Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vot, the host of the podcast and I'm here with Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop Barron. Good to see you again.

Hey Brandon, always joy to be with you.

You were just with all of your fellow priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for one of your regular press bidrull days where they gather for a camaraderie, usually for some sort of retreat or set of talks.

And this time you were one of the main speakers there. What'd you talk about? What was the gathering like?

It's a good gathering. We have two a year in LA. One is chrysum day, which is around, you know, right before Easter. And then we have this one in late September.

And we also, you know, I just got back about a month ago from Lakinta. We went out all of us for kind of a convocation.

So I've been getting together a lot with the priests. And a long time ago they asked me, I've spoken at chrysum day a couple times and now this one.

They asked me to share what I've been doing on the nuns, you know, the unaffiliated. So I brought in my PowerPoint and I did two presentations.

So the day began with the Archbishop giving a report, a kind of update. And then I had two sessions and with a little time for Q&A, not a lot.

But it was a good crowd. I mean, the priests really come for those. There were probably, I don't know, six, 700 people in the room.

And all priests, so all interested in pastoral things. And you know, I've said, look, after the sex abuse scandal, this is problem one in the church.

So there was, I think, a lot of interest in it.

You know, we talk about this problem of the nuns usually on a very broad abstract level. But these priests are on the ground in parishes working with actual families.

Was there sense that this problem is just as urgent on the ground level as it is sort of in the general broad national level?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I also heard from some priests when I laid out the statistics. Some of them were shocked at the statistics.

You know, especially that famous for everyone that joins us 6.5, now or whatever, or leaving.

And several people, some of the priests told me they did presentations to their own staffs based on my talk and how their staffs were flabbergasted when they saw the statistics.

And I used your line, Brandon, I quoted you to say, you know, that we're hemorrhaging young people in the church. And that's a way of summing up the problem we're facing.

But you know, these guys, they're interested in finding solutions. So the second talk was all about here are nine things we can do to address this issue.

All right. Well, today we are going to be talking about smartphones. I got my smartphone here, Bishop Ernst. I know is not too far away from him.

In particular, we're talking about smartphone addiction. This has become a very prominent topic in the culture.

I think as many people have begun recognizing that for all the great tremendous things our phones allow us to do, they're also dangerously addictive.

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