A Case For God
Catholic priest uses web to evangelize
By: Brenda Suderman

"I think if you want to preach to the nations, you use what you can," says the media-savvy Catholic priest, seminary professor and evangelist from Chicago of his multi-platform ministry, found on the web at www.wordonfire.org.

"Why not get the church's viewpoint out there and see what happens?"

What happens when the 49-year-old, dark-suited Barron addresses deep theological questions in professionally photographed videos with five- and six-figure hits on his YouTube postings, and thousands of comments.

"I never imagined so many secularists and people opposed to religion would be listening but I'm delighted they come forward," he says of the comments and reactions, many negative about religion in response to his YouTube movie reviews, commentaries and six-minute sermons.

With what he calls aggressive atheists on one side, and a growing number of people indifferent to religion on another, Barron sees his ministry as making the case for belief in God, as well as bringing Catholics back into the fold.

This week, he visits Manitoba to make that argument in person, speaking in Winnipeg on Wednesday about why it makes sense to believe in God, before travelling to Neepawa for a Thursday-evening speech.

"The question of God is the question," explains Barron in a telephone interview squeezed between teaching a class on the Reformation and another appointment. "God is the one thing that finally matters. If there isn't a God, then my life is all that matters. If there is a God, I should rearrange my life to live for him."

If that's the answer one might expect from a Catholic priest, it is also the message many Catholics should hear, says Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber, who invited Barron to Manitoba as part of a two-year campaign in the Archdiocese of Winnipeg to educate and support Catholics in their faith.

"Faith is a choice we make," says Weisgerber. "I don't think a lot of people are aggressively secular. They don't have anything against religion, they just don't have anything for it. It's just not part of their lives."

Barron says that indifference to religion is a greater threat to Christianity than atheism, and that secularism is marked by the growing number of people who don't identify with any religious tradition.

"The fastest-growing religion in American is 'none,' " he says.

So while Barron is attempting to entice and educate Catholics, he's also aware that many "nones" are watching him on the web. He sees it as his job to engage those folks by making connections between popular culture and religion, mixed in with a little plain talk about God from an approachable-looking guy wearing a clerical collar.

Although Barron's goals are admirable, using social networking sites, podcasts and the World Wide Web to evangelize the world is at best a hit-and-miss method, says a professor of communications and media.

That's because people have to find Barron and others with a faith message in the incredibly crowded World Wide Web, says Nicholas Greco of Providence College in Otterburne, Man.

"It's difficult to gauge success in new media," says Greco, who uses Twitter and writes a blog. "Even if you get unique hits on your website, its difficult to gauge the effects on people."

While success might not be easily measured, money talks, and Barron's media ministry, a registered charitable organization, is funded solely by private donations, not by the Catholic Church. His goal remains simple: to use culture as a way to talk about the deeper meaning of life.

"It's always to lure people to the attractive power of religion," he says of the motivation for his media ministry, which consumes about half of his working time. "The deepest longing is always to God. To awaken that is the lure of religion."

brenda@suderman.com

On fire for God

Always available on the web at www.wordonfire.org, Catholic priest, professor and evangelist Robert Barron visits Manitoba for the first time this Wednesday, speaking at Blessed John XXIII Church ,3390 Portage Ave. at 1:30 p.m., and at 7:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, 4588 Roblin Blvd.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 27, 2009 A9