Bishop Barron and Matthew Petrusek discuss the surge in Catholic conversions and how to sustain it
Bishop Robert Barron joins Matthew Petrusek on the Word on Fire Show to discuss the recent wave of new converts entering the Catholic Church.
Summary
Bishop Robert Barron and Matthew Petrusek examine the documented surge in Catholic conversions across the United States, parts of Europe, and Australia, drawing on EWTN data showing that 93% of responding dioceses reported substantial increases in new converts. Bishop Barron argues that the bleak spiritual landscape left by the new atheist movement — figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens — has driven young people to seek something more substantive, and that the Catholic Church's rich intellectual and liturgical tradition is meeting that need. He contends that attempts to liberalize Church teaching have historically driven people away, not attracted them, and that the current surge is happening despite superficial accommodation to secular culture, not because of it. The conversation also covers the role of social media in evangelization, the importance of beauty and apologetics, and practical advice for new converts on sustaining their faith.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
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.
A wave of fresh converts has entered the Catholic Church in the United States, Australia, and parts of Europe. The evidence for the surge is far from anecdotal. Even secular media outlets that are inclined to ignore positive stories about Catholicism widely reported packed sanctuaries this past Easter — the day those who have been preparing to enter the Catholic Church typically receive their first sacraments.
This is very welcome news for a Church that has grown accustomed to narratives of disaffiliation and decline. So what's behind this uptick in conversions? What factors are leading young people, and young men in particular, to buck the trends of secularization and become Catholic? What is happening both in the world and within the Church that is making the faith so attractive? And perhaps most importantly, what should Catholics — clergy and laity alike — do to continue the momentum?
Here to offer insight on what's driving the growth and why now more than ever we should double our efforts to proclaim Christ in the culture is Bishop Robert Barron.
Confirmation Season and Popular Confirmation Names
Matthew Petrusek: Bishop, welcome back to the studio.
Bishop Barron: Thanks, Matt.
Matthew Petrusek: Today we have a happy topic — the recent surge of new converts entering the Church this past Easter. As we're recording this, Easter is just a couple of weeks ago. But before we get to that, everybody always wants to know: what have you been up to recently?
Bishop Barron: Well, confirmation season is coming to a close. So right now, like the two months after Easter, we do all the confirmations. I've been going all over this diocese, north to south, east to west. A lot of driving. I get a kick out of going to all these places, seeing the kids, and often having dinner with the parish staff and the people involved with their training. It's a good chance to really get plugged into the diocese. But that's coming to a close, and it's also a bit of a workout. Talk to any bishop — they'll tell you confirmation season is a bit of a workout. But it's been good.
And the usual names — the always popular names. Sebastian is always number one for the young guys. For the girls, probably Thérèse or Cecilia would be the most popular names. All the musicians take Cecilia. Thérèse — it's Thérèse of Lisieux, this young girl who spent a few years of her life in a convent and then died at 24,
but has this massive impact on the life of the Church.
This year I noticed that Moses the Black has made a comeback. When I first began confirming out in California, there were a lot of Moses the Blacks. I had no idea who that was, so I looked him up. Interesting fellow — a patristic figure who lived a life as a thief and a murderer and everything, and then he comes to Christ and becomes like a desert father. Kind of a cool story. So a lot of the young guys take that name.
Anyway, confirmation season.
Matthew Petrusek: That's beautiful. Well, let's now turn to today's topic — the empirically verifiable surge in new conversions to the faith. It's not just anecdotal.
The Numbers Behind the Conversion Surge
Before we look at some of the potential causes of that surge and then move to how we can keep the momentum, I want to get some numbers on the table. Drawing on our friends at EWTN News, they contacted all 175 Latin Rite dioceses in the United States, of which 71 responded. Of those 71 dioceses, 93% shared with EWTN that they were seeing a very substantial increase in new converts this year compared to previous years. Some highlights include a 57% increase in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma, a 30% increase in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, and a 35% increase in the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama.
And finally, catechumens — for our audience who may not know, those are those in the process of entering the Church — are also on the rise. For example, in the Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado, there's a 105% increase in catechumens. The Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 77% increase. In Boston, 55% increase. Which means, all things considered, there will actually be more people entering the Church in next year and in future years.
And finally, we want to note that we are also seeing this growth across parts of Europe, especially in Great Britain, France, and in Australia as well.
So, Bishop, two questions to start us off. One: are you seeing this kind of growth in your own diocese here in Winona-Rochester? And two: are you surprised by these numbers?
Bishop Barron: Yes and no. First, the yes. Last year we set the record for the number of new people entering the Church, and then we broke it this year. So I go back in my mind to the Rite of Election Mass, when we gather everybody — they couldn't all come, of course, but big crowds the last couple of years. So it's part of this national trend, indeed international trend. It had been kind of rumored or bandied about or suggested, but now it's impossible to deny. As you say, the numbers are just clearly in place. They're undeniable. That's good news. No other way to slice that one — it's good news.
Am I surprised by it? No. And we can go into this, I suppose, but I think there's a revival going on for a number of reasons. The people seeking out the Church want something substantive. They want something ritually disciplined. They want a concrete expression of religiosity. So it doesn't surprise me they're turning to the Church. And it's really important to emphasize in all this that these are young people who are entering the Church.
Matthew Petrusek: Absolutely. As I think of those two Rites of Election Masses, the church is filled with young people.
Bishop Barron: It's so beautiful to see.
What's Driving the Surge: The New Atheist Legacy
Matthew Petrusek: Well, let's now turn to some possible causes for this. And again, we have an eye to the question of how can we continue this momentum. Let's start with what's happening out in the world, out in the culture, and then we'll look at some things that might be happening in the Church. What kinds of events or trends are you seeing in secular culture that you think might be contributing to making the faith so much more attractive?
Bishop Barron: Well, I've argued now for a while that the new atheists left behind a sort of bleak landscape, a grim view of life. Go back 25 years now, when the new atheists were all the vogue. I get how they appealed especially to young people, who always have a rebellious spirit and would probably see religion as the bastion of the establishment. So when these clever, smart, articulate guys come on TV and they're debunking religion, attacking it for its corruption — I get how young people all over the world said, "Yeah, yeah, stick it to religion." And then, mind you, when the new atheists were writing — Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins and company — that was the height of the sex abuse scandal. The Church's corruption in that way was being revealed, and then they came along with this kind of brutal intellectual critique. It did some damage, and it appealed to the sort of native rebellious instincts of a lot of young people.
But here's my argument. Okay, I get all that. But now in the wake of it — so you've read your Hitchens and Dawkins and you say, "Oh yeah, stick it to religion." But what are you left with? Well, Dawkins is, I mean, admirably honest about it. There's no God. That means there's no purpose. We came from nothing. We're going nowhere. There's no meaning. What does he say? The universe is this pitiless indifference to us and our project. Well, that leaves you in a pretty terrible place — psychologically and spiritually, a desolate, blasted landscape.
And I think it dawns on people: well, this is kind of a hopeless view. And then see, our greatest ally as religious people is the Augustinian heart, right? "Lord, you made us for yourself; therefore our heart is restless till it rests in thee." That has remained true across human experience. The goods of the world satisfy us to a degree and then it wears off. We take joy in various things in the world, but we don't take the joy we're looking for.
Think of the U2 song, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." That's a very Augustinian song. I've done this, I've done that, I've climbed the highest mountain — and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. That's a healthy psychological and spiritual attitude. It's the quest for God.
I think a lot of people, especially younger people who grew up in the blasted landscape of the new atheists, have realized: no, no, no. My heart is restless and it needs something beyond this world. "I guess I'll get as much pleasure and as much power as I can out of it" — that's not going to work. And so in the measure that religious people are able to present the religious thing in an attractive way, it will appeal to the searching heart. I think that's what you're seeing. I think that's why this is happening.
Matthew Petrusek: Do you think this is conclusive evidence that the new atheist movement has died?
Bishop Barron: Please God. Yeah. Something I've said from the time they emerged — and oh, they were all the rage, and oh, they were so smart — they're not smart. They were just rehearsing these old, tired arguments that go back to Marx and Freud and Nietzsche and company. There was nothing new about them except they were nasty. They were purposely obnoxious toward religious people.
So I was never impressed by them. Dawkins — I get what his scientific field is, cellular biology or something. Fine. I'm sure he's great in that field. He was terrible in philosophy. Terrible. He made elementary mistakes in the way he was formulating things. Hitchens — whom I admired as a writer and as a rhetorician. I always loved listening to Christopher Hitchens. I read a lot of his books. Great stylist, great sort of personality. Loved all that. But as a philosopher, he was making elementary mistakes over and over again. So these people were not impressive intellectually. They were flashy, and they were provocative, and they appealed therefore to a lot of younger people.
Now here's another thing worth pointing out. I think in God's providence they called forth a whole generation of Christian and Catholic apologists and theologians. I'll tell you one thing, speaking as a trained theologian who taught and wrote theology: boy, did we ignore apologetics. I can tell you right from the heart of the academy — "Oh, apologetics. Oh, catechesis. I don't do that. That's popular." But see, Thomas Aquinas did it. Anselm did it. Origen did it. Augustine did it. Our greatest theologians — yes, they did highly speculative stuff for their fellow academics, but they all — everyone I mentioned, Newman did it too — they all did, for want of a better term, apologetics: trying to make a case for the faith to a skeptical audience.
My generation, believe me, everyone that trained me pooh-poohed all that. "Oh, no, no, no. I'm not doing that. I'm doing serious theology."
Matthew Petrusek: They also made it sound kind of combative, right?
Bishop Barron: Yeah. "It's not worthy of me." And that was a giant mistake. A giant mistake. In the measure that theologians only talk to fellow theologians, only talk to people in the high university culture — that's fine, Aquinas did that too, Augustine did that too — but you should never eschew apologetics and helping people understand: here are objections, here's how you might respond to them. That was a giant mistake, and boy, we suffered from it.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: with the great exception of William Lane Craig, who during that awful time came forward like a great warrior and took on the new atheists and brought to bear our rich intellectual tradition — with the exception of Craig, that was a terrible performance by Christian apologists, because we had dropped our weapons and forgot how to use them. Christian apologists were like Fredo in The Godfather, fumbling with his gun because he'd forgotten how to use it. We forgot how to use these weapons. That was a mistake and we suffered from it.
So this is leading to my positive point: in the wake of the new atheists, I think it awakened a new generation of Catholic thinkers who are geared toward apologetics.
The Digital Revolution and Evangelization
Matthew Petrusek: What do you think about the increasing digitization of life and the breakdown of real relationships, and the loss of a connection to the permanent and the real? Are you seeing that also leading people toward the Church?
Bishop Barron: Yeah. And here we'll do positive and negative, because I think the digital revolution has had a very positive impact on this question. But the things you're pointing to are, I think, dead right.
I often compare my childhood with the way kids are coming of age today. And I know I sound like grandpa, but I much prefer the way I came of age. My mother would put a T-shirt on me and I'd run out the door. I'd come back at 6:00 p.m. for dinner. I spent the entire day outside with my friends, climbing on jungle gyms and riding my bike and playing baseball — and also learning how to deal with people. This guy's a jerk — how do you handle that? This guy's terrific. I'm interacting with friends and enemies and quasi-friends. What was I learning? As we all were: basic social skills.
Again, I sound like grandpa, but there's something about this turning inward around our little machines, shoulders hunched, inside, just dealing virtually with the world. Give me my childhood any day over that.
But I think you're right in suggesting it has religious implications too, because ritual and tradition and liturgy and coming together to worship God — that's a big part of my childhood memory. For my parents, missing Mass on Sunday would be like cutting your hand off. You just wouldn't dream of it. It becomes a structuring element of our lives: we went to Mass on Sunday, we heard the Scriptures, we received the Eucharist, we heard a sermon, we talked about it, we knew the priests, we met people there. That's an integral part of life. You lose that and you're lost in your little devices.
Matthew Petrusek: You've been on the evangelical field for over 25 years — we just celebrated 25 years of Word on Fire in particular. How would you describe, most fundamentally, the shift in culture that you've seen out there that's creating these openings for new conversions?
Bishop Barron: Well, a big part of it is that blasted landscape I talked about. But I also think — and Word on Fire is part of it — this is the positive side of the digital world. The digital world has allowed articulate and compelling Christians to make themselves available in the wider culture. Just as the new atheists were evangelizers for their position, well, okay, two can play that game. And Christians were able through social media to get the Christian thing out in a way that was intellectually compelling.
I'll tell you stories from the earliest days of my engagement on YouTube. I did a lot of videos about the new atheists, because that was exactly when we were starting — when they were all the rage. So I would take them on and argue. For a lot of people, they never dreamed there was anything like an argument that religious people could make. "I never dreamed of it. I've never heard that before. That's what you think about God?" Because again, we had dropped our weapons and forgotten how to use them.
That side of the digital world — I love it. It gave us an opportunity to reach people who would never come to our buildings. When I was coming of age — and I saw this at the Youth Synod in Rome, maybe seven years ago — the conversation was, "Let's get more programs to bring these young people to our churches." And I got up at that Synod and said, "Brothers, that's not it. They're not going to come to our churches. We have to find a way to get to them." And I think we found it through social media.
When I was a young kid in the Chicago area, interested in religion because of Thomas Aquinas, I'd go to the library to get Mortimer Adler's big volume on Aquinas. If you wanted to get a book of Catholic theology or apologetics, I lived in the Chicago area — which is big Catholic country — and I'd have to get in a car, drive 45 minutes to this Catholic bookstore. Drive there, look through the shelves, find a book — or if I'm looking for a specific book, "Oh no, we don't have that. We'll have to order that for you." Then they'd order it, maybe in six weeks it would show up, and I'd have to go back to the store to get it.
Now it's right there. I have a question — there's a very smart person, tell me about it. That's a great grace. I think God, who always knows how to make good out of evil, has taken even the dark side of social media and used it as a vehicle for communicating the faith. That's a major change in the culture that has helped the project.
Liturgy, Beauty, and the Turn Away from "Banners and Balloons" Catholicism
Matthew Petrusek: Now turning to the Church itself and the interior life — questions about liturgy are often seen as very inside baseball, even navel-gazing. How do you think, Bishop, that a renewed attention to the liturgy and the Mass might be having a positive impact on young people entering the Church?
Bishop Barron: Yeah, I think so to some degree. People come, as Chesterton knew, through all kinds of different doors. There isn't one door to enter the Church. And for some people, the liturgy is that door — they find in its beauty and its simplicity and its structure something deeply appealing. That can happen. I've seen it happen. I've often argued that beauty is the first step, the first of the transcendentals.
Now, I think it's rare, however, that someone just stumbles on the liturgy. Think of the young Liszt wandering into a Gothic cathedral as a young Jewish kid and being basically converted by it. So that can happen. But my own view is that we use social media to engage people, answer questions, try to draw them in, and then get them to come. At that point, yes, the liturgy can be very powerful and can speak deeply to people, but it might not be the first step for a lot of people. The first step, I think, is this outreach.
C.S. Lewis said that before the evangelist speaks, an apologist should speak — to clear up questions and overcome obstacles — and then let the evangelist come. But first there's a lot of static, a lot of obstacles in the way. He thought an apologist like himself could clear up a lot of that.
Matthew Petrusek: One of my favorite Bishop Barronisms is the rejection of "banners and balloons" Catholicism. Do you think we've turned the corner on that in the Church?
Bishop Barron: I do. And it's really interesting — someone, and I've always felt I'm not the one to do it because I don't know how to write novels, but someone should write a Tom Wolfe-like novel about the period when I came of age, like the late '60s and the '70s. It would be very interesting — some sprawling, funny, Dickensian, Tom Wolfe-ian sort of story about all of that.
Because to go from Gregorian chant and Gothic cathedrals and Thomas Aquinas to what I came of age with — which indeed were banners and balloons and three-chord guitar songs and "okay, relevance, okay, appealing to kids" — the repudiation of the deep wealth of our own tradition in favor of something very superficial was a tragedy. And then look at our church buildings, going from Gothic and Romanesque cathedrals to brutalist modernism. How any of that contributed to evangelization — I think it was just the opposite.
A lot of my life has been trying to recover from that period and propose something better. But I do think we've turned the corner. I think people understand now. There are some now very aged people who would, I think, still be clinging to those moves. How the word "relevance" became a joke, because it was so overused when I was coming of age. The idea is to be Christological — to present Christ as something true, beautiful, compelling. That's what the Church's job is. And then he becomes thereby relevant to every age. But when you try to water things down, or you give speeches to our culture's despisers all the time, or you dumb down the faith, flatten it out, make it banal rather than beautiful — to my mind, those are all bad moves.
Matthew Petrusek: You've also highlighted in previous conversations the importance of mysticism running through all of this. Do you think that's also something that's now more present in the life of the Church?
Bishop Barron: Yes. And to press that one — in my book The Strangest Way I talk about this a lot. But go back to something like Descartes. Go back to the founders of modern philosophy and you'll see the elements right there. There's a dualism in Descartes. There's a prioritization of a kind of mathematicized view of reality. There's a flattening out in favor of a rationalism. The mystical, the strange, the surprising, the supra-rational — all that gets squeezed out by the rationalism of modernity.
Now, read right in Descartes' own lifetime: someone like Pascal saw right through that program. Pascal — every bit as brilliant as Descartes mathematically and scientifically — but saw right through that program. But what happened? We adopted the Cartesian program in 1970 in a big way. And what we needed was a Pascal to come and again see through it. But I do think that's happening. And Pascal would speak: "The heart has its reasons that reason knows not." That's an appeal to the mystical.
Does the Surge Refute the Case for Liberalizing Church Teaching?
Matthew Petrusek: So a piece of so-called common wisdom that some in the Church have been repeating for the past 50-plus years is that the only hope we have to really evangelize young people is to update — meaning to change — the Church's teachings on marriage and sexuality and the exclusively male nature of the priesthood. So, Bishop, how should we interpret the surge in new converts among young people, especially in relation to the claim that the Church needs to modernize its teaching?
Bishop Barron: It's nonsense. The people coming to the Church are coming despite liberalism, not because of it. That old lie goes back to 1970: if we just liberalize and modernize and adapt to the modern world, they'll come rushing in. On the contrary — the opposite happened. In the measure that we did that, people ran away from the Church. That's demonstrable. And what's happening is: in the measure that we are faithful to Christ, people will come to the Church. It's not a Church that accommodates to the world that is appealing. It's the Church that's strange.
And again, that's why I wrote the book a long time ago — I called it on purpose The Strangest Way. We're a strange path, Christianity. To make it ordinary, accessible, easy — that was the mentality of my day. It worked the opposite effect. And I think we're witnessing that it's despite that kind of superficial liberalism that people are coming back, not because of it.
How to Keep the Momentum Going
Matthew Petrusek: Before turning to our listener question, let's get your advice on how to keep this momentum going. So Bishop, what in your view is not happening in the Church evangelically right now that you really wish were happening?
Bishop Barron: That's a good question. I really like, as I say, the digital work that's being done and this renaissance in Catholic apologetics. I think that's really good. So maybe more of that needs to be done. I do think attention to the liturgy is important, and to lead with beauty. Prayer for people that come to the Church — that's number one, that we pray for it. But I think the revival of a healthy apologetics is what we need more and more of.
Matthew Petrusek: In the past you've quoted Cardinal George's recognition that the Church started off without institutions, and of course we built many institutions, and many of those institutions unfortunately have failed us in different ways. Do you think it's a time for rebuilding of institutions in the Church?
Bishop Barron: Well, reshaping with evangelical purpose. I think Cardinal George's point was that in the beginning of the Church there was no Vatican, no chancery offices, no dioceses, no auxiliary bishops — but there were evangelists. And I think what he meant was that's what animates the Church up and down the ages. So if we have institutions, they serve evangelization, not the other way around.
But see, that happens a lot. And I get it — we're all sinners, we're all fallen. Our institutions become self-referential. They serve themselves. They want to perpetuate themselves as institutions, losing the sense that their entire purpose is evangelization.
I think of conversations I've been in a lot over the past ten years as a bishop about our schools. What's the purpose? Evangelization. That's the purpose of the entire Church. "Oh, well, we can't evangelize — our school will close." So what? Then close it. I don't want another bland public school that I'm paying for. The whole purpose of it is to evangelize. "But we have non-Catholics." Fine. Fine. But I want to evangelize them. That's why they're in a Catholic school. If their parents don't know that, they're not paying attention. And so, again, I'm not going to proselytize in a heavy-handed way, I'm not going to require and knock people over the head. But if they're in a Catholic school, they're going to be offered evangelization. That's the whole point of it.
So yeah, Cardinal George always had this way of getting right to the heart of it. "There were evangelists" is a way of saying evangelization must be underneath and informing all of our institutions.
Matthew Petrusek: You've noted the great benefits of social media and the internet more broadly in evangelization. But of course, the dark side of social media may indeed be getting darker in real time. Bishop, do you think there's a saturation point we reach as evangelists where we should maybe pull back from evangelizing online and focus more on in-person kinds of encounters?
Bishop Barron: No, it's always all of the above. It's never one or the other. We do all those things. My purpose as an online evangelist is to bring people to church ultimately. That's why I'm always happy when I'm out on the road and people say, "I'm becoming a Catholic because I started with Word on Fire, or I started watching your sermons, and now I'm coming to church." Good. That's what I want. I don't want, "Hey, I watch your sermons and I'm a Bishop Barron groupie" — I mean, all right, but I want you in church. I want you at Mass.
So can we evangelize, or even pre-evangelize, using media? Sure. But it is no substitute for the one-on-one. You know: I've come to know Christ, I want you to know Christ, and now I want you to share his life in the liturgy, in the Church. That's the heart of it.
Matthew Petrusek: A New York Times article recently came out with the title "New York's Hottest Club Is a Catholic Church." The question connected to that is: how can we take where we are now — with good momentum — and make sure that it doesn't become a trend in the sense of, well, it's going to die out as soon as it becomes unfashionable again?
Bishop Barron: I would say: the good, the true, and the beautiful. Always be aware of that. The good — churches work on behalf of the poor and the homeless and the needy. Ratzinger said the Church does three things, and one of them is it serves the poor. So we keep doing that. But then there's the true — the Church should get its message, its arguments, its intellectual tradition out there. And then the beautiful — that's where liturgy, prayer, processions, litanies, all of it come in.
Do those three things. Be attentive to the true, the good, and the beautiful, and I think people will be attracted to it.
Matthew Petrusek: Finally, Bishop, what advice do you have for all the new converts out there, especially recognizing that they're probably on fire for the faith right now? What kind of pitfalls should they be aware of as they grow deeper in the life of faith?
Bishop Barron: Cultivate the flame. Don't let it go out. In other words, you maybe have this little flame and your hands are cupped around it — but you've got to cultivate it. And that means you have to practice the faith: especially Mass, especially prayer, reading, study, doing the works of mercy. You participate in the good, the true, and the beautiful, and you develop and foster the faith. It's not like a given — one and done. No. Now you start this great adventure. You're like the Israelites escaped from Egypt, but now you're crossing the desert. You just have to be attentive. And there'll be the temptation — that archetypal story — "at least in Egypt we had enough to eat." That's a basic instinct: okay, I've taken this plunge, I've left the slavery of my former life, but I get drawn back into it. Resist that. Keep following Moses.
Listener Question: Should a Father Baptize His Daughters Before His Own Baptism?
Matthew Petrusek: It's now time for our listener question. Today we have Jesse from the Czech Republic, who's asking about whether he should baptize his young daughters before he himself is baptized into the Church.
Jesse: Hi, Bishop Barron. My name is Jesse and I live in the Czech Republic. After listening to your sermons and reading the Bible for almost two years, I've decided to finally enroll in the RCIA program, which I'm beginning next week. My question to you is: I have two young daughters, and should I wait to have them baptized until I myself am baptized? Or should I endeavor to do this before I am baptized as their father? Thank you for all the hard work you and your team at Word on Fire do.
Bishop Barron: Yeah, reminds me of my great visit to the Czech Republic a couple of years ago in Prague. Look, I want people to be baptized whenever they can. A parent is the first teacher of their children in the ways of the faith. So in a way it makes sense — if you're initiated, then you would help your kids. But technically, as long as you are approving of this and you have no objection to the child being baptized and you are committed to raising your child in the faith, there's no canonical problem with that.
Something in me is saying maybe you should all get baptized at the same time. If you're in the OCIA program right now — I don't know how old your kids are — but you know what I would do, honestly? Talk to your parish priest. He'd give better advice. He would know you better and the details of your family. That'd be my advice: talk to your parish priest about it.
Matthew Petrusek: Well, thanks so much, Jesse, for reaching out to us. Well, Bishop, we've completed another show.
Bishop Barron: Yeah.
Matthew Petrusek: Thanks for the conversation. Looking forward to the next one.
Bishop Barron: Always a pleasure, Matt. Thanks.