Bishop Barron Fires Back at a Cardinal: "Excuse Me, but…What?"

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:11] Welcome to Crisis Point. I'm Eric Sammons, your host and editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, you know what to do. Please subscribe to the channel Smash that like button. I appreciate everybody's doing that. I've noticed that since I started reminding everybody we are getting more subscriptions, which is great. It helps save the almighty algorithm to share us with other people who might not have heard of Crisis Points. So I really do appreciate. Please subscribe the channel. You don't have to hit the notify button. I always say, like, you got a life. You don't need your phone telling you what to do. You don't have to hit the notify button, but hit the subscribe button and I would appreciate it. [00:00:44] Okay, so I don't think anybody would say that our podcast here, our humble Crisis Point podcast, is. Is afraid to criticize bishops. [00:00:56] We've done that often. I've done that often. I've criticized usccb. I've criticized many American bishops and other bishops. However, I want today's podcast to be more focused on praising a bishop. It will also criticize another, an actual cardinal, but it will praise a bishop. A bishop everybody in this audience knows, maybe loves, maybe doesn't. I don't know. He's somewhat of a dividing rod. Somebody who really does bring up about strong opinions, and that's Bishop Robert Baron. [00:01:31] Bishop Baron, of course, is probably the most famous American bishop right now alive. [00:01:37] I mean, he's. He was. When he was Father Baron. He did the Catholicism series. He found A Word on Fire. He's done a lot of stuff there. He was the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles for a while, and now he's a bishop of his own diocese up in Minnesota. And it. I am blanking on the name of his diocese. And I apologize for that, Bishop Barron, and all the fine Catholics who live in that diocese. But it's up in Minnesota anyway, so Bishop Barron, I. I just want to lay my cards on the table. I have been critical of Bishop Barron in the past. In fact, in my book Deadly Indifference, I call out Bishop Baron by name. In fact, I call him out by name for something that I'm going to praise him for in this podcast. And so I want to be fair to him as much as possible. I always try to be. And I have criticized him multiple times in the past, but I've also praised him when he does something. Well, I mean, that's thing about Bishop Barron is he's very good at certain things. He's one of our best. And I've said that before. He, he's one of our best bishops in America and there's no question about that. But he has certain blind spots. He has certain things that frankly certain ways of looking at things that drive me crazy. That drive me crazy. I think he really misses the boat on. [00:02:53] And so I've brought that before, I'm going to bring it up again today. But I really want the focus today to be gratitude. [00:03:01] Gratitude that a bishop is doing his job, doing what the Lord calls him to do. And I want to make sure I don't just focus on when things are going bad with the bishops, because there's plenty to choose from, but also when a bishop stands out. So, okay, what's the story here? What am I talking about? [00:03:17] A few days ago, a Cardinal, Cardinal Vesco of the Archbishop of Algiers, he's French born Dominican. He said that proselytism is poison. [00:03:30] He said he wasn't trying. [00:03:31] The Catholics don't try to convert anybody. [00:03:35] And he basically was, was rejecting the Great Commission. He's rejecting what our Lord said to the apostles in Matthew 28. Go therefore and preach the Gospel. You know, convert the nations, baptize the name Father, Son, Holy Spirit, teach all I've commanded you. That was my paraphrase of that, that, that passage, the Great Commission where Christ says we're supposed to, we're supposed to convert people. If you look at. You cannot read the New Testament and not come away with the fact that the followers of Jesus believed that their duty, their primary duty was to share their faith with others and try to lead people to Jesus Christ to convert and become members of his church. [00:04:17] It's impossible to read the New Testament, not come over with that. In fact, there is some difference if in, in tone and in focus and emphasis between the Old Testament, New Testament on this, on this area. In the Old Testament, there definitely were passages. There were times in which it's clear that the purpose of the Old Testament Jews, the nation of Israel, is to eventually convert all the Gentiles to be. But it's more to be an example right now. [00:04:45] They weren't actually asked go out outside the nation of Israel and try to turn people into Jews. They were never asked to really do that. It was more to be the example the city on the hill in which people would look at and they'd flock to Jerusalem and, and worship the one true God. [00:05:01] But Jesus does change that in the sense that he now tells his followers, no, go out and convert everybody to my church, to my new, the new Israel, the Catholic Church. I Mean acts of the Apostles has it dripping all within there. So when we have a cardinal of the Catholic Church, a prince of the church, a successor to the apostles, who basically says, nah, we don't do that, we don't do that. We need to understand, we need to, to understand what he's talking about. And also what Bishop Barron then said in response. [00:05:31] Now, a few things Cardinal Vesco said is we are a church of this people. Not proselytizing church, not a church that's there to convert, but a church that aspires to be one of the components of this people. I'm not 100% clear what he means by this people. I just think he means like the world. [00:05:51] He said, in monotheistic religions, proselytism is poison because it implies considering the other person's religion false. It's poison to consider somebody else's religion false. [00:06:03] Okay, I guess I drank the poison then. [00:06:06] Because every, every religion on Catholicism is false. Some are more false than others, some are more true than others, but they all have some falsehood in them if they're not Catholic. [00:06:16] It's like, do we going on what the cardinal says, do we see ourselves as the besieged fortress or do we choose fraternity? [00:06:24] See, that's why some of us get to heebie jeebies when we start hearing Vatican officials talk about fraternity. [00:06:32] Because what do they mean by that? There is clearly a Catholic interpretation of the term fraternity. But are Vatican officials using that interpretation or are they interpreting it like the cardinal here? Vesco is saying, which is fraternity means you don't ever tell anybody their religion is wrong or even imply it. That's poison. [00:06:54] He also said synodality buried any possibility of a bishop's only Vatican 3 and that Christians have another card to play than reestablishing the regime of Christendom. No, actually that's my goal is to re establish regime of Christendom. It might not look exactly like he did in the old in, in the Middle Ages, but yeah, that's my goal. But the point is, is that he's basically saying we can never consider somebody else's religion false. We should never try to convert. I mean, he explicitly is saying that. [00:07:23] And note this is not a slip by him. This is a pattern. In 2018, he said the purpose of the church is not to try to convert Muslims. [00:07:32] In 2022, he said we must free ourselves from the idea that evangelizing means leading others to our own religious truth. So clearly, I mean, this is a cardinal. He's got a history. He was made cardinal by, okay, I'll give you three guesses. The first two count. Don't count. As far as who appointed him Cardinal. Ding, ding, ding. If you guessed Pope Francis, you were right. [00:07:53] And so it just is. It's unbelievable how he is basically rejecting all evangelization. [00:08:02] Note that he does live and he's a cardinal in a majority Muslim country. [00:08:09] And so I do have some sympathy for the fact that how he evangelizes, because he is bound, duty bound by our Lord to evangelize might look very different than how perhaps an American like me or Bishop Barron or something like that might evangelize. I'm. I'm willing to concede that, and I don't have any problem with the fact that the methodology used by a Catholic cardinal in a majority Muslim country might look very different than a Catholic cardinal in Italy or France or England or Australia or America. Okay. Or South America. All that is granted. [00:08:48] But that's not what he's saying. He's rejecting even trying to convert anybody. [00:08:55] And of course, he's completely wrong. He's completely wrong. Not only based on the New Testament, not only based on church tradition, but even based upon everybody's favorite council, Vatican ii. Vatican II made very clear we are called to evangelize, in fact. And then. And then also in redemptios missio, it says proclamation is the permanent priority of mission. [00:09:20] Dominus Jesus in 2000, in the year 2000 came out. These are not Vatican 2 documents, but documents from Pope John Paul II and then also from the. The CDF back then. Ratzinger. It also made very clear we have to proclaim the gospel. We need to convert. I talk about a lot of this in my book, Deadly Indifference. [00:09:36] Lumen Gentium. [00:09:38] It says men are very often deceived. And so the church fosters the missions. [00:09:45] I mean, I don't. I don't think I need to. I have other notes. I don't need to bore you with the details. The church, the church's primary. The church's primary mission is to convert the nations. That's our per. The primary purpose of the Catholic Church. [00:10:02] And the Cardinal, Cardinal Vespa is just rejecting that, just throwing it out the window. [00:10:08] So what is it we. We hear all the time, sadly. [00:10:14] Prelates, bishops, car. Even cardinals, sometimes the Pope even say things that just are not right. They're just contrary to the. The Catholic faith. And what happens when that happens? All of us online, we freak out. [00:10:29] And I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. I'm doing it too. I'm doing it Right now, in a sense, obviously, there's a charitable and Christian way to freak out and a non charitable, anti Christian way to freak out. If we do the charitable freak out, that's okay. My point is we go up, we go on podcasts, we get online, we go on social media, we say, this is wrong, he's wrong, and that's well and good. And there's a good, there's a good reason we do that because we do need to educate the faithful, the people who are confused by this. And even the non faithful people aren't Catholic. Make sure they understand what the church really teaches. What this cardinal says is wrong. [00:11:04] But we all know. We all know, you know, I know. [00:11:09] We wish we didn't have to do that. We wish Eric Sam's head didn't have to get on a podcast and say that the cardinal was wrong. We wish Taylor Marshall didn't have to do that. We wish we didn't have, you know, people on X posting, this is wrong. We don't really want that. What do we really want? [00:11:26] Well, first of all, we want a cardinal not to say dumb things like that. I mean, that would be the ideal, is have cardinals not say heretical things. [00:11:32] But more so what we really want, if it does happen, we want the bishops to speak out. If a cardinal says something wrong, we want another cardinal or a bishop to say, no, that's wrong. Because that's the authority of teachers. Those are the people who are given the job. And they failed at the job in so many ways, so many times over the past few decades. Which is why the laypeople raised rose up and say, we're going to defend the faith. If you aren't, your excellencies, your eminences, if you don't defend the Catholic faith, we will. And if you go against the Catholic faith, we will call you out. [00:12:09] And that's not the ideal situation, but it's a situation we live in. And we, and you and I can't change it overnight. [00:12:16] But we do want, we desire. We beg our prelates please speak out when something like this happens. And guess what? It happened. We had a prelate speak out. We had a prelate, we had Bishop Barron actually speak out and call out this cardinal and say it's nonsense what he's saying. [00:12:34] So he posted. On October 28, he posted. And so far, I mean, he's had hundreds of thousands of views. And, and I'll pull it up here, you cannot read it on the screen because it's a long post. I mean, he just went off. [00:12:47] Let Me pull it. I'll pull up on the screen just so you can see kind of how long it is. I'm going to read parts of it here so you don't have to try to read that on your screen and maximize your, you know, get a big TV to look at it on. [00:12:58] But essentially, here's what he. He did. He said, Bishop Barron, he said, well, another cardinal has come out with a, shall we say, puzzling take on evangelization. [00:13:09] Now, I know some people are like, oh, you gotta, like, you gotta be tough. You gotta say, he's wrong. So this is how you do it. Actually, if you're another bishop, he's clearly saying that the cardinal's wrong, just awfully wrong. But you say it like this. [00:13:24] A few years ago, Cardinal Americo Aguilar, at that time Auxiliary Bishop of Lisbon, said that he and other organizers of World Youth Day in his hometown had no interest in converting anyone to Christ. [00:13:38] Now, Cardinal Jean Paul Vesco of Algeria has opined that, quote, the church is not there to convert, and Christians should approach other religions through fraternity rather than seeking conversions. So he's quoting Cardinal Vespers. And then Bishop Baron continues. Excuse me, but what. [00:13:53] And that's literally what he said, last time I checked, the founder, that's Jesus. The founder said, quote, all authority in heaven, on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching to obey everything I've commanded you. End quote. Then Bishop Baron continues, sure sounds like conversion to me. I mean, he's. He's clearly frustrated. Bishop Baron's clearly, like, this is ridiculous that a cardinal of the Catholic Church is saying what he's saying, and I'm just tired of it. [00:14:23] And then he continues, BISHOP Baron, when St. Paul came to Corinth or Athens or Thessalonica, his purpose was not to listen or to form a discussion group, but rather to declare an unnerving message. The, um, Valiant, the good news, glad tidings that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. So impassioned is he for this work that he says, this is St. Paul. I have become all things, all people that by all means save some. [00:14:49] I do this for the sake of the gospel. If I do not proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, is an obligation laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel. [00:15:00] Further, now, Bishop Barron cannot have a statement longer than a paragraph or two where he's not going to bring up Second Vatican Council. I mean, let's just. But here he's on solid ground. He's on solid ground. He says, moreover, the entire thrust of the Second Vatican Council was towards bringing the light of Christ to the peoples of the world. Lumen, gentium. And this missionary elan has given rise to the last few. In the last few decades to an idea of a new evangelization, which is to say a fresh declaration of the lordship of Christ. Now, I'll talk about in a second, but I. I obviously have some issues with that. I wrote a book, old Evangelization because I think the new evangelization isn't working. But let's just grant his. He's right about his general point that Vatican II did not say we shouldn't evangelize. That's contrary to Vatican 2 to say that. And then he continues on. Quite obviously, Bishop Baron, no one thinks that this work of evangelization should be done in a brow beating, overbearing or disrespectful manner. Proselytization. But for God's sake, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. If I really. Now this is he just. Bishop Baron just closes it with a zinger. [00:16:04] If I really thought that the church does not exist to bring people to Christ, then I would resign and get an honest job. [00:16:11] Ouch. [00:16:13] Ouch. He basically said cardinal Vespa. [00:16:18] Vesco. Sorry, not Vespa. Cardinal Vesa, you need to quit. If you don't think you need to convert people. [00:16:25] You just. You're not. You're not doing an honest job. You're being. You're being fake. That's what Bishop Barron is saying in so many words. I mean, this is a takedown and it's a bishop against the cardinal. But honestly, this is what we wanted. This is a. This is so encouraging that we finally have a bishop willing to speak out against another bishop when the other bishop does something terrible. [00:16:47] It just doesn't happen very often. And so I just can't. But praise and thank. Thank Bishop Barron for what he has done. I also want to bring up where I just clear that. That, that Bishop Barron is just like done with this crap. [00:17:07] So somebody. I pull this up. Somebody responded to his long post and said a curio official right now is searching for someplace even colder to send Bishop Barron to. Because obviously Bishop Barron's in Minnesota. So he's kind of saying he's going to banish him to Siberia. Bishop Baron himself responded to this guy. This is just some anon said I'm from Chicago. Cold never bothered me. [00:17:28] I mean, to use the term of the kids. And I'm not a kid, so I don't like using these type terms. That's based. That's based. Bishop Barron's like, I don't care. I don't care. Make your threats, send me to Siberia. I'm not putting up with this anymore. And so God bless you, Bishop Barron. God bless you. I. I mean, I'm just. I'm very, very, very encouraged by this. And I think it's great. It's exactly what we want from our shepherds. [00:17:55] I will say this, this, and I. Bishop Baron would never say this. And he might not believe this. And I'm not speaking for Bishop Baron here. I'm speaking for me. [00:18:04] It does seem like what Bishop Baring is doing is contrary, though, to what the cardinals wanted when they elected Robert Prevost as pope, Leo xiv. Because the big theme there was unity. And I believe a lot of the cardinals meant unity without the truth, just outward unity where we all get along. We don't criticize each other. [00:18:25] Clearly, what Bishop Barron is doing causes disunity. Now, I will. I would argue that Cardinal Vesco, who's causing the disunity because he is preaching against the truth, he's preaching against Catholicism. [00:18:39] And Bishop Barron, on the other hand, is just saying, we gotta stick with the church. We gotta stick with the truth. [00:18:45] So technically, I would say it's Bishop Cardinal Vesco who's against unity. [00:18:50] But I do think many cardinals don't want this. They. They want just smooth ride, no light criticism after the Francis turbulent years. They just want kind of keep it all under the rug. [00:19:01] But thank you, Bishop Baron, for kind of not going by that. [00:19:05] And like I said, we could debate a little bit about Vatican II and the new evangelization, but I. I've talked about that before. [00:19:12] And also I want to acknowledge something. I want to acknowledge something, you know, like I said in my book Deadly Indifference, I criticized Bishop Barron. [00:19:20] And one of the things I mentioned, though, in the book is I criticize him because he's the best of us as far as evangelizing bishops. And I still believe that if I don't criticize Cardinal Cupich in the book, because who cares? Everybody knows he's terrible. [00:19:34] But a lot of us, a lot of people highly respect Bishop Barron. I respect him in many ways as well. And so when he does something wrong, it hurts a little bit more. It has more impact, in fact. [00:19:45] And like the classic example was when he was on Ben Shapiro's Show, I think 2019 or so. [00:19:51] And Bishop, I'm sorry and Ben Shapiro said like am I basically screwed here like being a Jew? And he didn't say you need to convert. Bishop Baron didn't say that. His, his answer was, you know, very kind of wishy washy. [00:20:08] The big thing though, I think, and the one thing like that I really struggle with and I, I really don't agree with Bishop Baron is his embrace of the von Balthazarian dare we hope that all be saved? I'm not gonna get, I think I've talked about this on a podcast before. I'm not gonna get into all the details here, but this is idea. Hans Urs von Balthazar, he was a cardinal great, one of the top theologians in the Catholic church in the 20th century. Very controversial. There are certain things about him I like, certain things about him I don't like. But one of the things, he wrote a book called Dare we Hope that all men be Saved? I have it sitting on my shelf. I've read it. [00:20:43] And it basically is kind of positing this idea that we can hope for the possibility of universal salvation. [00:20:50] Now a lot of people take this as, and they don't interpret it properly what von Balthazar is saying. He's not saying, he's not advocating that universal salvation is a known thing, that everybody's going to be saved. He's just simply saying as Christians, as Catholics, we can hope that's a possibility. I don't think that's true. I just want to be clear. I don't think that's true. But I just also want to try to be as fair as possible. What von Balthasar taught and what Bishop Baron supports and Bishop Barron has, you know, has long held this idea of a reasonable hope that all will be saved. I mean he's, he said this numerous times now. He, he clarifies that reasonable hope means grounded in the cross and mercy, not probable. [00:21:33] Baron says he's not expect all to be saved, but he has this reasonable hope. I, I disagree with that and I think a lot of it ends up leading to problems that maybe Bishop Barron himself doesn't recognize and other people will glam onto that he doesn't do, which is the idea of a universal salvation. [00:21:51] And there's no question in my mind that a broadening of this belief in a universal salvation or has led to religious indifference and has led to a loss of evangelization. Like I think there's a direct line myself. I think there's a direct line between kind of the spirit of Vatican II this idea of interreligious dialogue, ecumenism, a direct line from that to what? To Cardinal Vesco saying, we don't convert people. We don't try to convert people. I mean, I think the one led to the other. And again, I'm gonna. I don't care if I'm promoting it, but my book details this. I mean, hundreds of pages where I detail this. So if you really want to understand that argument, read the book. But the point I'm trying to make here is that I do think Bishop Barron. You know, there's some problems there, but the reality is you just simply can't say he thinks everybody's gonna be saved. They don't become Catholic. He clearly wants people to become Catholic. All his work has been towards evangelization. And there's no question he wants people to convert to Catholicism. You can't deny that you can challenge some of his kind of odd beliefs when it comes to, you know, dare we hope they're all be saved on Balthazar, things like that. Okay, I grant that, and I. And I have the same concerns about that. But ultimately, he's proven time and time again that he is pro evangelization. You cannot claim that he isn't. [00:23:16] And I just think that, like, I wish he saw. Like, I see it very clearly. And I'm all. I'm willing to admit. I'm not. I'm not. I might not be right. I think I am. And others, I. I'm support by the people. Somebody like Ralph Martin, for example, I'm on the same side as him, where I just think that Bishop Baron, I think, has a kind of a discordant views here, a dichotomy, cognitive dissidence, I guess, in that, on the one hand, I do truly believe he. He wants to evangelize all souls to become Catholic. On the other hand, he. He has this, like, kind of out clause almost where he. He waters down a bit what the. The proclamation of the gospel, like he did with Bishop, like he did with Ben Shapiro. [00:24:04] Because it's like this idea that the conscience. You know, Newman's. He talks about Newman back into the consciences are primary primeval guide. Or I can't remember the words he uses. And like, that will save us even if we're not Christian. And I. I'm not saying he's heretical about it. I think he pushes the envelope. And his emphasis is so far on there, though, that it does undermine his own work of evangelization and the work of others in their evangelization. [00:24:30] If I Could sit down with Bishop Baron. This is what I talk to him about. And I would be very much like Bishop Baron. I'm not trying to be like a jerk about this. I'm not saying that you're a heretic. I'm not saying that you're just a. A universalist or anything like that. I would not say any of those things. I don't. Because I don't believe those things. I would say, though. Can you see, though, that these things you're saying about you dare we hope, and about the conscience thing like that, that they, That a bishop of the Catholic are saying those things can lead people to believe that we don't really have to work that hard at converting others, that you're undermining, undercutting your own mission to evangelize. So I, I want to. I just. Again, he's not Vesco. He's not Cardinal Vesco. He's not doing any of that. I just want to be honest about and acknowledge kind of my, My issues with Bishop Baron in the past and why I have criticized him before. [00:25:23] I do think, though, I feel like Bishop Barron's getting bolder. He's getting. Maybe it's because now he's got his own diocese. When you're an auxiliary bishop. Here's the thing. The reality is, when you're auxiliary bishop, you serve at the. At the. At the behest of your bishop, you cannot speak out very much. Your bishop controls what you say and do. That's just a reality. Now he's got his own diocese. Yes, he still, of course, answers to the Pope, to the Vatican in some ways, but it does give you a freedom. And I feel like he's got that freedom. I mean, just when was that? Like, I wrote this down, like last week. [00:25:55] Here, let me find it. Yeah, just last week. [00:25:58] This week on October 27th on X, he called out the massive fraud in the US Government and he tied it to a epidemic of, of religious disaffiliation because it leads to moral drift, relativism, and indifference. And I just was like, I couldn't believe this. Because if you notice, when, when bishops typically talk about politics, at least in this country, they. They have their 3 by 5 index card of allowable opinion, as Tom woods would say. The great Tom Woods. They. They just, they'll talk about immigration, they'll talk about abortion, they'll talk about like, welfare, a couple other things like that, but they will not broach topics like. I've always wanted them to broach the topic of our money, how it's broken. That's why I wrote the book Moral Money, because our money is broken. And that's a real moral issue. But they never, they don't even know that. [00:26:44] And so the fact that Bishop Baron actually came out and came against fraud, like, they don't talk about things like that. So I really appreciated that. [00:26:51] And I think he's also, like, done some other things. You know, he's. He's talked against Warrant. He's warned against Cidality, did that back in January. [00:27:01] He's talked against, you know, he's talked against the transgender interventions for minors. He's. He kind of. In 2024, he was railing on the Paris Olympics Last Supper parody and saying there are. The apology of the organizers was pathetic. Or is it anything but a apology? Give me a break. [00:27:17] So, I mean, I really do like this Bishop Baron. I like this Bishop Baron that speaks out, especially what he's doing lately. And you know what else I like about Bishop Baron? [00:27:27] The progressive Catholics hate him. That's what I like about Bishop Baron. The fact that the progressive Catholics just can't stand Bishop Baron. I love. I mean, it just tells you he's doing something right. I mean, you know, I, I'll probably mispronounce his name and I apologize. Masio Faggioli. I think that's how you pronounce this Fagioli. [00:27:45] He's like, you know, the progressive Catholics. Progressive Catholics. He posted after Barron's rant against Besco that it takes some nerve for a bishop with a certain kind of relationship with political power in America today to attack a cardinal who lives in Algeria. [00:28:02] I don't know. That makes sense. Like, they want to tie everything with Baron to politics and Trump because why? Because Baron doesn't, like, go off h. Unhinged against Trump. He's got a good relationship with Trump. [00:28:14] Maybe a little too good. Maybe he should. I do think Baron, I'd love if he spoke out against the Iran war, for example. But the point is, is for the left, that is just. Is just unforgivable. [00:28:26] He just, you know, I mean, Michael Sean Winners has railed on Baron a ton of times, and he just, they just. The left hates him. The left hates him. And I. That makes him good in some ways at the very least. [00:28:38] And so, I mean, basically kind of to wrap this up, this is a topic near and dear to my heart as people who follow me for a while know and who know me. Evangelization is so important. [00:28:50] Religious indifference undercuts it. This attack against evangelization, against. Against sharing the Faith and convert. Trying to convert people is a real problem in the Catholic Church because so many Catholics think that we don't do that. I remember when this was in 2005 or 2006, something like that, I organized a door to door campaign at my parish. What we did, I mean, it was a very low touch. I mean, very, like low pressure. What we did was we. We got a bag of information about our parish and also, like, some things from Catholic answers in the rosary, things like that. We put in a bag and we went door to door in the neighborhood surrounding our parish church, and we knock on doors and, and people answer. We'd say, hey, we're from St. John Newman Catholic Church down the street. You know, just wanted to let you know that we're here. We want to ask you if there's anything you want us to pray about. We want to give some information about the parish. That's it. It was very low key. We weren't even trying in that instance of saying, hey, you need to convert. We were just simply introducing ourselves, which I think is a good thing to do. And I remember when I'm telling parishioners about this, inviting them to come join us, one of them, and I think a little bit a boomer, of course, she said to me, she's like, are we that desperate now? [00:29:59] Are we that desperate that we have to go door to door and beg people to go in our church? I'm like, what are we even doing here? We're always that desperate until every single human being on earth is Catholic, a practicing Catholic. Yeah, we are that desperate. And Bishop Baron knows that. [00:30:12] But religious indifference has really undercut so much. [00:30:16] What, what our evangelization efforts are missionary. I mean, missionary, you know, activity just cratered after Vatican ii. And it's all because of the emphasis ship from proclamation to dialogue. I mean, I, I've. I beat this dead horse for years. Unfortunately, it's not dead, and I'll continue to beat it. And I'd consider Bishop Barron a colleague in this, that we're on the same page. I, Even though I criticize in my book about this, I do think we're on the same team. I. I've always thought that. I just. I just think he's got some blind spots. I'm sure if we sat down and we talked, he would. He would tell me, you got some blind spots, Eric, and that's fine. I may, maybe. I'm sure I do. [00:30:54] But the point here is, for this, for this podcast, is we need to proclaim the gospel every Catholic. You need to explicitly ask people to become Catholic. You need to explicitly be a witness, proclaim the gospel. You need to follow exactly what Bishop Barron's saying. And if you're a bishop or a cardinal, I'm just going to repeat what Bishop Barron said again because it's just so good. [00:31:17] If I really thought the church does not exist to bring people to Christ, then I would resign. Again, honest job. And I would go further than that and say, if you are a Catholic and you do not believe that church exists to bring people to Christ, you really shouldn't be Catholic. You really shouldn't be Catholic. You need to like, go to confession. You need to ask for God to forgive you, convert and convert your heart so you can convert other people. So just kind of to conclude. Thank you, Bishop Barron. Thank you. This is exactly what we need. I hope you continue. [00:31:47] I'm sure you will get some pushback. I'm afraid you might get some pushback from people higher up than you in the church. And I hope you can kind of stay strong. Stay strong and continue to, to, to be bold, to tell people to share the faith and to be willing to charitably call out fellow bishops and cardinals. We need more bishops doing this. I'm hoping you are a model for other bishops, bishops like Archbishop Cordleone or. [00:32:13] Oh, and boy, you know, I'm actually blanking on bishops who are good right now. There's not many of them that will stand up and speak out. And I, I think this is, this is great. So, okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. Just real quick. You can go to my website, ericsammons.com if you want to buy my book, Deadly Indifference. You can also, at that point you can get my new book and pre order, it's coming out in a couple weeks. The Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence. Preserving the distinction between man and machine. I try to remember to put a link in the show notes to my website. It's just ericsammons.com though. It's not rocket science, people. And again, just want to encourage people, please hit the subscribe button because if you're still listening at the end, that means you're die hard. You really should be a subscriber. If you're not a subscriber, but you listen to my. All my ramblings, the whole 30 some minutes of it. Come on, man. What are you even doing? [00:32:57] Okay, until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor.