Vibrant Paradoxes Quotes

“Thoughtful Christians must battle the myth of the eternal warfare of science and religion. We must continually preach, as John Paul II did, that faith and reason are complementary and compatible paths toward the knowledge of truth. — BISHOP BARRON”
― Robert E. Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“This Church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people.” What the Pope is signaling here is that the Church, as his predecessor Paul VI put it, doesn’t have a mission; it is a mission, for its purpose is to cause the merciful face of Jesus to gaze upon everyone in the world. It is not an exclusive club where only the morally perfect are welcome, but, rather, a home for sinners, which means a home for everybody. And”
― Robert E. Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“The successful evangelist does not stand aloof from the experience of sinners, passing easy judgment on them, praying for them from a distance; on the contrary, she loves them so much that she joins them and deigns to walk in their shoes and feel the texture of their experience.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“Notice how wickedly and cunningly the serpent tempted Eve: “God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” The basic sin, the original sin, is precisely this self-deification, this apotheosizing of the will. Lest you think all of this is just abstract theological musing, remember the 1992 Supreme Court decision in the matter of Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Kennedy opined that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, of the mystery of human life.” Frankly, I can’t imagine a more perfect description of what it means to grasp at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If Justice Kennedy is right, individual freedom completely trumps objective value and becomes the indisputable criterion of right and wrong. And if the book of Genesis is right, such a move is the elemental dysfunction, the primordial mistake, the original calamity. Of”
― Robert E. Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“But in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this stunning truth is revealed: God is not on the side of the”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“scapegoaters, but rather on the side of the scapegoated victim.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“valorized.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“desacralizing”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“ersatz”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“Hitler was one of the shrewdest manipulators of the scapegoating mechanism. He brought the deeply divided German nation of the 1930s together precisely by assigning the Jews as a scapegoat for the country’s economic, political, and cultural woes.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“anodyne”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“mimetic”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“And when a politician abuses his office and uses his power for his own aggrandizement, Biblical people should rise up and protest with all of the insistence, courage, and eloquence of Nathan in the court of David.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“Jesus has entrusted to his Church the means to apply this victory—the weapons, if you will, to win the spiritual war. These are the sacraments (especially the Eucharist and confession), the Bible, personal prayer, the rosary, etc. One of the tragedies of our time is that so many Catholics have dropped those weapons”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“It’s easy enough to notice how often dysfunctional families and societies finally collapse into an orgy of mutual blaming. That’s satanic work.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“Whenever communities, families, nations, churches are divided, we sniff out the diabolic.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“God is a great gathering force, for by his very nature he is love; but the devil’s work is to sunder, to set one against the other.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“So prospective evangelists, do what Jesus did. Walk with sinners, open the Book, break the Bread.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“Successful evangelists are persons of the Eucharist. They are immersed in the rhythms of the Mass; they practice Eucharistic adoration; they draw the evangelized to a participation in the Body and Blood of Jesus.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“The successful evangelist uses the Scriptures in order to disclose the divine patterns and, ultimately, the Pattern who is made flesh in Jesus.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“The Church calls people to be not spiritual mediocrities, but great saints, and this is why its moral ideals are so stringent. Yet the Church also mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.”
― Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

“Catholicism consistently celebrates the coming together of contraries, not in the manner of a bland compromise, but rather in such a way that the full energy of the opposing elements remains in place.”
― Robert E. Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism