In the latest issue of The Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, I offer a followup to my previous interviews with Bishop Robert Barron — click here and here for those — with a more in-depth profile, which goes into his vocation and vision for the Church.
Here’s a taste:
As for his own vocation, Bishop Barron, 55, said he was drawn into the Church as a teenager because of St. Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God.
“That lit my mind on fire,” he said, “and eventually it moved in the rest of my person. By the time I was in late high school, early college, I was thinking pretty seriously about it. Keep in mind, too, when I was doing it, it was pre-sex-abuse scandal.
“The priesthood was still very much of a noble calling. For me, it seemed like a very radical, complete giving of self. That attracted me when I was a young man. Give your whole life to God; give your whole life over to the Church. That appealed to me in a romantic, radical way.
“That was part of it, but it took a long time, years of prayer and thought. It began with Aquinas, which is why he’s so important to me.”
Seeing the young men coming into the seminary — more than a decade after the sex-abuse scandal broke nationwide in 2002 (mostly involving adult victims of abuse decades earlier) — has had a profound effect on Bishop Barron.
“After the sex-abuse scandal,” he said, “it’s a much different game. These guys who are coming here, they’re 23, 24, they were all just discerning their calling during this time. They were kids when all this was happening. I find, first of all, that it’s a miracle of grace that it still happens, that the Lord still calls people to follow him, and these guys still listen — despite much more opposition from family, friends, the culture.
“I ask them that question, ‘What was it like to discern during this time?’ A lot of them want to be part of the solution. They know it’s a crisis time in the Church; they know we’ve been through a rough patch, but they want to be part of the solution. That’s what I hear from them, and it’s fascinating.”
Click here to read the rest.
Image: Kate O’Hare
Don’t miss a thing: head over to my other home at CatholicVote and like my Facebook page.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In