Bishop Robert Barron on Answering the Missionary Call
On Sept. 8, Bishop Robert Barron was installed as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is the founder of Word On Fire Catholic Ministries, a prolific author and the host of “Catholicism,” a documentary series about the Catholic faith around the world. He is a prominent theologian as well as a leader in social media, reaching millions every week with his broadcasts and videos.
Ordained in 1986 in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Bishop Barron taught at Mundelein Seminary for more than 20 years and was the rector there from 2012 until this summer.
Catholic Extension President Father Jack Wall recently sat down with then-Father Barron to ask him about the importance of seminarians for the Catholic Church and the missionary role of priests.
Father Wall: Seems like only yesterday that you and I first met — you were an aspiring seminarian and I was the vocations director.
Bishop Barron: You were the door that led me to the seminary, the priesthood and where I am today.
How important is seminarian education for the future of the Catholic Church?
I can’t imagine a better way to invest in the future of the Church than to invest in seminarians. If you’re forming a future priest, you’re forming someone who’s going to influence the Church enormously, for say, the next 50 years.
Think of all the ways that a single priest radiates outward — preaching, teaching, evangelizing, working with the poor, visiting the sick — and multiple that by the 600 priests that [Catholic Extension is] forming. That has a massive impact on the life of the Church.
You have a special task of cultivating a heartfelt missionary zeal in men studying to become priests. How are you doing that?
Extension has shown the way. If you think back to the Catholic Church’s immigrant period in the big cities, you could assume that Catholics would come to our institutions to be evangelized. They came to our parishes, schools and seminaries. We could count on that. Now we can’t.
About 75 percent of Catholics don’t go to Mass. The largest growing religious group in America is the “nones” — those who have no religion. The second largest group, if you counted it that way, would be ex-Catholics. We can no longer assume people will come to our institutions.
I tell the seminarians, we can’t think of parish priesthood as maintaining the life of a parish and simply caring for those who come, as important as that will always be.
Every priest in every parish has to see himself as a missionary.
When you’re assigned as a parish pastor, you’re not just assigned to that church, you’re assigned to care for all the people in that geographic region — Catholics, non-Catholics, believers and nonbelievers. Therefore, the missionary call is built right into the call to be a priest. That is the summons of our time. And I remind the students all the time that when they leave this place, they enter mission territory wherever they go.
We have to do what Catholic Extension has always done. You’ve always had a missionary sensibility of going out and evangelizing. Now we all have that mission. That’s exactly what Pope Francis understands.
Priests are scarce, especially in rural communities that may see priests only every couple of months. Yet it’s precisely in these places where the priesthood is most treasured. You’ve been involved in the formation of priests for more than 20 years. How do you explain this deep appreciation for priests and the priesthood?
It goes right to the beginning of the Church when people sensed the importance of the priesthood. That’s felt even more now with the rising tide of secularism — which is an ideology that says, “This world is all there is, you can find your ultimate happiness here.”
Secularism denies what St. Augustine said: that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Things of this world — money, power, pleasure — can be good, but they don’t satisfy us. They can’t. We’re destined for more. A priest is someone who in his very person reminds people vividly of the sacred, the sacred dimension of life, the God dimension of life. When that shuts down, the human heart shuts down. And a great sadness overwhelms people.
Priests play an odd role to challenge us — to challenge the assumptions of what makes us happy. A priest is witness to a transcendent sacred dimension, and that’s where we — all of us — find our joy.
Thank you for the work that you do.
At Mundelein Seminary, we have been so grateful to you and your donors. Many students who come here from the mission dioceses would not be able to earn advanced theological degrees without your financial help. Those degrees then allow them to become valuable theological resources in their dioceses. It’s a great gift of Catholic Extension and your donors. We couldn’t do it without you.
Catholic Extension grants almost $4 million each year to support roughly 600 seminarians across the country, which includes 30 at Mundelein. Click below to help fund seminarian education.
