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. One of the biggest political stories of this year can be summed up in one word: fraud. Minnesota, where we are recording this show, has been an epicenter of the systematic theft of public dollars. But this is not only a problem for us. It's a national epidemic. From California to New York, Arizona to Florida, and even Texas, the US Government Accountability Office estimates that American taxpayers lose between—get this—$233 billion up to $521 billion to fraud per year. On the high end, that is almost double the annual budget of New York state and more than the entire yearly GDP of the country of Denmark. The sheer scope of this swindle is bad enough. The fact that so much of it is taken from those who need the funds most—through the defrauding of Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs meant to support vulnerable people—makes the issue a national crisis. How should we respond to this scourge of dishonesty from the standpoint of Catholic social thought? Why is fraud such a grave injustice, especially in its effects on the common good? And what does the Bible say about taking what does not rightly belong to you? Here to offer a distinctively Catholic account of why the plundering of the public coffers is one of the great social injustices of our time is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
01:40 | Traversing the western side of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester
03:05 | The staggering numbers regarding US fraud
06:03 | What law or moral principle is being violated?
08:16 | What about stealing from institutions? Isn't that victimless?
10:03 | Connecting fraud with questions of social justice
10:50 | Fraud prevention and the preferential option for the poor
11:43 | What the Bible says about exploiting the poor
12:50 | The contributions of negligence
14:43 | Considering the common good in relation to fraud
16:01 | How fraud erodes civic trust
17:00 | Catholic social teaching and differing ideologies
20:23 | Checks and balances: The response to our fallen nature
22:11 | Decreased churchgoing and its impact on moral guidance
24:35 | Argument #1: What we call fraud is actually common abroad
25:33 | Argument #2: Uncovering fraud is really picking on the poor
26:32 | Argument #3: Uncovering fraud is partisan politics and we ought not engage
27:19 | Bishop Barron's response to "Stay out of politics"
29:00 | Listener question: What guidance can you give to incoming college students?
31:18 | 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.

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.