Word on Fire

On a recent trip to Sacramento, from my home base in the LA area, I flew Southwest Airlines. In an idle moment, I reached for the magazine in the seatback pocket and commenced to leaf through it. I came across an article by a woman named Sarah Menkedick entitled “Unfiltered: How Motherhood Interrupted My Relationship with Social Media.” The piece was not only wittily and engagingly written, it also spoke to some pretty profound truths about our cultural situation today and the generation that has come of age under the influence of the Internet.

“The Case for Christ” is a film adaptation of Lee Strobel’s best-selling book of the same name, one that has made an enormous splash in Evangelical circles and beyond.

Anyone even vaguely acquainted with my work knows that I advocate vigorous argument on behalf of religious truth. I have long called for a revival in what is classically known as apologetics, the defense of the claims of faith against skeptical opponents. And I have repeatedly weighed in against a dumbed-down Catholicism. Also, I have, for many years, emphasized the importance of beauty in service of evangelization. The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the Sainte-Chapelle, Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion,” T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” and the Cathedral of Chartres all have an extraordinary convincing power, in many ways surpassing that of formal arguments. So, I affirm the path of truth and the path of beauty. But I also recommend, as a means of propagating the faith, the third of the transcendentals, namely, “the good.”

Every community, inevitably, has a value or set of values that it considers fundamental — some basic good that positions every other claim to goodness.

Recently, I was interviewed in Los Angeles by Dave Rubin for his popular program “The Rubin Report.” Dave is a stand-up comedian, political satirist, protégé of Larry King, and spokesman for, I think it’s fair to say, the classically liberal, secularist world view. He has demonstrated a particular interest in the issues raised by the new atheists and by the supposed conflict between religion and the sciences. He is also an advocate of gay marriage. You might be wondering, therefore, why he’d want to talk to a Catholic bishop.

Two recent films, “Deepwater Horizon” with Mark Wahlberg and “Sully” starring Tom Hanks, represent something of a breath of fresh air, for both movies feature men who are intelligent, virtuous and quietly heroic. If this strikes you as a banal observation, that just means you haven’t been following much of the popular culture for the past 20 years.

This fall, I am giving presentations to all of the high school teachers, staff and administrators in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. These annual talks are dedicated to a regular cycle of topics. This year, the theme is morality. Lucky me! My guess is that disquisitions on doctrine or Church history or pastoral practice wouldn’t raise too many hackles, but ethics is practically guaranteed to rile people up, especially now when issues of same-sex marriage, transgenderism and assisted suicide are so present to the public consciousness.

In my capacity as regional bishop of the Santa Barbara pastoral region, which covers two entire counties north of Los Angeles, I am obliged to spend a good deal of time in the car. To make the trips easier, I have gotten back into the habit of listening to audio books. Just recently, I followed, with rapt attention, a book that I had read many years ago but which I had, I confess, largely forgotten: C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce.”