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Walking Truly and Completely with Him
Bishop Robert Barron https://wordonfire.podbean.com/mf/play/zujg7q/6_26_19.mp3 In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus clarifies that all worldly goods find their value in relation to Him. If we believe...
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On Reclaiming a Lost Patrimony: “My Father Left Me Ireland”
Dr. Tod Worner Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those...
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What We Need to Learn from Peterson (and What His Followers Need to Learn...
Robert Mixa Besides admiring Jordan Peterson’s ability to guide and mentor people, especially young men, Bishop Barron, I believe, wishes to address, in a Balthasarian way, Jordan Peterson’s incomplete...
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Hearing the Voice of God
Bishop Robert Barron https://wordonfire.podbean.com/mf/play/fdshr8/7-10-19.mp3 During the twentieth century, moral relativism was in vogue in elite cultural circles, but now it is the dominant moral...
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Why We Need Solitude
Dr. Tod Worner The soul’s at fault, which ne’er escapes itself. —Horace One of the great scourges of our time is preoccupation. Every day, precious time is lost in ruminating about the past or worrying...
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Martha, Mary, and the Attitude of Discipleship
Bishop Robert Barron https://wordonfire.podbean.com/mf/play/hi44br/7_21_19.mp3 Although the little story of Martha and Mary has been interpreted throughout the centuries as a parable dealing with the...
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Comic Books and Warrior Priests: An Interview with Douglas Ernst
Jared Zimmerer Comic book heroes have taken the cultural imagination by storm over the past century. The genre is not often seen as a source of truth and beauty. However, Douglas Ernst, the author of a...
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“The Rapper in Black”: Why NF Is Taking the Music World by Storm
Matthew Becklo A young white teenager from Michigan, using his initials as a stage name, emerges on the hip-hop scene; his rapid-fire lyrics reflect the wounds of a broken home; and his music quickly...
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Bishop Barron on St. Paul’s Masterclass in Evangelization
Bishop Robert Barron In this new video I reflect on St. Paul’s address on the Areopagus in Athens, found in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a sort of masterclass in the...
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Camille Paglia and Cultural Appraisal
Robert Mixa No one is more entertaining and insightful than rock’n’roll intellectual and 1960s mystic Camille Paglia. I discovered her a few years ago, and I was hooked. While not completely agreeing...
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Amazon’s “Ave Maria” Ad Brings Us to a Martha and Mary Moment
Elizabeth Scalia So, recently Amazon.com released a new commercial advertising its fast, free delivery services. The commercial shows snapshots of an intact traditional family: A startled mother. Young...
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“Mr. Robot” Returns: Where Is God?
Andrew Petiprin “Mr. Robot has become my god,” says Elliot Alderson, the brilliant, disturbed main character in the USA Network’s Mr. Robot, whose fourth and final season begins October 6. Elliot is...
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“Bishop Barron Presents” with Dr. Arthur Brooks Tomorrow!
Word on Fire The next “Bishop Barron Presents” event, featuring social scientist, musician, and Harvard professor Dr. Arthur Brooks, will take place LIVE tomorrow, November 21, at 10:00 p.m. (EST)! The...
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The One Pope
Bishop Robert Barron The new and much-ballyhooed Netflix film The Two Popes should, by rights, be called The One Pope, for it presents a fairly nuanced, textured, and sympathetic portrait of Jorge...
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“This Is the Way”: The Mandalorian’s Growth in Charity
Andrew Petiprin In the late first century AD, the historian Tacitus contrasted the freedom of the uncivilized Britons with the corruption of Rome, saying of his own people, “They plunder, they...
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Kobe Bryant and the Three-Point Lesson of His Life
Rachel Bulman It was a bit of a shock, for the whole nation, to learn of the death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter in a helicopter crash that took nine lives. The common lamentations came quickly:...
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Hidden Figures: The Conundrum of Black Catholicism
Nate Tinner-Williams Prior to Sunday, January 26, 2020, the most famous Catholic on Earth was a Black Catholic. Excluding the Holy Father, there is little doubt concerning the accuracy of this claim...
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The Loss of Culture and the Wisdom of Fools
Dr. Tod Worner There he sits brooding in the dark. Slouched in a Renaissance-era high-backed chair, his chin rests deep in his chest. His legs are splayed out in front of him with feet gripping the...
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“The Decadent Society”: Looking Heavenward, at Itself
Andrew Petiprin In Oscar Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Darlington memorably quips, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Wilde’s contemporary, H.G. Wells,...
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Evangelization in an Age of Rage
Jared Zimmerer In 1794, during the French Revolution, a state-sponsored religion arose called the Cult of Reason. Lasting for only about a year, that cult was replaced by the Cult of the Supreme Being,...
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Beauty and Substance: A Reflection on the Anniversary of “Evangelization &...
Dr. Tod Worner Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch. —Luke 5:4 Over eighteen months ago, on a chilly day in February, I was honored to join Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire...
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“Dominion,” the Values of the West, and the Cross of Christ
Bishop Robert Barron The popular historian Tom Holland has written an extraordinary book called Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. The subtitle sums up his argument. Holland is...
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“Culture Warrior” and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
Bishop Robert Barron One of the least illuminating descriptors that makes its way around the Catholic commentariat is “culture warrior.” The term is invariably used by someone on the left in order to...
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“Culture Warrior” and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
Bishop Robert Barron Friends, we all disagree on social media. But when we do, there is a tendency to exchange in oversimplified insults and mischaracterizations. We should instead pursue the tough...
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“Wokeism” in France: The Chickens Coming Home to Roost
Bishop Robert Barron I will confess that one of the biggest laughs I’ve had in the last several months was occasioned by a recent article in The New York Times by Norimitsu Onishi. In this lengthy...
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We’re All Becoming Platonists Now—And That’s Not Good
Bishop Robert Barron One of the most fundamental divides in the history of philosophy is that between a more Platonic approach and a more Aristotelian approach. Plato, of course, saw the universal or...
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“The Tree of Life”: A Cinematic Masterpiece 10 Years Later
Matthew Becklo When Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life hit movie theaters ten years ago today, the responses were either viscerally positive or viscerally negative. Some hailed it as an instant...
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Bishop Barron Presents Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen: Conversations at the...
Bishop Robert Barron Friends, it is my pleasure to share the latest “Bishop Barron Presents” discussion featuring author Dr. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen. In our conversation, we discuss the history of...
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Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Distinction Between Fact and Fiction
Bishop Robert Barron I am currently making my way through D.C. Schindler’s marvelous book The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism. This text will be of interest to...
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“Dune” Offers Audiences Visual and Thematic Richness
Andrew Petiprin Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the first installment of a two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark 1965 sci-fi novel, is visually stunning and thematically rich, especially for...
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Chappelle’s “The Closer”: Observant or Derisive?
Andrew Petiprin Bishop Barron begins his Catholicism book and video series reminding us that our salvation is bound up in comedy. He tells us, “It all begins with a jest,” the wildest congruence of...
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Back to the Movies: 4 New Films Tap Enchantment and Reality
Andrew Petiprin For most of my life, going to the movies at Christmastime has been an experience of enchantment I’ve ranked just below Christmas Mass. The late Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski said...
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Baptizing the New Mythology: Superhero Evangelization
Thomas J. Salerno It has become fashionable in certain circles to disparage the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It seems that every time a new entry in the wildly successful superhero franchise is...
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A Voice in the Wasteland: Korn’s “Requiem”
Jared Zimmerer The music of Korn first entered my life when I was in seventh grade. At the time, my friends and I were loyal fans of Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Notorious B.I.G, and other rappers. However, I...
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‘Sin’: Konchalovsky’s Masterpiece Shows a Sensual, Spiritual Michelangelo
Andrew Petiprin In his book The Pivotal Players, Bishop Barron describes the unparalleled and lasting influence of the great Italian master Michelangelo Buonarroti, saying, “Over and against the...
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The World-Enlarging Consolations of “All Creatures Great and Small”
Andrew Petiprin As millions of people watched Super Bowl LVI from their homes on Sunday evening, my family and I travelled back in space and time from ours. I am told that the Super Bowl was itself...
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Beware of Blind Guides
Bishop Robert Barron There are a lot of people claiming to be spiritual gurus, teachers, and guides today. But is the person to whom you’ve entrusted your life spiritually blind? Whom are you going to...
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With ‘The Tipping Point’: Tears for Fears is Timely and Timeless
Andrew Petiprin Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith wrote and produced a number of popular and critically-acclaimed albums in the 1980s and early 1990s as the backbone of the British New Wave group Tears for...
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The Lost Art of Intentionality
Dr. Tod Worner “All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”– Blaise Pascal, Pensees (No. 139) “The tragedy of modern man is not that he...
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Episode Six: The Big Lebowski and the Uncertainty of Unbelief – Watch With Me
Andrew Petiprin In this episode of “Watch with Me,” Andrew Petiprin guides viewers through Woody Allen’s film “Hannah and Her Sisters” and the Coen brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski” in order to...
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Pope Benedict XVI’s Address on Cultural Renewal
Robert Mixa Pope Benedict XVI’s legacy will be found mainly in his speeches and writings. His Regensburg Address, encyclicals, wednesday audiences, and Jesus of Nazareth trilogy will continue to be...
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Defying the Culture of Hedonism
Michael Adams Recently, while driving along a busy road in downtown Chicago, a billboard caught my eye. On the large canvas, a toddler was depicted covered in spaghetti sauce, making an unforgettable...
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The Coronation of King Charles III: A Reflection
Dr. Holly Ordway May 6, 2023, marks Coronation Day in the United Kingdom. Charles III became King the moment that his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September last year, but his formal crowning in...
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Trust Your Disgust
Dr. Matthew Petrusek The devil’s greatest trick, the adage goes, is convincing the world he doesn’t exist. His second is duping humanity into believing that poison both tastes good and is good for us....
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You’re Not Crazy, And You’re Not Alone
Dr. Matthew Petrusek There is something rotten in the state of America and in much of the West. Suicides and deaths of despair are at record highs. Secular culture goads mothers to regard their own...
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Searching for Home
Dr. Richard Clements One of our deepest desires as human beings is a desire for home—a place where we can count on being loved and valued, a place where we will always be welcomed, a place where we can...
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The Invitation and Obligation of the Lord’s Day
Kody W. Cooper The “Great Dechurching” over the past twenty-five years has been widely discussed. Some forty million people have stopped going to church in the past generation. As Protestant authors...
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Catholics Cannot Be Anti-Semites
Bishop Robert Barron A few weeks ago, at the commencement of Hanukkah, my Word on Fire team published on our social media platforms a graphic of a Menorah accompanied by a text from St. John Paul II...
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