I just watched this remarkable tribute to Christopher Hitchens by Fr. Robert Barron, and it confirms to me yet again that Kathryn Lopez is 100 percent correct about Father Barron: He is the most impressive Catholic apologist of our time. Too many Catholic apologists — and the exact same goes for Protestant apologists, and atheist apologists, and what-have-you apologists; it’s the occupational hazard in that line of work — come across as smug tribalists sneering at the lesser people not fortunate enough to be within their circle. Watch this video of Father Barron on Creative Minority Report and you will see why he is so good at apologetics: He is clearly someone who is catholic in the true lower-case-c sense, and infused with love for a (in this instance, one particular) fellow man. I had my problems with Christopher Hitchens — who didn’t? — and Barron mentions some of these issues in the video. But he puts those disagreements in a very realistic context, in what I think is an attempt to see our brother Christopher with God’s eyes. That is what we are called to do even with our outright enemies, never mind people who might say an unkind word about (or to) us now and again. Now there’s a resolution for the New Year: Try to be as charitable with people who disagree with me as Father Barron is in his comments on Hitchens. (One hell of a challenge; but then, so, of course, is Christianity. In fact, it’s the same challenge.) If any e-mailer or comboxer views this as an invitation to put my resolution to the test, let me say, preemptively, to that person: Have a blessed and happy New Year!
Small c Catholic? Come on Mike. Barron is a big C Catholic. There is no such thing as a small c Catholic Church...
But of course you know that as a big A Anglican.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFather Barron speaks well, and shows true grace in a world oft bereft of it. That said, he seems to honestly misunderstand people such as Hitchens (or, in this one parallel, myself) and their views on morality. People of faith and reason often believe that because their morality, their decency, their sense of justice come from their faith that there is no solid foundation upon which others might build the same. This is not so.
I do not need any creature or spirit or truth beyond myself to know that I should endeavor to treat others as I would wish them to treat myself. Yes, my parents and friends helped to make me the man I am today, but that is precisely because they instilled in me a trust in reason and an indifference to faith.
When I see, as I suppose Hitchens did, people suffering the worst of humanity's evils it drives me to a rage and an overwhelming desire to set things right. I do not do so whilst secretly hoping that there is a god, an immutable truth that just happens to be consistent with my own views.
We are mammals on a whirling ball. Dostoyevsky was right in that the absence of god makes everything permissible....before the universe. We as humans must decide what is permissible betwixt ourselves. I do not begrudge people like Father Barron their faith if that faith drives them to greater decency and humanity. All I ask is that he and those like him try a little harder to understand that secular humanism (or whatever one might choose to call it) is hardly a dodge or a cop-out. It may be as alien to Father Barron as his faith is to me, but it is no less real nor meaningful.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseChris, Yep. What Potemra calls being "charitable" is actually disrespectful both to Mr. Hitchens and true Christians. There is no middle ground. Perhaps Fr. Barron's god allows such, but not so with the God of the Bible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAn apologist should speak God's answers: not his own. These "charitable" ones believe there's a god but the demons know, and they shudder.
I definitely agree with the sentiment to bless when cursed, to return good for evil, but I have to admire the hope and potential of the term, 'brother Christopher'! God's grace is sufficient. Lord knows there were enough of us praying for Mr. Hitchens at the end. Cheers and Happy New Year!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseChrist never commanded us to declare someone who rejected Him a "brother." In fact, he said exactly the opposite (John 8:44). Hitchens might have been many things, including being dead wrong. But a brother to me - or to other Christians? Not a chance. Nonsense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA prayer some people rely upon goes like "God, please help me to see people as you see them,and help me to love them as you love them."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFr. Barron's argument is exactly what Mr. Hitchens would have strenuously opposed--that a "god" is the source of any justice and morality in the world. That said, Fr. Barron appears to be arguing the deistic view of a god--the prime mover who does not directly intervene. Accepting for purposes of discussion that notion, and that Mr. Hitchens espoused it, this view does not inexorably lead to the concept of a god that is "three persons," one of whom assumed human form and died for all of humanity's sins, of a god that "wrote" the bible or any other "holy" scriptures, of a heaven or hell, of a catholic church ruled by a human monarch in Rome, of a catholic clerical hierarchy that believes "god" wouldn't want women as priests, etc. etc.
All of this "praying" for Mr. Hitchens and views like Fr. Barron's are akin to the Mormons performing post-mortem baptisms on Jews and other infidels.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFather Barron makes the very reasonable put-down of the type of atheist who thinks jokes about the "flying spaghetti monster" are terribly clever and contrasts his idea of God as being simply the essence of Good, the essence of Truth - not a Being in the universe who has these characteristics but the characteristics themselves.
Speaking as an atheist, I have no problem with this. Indeed, I would call this deepest most fundamental aspect of God the shared possession of both atheists and believers. The trouble is that religious people take this base and expand it - so that Goodness and Truth are deemed to have a consciousness and to interact with people on a daily basis and send their only begotten Son to Earth as a human being and so on.
To me, Goodness and Truth are Platonic realities which exist outside the universe, in the same way as mathematical constants like pi and e. Before the universe existed the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was already pi and it will be so after the universe is gone. It is an eternal truth. Furthermore, it is an uncreated truth: it just IS.
It is harder to prove moral laws than mathematical ones, but I do not doubt their existence.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find it remarkable that Fr. Barron speaks about God without mentioning Jesus, who was very much in the world and a being among us.
Since Hitchens' death many religious people have covered up his numerous defects with gross sentimentality and wishful thinking. How about all the damage he has done to the more tender minded, who might have a religious sense, only to have it mocked and destroyed by him.?
Lenin and Che had a passionate, all consuming passion for justice too. Can we say of them that they had a religious sense of justice in the way Fr. Barron implies that Hitchens did? We would first have to clear away all of the dead bodies before we can find this sense in them.
I read many of Hitchens' works, and there was much to admire in them, but he was an enemy of religion and wanted to be known as such. He has had a very negative influence on many people. Religious people should not attempt to co-opt him; and I think they try to do so because they are afraid to face his ideas head-on.
There is nothing wrong to speak ill of the dead. St. Christopher certainly had no trouble doing it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut one cannot “see someone with God’s eyes” and be wrong at the same time. I’m afraid Fr. Barron is very confused.
I differed with Christopher Hitchens on the most important question one must face. The one he got wrong – that a personal, loving God exists. That said, I admired Christopher Hitchens’ defense of liberty and I admired the fact that he called evil by its name. He was a beautiful writer and polemicist. I was a fan in that sense.
But being “religious” was something he was not. Christopher Hitchens would agree with me on this one. I’d ask Fr. Barron and Mr. Potemra, what word do we use for the truly religious now that Christopher Hitchens has been designated religious?
One doesn’t have to call Christopher Hitchens “religious” to “see him through God’s eyes” - quite the contrary. The God of Scripture isn’t one to sugarcoat things.
Calling Christopher Hitchens “religious” because he was interested in “justice” is, quite frankly, absurd. Many are interested in justice and also interested in the demise of religion. Christopher Hitchens thought religion was a cancer on humanity. He could not have been more clear on this.
If you'll be please excuse the comparison, but calling him “religious” is akin to calling termites, woodworkers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUsing "religious" to describe Hitchens may be correct in the sense that he had an ethical standard, standing up for justice and against evil (as he saw it), and he tried to meet that standard. Many Christian denominations and non-Christian religions tout similar standards and push their congregants to meet them in order to become righteous or accepted or a good guy: "Do more! Try harder!" they advocate.
But the whole thrust of biblical Christiianity runs contrary to that simple syllogism (ie., I keep the standard (or try awfully hard), therefore, I must be righteous.). Real Christianity says, "Christ set the standard, I CANNOT keep it, I therefore need someone to keep it for me and to pay the price for my constant violatons.) There lies the rub between "religion" and faith in Christ.
Nonetheless, as a Christian, I can applaud someone like Hitchens. Though an unbeliver (regrettably), the God (whom he rejected) gave him great talents which Hitchens often (though not always) used to stand for good and against evil. I was able to read much of Hitchen's work to find "the good, the true and the beautiful" despite his theological error (again, regrettable).
Would to God that Hitchens's last thought was "Forgive me Christ, I was so wrong in so much. I do need a savior, I see now that I cannot save myself." I would love to talk to him in heaven someday.
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