Bible commentary for the past five years because I've been trying to. To fill up my contribution to it. I'm almost finished now. So that's been a multi year project, but it's a beautiful one.
- [37:10]
A
Well, we're almost out of time here, Bishop, so let's now shift our focus to the future. What most excites you about the future of Word on Fire, including the Order of Priests?
- [37:19]
B
Well, that's it. I'd say the Order of Priests. And it's an experiment. We'll see. Maybe people have heard about that. I'm afraid that, you know, if I'm hit by a bus this afternoon, Word on Fire would be over. And I don't want that. I think what we've done is something that's really worthwhile. And what's the best way to guarantee its continuance? You could say, well, I should find a successor. Okay, but wouldn't a better idea be establish an Order of priests with the same sort of charism that would carry this work of evangelization, the use of the new media, doing it in a beautiful way, intellectually informed, reaching out to the unaffiliated people who are on like, Reddit, ama, that would take everything we've been talking about for the past half hour and now make that the charism for their order. So that's what excites me the most when I think about it. Every morning, I do my holy hour, and I keep turning this over to the Lord and saying, look, if you want this, make it happen. It's an idea I've had. David, to be fair, had the idea to build the temple to the Lord, and it was a good idea. But the Lord said, but not you, pal. It's going to be your son. Right? So, okay. God will do what God wants to do. And so I've just said to him, all right, Lord, it's up to you.
- [38:35]
A
And finally, Bishop, what would you like to say to the Word on Fire donors and the members of the Word on Fire Institute?
- [38:40]
B
God bless you and thank you for your participation and the donors, without you, we couldn't do it, period. We do make money from sale of products, and that's terrific, but there's no way we could do all this work simply based on that. We've always depended. I've always been like a Franciscan with my beggar's bowl. I've always felt that way from the beginning, from that time at Sacred Heart Parish when I said, hey, everybody, can I have $50,000? I've always been in that stance of I got my beggars bowl. And I'm just asking, could you help me with this? And people have responded beautifully to that. So that's my word is gratitude to them and the institute members. It's go forth, you know, go forth and preach to all nations.
- [39:24]
A
Well, it's now time for our listener question. Today we have Jim from Illinois asking about how he might be able to become a part of this future Word on Fire religious order.
- [39:34]
B
Oh, okay. Hi, my name is Jim from Orland Park, Illinois. I just heard the wonderful news that Bishop Barron is forming a new order within the Catholic Church. While I wouldn't qualify as a priest or a novice, I'd like to be the first one on the list for the third order of Bishop Barron's Word on Fire order. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. As I said, that's good, because I didn't know this question was coming. We already have it in a way, I would say to our caller, join the Word on Fire Institute would be the best way to be part of basically the third order. So that's an easy answer.
- [40:18]
A
Well, thanks so much, Jim, for your question. If you would like to ask Bishop Barron a question for a future Word on Fire show episode, please visit askbishopbarron.com that's askbishopbarron.com as always, we love to hear from you. Oh, Bishop, fantastic conversation as always. Look forward to the next.
- [40:36]
B
All right.
- [40:37]
A
That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us on the Word on Fire Show. If you're interested in learning more about how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist with and for others, and work for the common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute. Check us out at institute.WordPress.org that's institute.WordPress.org we'll see you next time.
- [41:04]
B
It.