WOF 538: Bishop Barron's Work on the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
Release Date: 06/22/2026
WOF 546: Do You Listen to Your Conscience?
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. What does it mean to listen to your conscience, especially in a culture that scoffs at the existence of moral values? Does the concept of conscience still mean anything today? Or is it a relic of what the secular world would have us believe was a naïve and superstitious past—a time of cartoon crickets and buzz-killing angels perched on our shoulders, scolding us into acting against our desires? Was the atheist Sigmund...
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WOF 545: Modern Christian Martyrdom | Pt. 2
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, as always, for joining us. In this episode, we’ll conclude our conversation with Dr. Tod Worner and Bishop Barron on modern Christian persecution. Topics Covered 00:00 | Introduction 00:23 | Lower than God, higher than us 05:58 | What do their deaths demand? 18:08 | No. 1—Pray for the persecuted 18:25 | No. 2—Stay informed 18:50 | No. 3—Persuade government to take action 19:35 | No. 4—Provide aid to the persecuted 19:50 |...
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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...
info_outlineWelcome 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 Catholic ecclesial voices on the commission, his work addressed multiple abiding and practical questions. For example, at the conceptual level, what is religious freedom, and what role should the government play in protecting it? How can we define religious freedom in a way that prevents one religion’s exercise of their freedom from infringing upon the freedom of other religions, or on those who claim no religion at all? And at the more concrete level, where, right now, are the greatest threats to religious freedom and what can we do both legislatively and individually to combat them? Here to address these and related questions, and to discuss his experience serving on the presidential commission, is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction
01:16 | Bishop Barron visits diocesan schools
02:26 | How Bishop Barron came to join the Religious Liberty Commission
04:03 | The makeup of the Religious Liberty Commission
05:00 | Basic structure of the meetings
07:38 | Being a Catholic bishop on the commission
09:51 | The privatization of religion
10:36 | Where does religious liberty originate?
12:36 | The public nature of religious liberty
13:51 | Why religious liberty is the first freedom
15:11 | Is religious liberty just religious license?
16:36 | The role of government in religious liberty
18:00 | Separation of church and state?
22:33 | Principal threats to religious liberty
26:26 | Testimonies shared with the Commission
27:30 | How we move forward
28:18 | The question of religious exemptions
30:53 | Religious liberty and evangelization
32:17 | Listener question: To what extent do denominations matter?
35:07 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
Links:
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Word on Fire Institute: https://institute.wordonfire.org/
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