The Tucker Carlson Show
Bishop Barron on the New Pope, the Foolishness of Atheism, and Why Young Men Are Turning to Christ
Mon, 02 Jun 2025
There’s a revival going on, says Bishop Robert Barron. It’s unmistakable. You see it everywhere. (00:00) Introduction (09:05) How to Abandon Your Ego (20:47) Seeing God in All Things (25:15) The Biggest Threat to Your Relationship With God (54:00) Does God Require Sacrifice? Paid partnerships with: Beam: Get 30% off for a limited time using the code TUCKER at https://ShopBeam.com/Tucker Tecovas: Get 10% off at tecovas.com/tucker Hallow prayer app: Get 3 months free at https://Hallow.com/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Do you think that Christian persecution is on the rise?
Oh, I know it is. It's documented. 20th century was the worst century for Christian martyrs of Christian history, all the previous centuries combined. It's the most persecuted religion. If two friends like each other, that's fine. But Aristotle says that won't last, that relationship. What makes it last is when the two friends together fall in love with a transcendent third.
And now together we look to that. Now we really find a bond. When the bride and groom together look to Christ, now they'll stay married. If they're just looking to each other... it'll founder.
The Catholic Church got super liberal. And then all of a sudden, everywhere you look, people you know are converting to Catholicism with a pretty kind of traditionally Christian orientation.
This is how I would characterize ecclesial liberalism, a tendency to reduce the supernatural to the natural. That was going on for a long time. Yes. In very recent years, there's been a keener interest in the supernatural dimension of the faith.
I don't think I've ever received more texts about any guest than I did about you. From Catholics I know, from non-Catholics I know, but the Catholics all wanted to hear details on, you know, factions within the church, and I'm not going to ask you any questions about that because I don't understand any of it.
Good.
I want to start as broad as I possibly can, which is, it seems like a lot of people in the West are unhappy, and it's measurable, suicide rates are. Yep. at record highs and birth rates are at record lows. And those are not signs of confidence in the future. Those are signs of despair.
Why are people unhappy? Well, they've lost a sense of God. I mean, God is the supreme good. And when you lose that sense of God and you collapse back in on yourself, that St. Augustine defined sin as curvatus in se, I'm caved in around myself. When you do that, you are by definition unhappy.
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Chapter 2: How can we abandon our ego?
When you lose a sense of objective value grounded in the supreme value of God, almost again, by definition, you become unhappy. What does it mean to cave in on yourself? It means that you've lost a sense of connection to the values that should be calling you out of yourself in an act of love, and you've now come to reverence your own freedom, your own autonomy.
So what gives my life meaning is the fact that I've chosen something. I've determined my life. If the Bible has one message, it's that, that when you live your life that way, you get lost. Right. When you deify your own psyche, your own ego, you get lost. The joy of life comes from forgetting in this great ecstatic act. You forget about yourself and you lose yourself in some great value.
Now, that could be sports, that could be politics, whatever it is. But then the supreme value in which all the other ones participate... We call God. God is the highest good, the sumum bonum. That's why you love the Lord your God. That's the first commandment, right? But when the culture's lost that, which ours is in danger of, you, by definition, become unhappy. You get caved in around yourself.
And then you fuss around in this kind of addictive way. That's how I would diagnose the thing spiritually.
When you are in love with the idea of choices, I thought the whole point of the West was choices.
Well, but you have to know what your choice is for. When you deify choice itself, when you say autonomy, that's my God. No, choice is for some good. And the idea is to order freedom, right? Freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom is ordered towards some good. When it's disordered, it tends to collapse upon itself. That's what we got.
The whole point of America, I thought, was choice and freedom for its own sake. Well, and I would argue it's not for its own sake. And if that happens to us, something's gone wrong. The founding fathers, you know, they weren't in the full sense of the term. It wouldn't have the full Catholic imagination as I would like it, but they certainly had a sense of the objective good.
And that the purpose of life is to find that good and be ordered toward it. And ordered freedom is what they're interested in, not freedom for its own sake. What does ordered mean? Ordered toward the good. And that's why it has to be educated. Your freedom has to be disciplined and directed.
It's like a kid with all kinds of athletic ability, but if a coach never directs that ability toward the achievement of some good, that he can become a great tennis player or a great golfer, then the freedom begins to kind of stew on itself. No, direct freedom, direct talent, direct energy. And our culture, see, it's like, I think of this, if you have banks to a river, the river has energy.
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Chapter 3: How can we see God in all things?
Deify our autonomy. So you're speaking as if autonomy and choice are the same thing or closely related.
The goal for the Bible is not autonomy. It's theonomy. God, theos, becomes the normos. God becomes the law of my life. And see, here's the trick. When God becomes the norm of my life, I become more myself. I find who I really am. If I jettison God and I say, no, autonomy, it's I'm the leader of my own life, I get lost. What does Jesus say? The one who loses himself will find it.
The one who's trying to hang on to himself is going to lose it. Lose your freedom in God's greater freedom, and you become now authentically free. That's every spiritual master in the West teaches that lesson. But we lose it in the measure that we say, no, it's all about my autonomy. That's all that matters. Don't tell me what to do. Throw off the rules. Right.
Knock down the banks and the river becomes a lazy lake and we tolerate each other blandly, but we don't have a common purpose. There's another problem. See, if you reject objective value, so you got your values, I got my values, your freedom, my freedom. Well, what connects us? In fact, we're antagonistic to each other, right? We tend to grow into hostility and my freedom is against your freedom.
But if together we find a common good, a common goal, now we can join forces, right? Yeah. So it's falling in love, that's Aristotle, with the transcendent third. So like if two friends like each other, that's fine. But Aristotle says that won't last, that relationship.
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Chapter 4: What is the biggest threat to your relationship with God?
What makes it last is when the two friends together fall in love with the transcendent third, the country or philosophy or some great value. And now together we look to that. Now we really find a bond. Right. Go back now to the 1950s and Fulton Sheen, the great Catholic preacher, writes a book called Three to Get Married, made the same argument, right?
The three are the bride, the groom, and Christ. When the bride and groom together look to Christ, now they'll stay married. If they're just looking to each other, it'll founder. What are the banks that we've demolished? Well, I would say objective value. You know, the life of the mind, the moral good, religious good, aesthetic. Think of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
If we subjectivize those and just relativize them, you got yours, I got mine, what you think is right, I think is wrong. When that's lost, the banks are knocked down. But when together, oh no, we can together reverence the beautiful. We can together reverence the moral good. We can together reverence the epistemological good, the intellectual good. Then together we move someplace.
And see, our whole system educationally was set up classically to do just that, was to train people in what these objectivities are.
uh but when you subjectivize those or you see it simply as part of an oppressive or patriarchal system you know why do we why read shakespeare he's just an old patriarch see but that's a very dangerous game to play now we've lost a common mooring and then we devolve into this sort of self-regarding um autonomy so i mean christianity is probably not the i don't think it's the only religion to make this point but self is the trap
Yeah. Yeah. So you think of the self here, the ego is like a black hole, a black hole that will draw everything into itself. Sucks all of life and light and energy into itself. Nothing can escape. The crevatus in se, ego, right, becomes a black hole. And I've known people like that. I'm sure you have too.
Oh, yeah.
You're with them. They'll draw everything into themselves. Yeah.
the best people are those who breathe life into a room and that happens because they they're not preoccupied with the ego they're they're captivated by some objective good yes and they want to show it to you think of some like great coaches i had as a kid that wanted to show me the various games i learned to play baseball we had a coach when i was a little guy seven eight years old and he said all right guys i want you to get down on your hands and knees on the field i want you to feel the infield
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Chapter 5: Does God require sacrifice?
I'm going to open up a deeper door, you know, and I'm going to commune with the God who's here and now creating me. That's prayer. And then there's all kinds of disciplines around that.
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