Welcome back to another episode of the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vod, the content

director at Word on Fire, and with me, as always, is Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron,

great to be with you.

Brandon, always joy to be on the show with you.

Now, you're just returning from a talk that you gave at the University of Mary in Bismarck,

North Dakota, and the talk was on social media and new evangelization, two great things

that you've been involved with for years. And as a part of that talk, you recounted the

story of Word on Fire. That's why I like to focus on here. A lot of people are familiar

with your work, with the Ministry of Word on Fire, but I think the story in itself is

fascinating how a priest professor at just a seminary in the middle of Midwestern America

can suddenly gain such a large voice through the help of the new media and through several

other elements. So let's maybe go back in time. Let's go back even to your education.

So talk a little bit about your higher level education at Catholic University of America

and then the Institute and where you went from there.

Yeah. I was fortunate to get the Basil in scholarship, which is a scholarship given to college

seminarians to go to Catholic you in Washington and get a BA and then an MA in philosophy.

So when I was in the college seminary in Chicago, I was offered that scholarship and I got

it. And that was a turning point in my life really. I think that those years were so formative.

It was crazy liturgically and all that because it was the high water mark of post-consilient

year silliness. It was the late 70s, early 80s. However, in my academic life, I was going

over to Catholic you and studying with some of the great masters like John Whipple, who

was one of the really prominent Thomas of the last 50 years. And then Thomas Prouffer,

...