A Tiny Whispering Voice – Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, for this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to do a little apologetics with you. I promise, though, I will get to the readings. But, you know, I do a lot of work online with people who are often skeptical of religion and you hear their questions. When I'm coming up against someone, let's say, from the left wing who's, you know, just dismissive of religion, they say, oh, you know, tired superstition and it's irrational, etc., etc., I usually ask a couple of questions. The first one is, well, do you believe in science? And, you know, without exception, they say, well, yeah, of course, you know, follow the science. And look, I'm against superstition. I like modern science. I say, okay, good. I like science, too. I say, you know, the condition for the possibility of any science is the keen sense that the world in every nook and cranny is intelligible. It can be understood.

0:54 It has something like a rational pattern to it. Otherwise, science wouldn't get off the ground. If things were just utter chaos, there was no intelligibility, I couldn't launch a science. I can launch biology, psychology, physiology, because there's logos in all three, right? I'm looking for the logos in bios. What's the logos in life? Psychology. I'm looking for the logos in the psuche. What's the intelligibility of the mind? right or like astronomy well it's not logos but it's nomos which means law i'm looking for the law of the stars all of science i remind them depends upon the mystical intuition that reality is marked by intelligibility i think i've told you before about the great physicist eugene wigner who writes this article 1960 called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences. What struck Wigner, who was a secular Jew, by the way, not a religious man, what struck him was how weird that we need the most abstract, complex mathematics to describe the qualities of physical reality. Why should that be true? That there's such a rich intelligibility patterning within physical things. How about Einstein, my favorite quote of his?

2:18 the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible. Let that sink in. I often say to these critics of religion, the weirdest thing, the hardest thing to understand about the world is that it's understandable. So here's my question to my liberal critics of religion. How do you explain that? Why is that true? Where does this universal intelligibility, describable with the most complex mathematics, come from? You know the answer I get typically? I don't know. It's just that's the way it is. Hmm. Good answer? I don't know. Any other arena of life where you're thinking an answer like that's a good answer. Hey, why is that the case? Well, I don't know. That's just the way it is. It's dumbly there. I got a better answer.

3:12 Why is the world marked by mathematically precise and complex intelligibility? Because it was made by a mathematician. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And all things that came to be came to be through that Word. I don't know about you, Mr. Rationality, I'll often say, But that strikes me as a much more rational answer to the question of universal intelligibility. Okay, then I say, while you're thinking about that, let me ask you a follow-up question. How is it that we are capable of understanding the intelligibility of the world? You say, well, no, it's from your mind or it's from your brain. Okay, but you're a complete materialist, right? You don't think there's any purpose or direction of the universe.

4:06 It's under no intelligent direction. Things just happen by dumb chance, by the accidents of evolution. And that's how the brain was produced, according to you. Yeah. Well, here I echo the great John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician who was an apologist too. He said, well, why in the world would you trust it? this brain is just thrown together by haphazard chance and evolutionary accidents, why would you trust it? If your computer was just thrown together by haphazard accident, would you trust its calculations?

4:46 See, the intelligibility of the world is met by an even more puzzling, if you want, capacity to understand the world. The rational mind meets intelligible reality. We call that philosophy or, indeed, science. How do you explain that? I don't know. Dumb chance, just the way it goes. Come on. It's a stupid answer. I say to them, you call me irrational? I'm the avatar of superstition? That's a pretty stupid answer, I think. Much better answer. both world and mind come ultimately from a great creative and personal mind whom we call god okay that was the first set of questions i asked my skeptical um interlocutors here's a second one people that say religion is crazy there's no god it's just a lot of old superstition i'll say do you think slavery is wrong and i said yeah of course i do Well, what if I just said, no, that's just the consensus of the culture.

5:57 You know, most people agree to it, so we say, okay, slavery's wrong. But, you know, heck, 200 years ago in our country, the consensus was that slavery was okay. There were opponents of it, sure. But I'd say the general consensus 200 years ago was that slavery was okay. Go way back to someone like Aristotle, a brilliant philosopher. he thought slavery was natural, that some people were suited for slavery. So what if I said, hey, you know, someday the consensus might change again, and we'd say slavery is okay. No, no, no. My interlocutor always says, no, no, no, no, no. Slavery is just wrong. Yeah, I agree with you. It is. It's not a matter of just consensus. It's really wrong. Then I say, how about racism? Is racism wrong? Well, yeah, of course it is. I mean, that's like just a basic moral principle of anyone on the left wing today. Racism, of course, it's wrong.

6:51 And I say, yeah, I agree with you. It's wrong. But I said, you know, look, even 150 years ago, a lot of people in our country would have said, no, there's a difference between the races, and some are higher than others. They're superior and inferior races. And so, you know, treating people accordingly and segregating them and organizing society according to hierarchies of race is okay. Very bright people and good people said that 150 years ago. Yeah, yeah, but they were wrong. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree they were wrong. But heck, what if in 150 years from now, things shift around and there's a different consensus and people say, I think slavery is okay. No, no, no, no. My interlocutor always says, no, no, no. Slavery is just, racism is just wrong. Okay, in other words, I say You believe in objective moral value You think there are some things that are objectively right or wrong where does that come from?

7:57 where do these values come from that are not a matter of just vote or consensus or the opinion of the crowd that are in themselves good and evil where does that come from? I don't know, just the way it is really, that's your answer? while you're thinking about that I'll say, let me ask you another one how do we come to recognize these moral values and disvalues? How do we come to say, yeah, that's right, or, you know, that's wrong? Where's that come from? Oh, I don't know, just it's some kind of instinct that we have. Let me go back now to the scripture. I think a great breakthrough in Western consciousness is reflected in this reading from the first book of Kings. Remember the famous story of Elijah?

8:53 He's on the run, and he comes to Horeb, the mountain of God, and he's in great distress. And the Lord says, I'm going to be passing by. A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains, crushing the rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind and earthquake, the Lord was not in the earthquake. after the earthquake was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. Now, those are all classic kind of signs of rather bombastic signs of God's presence, right? But then listen. After the fire, there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in the cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.

9:37 Where did he sense the presence of God? in this tiny whispering voice. What is that? How do we recognize objective moral value? Just as our rational mind recognizes objective intelligibility, how do we recognize objective moral values? what John Henry Newman called the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul, the conscience, that we rightly call, mind you, the voice of our conscience. A voice that tells us, yes, that is right. That's a value.

10:30 Or that's wrong. That's a disvalue. Seek and do this. Avoid that. What is this voice but the presence of God within us, our capacity to discern moral value and disvalue? You know, there's a kind of Freudian reading of conscience. It says something like this. No, no, no. Conscience is just the internalized voice of your father. You know, your father, when you were a kid, told you to do this and don't do that, and you internalize that, and then you kind of extrapolate from that as you grow up, it becomes a sort of unconscious memory of what your father told you to do and not to do. Come on. Let me tell you my argument against that. And I'm reluctant because my father was the best guy ever. I love my father. He was a great man.

11:21 But I remember the moment. I don't know how old I was. But when I realized, hey, you know, what my father just said there, that wasn't the nicest thing. or, you know, that wasn't the best thing for him to do. If the conscience is nothing but the internalized voice of my father, I'd never be able to judge father or president or mother or elder. See, I'm saying, yes, that plays a role in the formation of conscience. Yes, indeed, the rules given by your parents. No, no, but conscience is much more mysterious. it's rather the presence in you, listen now, of an intelligent person who knows you intimately and rewards you for the good choices you make and punishes you for the bad choices you make.

12:15 Isn't it interesting, everybody, that when we do something morally wrong, we feel that we've offended someone, and we feel accordingly ashamed. Let's say, you know, I'm a builder and I did something wrong. You know, it was bad architecture or bad masonry or whatever, and it didn't work out well. Well, I might feel like, oh God, that was stupid and that was a mistake. But I don't feel like I'm ashamed in the presence of someone. I might feel stupid.

12:48 But when you do something morally wrong, what do you feel? As if you've hurt someone. When you do something morally right, you feel that you've pleased someone. There's a tiny whispering voice that enables us to know objective moral right and moral wrong. just as God placed these values in the world, so it's God who enables us to intuit them and understand them. So next time you're up against someone who's just completely dismissive of religion, ask those two questions. How stand you with science? How stand you with objective morality?

13:42 I think you follow both of those convictions all the way, you come to God you come to the author of intelligibility the author of moral value and the one that enables us to understand intelligibility and discern moral value and God bless you