Welcome to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vat, the content director at Word on Fire,

and I'm joined once again, as always, by Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron, great to have you.

Brandon, always joy to be on with you.

So what's been going on, Bishop Barron? You just finished a few weeks of grueling travel.

Now I'm guessing you finally have some time to catch your breath.

Yes, it's been one of the busiest periods I've ever had in my professional life.

And that's because I had all my responsibilities here, you know, doing confirmations and many other things.

And then I was just on the road constantly.

Most recently now, I'm back from both New York and Washington.

In New York, I was part of this really interesting conversation between Jews and Catholics.

Cardinal Dolan invited me to be on this committee.

So we had an all-day meeting in New York, also a chance, though, to celebrate Cardinal Dolan's 40th

priestly anniversary with him and many other people.

And I stayed with him, which was a great joy.

So we were able to smoke cigars, you know, late into the night and talk about everything.

So that was a joy.

Then I went right from New York to Washington because I was invited to speak to the American Enterprise Institute.

And I stayed with Cardinal Whirl all this time.

And we went to a wonderful event the night before the AEI talk.

It was a fundraiser for Catholic schools in Washington.

And both John Bainer, the former speaker and Paul Ryan, the current speaker, were there

because they support this fundraising effort.

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