Father Barron: “I wanted to show the life-affirming message of the Gospel”

On the CWR homepage today, Father Matthew Gamber, SJ interviews Father Robert Barron about the new, 10-part DVD series Catholicism, which airs on more than 90 PBS stations around the country this fall. Barron talks about the various factors that inspired him to undertake the mammoth project—from the malaise of the American Church in the era of the sex-abuse scandals to John Paul II’s assertive yet peaceful calls for a New Evangelization to the on-going intercession of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

One excerpt from the interview:

CWR: You have mentioned that you hope to reach three different audiences: inactive Catholics, active Catholics, and finally the wider secular culture. What kind of reaction do you hope to elicit from these various audiences who watch Catholicism?

Father Barron: I hope that the regular Catholic will feel proud and up-lifted and newly informed about their faith. My brother, who is a very successful publisher, born and raised in the faith, watched the film recently and he told me that at the end he was left with a realization that there is so much more that he does not know about the faith, but that he wants to know more and needs to know more.

I hope the fallen-away Catholic, or what I call the “drifted-away Catholic,” will find that it intrigues him enough to take another look. I hope that he will be given a new sense of Catholicism. … I believe that it is beauty that will bring people to God. You look at La Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, at the Sistine Chapel, and you can’t help but be drawn into something outside yourself. The visuals throughout the series are meant to draw people into the message of Catholicism.

Read the entire interview here.