← The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
WOF 526: The Early Days w/ Bishop Barron & Fr. Steve (pt. 1)
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Patrucic, senior director of the Word On Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. In 2025, the Word on Fire ministry celebrated its 25th anniversary. And in October of that same year, Bishop Barron and Word on Fire CEO Father Steve Grunow gave a presentation at the good news conference in Orlando in which the two men took a deep dive into Word on Fire's origins. How did it begin? What were its animating principles? What were some of its earliest strategies? Where did the name Word on Fire even come from? Why in short, did Word on Fire develop the way that it did? Here to discuss these roots with Father Steve Gruno in the first half of an hour long conversation is Bishop Robert Barron.
- [00:56]
B
From the very beginning, Word on Fire was open to trying new things, to experimenting, to, you know, trying to be bold in what they, in what they did, trying to do something, trying to take a chance. And that, that in many ways is the theme of our 25th anniversary, which is refers to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5, in which Jesus exhorts his disciples to go out into the deep, to be bold, to go out into the deep, which is rendered in Latin as Duke in altum. And that's kind of the theme of our 25th anniversary. It also meshes nicely with the theme of this year's good news conference, Hope. Because at the very beginning of Word on Fire, it wasn't much more than hope. And that hope was obviously well placed with that. I think you all know Bishop Barron, in some way, there are so many different ways that people have come to Word on Fire, but you've gotten to know him over the years. Perhaps less well known is Father Steve Gruno, who was there from the beginning and serves as the CEO and executive producer of Word on Fire. Father Steve is a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago who is on what seems to be permanent assignment to Word On Fire. We're fortunate that the cardinal archbishops of Chicago have, have allowed him to be attached to Word on Fire and serve as our CEO. So with that, I thought we would obviously try to go back to the very beginnings of Word on Fire. And I know there's a million different stories on how Word on Fire came together, how it started, how it began to gain some traction. But in your guys words, how do you think about how Word on Fire started? Well, that's a great answer. It's a miracle, really, ladies and gentlemen.
- [02:57]
C
We don't think I've told this Story before, maybe you heard it, but of a priest friend that both of us know very well, Father Wayne Prist, who's a Chicago priest, and late 1990s, I was out to lunch with him, and I was complaining about the fact that the Catholic Church was behind the curve when it comes to the use of media. That, you know, Fulton Sheen did it. Then we dropped the ball, and the Protestants are way ahead of us. And I was going on and on, and he was listening, but then finally said to me, well, what are you doing about it? Just like that. And I first kind of sputtered a little protest, like, well, what do you mean? I'm a professor of theology and I'm writing books. And he said, well, then stop complaining about it. And I must admit, it kind of stuck in my craw a bit. And that's what prompted me first to go to WGN Radio, if any Chicagoans or Midwesterners are here. You know, big radio station in Chicago. But I went to them and just for fun, they didn't know who I was. And I said, what would it cost for me to have, like, a sermon program? And they said, well, for $50,000, we can get you on every Sunday morning at 5:15. So I went to the parish I was helping out at the time, Sacred Heart in Hubbard woods. And I told them just that. I said, okay, for 50,000. And they all laughed, as you did when I proposed it. And then they gave me the $50,000. So I got on the radio, and then it was soon after that that another good friend, now he's gone to the Lord, but he said, you know, you should put these sermons up on a website. And at the time, I said, quite stupidly, what's a website? I don't know what that was. So he. This fellow started the website, and we wanted to come up with a name. And I didn't want it to be, you know, Father Barron's sermon. So we maybe tell the story later, but came up with word on fire to name the website. And that's really how it got off the ground. Was this priest challenging me? My sense of, we need to do something as a Catholic church to get more in this game. Now, mind you, we're before the social media at this point. This is prior to, you know, YouTube and Facebook and all that. But I just wanted to use the old media, radio and tv, in a more creative way. So that's really how it got going.
- [05:13]
B
But at the same time those initial thoughts were happening, there were things going on in the larger church. Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelization. And that was a major thread at the beginning.
- [05:28]
D
Bishop Barrett and I were having many, many conversations about Saint Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelization. And the church was spilling, as it often does, a lot of ink in that, and not much was coming of it. And one of the conclusions I presented to Bishop Barron is that I think that the church's efforts at evangelization were getting off the rails, being lost in kind of bureaucracy or a bureaucratic approach, as if you could create an office of evangelization and have anything happen. I said, what's missing here is that you don't have evangelization without an evangelist. There has to be someone who has the charism of evangelization itself in order for that to happen. That's why Billy Graham was the. Was the evangelist. He was, because he had a charism of the Holy Spirit to introduce people to Jesus Christ. And so with that in mind, Word on Fire was configured as the ministry of an evangelist, Father Robert Barron, or now Bishop Robert Barron.
- [06:44]
B
Very good. And in those early years, I mean, you were. You were dealing with the sermons on wgn.
- [06:52]
C
You were.
- [06:52]
B
You played with putting the sermons on a website. Once you figured out what that was, something like YouTube was brand new at that point. And I think you people call you a pioneer in media evangelization, but I think you've described it as, hey, here's this thing that's out there. Let's give it a try, right?
- [07:11]
C
Our first YouTube video was February 2007. So I think I had just heard about it. And at the time, the YouTube was largely, you know, my cat jumps off the roof. It was like, you know, silly little things. But I remember thinking, well, why don't we try it? You know, I could just go on and talk about movies or about books or. And honest to God, I had zero idea whether it would be watched by anyone, whether it would be successful. It was a complete experiment. And the first one we did, if you go back, it was Scorsese's movie, the Departed, I had just seen. And I thought, well, I'll talk about some spiritual themes in that movie. First one we did, and when we got to 300 views, I remember I was thrilled, really. 300 people watched the video. I really was, sincerely. Because it wasn't clear my mother was watching, so. And then the other breakthrough with YouTube, and it really was a surprise, was the comments. I didn't know my social media was brand new. And people were. I said, oh, they're making comments on my video. How nice. You know, And I look. And of course, 90% of them were attacking God or me or the church. And at first I was sort of flabbergasted, but then it really gave traction. It was an opportunity. So I could say, well, wait a minute, you know, and I would respond. And of course, people like that. They like when there's an exchange of ideas. And that's how it got going. And then the other thing was frequency. We just decided, let's just keep making these one after the other. Let's keep trying, put a new one out there. Put a new one out there. And eventually the audience, you know, built up. And now you just watch. The number of views is approaching a quarter of a billion now on YouTube.
- [09:01]
D
The other thing is St. John Paul II said, the new evangelization is new in order, new in methods, and new in expressions. And I think at the time, Bishop and I noticed that that was everything that evangelization. The church wasn't that we were trapped. We were trapped in older forms of evangelization and there were these newer forms of media that were emerging, and it just seemed like a natural fit. We can do the old media like radio and television, but we should immerse ourselves in these new methods and new expressions and you see the result today. And I really think it's a true statement that Bishop Barron was the Catholic pioneer in that form of evangelization.
- [09:55]
B
It's interesting talking about the early YouTube videos because they were certainly viewed, things were discussed through a Catholic lens, but you were very much taking, taking part in the culture and word on fire. One of our mottos or our themes is proclaiming Christ in the culture. Let's talk about that a little bit. But it had the ancillary effect of so many people found you because they were looking for non religious topics.
- [10:27]
D
Entirely intentional.
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B
Yeah.
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D
So when we talked about how to do this in terms of strategy, we noted that there's kind of two dimensions to the church's proclamation. One is ad intra, that's inside of the church, and then there's ad extra outside of the church. And so we didn't want to just hit the ad intra because there's lots of that in the church. And in a sense for us Catholics, it's easier to do that. The add extra is a little bit more tricky because you have to find something to draw people in to what the message is going to be. It was no accident that the first of the YouTube videos was not a video on Catholic catechesis It was a film review of Martin Scorsese's the Departed. We have continued with that trajectory since then, that we had the ad intra dimension of proclamation. But more significant for Word on Fire is the ad extra. It's Christ in the culture. It's Christ proclaimed in the culture. That's significant to the mission. And it's had tremendous impact.
- [11:38]
C
One story to concretize that from the early days is a person wrote to us and they had just joined the church, right? But then she gave us the trajectory. It was. She's just, you know, surfing on the web one night. So she's googling Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen linked her to Martin Sheen, Charlie's father, the actor from Martin Sheen. She went to Fulton Sheen because Martin Sheen, it's true, took his name from Fulton Sheen. He was Martin Estevez, and he took the sage's name Sheen. So she goes Charlie Sheen to Martin Sheen to Fulton Sheen, which led her to Catholic preaching, which led her to me. And then that started her on a journey toward the ocia. And I thought, well, okay, that's the beauty with all its darkness. I mean, I get the dark side of the. Of the web, but that's the beauty of it, that it's. It's sticky, as they say, right? People, you can find. You can attract people in unexpected ways.
- [12:36]
D
And it's also why you've advanced the conversation outside of kind of church conversations. So it's kind of like, let's go talk to Jordan Peterson, or let's go talk to Lex Friedman, or let's go talk to someone else who's out in the culture, and let's facilitate a conversation there. And once it's out there in the culture, then it inadvertently or through the work of the Holy Spirit, we should say it draws people in.
- [13:05]
C
Jordan is a good example. Some people online today signing books tell me about this, but I hear it all the time is Jordan Peterson had several conversations with me over the years, and people interested in him would then find something about me. And he's like this pontifex. He's a bridge builder. You know, I said to him one time, you're. You live up to your name. You're the River Jordan that a lot of people cross, even though he. I don't know where he is in terms of the promised land yet, you know, but they cross over him to get to religion very often. But that wouldn't happen unless we had done an outreach to Jordan Peterson when, When.
- [13:41]
B
When Word on Fire was in its infancy and you were trying all These things when. What were you. What were you hoping to accomplish?
- [13:48]
C
The Catholicism series, Maybe we'll get to that. But people said you should really talk about, you know, birth control and talk about the sexual morality. No, I don't want the church bickering with itself. I want the proclamation. You know, I wanted what people, when they first read Matthew's gospel, you know, I don't think their conclusion was, let's not use birth control. And I'm not for a minute making fun of that. You know what I'm saying, though, that when you read Matthew's gospel, you got a sense of, all right, the proclamation of Jesus risen from the dead. And I felt the church had kind of turned in on itself too much. And I wanted the outward proclamation to be paramount in what we were doing.
- [14:25]
D
And then it's a question of what is the outward proclamation? And it's an emphasis on. It should be an emphasis on introducing people to Jesus. Like, that's the source of evangelization. That's the reason to evangelize.
- [14:39]
A
And.
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D
And that's the subject of evangelization. So getting to the Catholicism series. The Catholicism series doesn't start with an excursive on the church, a kind of an outline of how the church is organized and functions and who has this authority and who is responsible for this, or kind of a list of hot button issues. The Catholicism series begins with an introduction of Jesus. And that was absolutely intentional. And it's the intentionality of Word on Fire. It's like we're trying to draw people into a relationship with Christ in the church. And so the introduction to Christ is fundamental, and everything is directed towards doing that.
- [15:22]
B
The Catholicism series, you've talked about really being the thing that put Word on Fire on the map. And can you talk about the origins of that and how it played out, how the filming came together and what. What it meant to Word on Fire and its trajectory of growth.
- [15:41]
C
It started, I'd say, when I was a young teenager and watched Kenneth Clark Civilization, that marvelous series about Western civilization done by this master of Western art. And it was a visually compelling, deeply intelligent presentation. And I long had the idea of doing something like that for Catholicism. So this was maybe mid 19, 2000s, and we were kind of underway, institutionally doing the YouTube and, you know, beginning the. I had some retreats that were on EWTN and so on, but our board met and the question came to me, well, what's. What's your dream project? If you could do anything, what would it be? And I said that I Described the Catholicism series. I'd go around the world. I'd go to great, beautiful places. I'd talk about the faith and I'd show the splendors of a church. And so my board said, well, why don't you do that? I said, well, I need millions of dollars and the permission of the archbishop. And they said, well, we're going to get you the permission of the archbishop. And they. Were you part of that group that went down? There was a group. I didn't go with them. The board members went to see Cardinal George. I'm happy his picture's been popping up here because he's the grandfather of War on Fire.
- [16:50]
D
Do you notice how young we all look?
- [16:51]
C
I know, it's depressing. It's depressing. But they went to the cardinal and said, here's this idea, and would you be willing to let. I was a seminary professor at the time. Would you be willing to let him go to do this? And he said, I'll do whatever I can to make this happen. So we had that part of it dealt with, but then we had to raise. At the time, it was about $3 million, which is really shoestring budget when you think of this thing. And then we started this process of begging for money. I was like Franciscan beggar, just going around to households. I remember the very first time, it was somewhere on the North Shore in Chicago. I had nothing. I had an idea. That's it. That's all I had, an idea. And I said to these nice people, here's what I'm doing. And we think the thing will cost if you bring everything together, like 5 or 6 million. And I turned to you and I said, well, they haven't left the room yet, you know, so that's a good sign. But that's how we did it. And then we started filming 2008. And if you remember, the economy collapsed in the fall of 2008. So we had donors say, hey, Father, you know, I know I pledge, but I can't possibly give you money now. So we scraped and scraped and scraped and scraped. And when we got like 300,000 together, we'd say, okay, we can do another trip. And we'd take our little team. It was how many handful of people? The camera that filmed that whole series this big, it fit on the overhead compartment of the plane. So it was a small crew. But when we got to 300,000, we say, okay, let's go to the Holy Land. Let's go to Rome. Let's go to Turkey. Let's go to Africa, you know, and we somehow pulled it off. But like, with that, my sense was it's just something I think we have to do. And people would say to me at the fundraisers, what's your distribution strategy, Father? And I would say, what's a distribution strategy? I really did, I mean, I didn't know. I said, well, we're hoping it will get out widely. I just had this idea that it would be a really good thing to do. And then it was kind of a miracle of grace. I think that when we landed with it, we did find indeed a distribution strategy.
- [19:04]
D
And you know, Bishop's big emphasis for the Catholicism series was to get it on public television, to get it on pbs, because that would indicate the seriousness, the gravitas and the quality of the production, which it had those three things and we did that. But I'm looking at it at that time and saying a great change in learning models is taking place before our eyes, which is the transition from printed textbooks to screens. And I'm thinking this thing, this series is going to become the premier catechetical tool in the Catholic Church. And that's what we did. That's how we pushed it on that. So it was like a screen based catechism and it did its job because we've talked to people and one of our friends, who's a professor, I believe, at Harvard University, refers to the Bishop Barron generation. And it's a generation of now young adults who were catechized by Bishop Barron's screen based ministry. We made a conscious and deliberate decision to sell it ourselves rather than to give it away to some other distributor to just take care. So we sold it and that provided us with enough capital to grow Word on Fire begin its growth. And once I saw the receptivity of the series, I knew something was bigger was about to happen. And so that initial kind of influx of money, it didn't go to Bishop Barron, it certainly didn't go to me. It became kind of the way that I wanted to position his apostolate, to be able to support his evangelization and missionary efforts for years to come. So that's kind of that series that provided so much to the church also provided for Word on Fire at its beginning and enabled the ministry of the apostolate to grow in the manner that it has.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah. And you know, over the summer, I think in July we had a staff gathering in the Chicago area. And remember I said this all started with one guy in a pulpit. We're now up to about 85 employees. We've been able to really kind of professionalize the organization, take care of all the various departments and channels we need to have. It's been, you know, amazing growth, especially in the last half a dozen or so years. But at that meeting, Father Steve, we were recounting some of the early days and successes of Word on Fire. And I think you very powerfully mentioned that, you know, they were signs that. That God wanted Word on Fire to succeed.
- [21:59]
D
Yeah. I have this sense that if you look at the Church throughout history and you look at what thrives and what doesn't, we shouldn't see success or failure. We should see where does the blessing of the Holy Spirit fall and those things that are in accord with Christ's will for His Church, because it's his church, not it doesn't belong to us. We're not shareholders in corporation Catholicism. It's Christ Church. And as you look at what is blessed in terms of what thrives in the Church, it's an indication of the Holy Spirit. And so as I saw Word on Fire beginning to flourish evermore, I saw the providence of God and I saw the activity of the Holy Spirit to bless what was in accord with the will and purposes of Christ.
- [22:56]
B
You know, we've been talking about how in the very beginning, you were kind of trying anything in the, you know, the very beginning, and most things worked. But also from the beginning, there have been a very clear set of animating principles of what Word on Fire's ethos is, what the charism of Word on Fire is, what you want it to be. And I'm wondering if you can take us through a couple of those animating principles. Maybe the one people have heard about the most is leading with beauty.
- [23:28]
C
Yeah, it's important for me. I taught a course in the theology of Hans Urs von Baltasar for many years. And Balthazar, you know, great 20th century theologian, a favorite of both Benedict and John Paul ii. Also Pope Francis was a Baltasar student. But one of his great insights was that that of the transcendental, the good, the true and the beautiful. We tend to put the beautiful toward the end, as I just did there. But in fact, the beautiful should be the first one, because the beautiful is what first gets your attention. Right. You have to say, that's splendid. Now my mind searches out its truth, and now my will searches out its goodness. But the first stop, Balsar argued, is the beautiful. And I just think today it's a more effective approach because there's such a reaction in the general culture to Truth claims and claims about morality. Right. Here's how you should behave, here's what you should believe. And if there's a reaction to that, okay, well, just show them. And a lot of the Catholicism series was predicated upon that Baltazarian assumption that if you just kind of show people the Sistine Chapel and the Sainte Chapelle and you show them Mother Teresa's Sisters in Action, as we did, and I think one of the most beautiful of the episodes that will get people's attention in a non threatening way. And so we've used that consistently, as Pope Francis called it, the Via Pulchritudinis, the way of Beauty. And I think that's a very effective evangelical approach.
- [24:57]
D
It's also the great power of Catholicism itself because as you've said many times, we're a beautiful religion. And we're at our best when our religion is beautiful. Beautiful in our worship, beautiful in our art, beautiful in our literature, but also beautiful in our charity, beautiful in our concern for the poor. And so when you want to introduce someone to the great mystery of the Catholic faith, it should start there. It should start with that kind of introduction. And if you look at all these monuments around us that are Catholic in their orientation, or the great literature and art, or our great charitable endeavors, what the Church is doing is it's leading with beauty. The truth claims are there and the moral claims are there, but the route of access into it all should be the beautiful.
- [25:56]
B
Well, among the other. Yeah, thank you. Some of the other more obvious animating principles might have been, you know, obviously special commitment to the new media. What we used to call the new media, now it's kind of the media, but embracing all forms of media, all forms of communication. We've talked a little bit about evangelizing the evangelization of the culture, seeking to spread Christ to all aspects of society. It was also an early intention, and it certainly played out that way that Word on Fire would be a collaborative apostolate combining the. Collaborating, combining the clergy with the laity.
- [26:45]
C
Well, it's all. We're the only two priests in the whole organization out of what, 85 people so far. So far, yeah, we'll get that right. But that's, I think, very telling and I think that is very much in line with Vatican II sensibilities. And, you know, I think led appropriately by priests who have the kind of the spiritual vision of it. But we've from the beginning included lay people in all different aspects of Word on Fire. So I think that's a beautiful post conciliar sort of aspect of it.
- [27:13]
B
These guys have nothing but ambitions, big ambitions. And I often joke that my brother thinks big because he has to. And, you know, we're fortunate that many of these ambitions are ultimately realized. Among the larger ambitions, though, in the last, say, half a dozen years, has been two of our biggest growth areas that were not necessarily there at the beginning. I'm talking about the Word on Fire Institute and our publishing, our book publishing arm. And I'm wondering if you guys can talk about that a little bit, remind people about what the Word on Fire Institute is and what you hope it will become.
- [27:53]
C
I'm super proud of both of them. Of course, the institute, Matt Petruzyk, you've been hearing from, is the director of the institute. Its purpose is to form Evangelizers among the laity. In a way, it's starting in order with the third order. Think of the Franciscans. The Dominicans have a third order, the laity. In a way, we're starting that way to get 30,000 lay people formed as evangelizers of the culture. And so we do it in all kinds of different ways. And then the publishing branch I'm super proud of. Brandon Vaughn, who's sitting right out here, runs that branch. And the books they're bringing out, I think, are the most beautiful books being produced anywhere in the Catholic world today. And the Word on Fire Bible is just kind of a masterpiece, I think. And the team that puts that together is extraordinary. So I'm super proud of both of those instantiations of the Word on Fire Spirit.
- [28:46]
D
But something like the Word on Fire Bible, too, is what you also see in Word on Fire is that we're trying to make the great desires of the Second Vatican Council real. And so the Second Vatican Councils wanted the Scriptures to be presented anew to the faithful. And we wanted to do it in a way that led with beauty, but also represented to the faithful the coming together of the scriptures and our great tradition. And that's what we did with the Word on Fire Bible. And I remember when Brandon and I were discussing that project and I said to him, well, you know, this will be the work of a lifetime. Well, he's completed it in less than a lifetime. And so I think I would like to give him a round of applause. Because when you think about how the laity and the clergy should work together to accomplish great things, there's a great example in the Word on Fire Bible, because Bishop Bear and I didn't create that thing ourselves. We worked with the laity the lay members of our apostolate to make that happen. And that's one of the great characteristics and charisms of Word on Fire, which is also the fulfillment of something the Second Vatican Council wanted. Constructive and creative relationships between the clergy and the laity.
- [30:30]
B
It's amazing. It's amazing. So let's go a little bit more behind the scenes at Word on Fire. We've already answered the question about where's your glasses? But the other question I get the most is how did Word on Fire get its name?
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C
I know exactly how that happened. As I said, I didn't want it to be Father Barron's, you know, sermons or whatever. I wanted a title that was more, you know, biblical. And so I was around the table in the faculty kitchen at Mundelein Seminary. Father Steve was there and Father Paul Murray was there, who's spoken at this conference. Remember Father Paul, great Dominican spiritual writer at the Angelicum in Rome. And we've been friends forever. And he was. I forget why he was at Mundelein. Maybe it was. He was a scholar that year with us. But Paul was around the table and we're just sharing ideas. And I said, well, you know, what are you thinking? I said, well, I've come to light a fire on the earth. Yes, I love that passage from the Lord. I've come to light a fire on the earth. Fire. And it's all about preaching the fiery, preaching the word fire. And then Father Steve said, word on Fire. And Paul Murray, who's a very fine poet, you know, Paul Murray said, you will not do better than that. And that was it. That's how we came up with the name.
- [31:51]
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.