Bishop Robert Barron on conscience: what it is, how to form it, and why it matters
Matthew Petrusek interviews Bishop Robert Barron on the Catholic understanding of conscience.
Summary
Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute, interviews Bishop Robert Barron on the nature, formation, and cultural relevance of conscience. Drawing heavily on John Henry Newman, Bishop Barron argues that conscience is not merely a subjective feeling or the internalized voice of authority — as Sigmund Freud claimed — but a genuine contact with objective moral truth, which Newman called "the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul." Bishop Barron contends that the modern collapse of conscience into personal inclination or relativism is not liberating but life-denying, and that the Church's moral rules, far from being instruments of control, are liberating guides in the same way that the rules of music or baseball enable excellence. The conversation concludes with a listener question about how to respond to people who say they believe in God but reject organized religion.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and recent activities
Matthew Petrusek: 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 naive and superstitious past — a time of cartoon crickets and buzzkilling 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 does have 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. And through all of this, how can we say that 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 conscience is more important than ever is Bishop Robert Barron.
Bishop, welcome back to the studio.
Bishop Barron: Hey Matt, always good to be with you.
Matthew Petrusek: So today we're talking about what it means to follow your conscience — properly defined. But before we get into that, what have you been up to recently?
Bishop Barron: Well, as we record these words, I'm just back from Nashville, Tennessee. I was down there for the Good News Conference, which is a yearly thing now. We've done it for six years in a row — a great gathering of Catholic folks. We have speakers come in and different liturgical events. So we were in Nashville for that. And while I was there, I visited the Nashville Dominicans. We could do even a special program on them because they're an extraordinary community that not only survived some of the chaos after the council, but they've flourished and they're influencing the whole country. I visited their mother house — a marvelous visit, meeting with about 70 novices that are there.
I was also on with Theo Vaughn. By the time this comes out, it probably will have aired. Theo is like one of the top four or five podcasters in the world, and we had a lovely two-hour conversation.
Matthew Petrusek: We're all very much looking forward to watching that. It'll be out very soon. Well, let's now turn to today's topic, which again is what it means to follow your conscience. Let's start off by, as we typically do, laying some groundwork — some definitions of what we're talking about — and then comparing it with some popular but perhaps misleading conceptions of conscience. Bishop, what from a Catholic perspective substantially defines the conscience?
Defining conscience: Newman's "aboriginal vicar of Christ"
Bishop Barron: I would say it's a really fundamental moral sensibility by which we determine right from wrong. But more to it — as Newman said so well — the conscience rewards us and punishes us. So when we do something right, it applauds us, it gives us positive feedback. When we do something wrong, it punishes us. Which convinced Newman it was much more than a mere sensibility. You might say, "That guy's got a good feel for the aesthetic — he can really judge what makes a painting great," or "That guy's got a great feel for mechanics." Conscience is more than that. It is indeed a kind of fundamental sensibility about good and evil, but Newman observes that we call the conscience a voice. We don't call the other ones a voice. I don't say "the voice of my aesthetic sensibility told me," or "I've been punished because I made a bad judgment about a painting." But I do say those things about the conscience — "the voice of my conscience."
And so Newman famously called conscience "the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul." It's a very interesting description. Newman was well aware of the vicar of Christ in Rome, namely the pope. But the more original — the aboriginal — vicar, the representative of Christ in the soul, is the conscience. So it's that moral sensibility which is a voice, not just an intuition, that tells right from wrong and rewards and punishes accordingly.
Matthew Petrusek: And using Newman's definition, that would mean that that sort of Christ-consciousness is constitutive of who we all are as human beings — is that ultimately right?
Bishop Barron: Yes. Even though you might make the implicit/explicit distinction. And that's interesting, Matt, because when Vatican II says that even a person of goodwill who is following his conscience and who is not an explicit believer can be saved — and let me hold off all those who'd write me angry letters, I'm not saying will for sure be saved, I'm saying with Vatican II can be saved — see why? If anyone is saved, he's saved by the grace of Christ. But let's say even the non-believer following his conscience is in fact following the voice of Christ, though he might not be fully aware of it. If he's saved, therefore he's saved by the grace of Christ. So it's a wonderful paradox that you can say truthfully there is no salvation apart from Christ, but then you've got to make the distinction between explicit and implicit faith — and conscience therefore can be a road to salvation.
Conscience versus gut feelings and personal inclination
Matthew Petrusek: We'll get more into the nuances of how all that plays out specifically with freedom of conscience and the formation of conscience. But before we do — how does having this conscience compare to our gut feelings or our personal feelings about what we should do in any given moment?
Bishop Barron: It depends on what we mean by that, because sometimes when someone says "my gut feeling," she might be referring to her conscience — naming this really fundamental and substantial moral intuition. If that's what we mean by gut feeling, okay. But I'd say more frequently, especially in our culture today, we mean something like my personal inclination, my personal feelings about something.
Conscience is very objective in a way — it's not really mine. That's why when I call it a voice, "the voice of my conscience told me" — that's not like I'm telling myself something. There's a real experience of another telling me what to do and telling me the right path to take. So I would make that distinction: a mere subjective feeling or subjective intuition versus this substantive contact with an objective moral intelligibility.
But that's slippery, because I think today people will say, "Oh no, look — I know the right thing to do. It's my personal conviction." My experience actually is that knowing the right thing to do is alienating in a way, because I'm so fallen, so compromised, that when I really know what the right thing to do is, it's more often than not at odds with me — at odds with my intuitions and my inclinations. So to collapse conscience into inclination is to compromise conscience completely.
The angel-and-devil trope
Matthew Petrusek: Well, to that point — how would you assess the old-fashioned but still quite likable trope of our conscience being depicted as an angel on our right shoulder that has our face, counseling us to stay on the narrow but bright path, while there's another version of us — the devil version — also with our face, counseling us to give in to our temptations? Is there any wisdom to that old trope?
Bishop Barron: I think so. I'm thinking right now of Animal House — there's a famous scene where the two appear, and as I remember it, he does the right thing. He follows, begrudgingly. The Simpsons love to play with this too — Homer often has the angel and the devil appearing.
I think it's naming something very real, and it's this very point: that the conscience is often at odds, in our fallen world and given our fallen minds and wills, with inclinations within us. We symbolize those inclinations by the devil; we symbolize conscience by the angel. And that's part of the drama of human life.
Now in a higher world, as Newman might say, it will be otherwise. When we are perfectly integrated, in line with God and our own interiority is properly ordered, we won't have that tension. We will effortlessly do the good. Here below, in our fallen world, that's not the case. In fact, doing the good almost invariably involves struggle — either interior or exterior — which by the way is what we name the virtues of temperance and courage. Temperance is when I'm fighting opposition within me; I need to temper my various appetites. Courage is when there's a threat coming from the outside — if I do the right thing, I'm going to get attacked. In heaven I won't need those two things because I'm going to be aligned perfectly and the world will be ordered such that I won't be at odds with the good.
But here below, the angel-devil battle is going on all the time within us. You know when you wake up in the morning and say, "Oh, I don't want to go to work today, I'm just not in the mood" — but then your conscience says, "No, your duty is to go to work and support your family and do the right thing." That's angel and devil battling each other. If we indulge people with "Oh no, just follow your own inclinations" — well, in a fallen world we're always inclined toward self-indulgence. Follow your instincts, and God help us, we're going to slide right down into the abyss. Follow your conscience. Do the right thing even when it's a struggle. That's the drama of human life.
Socrates, the daimon, and conscience as an external voice
Matthew Petrusek: The other classical trope of course is Pinocchio, and the conscience depicted as an external voice — a cricket. Can we confirm that theologically, that it's coming from the outside?
Bishop Barron: It's very interesting, because that's again, as you say, a trope up and down the centuries. Think of Socrates, who talks about his daimon — in Greek, and we get the word "demon" from that, but he wouldn't have meant that. He meant something like a guiding spirit — his daimon is what's telling him what to do. And Socrates — I'm looking at the bust of Socrates right over there as I say this — Socrates did the right thing even though it meant his own death. His daimon, his inner conviction, was telling him to do the right thing. That's conscience.
And then we can find that in the literature of the world. In fact, most stories turn on that — the hero or heroine at some point has to say, "All right, what am I going to do?" I already mentioned Animal House, and I'll get in more trouble, but Pulp Fiction — which I think is a very well-crafted movie — at every stage of that movie, one of the main characters faces that moment. Do I go the self-indulgent route? Do I go the route of duty, of what I should do? It's a movie that really shows the dark side of life, but watch: in almost every major scene there's a moment when the person does the right thing, follows the daimon, listens to the angel not the devil. That's human life.
Freud's superego and why it fails
Matthew Petrusek: How about this conception of conscience made popular by Sigmund Freud but which now permeates the culture — that all conscience is, is the internalized echo of authority structures from the world, speaking through you with the goal of controlling you and taking you away from the things you actually want to do?
Bishop Barron: Freud, you're right, has been so massively impactful. Think of his anthropology of id, ego, and superego, which we have very much internalized. Freud turns around the classical thing — Plato wants the passions to be like horses energizing the chariot, but in the driver's position is reason, ordering the passions to attain the end. Freud turns it upside down: the driving thing in us is these fundamental drives for sex and pleasure and so on. Then the ego — the rational level — is: how do I order my life so I can attain these goods that the id wants? The emotions are still running the show. Then what's the superego for Freud? It's the internalized voice of the father. From early on we hear this voice of authority telling us this, not that.
I do think, as you suggest, that's been internalized largely by our culture. So when you speak of conscience, people say, "Oh come on, that's just your father — you're still hearing his echo in your mind," or "That's just the oppressive society trying to limit your seeking of pleasure."
But I think the best argument against this — and we can all find this moment — is when as a young person you recognize: "Hey, you know what? What my father just did there — that wasn't the right thing. He was actually being kind of cruel. That wasn't the right thing to say." When you're a little kid, your parents are the criterion of right and wrong. But at some point, because we're all sinners, you recognize: no, wait a minute, what they just did was wrong.
To my mind, that disproves Freud. If the conscience is nothing but the internalized voice of the father, you'd never be able to turn on your father that way and notice a moral difficulty. Your father might indeed awaken your conscience — that's true. Your parents for a time function effectively as the great symbol of your conscience. But the conscience is greater than your parents. They're in fact appealing to it when they're guiding your life.
And broaden it out: when you realize, "Yeah, the norms of our society, the laws — I think they're fundamental, but you know what? That law is not right. That's an unjust law." Well, if it was just the internalized voice of authority, I wouldn't be able to say that. There's something that transcends the authority of parents and state — indeed, the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul. I think that gives the lie to Freud.
I remember — this is an old memory — my favorite show when I was a kid was Batman, the old TV Batman with Adam West. There's an episode where for a time Batman and Robin pretend to be criminals and are actually hunted down by the police, and I think they're shot at one point. It's all subterfuge. But my little six-year-old mind, it really bothered me, because Batman and Robin are justice, they're the good guys. And when it seemed like Batman was doing something wrong — in fact, the police were after him — it really bothered me. And it was with a great sense of relief in the follow-up episode that I realized, oh, wait a minute, they're just playing a game, it was subterfuge.
But that speaks to how conscience is formed. When you're a little kid, yes, your parents and the authority of the state and heroic figures like Batman and Robin symbolize the objectivity of the moral norms. But at some point we turn on those and realize there's something beyond them.
Conscience as both individual and universal
Matthew Petrusek: Moving a bit deeper into specifically Catholic and biblical anthropology and morality — how do we conceive of the conscience as something radically individual, unique to each one of us, and yet still pointing to something objective and universal, shared among all human beings? What's the right way of framing that?
Bishop Barron: It's my particular moral guide — that's true, it belongs to me in that sense. But make an analogy with the intellectual arena. You and I could have a coherent conversation if and only if we share some basic logical framework. If you and I were talking and I was just freely contradicting myself at every turn, the conversation would just be a shipwreck. You and I have to share something like the principle of non-contradiction, that truth is better than falsity, that deception is a bad thing — those basic intellectual frameworks must obtain if we're to have a conversation. So there's something common and objective.
The same is true in the moral order. Alasdair MacIntyre saw this — one reason we can't have a moral conversation is we don't share a framework. So when Aquinas says that as the principle of non-contradiction is the basis of intellectual life, so the principle "do good and avoid evil" is the fundamental principle of the moral life — if we don't share that in common, we can't talk at all. Then he broadens it, including things like reverencing life, reverencing sociability, reverencing friendship with God — these are fundamental convictions. On that basis we can begin to argue about particular cases and what's morally right and wrong. But if we don't share the objective framework, we can't have the conversation.
So conscience — yes, it's my conscience or your conscience, but it's getting us in touch with objective principles without which we can't have a moral conversation.
Conscience and the virtue of prudence
Matthew Petrusek: Connected to that — for those who have studied some moral theology — how would you relate the virtues, and specifically the virtue of prudence, to the conscience?
Bishop Barron: I think they're very tightly connected. Prudence is knowing in the particular situation how to apply the great moral principles. So I've learned them, I've internalized them — it's like knowing the rules of baseball and then playing baseball. You can't really play baseball unless you know the rules, but then the game unfolds in a particular way and you have to know how to apply them. The same in the moral order: the principles are always there and conscience is urging us to follow them, but then the game unfolds in a particular way with particular challenges, and prudence is the virtue that enables that application. So I would just see them as tightly linked — prudence and conscience.
Freedom of conscience
Matthew Petrusek: What about this notion that the conscience is free — especially when we're recognizing that the freedom of conscience, the purpose of it, is to appeal to an order that's outside of our freedom, that exists independently of us in a sense? How do we understand that freedom of conscience?
Bishop Barron: Well, that hinges on the modern distortion whereby freedom is construed as self-determination — what Pinckaers calls the freedom of indifference: A or B, I'll just decide A or I'll decide B. That's not a classical understanding of freedom. In the classical mode — what Pinckaers calls the freedom for excellence — when I am free from my attachments and all that, I am free to accomplish the good. So the good lures the will; it lures freedom. Freedom is not apart from the good and doesn't determine the good; rather, it sees the good and then chooses among various non-absolute goods. That's why we call it freedom. In the presence of God, in a way, my freedom is transformed into complete acquiescence. But in the presence of competing goods — like, do I come and talk to Matt today on the show or do I stay home and stay in bed? — those are competing goods, neither one of which is infinite. So I'm described as free in regard to those goods. But it doesn't mean I'm determining the good or hovering above the goods indifferently. No, the goods are always luring my freedom.
So I would say the more you follow your conscience, the freer you are, because you're freed from the various distractions and attachments that are pulling you away from doing the right thing. You're freer the more you follow your conscience.
What the Church means by respecting freedom of conscience
Matthew Petrusek: What does the Church mean when she says that she respects everybody's freedom of conscience even if she disagrees with the particular moral conclusions they arrive at?
Bishop Barron: You have to distinguish between the subjective and the objective. As a priest I've been a confessor now for 40 years, and that's an important distinction. Someone can do something that is objectively wrong, and yet they don't bear the subjective responsibility — if you can determine that that person really has informed his conscience, has sought spiritual advice, has wrestled with it, and comes to this conclusion: I'm to do A, even though A is objectively wrong. We would not assign subjective blame in that case.
Now that doesn't mean everything's relative — that's the problem. That collapses the distinction. You can still say, "No, what you did was objectively wrong," but I wouldn't be able to assign blame if I can really discern that this person is following his or her conscience. That's where it has a primacy. The problem is we conflate the subjective and the objective and turn that into, "Well, then it's just whatever you want to do — it's your good and my good." No, no. There is the good. But then there's the subjective element whereby I try to appropriate the good, and we respect the integrity of conscience as long as the conscience is informed and as long as you're acting responsibly.
Aquinas on the duty to follow an erring conscience
Matthew Petrusek: This is something that those who have studied Aquinas often wrestle with — his claim that everyone has a duty to follow his or her conscience even when the conscience is in error. How do we make sense of that?
Bishop Barron: Again, it hinges on that same distinction. As far as that person is concerned, she has made the right decision. She feels she is in line with the objective good, and she's done it in a responsible way. I can still say — and be correct in saying — "No, what you did was objectively wrong," but I respect the integrity of that person's conscience. It's a little tricky, but I think that's a classic view of the Church.
The formation of conscience
Matthew Petrusek: Well, that brings up the question of what it means to form conscience. On the one hand, conscience seems to be an intrinsic capacity — the original vicar of Christ, Christ present within us — so it seems it wouldn't need formation if it's already this fixed entity. On the other hand, we're already recognizing that conscience can err. So what role does formation play in bridging that gap?
Bishop Barron: It plays an enormous role. Here's maybe a dumb analogy, but let's say you recognize in a kid: boy, that kid is athletic. You can see the coordination and speed, they can jump, they've got good muscle tone. That kid's an athletic kid. But now I want to form this kid as a baseball player. So now I'm going to take this basic capacity and form it according to the needs of baseball — how to swing the bat, how to field, how to throw, how to catch. I'm forming him as a baseball player, taking a vague general athleticism and focusing it.
So it's an analogy. Do we have, even as a child, this sort of basic moral sensibility? Yes, I would say. And you can see it — you're a father of kids — even the littlest kids, what are they acutely aware of?
Matthew Petrusek: "That's not fair."
Bishop Barron: "That's not fair." "That's my toy." Where does that come from? I mean, in a way the parents are teaching, but not really — I think it's just a fundamental moral sensibility. Okay. Now does that mean the kid's great, he's set for life? No. Now I'm going to form that sensibility, inform it, give it structure and purpose and direction. So it's a both/and — the conscience is a given in one sense, but it's also something that I now submit to formation, the way I would in any other area of life. "Boy, that kid is musical — she's got musical ability." All right, good. Now sit her down at the piano and get the piano into her fingers and instincts. Same is true in the moral order.
How different people reach contradictory moral conclusions
Matthew Petrusek: You've already laid the foundation to answer this question, but just to bring it to a point — because it always comes up — the specific question is: how do we account for when different people, both appealing to their conscience, reach completely morally contradictory, mutually exclusive positions? Martin Luther famously appeals to his conscience — "Here I stand, I can do no other."
Bishop Barron: Well, I think to some degree it's because we live in a finite, fallen world. Take Luther as a good example. Here he stands, he thought things through very seriously, engaged in debate, and determined: this is where I have to stand. Now, was he right? I would say no — I think it was a bad judgment. But I can certainly respect the integrity with which he made that judgment. I think that's a legitimate distinction. You're not collapsing the objective into the subjective. I think it's just a function of our finitude and our fallenness — our judgments are clouded.
How could Aristotle make mistakes, which he clearly does? Here's arguably the greatest genius that ever lived. Did he make mistakes? Sure. Aquinas, whom I reverence — I can point to a number of things Aquinas got wrong. The saints — they're not flawlessly perfect, except the Blessed Mother. Did the saints get it wrong? Yeah, sometimes. So I think just given our nature and the nature of the finite world, that's going to happen.
Signs that conscience has been corrupted
Matthew Petrusek: From a pastoral perspective, what are some signs we could look for to identify when what we think might be the voice of our conscience is actually a corruption within us speaking?
Bishop Barron: That's good, because something I've talked about is that there are a lot of indicators — the conscience being one — that there's this call, the voice of the conscience. But also the teaching of the Church, which is very objective and endures across the centuries; the Bible — what's the Bible saying about this; the example of the saints; the doctrine of the Church. Let's say my conscience is telling me to do A, but all those other things — the saints, the Bible, the teaching of the Church — are telling me to do B. Well, I'd be kind of arrogant just to say, "I'm going to leave all that aside." I think the morally responsible person attends to all of these indicators.
And I would say too: look at Galatians chapter 5 and look at the fruits of the Holy Spirit. As you walk path A, what's your life like? What kind of fruit is it bearing? Is it making you joyful and peaceful and respectful of others? Or is it making you crazy and dangerous and violent? That's a good indication that you're on the wrong path. So you have to look to all these things as you make your moral judgments.
The evangelical case for conscience against relativism
Matthew Petrusek: Moving to the evangelical dimensions of conscience — how can we speak about conscience in a compelling way to a culture that says the preeminent paradigm for understanding morality is "you do you"?
Bishop Barron: I know what a dead end that is. As I've said many times before, in no area of life that you take seriously do you accept that kind of logic. The minute you take something seriously — you're a baseball player, you're a guitar player, you're getting interested in the arts or in philosophy or whatever — you stop thinking "my truth, your truth" or "my good, your good." No, you get drawn out of the black hole of your little petty self-regard and you are drawn into the world of the objectively valuable. This is Dietrich von Hildebrand — I always go back to him.
Those are the best moments in life. To me, one of the most life-draining things to hear is "my truth, your truth — well, that's your point of view, I've got mine." To me, that is a recipe for boredom, a recipe for deflating one's life. What's interesting is when you're a young kid — I remember when I was learning baseball, I was good at baseball — to watch Roberto Clemente, or one of the great stars of that era, was thrilling. I would never say, "Oh well, I'm glad Roberto, you run that way, I run my own way." No — I run like an idiot, I run like an amateur. You run like a star. I want to be like you. That's a better moment.
So like the saints — how stupid for someone to say, "Well, you know, I've got my path, Mother Teresa. I respect your path and God bless you, but I've got mine." Come on. In the presence of Mother Teresa, I realize what a moral amateur I am and I want to be drawn into the world that she's opened up to me. Then you're alive. "I'm okay, you're okay — your truth, my truth." That is the most attenuating, enervating, life-denying stuff. But it's all through our culture, sadly.
Calling out moral confusion in the culture
Matthew Petrusek: And how can we break through to those who — to paraphrase the prophet Isaiah — are calling evil good and good evil? We've perhaps been watching recently clips of people declaring just the most horrific things in a celebratory, self-righteous tone. How can we break through when it seems like conscience is dead in them?
Bishop Barron: Don't acquiesce to it. We take in now with our mother's milk this idea of relativism — "I'm okay, you're okay," toleration and all that — but it's life-denying. I think you call it out. A lot of it too is the emperor's new clothes thing, isn't it? We all start saying, "Oh yeah, I guess so, everyone seems to accept this." Say: wait, these people are barbarians. These viewpoints are subhuman. Say it. I think we as a Church especially should say it.
Conscience invoked to justify what the Church teaches is intrinsically evil
Matthew Petrusek: How about the issue within the Church of those who use the conception of freedom of conscience to actually justify things the Church teaches are intrinsically evil — like abortion, like gender mutilation, like illicit sexual activity?
Bishop Barron: You've got to call that out, because again, it's fudging these distinctions that we've been making and turning the objective into the subjective. Yes, there's a legitimate claim to be made — if someone says, "Look, I really have informed my conscience, and after much wrestling I have decided X" — okay, at the subjective level there's an acknowledgment of that. But it doesn't mean for a minute that they've now obliterated the objective or called it into question. And we just have to be clear about that.
That's why "hate the sin, love the sinner" is a basic Christian intuition and is what we should follow. But that gets misconstrued — "love the sinner" gets taken to mean "love whatever the sinner does." No, that's not what it means at all. So we've got to be clear and keep calling that stuff out.
Rules as friends of freedom, not enemies
Matthew Petrusek: And finally, Bishop — you're well versed with this critique — how do we respond to the general criticism that Catholicism is rule-obsessed, that all it's trying to do is control what you do and what you think?
Bishop Barron: Well, that's the Michel Foucault kind of imposition. I would again say: whenever you take something seriously, you love the rules. You don't hate them. You're trying to learn the piano — give me more, give me more rules, give me more instruction. You're trying to be a better hitter in baseball — tell me more, I want a coach, I want an instructor. Rules aren't the enemy of freedom; they're the friend of freedom. Rules channel and awaken freedom.
But that's again a very postmodern thing — we read power as a problem, we interpret rules simply as the arbitrary imposition of power, instead of seeing them as a liberating device. I think the best moments in my own life are when I moved into a world I didn't know that well but found compelling, and then started learning and internalizing the rules of that world. Whether it's learning how to read — if a kid said, "I don't want your rules of grammar and syntax and vocabulary, don't lay your guilt trip on me" — no, give me more rules, I want to understand more and more about this. Or Shakespeare — "What does this mean? Tell me, inform me." So again: inform — there's our word — inform my conscience. Help me understand more and more about the moral life. We fall into these easy bifurcations.
Listener question: "Spiritual but not religious"
Matthew Petrusek: Well, it's now time for our listener question. Today we have Carolyn from Maryland asking how to respond to those who say they believe in God but not organized religion.
Carolyn (listener): Hello, my name is Carolyn and I'm from Maryland. My question is: how should I best respond to someone who makes the comment that they believe in God but not in organized religion, or that they consider themselves spiritual but not religious? I'd like to be able to engage with them in a way that opens the door to evangelization. Thank you.
Bishop Barron: Well, here's the first observation. If you know anything about God, it's because of some organized religion. Somehow, whether through the Bible or through some preaching or some teaching, you got that mediated to you through some kind of organized religion. So the distinction is just way overdrawn.
Now, it's not to say that you can't notice flaws within organized religion and notice its sins and call them out. I wrote a whole book about the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. So it's not to exonerate organized religion from any blame. But it's just a false dichotomy to say, "Well, I'm spiritual, not religious."
The other side of it is this: if you completely divorce your spirituality from your religion, it'll fade away. Because religion here means something like practice — going to church, praying, living the moral life, following the instructions of the Church. You stop doing that, and trust me, in short order your spirituality will eventuate, will fade away. So yes, you can criticize the institutional Church, but no, you can't separate institution from spirituality.
Matthew Petrusek: Well, thanks so much, Carolyn, for reaching out to us. We've come to the end of another conversation, Bishop. Thank you.
Bishop Barron: Thanks, Matt. Always good to be with you.