Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vot, the senior publishing director.

Today we share a talk that Bishop Baron gave a couple years back titled Not Dumbing Down

the Faith, Answers to Young People's Pressing Religious Questions. The talk was for the Regional

Congress 2.0 Teach Event, and in the talk Bishop Baron presents on the importance of Not Dumbing

Down the Faith, especially in religious education. Young people, he says, enjoy asking about and

discussing the big questions, everything from God's existence to how to be a good and moral person

to the problem of suffering, but a disconnect takes place when we meet these intellectual questions

with watered down catechesis. Instead, we must remember the central teachings of Christianity,

and we must present the fullness of truth, the reality of the incarnation, and the good news of grace.

So it's a great talk. I think you're going to enjoy it, and I invite you to sit back and listen

to Bishop Baron on Not Dumbing Down the Faith. Enjoy.

Well good, good morning everybody, and you know, my first happy responsibility is to thank

all of you, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I mean, I know two things,

one how important it is to be communicating the faith to the next generation,

secondly, how hard it is today, especially with the rising tide of secularism and kind of

indifferenceism. It's always hard to teach young kids. I mean, it's always difficult to challenge,

but I think especially today it's a challenge. So thank you, and I say that on my own behalf,

but also on behalf of the church, what you do is supremely important. And God bless you,

if you're willingness to share the faith with young people. So good, what I want to talk about today,

you know, you know this, I've been being this drum for a long time, to stop dumbing down the faith,

to present the faith in an intellectually compelling way, and I say it everybody, not just because,

you know, my background is in teaching and theology and philosophy. I say it because of my study of

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