Robert Barron: Finding Truth Wherever It Lies
February 25, 2011
by brettsalkeld
Like many moderates, Barron seems to have been taken to task for his appreciation of various figures beyond the pale of orthodox Catholicism. I once gave a talk that included undisputed sociological data from Father Andrew Greeley and was castigated for this indiscretion by some of orthodoxy’s defenders in the audience. But this attitude is the opposite of Catholic. It is sectarian. Father Barron is right to have nothing to do with it.
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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Moderation evolves from wisdom which evolves from love which is God.
Father Barron for Pope.
I certainly endorse finding truth wherever it lies. But the idea of getting “access” to people outside your own particular sphere by referencing theirs can backfire if you don’t have a deep understanding of what you are talking about. It seems that Fr. Barron truly knows and appreciates Dylan, Richards, Merton, and so on. But if you are, say, preparing a talk for young people and you decide you need a reference to Beyoncé or Lady Gaga or Bruno Mars, and you don’t really know anything about them, you are liable to make yourself look foolish and condescending. It seems clear to me that Fr. Barron is not advocating anything so lame, but people listening to him talking about getting access to people you would not reach otherwise might be tempted to say, “Hey, maybe I should try rap for my next homily.”
It can sometimes be just as bad when you do know what you are talking about. When I was in high school, certain teachers tried to use sports metaphors to make spiritual points. Not only didn’t it work for people like me who were not particularly interested in sports, but it often just evoked laughter, because the metaphors were so forced, and it was such a transparent effort to be “relevant.”
This is the second video I’ve seen of Fr. Barron, and I’m more and more impressed by him.
This is what makes Barron so great. But don’t call him a “moderate”! What is this, the New York Times!?
And he is a “moderate” by what standard?
I must admit that “moderate” is an equivocal term. Moderation is, in many ways, a good thing. It means things like, “not hasty in judgment” or “willing to listen to those with whom one disagrees” or “possessed of the virtue of temperance.” In these ways, I consider Barron a moderate.
On the other hand, it can mean simply luke warm. Barron certainly is not that.
The man himself might not be too happy with the appelation moderate, though I trust he is wise enough to know how I meant it. He himself might prefer “bi-polar extremist.”
http://vox-nova.com/2009/07/31/the-virtue-of-bi-polar-extremism/
Upon reflection, I am aware that in choosing the term “moderate” I also was thinking “not partisan.”
Did you not know that if you are not far enough right you can only be a liberal? I have the memo right in front of me that says clearly that there are only two settings on the ideological dial.
Why do you feel compelled to apply any sort of political label to a question and a topic that is decidedly a-political?
Hmm, I don’t think I was thinking about politics as such. I was thinking that Barron isn’t captive to any particular wing of the Church. He can speak to and for the whole community. That’s part of what I love about him.
In this particular case, my experience is that there is a (small) wing of the Church that will jump you for using Thomas Merton and a wing that won’t.
Overall, this is a very concise and helpful video, and I would not gainsay it one word.
Of course, I am a Dominican, so I need to make some distinctions! Principally, I might ask a different question. What if we asked not whether we might rightly read, engage, and even appeal to approvingly and within just limits, the work of those who were in faith or morals compromised as regards the Gospel? Instead, what if we asked whether there is a legitimate reason to be worried about such an engagement?
What I mean is this. Fr. Barron suggests an unhappy version of rejecting the use of such material, viz. that we would be left only to appeal directly to Christ and the Virgin, and that we would not represent the best of the Catholic faith, e.g. the thought of Thomas Aquinas. However, imagination is a crucial and indispensable part of all human thinking and knowing. We cannot think of anything, even divine things, without some appeal to imagination, which is itself necessarily grounded in our sense experience. Our capacity to think well, to reason well, whether speculatively (which will impact faith in God and our understanding of human nature, e.g.) or practically (and thus how to live our live in relation to God, to ourselves, and to others) is wholly dependent on the furniture we have imaginatively, our skill in making use of that furniture, and our sharpness in moving from the imagination to the immaterial truths that are so key to human flourishing and the life of faith.
If we do not live in a world which feeds, from infancy through childhood and youth to adulthood, a healthy and wholesome imagination, then even when we receive the faith we will be ill equipped at living it out and find it puzzling, odd, even perhaps in some ways distasteful. I believe there is an altogether legitimate worry today whether or not, in the life of the Church, even for those baptized in the cradle, there is much to sustain a wholesome, healthy Catholic imagination. After all, it was this kind of imagination that allowed Aquinas to make such fitting use of, e.g. Moses ben Maimon, ibn Sina, Aristotle, etc. On the other hand, we might rightly be worried by a person whose primary imaginary world is filled with Lady Gaga, Big Brother, and Killzone 3, with only an hour of Mass every week to compete. It is especially worrisome if that Mass has ceded its own proper, Catholic signs and symbols for those which seek to “reach out”, with the result that the classic Catholic faith, even if in principle accessible, seems alien, foreign, hard to imagine.
The solution, of course, is not to be phobic of the culture around us nor to refuse to appeal to it. Even so, what we do need to do is enrich, and deeply, the experience of the Christian life so that we can confront the counter-signs of the world with a well-equipped, wholesome and holy imagination.
Thanks for clarifying. “Not hasty in judgment,” “willing to listen to those with whom one disagrees,” and “possessed of the virtue of temperance” are more helpful descriptions. They aren’t, however, apparent from mere use of the term, nor are those characterists apparently absent from someone described as not being a moderate.
Though their lack is implied by the term “immoderate.”
;)
Depending on who says it.
In listening to Fr. Barron, I think we need to remember that he is not just taking symbols and referents from the dominant culture: he is attempting to engage that culture in dialog. Aquinas cited Aristotle, etc. but he was not passively taking from them: he was engaged in an intellectual dialog with these traditions, giving as much as he was getting.
So, in the same way, Fr. Barron seems to be sifting through popular culture and appropriating things that are good and true and useful, and then using these things to speak to members of that culture. He does not want to replace the traditional Catholic symbol set, but rather add to it.
In this regard I sometimes think that our evangelical brethren are a leg up on us. I have a weakness for the “big hair” metal of my teenage years, though I stopped listening as it got cruder and raunchier. In grad school I got turned on to Christian metal bands (and later other Christian rock bands). I had long had a suspicion of Christian music: the Catholic examples I had been exposed to were really quite awful. These bands, however, had mastered the artistic conventions of metal, made them their own, and then used them as a vehicle for speaking Christian truths. Stryper’s “To Hell with the Devil” remains a metal classic, and this band went on to enjoy cross-over success.
Regarding your last paragraph about the artists learning the conventions of whatever style they’re working in U2 did something similar. The singer Bono said in the early days of U2 that they were very drawn to the anger, energy and passion and the whole “do-it-yourself” ethos that they heard coming out of the London and New York City punk rock bands. Bono said he just wanted to do something more positive with punk rock than just stir up indignation and leave it at that. He wanted the music and the lyrics to end up pointing somewhere so his Christian faith informs a lot of their lyrics. The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen were hardly formally trained musicians, but they followed that DIY ethic and ended up giving the band’s music a very distintive sound. For instance, since learning how to play guitar much of U2′s music gets its ambient, “searching” quality by the fact that the guitar chords are rarely played as major or minor which compliments Bono’s lyrics very well. Since then, U2, has been cited as a major influence by both Christian and contemporary rock bands. I could also say this applies to another band from the same period , Los Lobos. I’ve always heard their Catholic upbringing in the Mexican East LA neighborhoods in their songs. Like U2 it’s not always explicit but it’s certainly informed by it.
Excellent video and comments as well. Thank you.
I think many of us lack the faith to touch a leper; there is a real fear that the Church will somehow lose something essential if we embrace too many points of contact with the culture.
I’m found, after a bit of bumping into furniture I’m afraid, that I gain more from avoiding the initial tendency to be critical of those with whom I disagree. Better to do the humbler work to peel back the onion and find the point of agreement with someone first. Starting from a point of agreement, I can better distinguish where the parties actually disagree. Plus, I find the discussion is better (and more informative) if both sides respect each other and avoid ad hominem or alienating arguments.