WOF 522: What’s It Like to Be a Catholic Bishop?
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
Release Date: 12/29/2025
WOF 544: Modern Christian Martyrdom | pt. 1
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. Recently, Dr. Tod Worner of The Evangelization & Culture Podcast sat down with Bishop Barron to discuss modern Christian persecution with Bishop Barron’s new book, What Do Their Deaths Demand? Now, it’s a topic we’ve explored here on this show, once before. In this new conversation, we’ll take a deeper dive into that subject, exploring the specific witness of some of these martyrs, and examining this modern era...
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WOF 543: Christian Charity vs. "Suicidal Empathy"
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. The evolutionary behavioral scientist and public intellectual Gad Saad recently published an influential book entitled Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. In it, Saad argues that much of the West has, unfortunately, come to embrace a perversely deficient understanding of empathy, twisting the natural and otherwise noble human capacity to feel and respond to other peoples’ sufferings into a moral license to upend the...
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WOF 542: Why All Catholics Should Pray the Liturgy of the Hours
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. The Liturgy of the Hours, or the “Divine Office,” is often associated exclusively with the spiritual practices of priests, monks, and nuns. To be sure, praying the Hours is an essential part of the lives of those who have formally taken religious vows. However, the prayer of the Church, as the Liturgy of the Hours is also called, is precisely that: a way of sanctifying the day for the whole Church, both laity and...
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WOF 541: “Heaven in Stone and Glass”—A New Feature Film by Bishop Barron
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. We’re delighted to announce that a new feature film by Bishop Robert Barron will be hitting theaters—yes, theaters—soon. The full-length documentary, entitled Heaven in Stone and Glass, draws on the collective shock and sadness the world experienced watching Paris’s Cathedral of Notre-Dame burn in 2019 to explore the enduring philosophical, theological, aesthetic, moral, and evangelical significance of the great...
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WOF 540: How the Virtues Help Us Respond to an Increasingly Vicious Online Culture
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. From Bishop Barron’s very first social media post close to 20 years ago, he and Word on Fire as a whole have recognized that the online world is a rough-and-tumble place. While most, over the years, have interacted with our content with charity and respect, even if they disagree, there’s always been a gallery of trolls who traffic in insults and profanity and are only interested in taking potshots at the ministry...
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WOF 539: Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday, marking two and a half centuries since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That a country as expansive and diverse as ours has remained united under a single Constitution for two and a half centuries—passing through multiple existential wars, including a civil war, and numerous periods of traumatic political and economic upheaval—is a monumental...
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WOF 538: Bishop Barron's Work on the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. Bishop Robert Barron has long defended religious freedom as a universal human right. As part of his ongoing advocacy—which includes a new book on how to confront persecution against Christians—he has recently completed serving on a presidential religious liberty commission charged with ensuring that people of all faiths can participate fully in society without fear of violence or unjust discrimination. One of the few...
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WOF 537: How to Keep the Momentum in the Surge of New Conversions
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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 this surge is far from anecdotal; even secular media outlets that are historically inclined to downplay 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...
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WOF 536: Bishop Barron’s New Book on Persecution Against Christians
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. Although not widely reported in legacy media outlets, Christianity is, by far, the most persecuted religion in the world. From the Middle East and Africa to India, China, North Korea, and elsewhere, Christian communities regularly experience widespread humiliation, imprisonment, kidnappings, expulsions, and even murderous mob violence. While not as severe, Christians in parts of Europe and even right here at home, in the...
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WOF 535: Bishop Barron on Bishop Fulton Sheen
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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. The faithful recently rejoiced at the news that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the great American evangelist who lived from 1895 to 1979, has moved forward in the canonization process. The Vatican recently announced that he will soon be beatified, which is one step away from being declared a saint. This is an especially happy development for Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, which, as an apostolate dedicated to evangelization,...
info_outlineSt. Pope John Paul the II memorably observed that the Catholic Church comes from the eucharist and that the eucharist, in turn, comes from priests. As Bishop Barron noted in a recent letter to his diocese, “by an inescapable logic [therefore] no priests, no Church.” We should add, however, that priests come from bishops, which expands the ecclesial logic to this: no bishops, no priests; no priests, no eucharist; no eucharist, no church. In other words, bishops not only hold an important administrative position within the Church; tracing their authority back to the apostles and, ultimately, to Jesus Christ himself, they constitute the very sacramental and liturgical foundation of Catholicism itself. That, to say the least, is a weighty responsibility. So what is it like to be a bishop? How does one come to hold this office? What, specifically, do bishops have authority over–and what don’t they have authority over? What kind of relationship do they have with each other and with the Holy Father, the pope? What are their day-to-day obligations and activities? And what are some challenges they face that both clergy and laity may not be aware of?
A listener asks what made Bishop Barron want to be a priest.
Topics Covered:
01:38 | Bishop Barron’s Thanksgiving in Chicago
02:45 | The origins of the office of bishop
04:51 | The theological dimension of the bishop’s role
06:41 | The liturgical symbols of the office
10:45 | Bishop Barron’s coat of arms
12:12 | How does one become a bishop?
16:10 | How are dioceses formed?
17:20 | Relating bishop to archbishop
18:51 | Understanding the bishop’s authority
20:03 | What is a chancery?
21:03 | Essential tasks of the bishop
29:38 | Bishop Barron’s approach to his official duties
33:01 | The meaning and authority of a conference of bishops
37:19 | Myths about Catholic bishops
40:06 | Listener question: What made you become a priest?
41:41 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
Links:
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: https://www.usccb.org/
- Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/
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