bishop barron speaks at notre dame

By LIAM KELLY news Writer

b ishop r obert b arron, second-most-followed priest on social media and founder of Word on Fire c atholic m inistries, spoke at n otre d ame Thursday evening and urged the university to commit itself to its c atholic character in all that it does.

“A c atholic university is one in which c hrist holds a central and organizing place in all the disciplines and activities of the university,” b arron said.

In addition to serving as bishop of the d iocese of Winona-r ochester in m innesota, b arron is also the founder of the c atholic ministerial organization Word on Fire. b arron’s homilies have amassed hundreds of millions of views online, causing him to become one of the most popular c atholic priests in the world.

b arron emphasized that in a truly c atholic university, “the relationship between c hrist, the Logos, and all other disciplines and activities is explored and celebrated.” c entral to this understanding, b arron argued, is the idea that “God is not a being.”

In explaining this vision of a c atholic university, b arron compared the proper role of faith in academics to the proper role of God in the life of human beings.

“If h e were, we’d be in a competitive relationship,” b arron pointed out. Instead, God is “ipsum esse,” or being itself, b arron said.

In this framework, b arron asserted, humans become uplifted by God’s presence instead of controlled by it.

“The closer God is, the more alive we are. God is not in the business of supplanting us or dominating us but rather lifting us up,” b arron said.

The same, then, is true of the relationship between God and a university, b arron argued.

“I don’t think theology comes crashing in and pushes the physicist aside, pushes the chemists aside, pushes the mathematicians systems aside or pushes the philosophers aside,” b arron emphasized. “ n o, no. God opens up a depth dimension to all these disciplines.” b arron explained how this approach to God can be applied to seemingly disconnected subjects such as mathematics. m athematical concepts, much like God h imself, b arron said, are not always readily apparent to the visible eye.

“Pure numbers, pure mathematical intelligibility, those don’t belong to the world of ordinary human capacities and experience. Those are invisible things,” he said.

To b arron, this “different, higher, stranger world … touches upon the absolutely, sure intelligibility of God.” b arron also applied this concept of intelligibility to the sciences.

“All the sciences rest upon the fundamental presumption that the reality we operate in is imbued with intelligibility. It’s imbued with something like a pattern or form that can be understood, that corresponds to the inquiring mind,” he said.

The connection from an intelligible universe to an intelligent creator is then an simple one, b arron argued.

“The only way finally to explain the universal intelligibility of our experience is to recourse to a creative and personal intelligence that has thought it into being,” he said.

When it comes to history, b arron pointed out that most historians don’t look at history merely as a sequence of events but rather try to organize these events into a “meta narrative” that gives them meaning. b arron described how the predominant meta narrative today is one of “secular modernity.”

“The idea is that there was a long period of oppression and then in the 17th and 18th century there was this marvelous e nlightenment, focused on the physical realm, that overcame all the centuries of oppression, oftentimes tied to religion,” he said.

While affirming the benefits of the advancements in modern science brought about by the e nlightenment, b arron urged c hristians to develop a different meta narrative in their view of history.

“The climax of history is not in the 17th and 18th century,” he said. “We think history came to its climax on this squalid hill, outside of Jerusalem around the year 30 A. d. when this young rabbi was dying on an instrument of torture. We think the dying and the rising of the s on of God is the climax of history.” o n the subject of literature, b arron elaborated on the point of American writer William Faulkner who said that “the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.”

“What would history look like if we take seriously that that’s the meta narrative?” b arron questioned his audience.

All writers “are talking about that reality,” b arron argued. To b arron this problem in the human heart “comes when we tie our inner desire for God onto something less than God.” b arron urged the university to explore the relationship between God and human discontentment “in relation to literature.” s hifting his focus to law, b arron made the point that there is an unshakable relationship between human law and God’s law. b arron argued that this theological approach to law has the same principles as the theological approach to science. c oncluding his address to a packed crowd, b arron called upon the university to take pride in its c atholic roots.

“Law opens up onto morality and morality opens up onto theology. There’s a relationship between law, morality and God which is inescapable,” b arron said.

“These moral intelligibility that we discern in the world come from the great Logos that gave rise to the world just as the intelligibility we explore in the sciences come from that same source,” b arron pointed out.

“Pope John Paul II said, quite correctly, that universities emerged “ex corde ecclesiae” — from the heart of the church,” b arron recounted. “That should be a point of pride, especially in a place like this.”

Finally, b arron implored his audience not to think of the c hurch and the university as opposite forces, but rather as compliments that have the power to lift each other up.

“I do think that one of the tragedies of our time is that we’ve forgotten that relationship and, at times, have even set c hurch and university at odds with each other,” b arron lamented. “I’m here to argue precisely the contrary. The more we recover this idea of the university itself coming from the heart of the c hurch, the more the university is authentically itself.”

Contact Liam Kelly at lkelly8@nd.edu