Bishop Barron discusses his new book on the global persecution of Christians
Matthew Petrusek interviews Bishop Robert Barron about his new book What Do Their Deaths Demand? Christian Persecution Today.
Summary
Matthew Petrusek, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute, interviews Bishop Robert Barron about his newly released book What Do Their Deaths Demand? Christian Persecution Today. Before turning to the book, Bishop Barron discusses his recent participation in the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, which he describes as productive and concluding with a final report of recommendations to the president. Bishop Barron argues that Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, and that this fact has been systematically underreported because it does not fit what he describes as the "woke narrative" that places Christians on the oppressor side of a binary worldview. Drawing on John Henry Newman's distinction between notional and real assent, Bishop Barron explains why he structured the book around personal stories of martyrs and persecuted communities rather than statistics alone. He also notes the important collaborative role of Aid to the Church in Need, which provided data and stories for the book and is overseeing its translation into six languages for wide distribution. He provides a theological account of why persecution is intrinsic to Christianity itself — rooted in the radical nature of Christ's claims about his own divinity — and concludes with six practical actions Christians can take in response.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and Background
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.
Although not widely reported in legacy media outlets, Christianity is by far the most persecuted religion in the world. From the Middle East to Africa, India, China, North Korea, and elsewhere, Christian communities regularly experience widespread humiliation, imprisonment, kidnappings, expulsions, and even murderous mob violence. While not as severe, Christians in parts of Europe, and even right here at home in the United States, also often endure discrimination, exclusion, and ridicule. There is no ambiguity about who is carrying out these attacks or what their motives are. Like the martyrs of past centuries, millions of our Christian brothers and sisters are currently suffering because they profess faith in Jesus Christ.
In response to this ongoing outrage, Bishop Robert Barron has released a new book called What Do Their Deaths Demand? Christian Persecution Today. Intended for widespread distribution, the book spotlights heartbreaking stories of the continuing targeting of Christian communities throughout the world, offers a theological explanation for why Christianity has been under assault since its inception, and most importantly, provides actionable ideas for what all of us can do to respond. Here to discuss the book and why its message is more urgent than ever is Bishop Robert Barron.
Recent Work on the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty
Matthew Petrusek: Bishop, welcome back to the studio.
Bishop Barron: Thanks, Matt. Always good to be with you.
Matthew Petrusek: Today we're looking at a very serious topic — the ongoing persecution of Christians throughout the world — and you've just produced a new book about the problem and, very importantly, how we can address it. But before we get to that pressing topic, what have you been up to recently?
Bishop Barron: Well, I'm not sure when this show will air, but as we record, I just got back from the last meeting of the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty. For the past year, I've been attending these meetings pretty much once a month, and we had our last one. Now we're preparing the final report for the president. Having heard from witnesses and done a lot of discussing of these matters, we're now going to make concrete recommendations to the president. It's been an interesting year, and I enjoyed it very much, actually. I enjoyed these meetings. We took in a lot, but I was privileged to be part of it.
Matthew Petrusek: Did you find them actually productive?
Bishop Barron: Yeah, I did. I found them interesting. Going into it, I had no idea what to expect, really. Out of the blue, I got this call to be a member of this commission. But I must say I enjoyed the meetings and thought they were fascinating.
The Origin and Purpose of the New Book
Matthew Petrusek: Let's now turn to today's topic. You've just produced this book, What Do Their Deaths Demand? Christian Persecution Today. We'll turn to the title in just a moment because it's certainly significant. But just give us some background, Bishop — why this book, and especially why now?
Bishop Barron: It's been a problem now for a long time. Around the world in a remarkable way, Christians are being persecuted. In fact, Christianity is clearly the most persecuted religion in the world. The number of those who are directly persecuted or under threat is really staggering, and it's not been talked about sufficiently. There are reasons for that that we could explore. But I just felt it was time to raise consciousness about this, and speaking as a brother Christian to all these people who are being persecuted, to show solidarity with them and try to raise consciousness and move people to action.
Matthew Petrusek: And the first part of the title, What Do Their Deaths Demand? — where did you get that? What's its origin?
Bishop Barron: Interesting. I was on retreat last January with the bishops of my province, and our retreat master was the great Paul Murray, who's been a friend of mine for a long time — a Dominican priest from Rome. Paul's a very fine poet, and one of his side gigs is that he's a great master of titles. He's been instrumental in the titles of a number of my books over the years. I'll go to him and say, "Here's what the book's about," or I'll have him read the book, and he's a kind of genius at coming up with titles.
So I told him, "Paul, I'm working on this short book on Christian persecution — it's a problem." Well, within a few hours, he sees me in the hallway — we're both in the same dorm area for the retreat — and he said, "What do their deaths demand?" And I said, "Where did you come up with that?" And he said it's a line from a poem by Denise Levertov, the great poet. It was about, I think, the death of a Christian some forty years ago in Latin America. She wrote a poem, and it has that line: What do their deaths demand?
I just thought — perfect. It's the perfect title. Because it is raising that question: okay, this is happening, and what's our obligation? What does it demand of us now, who know about it? So I give Father Paul Murray total credit, and I give Denise Levertov indirectly credit for this great title.
Cardinal Pizzaballa's Preface and the Role of Aid to the Church in Need
Matthew Petrusek: It's also important to note that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa writes the foreword to the book. Say a little bit about how his own experience with the suffering community in the Holy Land helped you to frame your understanding of the issue.
Bishop Barron: First, I was utterly delighted. When I finished the book and we were looking for someone to write the preface, he was my number one choice. I said, "Gosh, if we ever get Cardinal Pizzaballa" — one of the most respected churchmen in the world. At the last conclave, he was certainly a papabile. I came to know him a little bit during the time of the synods. Just a deeply respected figure. And he's the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, so he's on the front lines of a lot of this religious and cultural conflict. He knows directly about Christian persecution.
I thought, because of that and because he's a kind of great spiritual master, he'd be the perfect person to write the preface. Now, to be honest, I thought, "Well, he's a busy man — who knows." But right away he responded. And more than that, he responded with such a beautiful preface that showed he had really read the book. Sometimes, to be honest, people will write a few lines —
Matthew Petrusek: Based on the title, yeah.
Bishop Barron: Right — and God bless them, I thank them for that. But he really read the book and understood it and wrote a beautiful preface. I've been telling people, look, that's worth the price of admission just to read his preface. I'm very grateful to him, and I think it really sets the book up beautifully.
Matthew Petrusek: You also note at several points in the book your relationship with Aid to the Church in Need. What role did they play?
Bishop Barron: They played an important role. It's a very important organization helping Christians and Catholics around the world. In two ways, really. One is they provided a lot of the statistical data, and a lot of the stories I told were based upon work that they've done and stories they've learned about — they shared that information with me. And then secondly, they're really trying to get the book distributed widely. They're presiding over, I think, six different languages they're going to translate it into and then help it get distributed. That's of course our goal. It's a short book, and that's what I wanted — I wanted people to read it. We're selling it for next to nothing in the hopes that it will get widely distributed.
Matthew Petrusek: And they're of course on the front lines of the persecution.
Bishop Barron: Right, this is work that they do directly. So happy to collaborate with them.
Why the Persecution of Christians Goes Unreported
Matthew Petrusek: Finally, one more framing question before we actually get into the content of the book. Bishop, why do you think it is that so few Christians, both in the United States and across the West, know that Christianity is by far the most persecuted religion in the world?
Bishop Barron: Well, at the risk of being a little provocative, my answer would be because it doesn't fit the sort of woke narrative that dominates a lot of our communication. As you know, I'm a great critic of wokeism, and one of the marks of it is a tendency to divide the world into the binary of oppressor and oppressed, and then to put people very simplistically on either side of that binary. So who are the oppressors? Well, let's put white people, let's put men, let's put Westerners, let's put especially Americans, and let's put Christians on the oppressor side. Who's on the oppressed side? Well, women, people of color, non-Americans, non-Westerners, non-Christians. That tends to be the way the woke mind divides the world. So persecution of Christians doesn't fit the narrative. And I think that's why it's been filtered out of a lot of the conversation. It's time for us to take away that goofy filter.
The Structure of the Book: Three Sections
Matthew Petrusek: Let's now turn to the book itself. The text is divided into three sections. The first highlights what persecution against Christians looks like today across the globe. The second section examines the question of why Christians have always been — and as you note, always will be — persecuted, from a theological perspective. And the third section offers practical advice on how we can help our fellow Christians who are suffering persecution right now.
Bishop, the first section quotes some alarming statistics, but you draw on St. John Henry Newman's distinction between notional assent and real assent to focus on telling stories of contemporary martyrs and those who have continued to suffer from persecution. Why did you take this approach — focusing on narrative rather than just giving reams of statistics and reports?
Bishop Barron: Well, Newman's the right place to start, because Newman makes that distinction. Notional assent is given to concepts and abstract ideas. So let's say I lay out statistics for you — here are the numbers about Christian persecution — and you say, "Hmm, that's interesting." But real assent, as he calls it, is the assent that we give to something vividly experienced, seen, or imagined.
The famous example — and I cite it in the book — is that prior to, let's say, the 1850s, a lot of people in the North would have said notionally, "You know, slavery's a bad thing. Yeah, I'm against slavery." But it was an abstraction. But then it's Uncle Tom's Cabin, right? Harriet Beecher Stowe writes this novel that becomes massively popular, and what it did was bring vividly to people's imaginations the reality of slavery. There's this story — it could be apocryphal, but if it's not true, it should be true — of Stowe coming to the White House during the Lincoln administration, and President Lincoln saying to her, "So you're the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war." That reflects the Newman idea: she brought to real assent the visceral horror of slavery, which then led to the Civil War.
As I say in the book, I'm not interested in starting a war, but I am interested in raising consciousness. Statistics and abstractions are one thing, but when you tell a visceral story, real assent leads to action. If you want people to act, you give them something visceral and sensible that appeals to the imagination. That was my purpose in telling these stories.
Stories of Contemporary Martyrs
Matthew Petrusek: The book tells many detailed stories of contemporary martyrs and those who are still alive but suffering persecution. What are some that really stand out to you?
Bishop Barron: It begins really with one that raised my consciousness. Back in 2015, the Libyan martyrs. These young men — mostly in their early twenties — were construction workers and ordinary laborers. They were kidnapped by a very radical Islamic group and taken to a beach in Libya, where they were beheaded. The video that was made was directed very much toward, as they said, "the people of the cross" — it was directed toward Christians to say, "Here's what we're going to do to Christians."
There are so many things that people find moving about it, but one is that in the tape — which, happily, I've never seen — they say that the men, as they were about to die, were calling on the Lord Jesus and affirming their faith, given every opportunity to say, "Okay, I repudiate my faith." They didn't. And that happened in 2015 — not that long ago. That sort of raised my consciousness.
The other one — it was in 2016, and I remember it vividly because I was speaking at World Youth Day in Kraków. I had a speech all prepared for this big gathering in a stadium, about 20,000 kids. But either the day before or even the day of the speech, it was the death of Father Hamel in France — the elderly priest, a man in his mid-eighties, who was brutally murdered by Islamic radicals. I remember I changed my speech. I got up on the stage — you can see it on YouTube — and I said, "Look, everybody, I had a speech prepared, but I'm getting rid of it. I want to talk to you about the death of this man and what it meant to be a Christian witness." So 2015 and 2016 — those stories kind of brought it, in that Newman way, vividly before my imagination. It compels us to act.
Responding to Claims That Persecution Is "Too Complex"
Matthew Petrusek: The book covers all different kinds of persecution — everything from terrorism in the Middle East to murderous mobs in Nigeria and India, to imprisonment in China, to employment discrimination in Europe and unfortunately here in the United States. Bishop, how do you respond to those who look at the problem of religious persecution and say, "Oh, it's just too complex sociologically and historically for us to definitively say this is Christian persecution — there are other causes at work here"?
Bishop Barron: It's a facile excuse. Sure, everything's complicated, and there are multiple causes for things — that's a banality, a commonplace. It can be applied to any situation. But not to see the religious dimension of these attacks and this persecution — you have to be blind, or you have to be ideologically captured, not to see it.
When it comes to the Nigerian persecutions, there's been debate about whether these are tribal conflicts, conflicts over farming territory, and all this. Sure, I'm sure that's operative somewhere. But look — I'm going to listen to bishops on the ground, my brother bishops who are dealing very directly with this, rather than someone sitting around a table at a think tank or in the faculty lounge of some comfortable Western university. I'll listen to the people on the ground, and they tell me pretty unambiguously about the religious nature of these persecutions. It's a facile excuse to say, "Oh, well, it's complicated." You'd be blind not to see the religious dimension of these.
Matthew Petrusek: And of course, many of these attacks are taking place in Catholic churches, on Christian feast days, and so on.
Bishop Barron: Of course.
The Theological Account: Why Christianity Has Always Been Persecuted
Matthew Petrusek: Let's turn to the second section of the book, where you address the question of why Christians are persecuted. Rather than offering a historical or sociopolitical account, you provide a theological account grounded in the nature of Christ and his mystical body and the relationship between that and the world. You write, for example: "Just as Jesus was opposed, his church has been opposed from the very beginning, and this antagonism is a function of the very nature of Christianity." Say a little bit more about why that's the case and how persecution is sort of built into the identity of Christ and the Christian community itself.
Bishop Barron: To my mind, it's the great question. I'll cite first of all a theologian I don't really care for that much, but I remember reading a book of his when I was a young man and a section of it has stayed in my mind — I kind of reproduce it in this book. I'm talking about Hans Küng in his book On Being a Christian. There's a section where he says, "Look at the difference between the way the other great founders died and the way the founder of Christianity died."
I rehearse this in the book: the Buddha dies full of years, surrounded by his disciples, confident that his teaching will go on. Muhammad dies full of years, confident that he's accomplished his great ends. Confucius dies the same way, surrounded by his disciples. Then there's Jesus, who dies at the age of thirty on this horrible instrument of torture, with an animal cry on his lips, his followers having abandoned him, his movement by all accounts destroyed.
Küng is right in saying that's worth taking into consideration. That matters — the way the founders died. Now why? Because Jesus was opposed in a way that the other founders were not. The opposition to him was so basic. And the fact that, as Catholics, we hold up the cross of Jesus all the time — I'm wearing it right now — we're not hiding the fact that he was done to death. We're holding it up. And from that we take something very basic: that he represents something that the world has always found very difficult to take.
And then, as Jesus himself said, "If they hate you, they hated me first. They persecuted me, they will persecute you." So that leads to the same question: well, why is that the case? If he's just a guru, just a teacher of spiritual truth, just someone showing a new ethical path — okay, why would they want to kill him brutally on a cross? In other words, he's more than that. What is the "more"? That's what I talk about in the book.
The "more" is the still startling, unnerving, disturbing claim he makes about himself: "I and the Father are one." "He who sees me is seeing the Father." "You've heard it said in the Torah, but I say to you..." "My son, your sins are forgiven." "Unless you love me more than your mother and your father, more than your very self, you're not worthy of me." How strange that is. It's the claim of Jesus to divinity that led people 2,000 years ago — and I would argue up and down the centuries — to stand in opposition to him. As he himself said, "Either you're with me or you're against me." You see why — because of the radicality of the claim he's making about himself.
That's why, as I argue in the book, I'm not the least bit surprised that authentic Christianity, when it presents itself, will always awaken the opposition of the world. It'll always awaken this frustration and this confusion and this opposition. "As they hated me, they will hate you," Jesus said. That's not an incidental observation. That belongs to the heart of the matter.
Matthew Petrusek: And there's also an important ecclesial point that you really draw out — that the Church is the body of Christ, and so that persecution continues to be against Christ, not just some followers of Christ.
Bishop Barron: Right. The master text then being the Acts of the Apostles: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Think of Saul — before his conversion to become St. Paul — as an anti-Christian persecutor. He's the forefather, if you want, of all this Christian persecution we see to this day. That's Saul of Tarsus. And then Jesus says to him, "Saul, why are you persecuting me?" My Church is not just a collectivity of like-minded people. My Church is my mystical body. And so as it persecuted Jesus, the Church will be persecuted. I think that's just a basic fact. We can draw certain implications from that, but I think we should acknowledge that truth.
The Significance of Martyrdom and Tertullian
Matthew Petrusek: Say a bit about the significance of martyrdom for Christianity, especially in light of Tertullian, one of the Church's ancient writers, whom you quote. He famously says, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Explain the significance of that.
Bishop Barron: Well, a martyr is a witness — that's what the word means. But a martyr is also a kind of warrior. A non-violent warrior, a warrior who fights not with the weapons of the world but with the weapons of the spirit. The martyr is someone who participates in the identity of Jesus in the measure that he or she awakens the hostility of the world and then does battle with the world — again, not using the world's weapons, but using spiritual weapons. That's what the martyrdom of a martyr represents. It's the heroic warfare of the mystical body.
I remember — I think I have this in the book — years ago I was in Paris as a doctoral student. At the time there was a lot of talk about imperialism, Western imperialism, the imperialism of the Church, and all this. The man running the seminar was my thesis director, the great Father Michel Corbin. And I remember he said, "The only legitimate imperialism is the imperialism of the martyrs." Dead right, it seems to me. It is a kind of imperialism, because they're speaking for the empire of Christ, which is meant to cover the whole world — "Go declare to all nations, go to the ends of the world." So there is an imperial ambition within Christianity. But the only legitimate imperialism is that of the martyrs, who witness by their death in the face of persecution. I think that's getting the accents right. He wasn't denying imperialism, but he was clarifying the nature of Christian imperialism.
Should Christians Seek Out Persecution?
Matthew Petrusek: As I transition to the third section — what can we do about persecution — there's a potentially fundamental quandary here. If persecution is inevitable given the nature of who Christ is and the nature of the Church as the mystical body of Christ, and martyrs are, in Tertullian's words, the seed of the Church, then why — theologically and morally — should Christians resist persecution? Why shouldn't we see it as a positive good and even seek out opportunities for persecution?
Bishop Barron: No, that's going too far. I think of Thomas More, and it's beautifully portrayed in A Man for All Seasons — More tried by every legitimate means to avoid martyrdom. He said to his wife, "This is not the stuff of which martyrs are made." He meant, look, I'm not running into the arms of my persecutors. I'm not trying to become a martyr. But then when he realized there was no other way, no other path, that indeed God had brought him to that place, then he said, "Okay, I accept. Now I'm going to stand and fight."
But no — we don't run into the arms of our persecutors. We expect persecution because of the nature of Christianity, we're not surprised by it, but we don't seek it out. It's living somewhere in that paradox. I think we wait for God to bring us to that place. We would say in regard to the martyrs that God indeed brought them to that place finally, where they knew they had to take a stand. But we want to be as innocent as doves and clever as serpents as we make our way through the world. And you can battle the dark powers in a less dramatic way than martyrdom — there are all kinds of ways that you can oppose the powers. I would let God bring me to the place where, okay, now I know I have no choice. So somewhere in that space.
Matthew Petrusek: Is there also a moral angle on this — in the sense that even if I'm willing to accept persecution and perhaps ultimately martyrdom, that still doesn't mean I shouldn't help protect my neighbors, my brothers and sisters in Christ?
Bishop Barron: Of course, yeah. We should fight the persecution of the Church. If God brings us to the point where we say there's no other way to fight it than my own martyrdom, okay. But no — we fight in all sorts of more mitigated ways.
Six Practical Actions: What Can We Do?
Matthew Petrusek: So the third section does directly turn to the question: what can we do, and what can we do right now? You identify six things: one, pray for the persecuted; two, stay informed; three, persuade the government to take action; four, provide aid to the persecuted; five, respect religious liberty; and six, resist what you call soft religious persecution. We have time to go through all six, but let's look at a few of them in a bit more detail.
This first one — praying. Given the horrific nature of the persecution that some Christians are experiencing right now, being told to pray may sound offensively inadequate. But you say no, it's the first and most important thing. Why?
Bishop Barron: Of course. I hate this thing that's in the culture now — "thoughts and prayers." Like, "Oh, don't give me thoughts and prayers." This sort of condescending dismissal. That is dead wrong. In the Bible, nothing great ever happens apart from prayer. Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God. Prayer is linking my own life to the source of all power and all grace. Without prayer, nothing positive can really be accomplished. Now, it's up to God what God's going to do — prayer is not something magical — but it's a basic orientation of one's life whenever you're facing any challenge or difficulty.
I do a holy hour every morning, and a lot of it is facing my day. To some degree I feel I'm in control of this or that and I know what to do, but very often I'll just say, "I don't know. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to solve this. Give me the strength. Give me the guidance. Show me the way. Turn the light on so I can see." Without that, you'll accomplish nothing great. So yes — praying for persecuted Christians, absolutely. I love to hear it in our parishes, in the prayers of the faithful, mentioning on a pretty regular basis: we pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who are being persecuted. Super important.
Matthew Petrusek: You also make this beautiful metaphysical point that in elevating ourselves to God in prayer, we also descend and are in even stronger community with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ — not only through baptism, but because we share a common creator.
Bishop Barron: Quite right. If you find your own center in God, you've found the center of everybody else. That's just the way it works metaphysically.
Respecting Religious Liberty at Home
Matthew Petrusek: You also note the importance of respecting religious liberty at home. How does that help our persecuted brothers and sisters elsewhere?
Bishop Barron: It gives them hope. Religious liberty is such a precious gift. We mentioned at the outset my participation in this religious liberty commission, which I was happy to do because — and it's not just a cliché — it's the first freedom, the first freedom defined in the Bill of Rights. It's the hinge freedom in many ways. If religious liberty is compromised, the other ones will fall, it seems to me. And it's recognized as coming from God, not as a gift of the government — it comes from God.
You have no idea — and I've heard this from people around the world — what a beacon of hope it is for people around the world when they see a country, the leading superpower in the world, where one of the marks of our polity is religious liberty. That's extraordinarily powerful. If you're living in a place where your liberty to express your faith is limited to the point of death, you need some beacons of hope, and I think one of them is our own commitment to it.
So when we let that slide — and we have been — when our report comes out, you'll see a lot of instances of the principle of religious liberty being undermined in our own country. That discourages people around the world. Maintaining it strongly here is super important.
Matthew Petrusek: And it's been historically demonstrated time and time again that once religious freedom goes, the other freedoms follow. That's why totalitarianism always goes after religion first. Karl Marx was up front about that, and his followers have not hidden it. They go after religion first. So we've got to be vigilant.
Living Faith Boldly: Resisting Soft Religious Persecution
Matthew Petrusek: Finally, Bishop, as part of your call to resist soft religious persecution, you write — and I love this — quoting you: "I would encourage Christians to live their faith boldly, unapologetically, even with a bit of swagger. Don't be intimidated into silence or into privatizing your faith." How would you respond to someone who hears that and says, "Well, Bishop, I just can't do that because I don't want anybody to be offended by my Christianity. I certainly don't want them to feel like I'm imposing on them"?
Bishop Barron: Well, as John Paul II said, the Church never imposes, the Church proposes. So it's not a question of imposition — I'm not compelling you. Go back to our own First Amendment: we don't want the state establishing religion. I don't want that. I don't think any right-minded American wants that. But the second part of that is: Congress shall make no law prohibiting or restricting the free exercise of religion. That means much more than private worship or whispering my convictions among fellow Christians. No — the free exercise means free exercise in the public square, able to announce who I am, nonviolently and not imposing.
Think of Pope Francis, who would often rail against proselytizing. If you define it as a kind of browbeating, aggressive approach, yeah, I'm against proselytizing — that would be at least akin to an establishment of religion. But having said that, the free exercise of religion is a good thing, and we shouldn't be cowards. Under the supposed rubric of the "wall of separation" — which is not in the Federalist Papers, not in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Constitution — under that rubric, to be cowed into privacy: we religious people should resist that vehemently.
Evangelization and the Fight Against Persecution
Matthew Petrusek: Finally, before turning to our listener question — especially as the founder of Word on Fire — what relationship do you see between the work of evangelization and the work of combating persecution? Are they connected in any way?
Bishop Barron: Well, yeah. Thank God in our country we have religious liberty that enables me to evangelize. The very fact that Word on Fire has come to be and has flourished in our country — that's one of the great blessings of American democracy. Thank God for it. And one of the ways that the opponents of the faith will express themselves is precisely by limiting the capacity to evangelize. Think of some parts of the world — maybe they'll allow you privately to worship, but you can't call people to conversion, you can't evangelize. Religious liberty is essential to healthy evangelization.
Listener Question: The Crucifix in Catholicism
Matthew Petrusek: It's now time for a listener question. Today we have Declan in England, who's asking about whether we should reconsider the prominence of the crucifix in Catholicism given that Christ has conquered death once and for all.
Declan (listener question): The crucifixion itself tends to be presented really horribly — it's just a really awful event. Do you think that's possibly counterproductive and off-putting? Because surely it is actually a success story. Jesus won. He went up to heaven, and then he was back two days later. So should we present it more positively? Thanks.
Bishop Barron: You know, it's a kind of classic question in Protestant and Catholic conversations, because Protestant faith tends to put a cross without the corpus in their churches, while we tend to put the cross with the corpus. I don't know any Catholic that doesn't believe in the resurrection, that doesn't understand that Jesus who was crucified rose from the dead. So to see the corpus on the cross as some kind of cult of death, or as though we're preoccupied with the death of Jesus — I mean, I'm with Paul: "I know one thing, Christ and him crucified." The fact that we boldly demonstrate Christ crucified shows our faith in the resurrection. We're not afraid to show that God went all the way to God-forsakenness to save us — as an expression of love.
Now, if someone wants to display a cross without the corpus, I have no big problem with that — sure, it's a sign of the victory of the cross. I don't think it's worth going to the mat over this question, because I don't know any Catholic who thinks, "Oh wait — didn't he rise from the dead? Is he just dead?" I don't think any Catholic would hold that. But I'd be Pauline there: I know one thing, Christ and him crucified, and I want to boldly show that to the world.
Matthew Petrusek: Beautiful biblical warrant for the presentation. Well, thanks so much, Declan, for reaching out to us.