The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. What does it mean to listen to your conscience, especially in a culture that scoffs at the existence of moral values? Does the concept of conscience still mean anything today? Or is it a relic of what the secular world would have us believe was a naïve and superstitious past—a time of cartoon crickets and buzz-killing angels perched on our shoulders, scolding us into acting against our desires? Was the atheist Sigmund Freud right that conscience is merely the internalized echo of a tyrannical father, seeking to keep our conduct in check? And even if we grant that conscience has some kind of objective existence, how can we account for the fact that people reach radically incompatible moral conclusions while all claiming to follow it? For example, one person says conscience leads them to support abortion; another says conscience requires them to stand against it. Through all of this, how can we say that the conscience is "free" if its primary function is to impose rules? Here to help us untangle these questions, and to make the case that recovering the biblical conception of the conscience is more important than ever, is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
01:24 | Bishop Barron in Nashville: Good News Conference, Dominicans, and Theo Von
02:29 | What is the conscience?
05:21 | Is conscience just a gut feeling?
07:14 | The "angel" and the "devil" on our shoulders
09:57 | Perceiving conscience as an external voice
11:30 | Freud's concept of the internalized voice of authority
16:04 | Both radically individual and universally shared
18:04 | How prudence interacts with the conscience
18:55 | Is the conscience free?
22:04 | What are the duties to the conscience?
24:57 | What about when poor judgment clouds the conscience?
28:02 | "My truth, your truth"
30:24 | Responding to the conflation of evil and good
32:22 | The liberating benefits of rules
34:01 | Listener question: How can I respond to "I'm spiritual but not religious"?
36:14 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
Links:
Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/

NOTE: Do you like this podcast? Become a Word on Fire IGNITE member! Word on Fire is a non-profit ministry that depends on the support of our listeners . . . like you! So become a part of this mission and join IGNITE today to become a Word on Fire insider and receive some special donor gifts for your generosity.

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you, as always, for joining us. In this episode, we'll conclude our conversation with Dr. Tod Worner and Bishop Barron on modern Christian persecution.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
00:23 | Lower than God, higher than us
05:58 | What do their deaths demand?
18:08 | No. 1—Pray for the persecuted
18:25 | No. 2—Stay informed
18:50 | No. 3—Persuade government to take action
19:35 | No. 4—Provide aid to the persecuted
19:50 | No. 5—Respect religious liberty at home
20:32 | No. 6—Resist soft religious persecution
22:09 | How the martyrs impacted Bishop Barron
25:03 | Join the Word on Fire Institute




Links:
Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/

NOTE: Do you like this podcast? Become a Word on Fire IGNITE member! Word on Fire is a non-profit ministry that depends on the support of our listeners . . . like you! So become a part of this mission and join IGNITE today to become a Word on Fire insider and receive some special donor gifts for your generosity.

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. Recently, Dr. Tod Worner of The Evangelization & Culture Podcast sat down with Bishop Barron to discuss modern Christian persecution with Bishop Barron's new book, What Do Their Deaths Demand? Now, it's a topic we've explored here on this show, once before. In this new conversation, we'll take a deeper dive into that subject, exploring the specific witness of some of these martyrs, and examining this modern era which has seen more Christian persecution than any other in history. Here to discuss that with Dr. Tod Worner, is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
02:18 | The most persecuted religion
15:08 | Why the persecution of Christians?
25:44 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
Links:
Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/

NOTE: Do you like this podcast? Become a Word on Fire IGNITE member! Word on Fire is a non-profit ministry that depends on the support of our listeners . . . like you! So become a part of this mission and join IGNITE today to become a Word on Fire insider and receive some special donor gifts for your generosity.

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. The evolutionary behavioral scientist and public intellectual Gad Saad recently published an influential book entitled Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. In it, Saad argues that much of the West has, unfortunately, come to embrace a perversely deficient understanding of empathy, twisting the natural and otherwise noble human capacity to feel and respond to other peoples' sufferings into a moral license to upend the moral, economic, and political order. According to the dictates of suicidal empathy, for example, society should prioritize criminals over victims, illegal immigrants over citizens, lawbreakers over law abiders, racial identity over competence, adult sexual expression over childhood innocence, and trans women––that is, men pretending to be women––over real women. Suicidal empathy's endgame, Saad warns, is nothing less than societal ruin and the eventual totalitarian eclipse of the individual. How, from a Catholic perspective, should we assess these claims? Is Saad's characterization of suicidal empathy and its dangers accurate? If so, how should we, as Christians, constructively respond? What role, in particular, should the biblical conception of love play in defining what it means to show true compassion and care for those in need? Here to discuss Saad's book and to explain how authentic Christian charity is—and is not—related to empathy, is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
01:40 | Bishop Barron interviews JD Vance
02:45 | How Saad defines "empathy"
04:45 | Saad's argument on the exaggeration of empathy
06:31 | Exploring the concept of "forbidden knowledge"
09:30 | "It will destroy the West"?
11:05 | Connecting wokeism and self-destructive empathy
12:33 | Can we square wokeism's moralizing mandates with its amoral claims?
13:40 | Tracing the movement's origins
16:27 | Mistaking empathy for love
22:01 | Recognizing the fallenness of our emotional lives
27:39 | Does love equate to niceness and kindness?
28:50 | What about "love thy neighbor"?
30:42 | Distinguishing a proper preference for the poor from its unhealthy overemphasis
32:46 | Addressing the Christian impulse beneath the wokeist trappings
34:42 | Listener question: Where was God before time?
36:33 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
Links:
Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/

NOTE: Do you like this podcast? Become a Word on Fire IGNITE member! Word on Fire is a non-profit ministry that depends on the support of our listeners . . . like you! So become a part of this mission and join IGNITE today to become a Word on Fire insider and receive some special donor gifts for your generosity.

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. The Liturgy of the Hours, or the "Divine Office," is often associated exclusively with the spiritual practices of priests, monks, and nuns. To be sure, praying the Hours is an essential part of the lives of those who have formally taken religious vows. However, the prayer of the Church, as the Liturgy of the Hours is also called, is precisely that: a way of sanctifying the day for the whole Church, both laity and clergy alike. With so many forms of prayer already available, however, why should lay Catholics also consider praying the Hours? What, substantively, is distinctive about it? What are its origins? Moreover, given the size and complexity of the Hours—the full liturgy occupies four thick volumes of text with multiple ribbons to mark different sections—how, practically, can we get started? Here to explain the enduring theological and spiritual richness of the Liturgy of the Hours and how it deepens and enriches all Catholics' lives, is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
01:11 | Bishop Barron's diocesan travels
02:35 | Why the Liturgy of the Hours matters to Word on Fire
03:57 | Leading with beauty
04:57 | Prayer and the importance of embodiment
08:06 | The origins and practice of praying the Divine Office
12:13 | How the Liturgy of the Hours shapes priests
13:26 | Understanding the Liturgy of the Hours as the Divine Office
14:22 | Relating the Liturgy of the Hours to the liturgy of the Mass
15:11 | What makes a prayer liturgical?
15:52 | Why the Psalms feature so prominently in the Divine Office
20:06 | How the laity benefits from praying the Divine Office
21:46 | "Pray without ceasing"
23:17 | Getting started with the Liturgy of the Hours
27:32 | Persevering through fatigue in prayer
30:51 | The Divine Office and evangelization
31:44 | Listener question: What effect does our prayer have on others?
34:18 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
Links:
Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/

NOTE: Do you like this podcast? Become a Word on Fire IGNITE member! Word on Fire is a non-profit ministry that depends on the support of our listeners . . . like you! So become a part of this mission and join IGNITE today to become a Word on Fire insider and receive some special donor gifts for your generosity.