A Catholic bishop and an Orthodox artist are calling on believers and non-believers of all backgrounds to open their minds to a world more complex than what meets the eye.
Bishop Robert Barron, the most widely followed Catholic bishop in the world outside the Vatican, hosted his second annual Wonder Conference focusing on the intersection of faith and science.
Fox News Digital spoke with the bishop and his guest speaker, Orthodox liturgical artist Jonathan Pageau, to discuss how human beings should approach faith and science in their daily lives.
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Jonathan Pageau, left, and Bishop Robert Barron speak during a virtual town hall with Fox News Digital. The two men answered questions about logic, faith, their different denominations and whether there is a scientific case for Christianity. (Word on fire)
“People are being indoctrinated,” Barron told Fox News Digital of the increasingly atheistic culture in the Western world. “As far as materialism goes, materialism is not something that science produces. Materialism is a philosophy. It’s a philosophical view, and it’s ultimately incoherent.” […] One cannot be a scientist and not believe, at least implicitly, in the invisible, that is to say, in the purely intelligible scheme.
Pageau feels the same way, telling Fox News Digital that one of the main goals of his work is “to try to break down some of the presuppositions that people have” about what God is.
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Bishop Barron stands at the podium during his lecture at Word on Fire Studios. (Ministry of the Word on Fire)
“What are we talking about when we talk about ‘God’?” he asked in the interview. “There are still people who think that God is basically a man – an invisible man who is just equal to all material reality. And that’s what the ancients were talking about when they talked about ‘gods.’”
“Ultimately, the source of all reality is the transcendent God,” Pageau continued, adding that he hoped his works and speeches “help people see that again.”
The Wonder 2024 conference, held this year in the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, where the Barrons live, focuses on the theme “Nature and the Human Body.”
The conference took place from August 2 to 4 and brought together speakers from diverse backgrounds, including theoretical physicists, priests, gender studies specialists, philosophers and computer scientists.
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“The human body is at the heart of today’s most controversial topics, including evolution, artificial intelligence, and gender ideology,” according to Wonder organizers. “It’s more important than ever to be confident when discussing these topics with friends and family.”
In addition to hundreds of Catholics attending the conference in person, his lectures and speeches were streamed live online for free.
Pageau gave a speech at Wonder on Saturday, titled “The Body as Symbol and the Symbol of the Body.”
The Orthodox liturgical artist gained popularity through his YouTube series “The Symbolic World” – videos that examine patterns of meaning and symbolism in Scripture with lectures such as “Sacrifice: The Paradox of Salvation” and “The Ritualized Behavior of Animals in Church.”
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Bishop Barron administers the sacrament of confirmation to a teenage parishioner while celebrating a Catholic Mass. (Word on fire)
Barron said he met Pageau through mutual academic connections, including with behavioral psychologist and lecturer Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Barron and Pageau, despite their denominational differences, preach an equally complex and elaborate conception of God, rooted in the early theologians of Christianity – from a time when denominational distinction did not yet exist among believers.
It was Pageau’s methodology for explaining Scripture that ultimately convinced Barron to collaborate with the Orthodox speaker—a focus on early Christian leaders that Barron had also taken up earlier in his life after what he described as an unsatisfactory catechesis.
“It was [Pageau’s] “I have a very patristic way of reading the Bible, based on the Church Fathers. And I grew up with a very rationalistic approach to Scripture, which was kind of a spiritual dead end, really. And I ended up coming across the Fathers,” Barron told Fox News Digital.
He continued: “But when I heard Jonathan talk about it, I thought, ‘That’s right. That’s the best way to open up the meaning of Scripture in a way that honors it.’”
Jonathan Pageau and Bishop Robert Barron agreed that while they would both like to see the Orthodox and Catholic churches return to communion, genuine and lasting reconciliation is unlikely in their lifetimes. (Word on fire)
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“The main difference, as far as I’m concerned, is the papacy. That’s the major dividing line,” Barron said of their divergent beliefs. “There’s a theological dimension, but it’s also a legal issue.”
And while both would be delighted to see the Catholic Church and the Orthodox communion reunited after nearly 1,000 years of schism, neither wants such a reunion to be rushed or haphazard.
“I’m sitting here with Bishop Barron and I like him very much, and I enjoy our discussion,” Pageau said. “But I sincerely hope, at least in the short term, that [unification] not happening. And I know the sounds may sound mean at first, but I think we […] “We must be careful not to pass things over in silence.”
He continued: “If we’re going to have reunification, it has to be a real unification that heals the things that separate us. If we just try to crush it and impose it from above, or if we just try to force it on, for political or… ideological reasons, I think it’s going to cause a lot of chaos in the long run.”
A pre-recorded discussion between Barron and Pageau will soon be posted on the bishop’s YouTube channel, in which the two delve deeper into their shared approach to theology and Christian witness.
