Tasty Goodness from Fr. Robert Barron

Here’s the scoop on his new six-part Priest, Prophet, King film series.

Also, here’s his keynote address to the LA Religious Congress:

A word about the LA Congress. A couple of days ago I put up a daffy picture of some sort of goofy liturgical something or other dancing from last year. I thought it silly, but don’t really lose much sleep over such matters. As I might have known, however, various people showed up to proclaim the Apocalypse, demand excommunications, and shout to the heavens about how Pope Francis needs to shut everything down and declare an emergency and so forth. When I pointed out that the pope’s job is not to micromanage what some liturgists in LA like to do with their two left feet, the outrage erupted with more vitriol and prophesying of The End. Somebody else did the “We had *hoped* Abp. Gomez would instantly change absolutely everything about the Archdiocese of LA by miracle magic, but that has not happened. So I guess he’s a Fake Catholic too and no one can be trusted and there’s no hope and we’re all gonna die” trick. I suggested that people attempt getting lives. At which point somebody said that I was a fine one to talk since I had posted the picture.

The assumption apparently was that my amusement at a silly picture constituted “outrage” which my outraged readers thought they shared with me and I was letting everybody down by not being particularly outraged after all.

This, psychology fans, is called “projection”. I don’t have panic attacks about the LA Congress. Never have. It attracts, and is supposed to attract, all sorts, including both the “Excommunicate 99% of the Church’s members” crowd of Pharisee Reactionaries and the “God Has Called Heffelumps in Iron Gray Hair and Sensible Shoes to Dance” crowd from the Woodstock Generation. Both amuse me (but only one of those two is perpetually setting itself up as judge, jury, and executioner of everybody else in the Church on the basis of themselves being the Greatest Catholics of All Time).

Meanwhile, in a little place I call “reality” Abp. Gomez has the unenviable task of trying to clean up the damage done by the odious Cdl. Mahony, and is doing a fine job of it from what I can see. Believing in grace, not magic, I assume that process will take quite a bit of time and never be fully complete in this lifetime. But I have to say that having Fr. Barron as keynote speaker is an awfully healthy sign: