Bishop Robert Barron spoke on political commentator Tucker Carlson’s show on June 2, 2025. / Credit: CNA/EWTN News
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 4, 2025 / 16:29 pm (CNA).
Bishop Robert Barron sat down with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson this week to talk about the Catholic faith and discuss some hot cultural topics. Carlson, an Episcopalian, began the June 2 interview by saying that his friends urged him to have Barron on his show.
“I don’t think I’ve ever received more texts about any guest than I did about you,” Tucker told Barron. “From Catholics I know, from non-Catholics I know.”
Barron, founder of Word on Fire Catholic ministries and bishop of the Winona-Rochester Diocese in Minnesota, and Carlson discussed a wide range of subjects, including how to find happiness, prayer, grace, persecution, technology, and the future of the Church.
Finding happiness
The interview began with a discussion about happiness. Carlson cited falling birth rates and increased suicides as evidence of a widespread lack of happiness in the culture.
“The joy of life” comes when “you forget about yourself and you lose yourself in some great value,” Barron said.
“God is the highest good, the ‘summum bonum.’ That’s why you love the Lord your God. That’s the First Commandment. But when the culture has lost that, which ours is in danger of, you, by definition, become unhappy,” Barron said.
In order to find happiness, people must let go of their egos and pursue “the good,” he said. “The ego is like a black hole … that will draw everything into itself, suck all of life and light and energy into itself. Nothing can escape.”
People who feel unhappiness have “lost a sense of God” and therefore lost “the supreme good,” according to Barron. “The best people are those who breathe life into a room. And that happens because they’re not preoccupied with the ego. They’re captivated by some objective good, and they want to show it to you.”
What is true freedom?
The discussion turned to the topic of freedom.
If we focus too much on choices in our lives, we will “get lost,” Barron said.
“I thought the whole point of the West was choices,” Carlson responded.
“But, you have to know what your choice is for,” Barron said. “When you deify choice itself, when you say, ‘Autonomy, that’s my God.’ No, choice is for some good.”
He continued: “The idea is to order freedom. Freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom is ordered towards some good. When it’s disordered, it tends to collapse in upon itself.”
“The whole point of America, I thought, was choice and freedom for its own sake,” Carlson responded.
“Well, and I would argue it’s not for its own sake,” Barron said. “If that happens to us, something’s gone wrong.”
Of the founding fathers, Barron said they didn’t “have the full Catholic imagination as I would like it, but they certainly had a sense of the objective good, and that the purpose of life is to find that good and be ordered toward it.”
“An ordered freedom is what they were interested in, not freedom for its own sake.”
“Your freedom has to be disciplined and directed,” he continued.
“Our culture, it’s … banks to a river, the river has energy. It’s going somewhere. You knock down the banks. You say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be limited. Don’t set limits to my freedom.’ It just floods the fields.”
When asked by Carlson what are the banks that we’ve demolished, Barron said: “The life of the mind, the moral good, religious good, aesthetic … When that’s lost, the banks are knocked down.”
Barron explained: “The goal for the Bible is not autonomy, it’s theonomy.”
“God, ‘theos,’ … becomes the law of my life … When God becomes the norm of my life, I become more myself. I find who I really am. If I jettison God and I say, ‘No, I’m the leader of my own life,’ I get lost.”
“What does Jesus say? ‘The one who loses himself will find it. The one who’s trying to hang on to himself is going to lose it.’ Lose your freedom in God’s greater freedom, and you become now authentically free.”
Prayer and God’s transcendence
Barron spoke of prayer as a way to let go of ego. “Prayer is a conscious exercise in overcoming autonomy. It’s a conscious exercise to say, ‘I want to get out of my preoccupations. I’m placing myself in the presence of God.’”
Prayer is a way to “overcome” and “calm the mind,” Barron explained. He highlighted that the rosary is a “meditative prayer” that can really help the mind “open up to a deeper consciousness or a deeper awareness.”
When distraction occurs during prayer, Barron instructed people to “acknowledge” it. “Don’t try to fight it,” he said. “Acknowledge it and then go back.”
Related to the topic of the transcendent nature of God, Barron said: “You’re not going to find him in the world … you can’t say things like, ‘Oh, there’s no evidence for God,’ as though he’s a chemical reaction.”
“God is, at the same time, as transcendent as you can imagine, not a thing in the world, and as imminent as you can imagine. He’s higher than anything I could imagine, and he’s closer to me than I am to myself. Now, figure that one out,” Barron said.
When Carlson asked if God needs our sacrifice, Barron responded firmly: “He doesn’t require it.”
“How could the one who made the entire universe from nothing possibly need anything from it?” Barron said. “It’s just a logical contradiction.”
“He wants the openness of heart signaled by the sacrifice, because he wants us to be alive. And when we say, Lord, ‘I’m opening my heart to you. I’m ordering my life to you in this great sacrifice of praise,’ God delights because now we’re going to find the joy he wants us to have.”
God “needs nothing,” Barron said. “We eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus. We consume the sacrifice. It’s for our benefit, not for God’s.”
Christian persecution
During the interview, Barron highlighted the fact that the 20th century has been “the worst century for Christian martyrs [in] all of Christian history.”
“Now, around the world, we are by far the most persecuted religion,” he said. “It’s a crime. It’s an outrage. We talk in a demure way about religious liberty in our country, which is indeed under threat, but you want the real threat to religious liberty? It’s in different parts of the world. People are being killed for their Christian faith.”
Barron pointed to the late-19th-century Pope Leo XIII, who believed “the devil would have a unique control over the 20th century,” so he formulated “the famous St. Michael prayer … asking for the protection of Michael, the archangel.”
“It’s hard to argue” that Leo XIII’s premonition was not real, Barron explained. “If you believe in the devil, as I do, and you see what happened in the 20th century, it’s hard to imagine it wasn’t to some degree.”
Religion and violence
When asked if Christianity leads to violence, Barron said: “It’s one of the myths of enlightenment historiography that religion is the problem.”
There was a “careful study of all the great wars” conducted, Barron said. “And the conclusion was something like 8% could be traced to a religious cause.”
“There’s the totality of human dysfunction. God’s response to that is not to more violence. It’s to respond with forgiving love. That’s Christianity … It’s not a religion of violence,” he said.
Technology and faith
In the course of the more-than-hourlong interview, Barron and Carlson discussed digital technology, social media, and artificial intelligence.
“We’re all addicted to [them],” Barron said in reference to smartphones. “Those machines were designed to be addictive.”
He highlighted a program whereby priests have given up their phones for a whole year as a part of a study. Barron said the result was that “they all feel liberated.”
“They all come back saying, ‘It was the best year of my life, and I read books again, and I talked to people. I cultivated friendship. I played games. I played sports … That’s almost an illustration of Augustine’s ‘incurvatus in se,’ that I’m ‘caved in’ over my iPhone.”
Barron mentioned another study that found a “direct correlation between screen time and depression,” which he said he finds “perfectly plausible.”
“Look how unhealthy it’s making our young kids,” Barron said. “I think taking those things out of the hands of our kids would be a great idea, at least to some degree.”
Later in the interview, however, Barron said “technology is not bad in itself.” It becomes a problem when “you couple technology with a sheer celebration of autonomy or a bracketing of God.”
Artificial intelligence is “frightening” Barron said. “It [has] to be grounded in a moral vision … or it will become a Frankenstein’s monster.”
We cannot try to “become God” and “decide to dictate terms to reality. It’ll turn on us and wreck us,” Barron said.
Pope Leo XIV and the future of the Church
When asked what changes Pope Leo XIV may make as the new pontiff, Barron said “I don’t know.” But he did share that he thinks the pope has “made some interesting gestures” so far.
Pope Leo’s use of Latin and his appearance in the mozzetta on the loggia after his election was a “gesture toward more traditional Catholics,” Barron said.
At the end of the interview, Carlson ran a paid advertisement of the Catholic prayer app Hallow, a sponsor of the podcast interview, offering listeners a three-month free trial with the code “TUCKER” at Hallow.com/Tucker and promoting the app’s consecration to Jesus through St. Joseph.
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Anybody who’s unhappy with his boss, should quit.
Nathalie, Pope Francis and Archbishop Naumann hcve one “boss” and He is Jesus, the Son of God. They are both by thier calling must teach, defend, and spread the commands and teachings of the Lord Jesus. If one is failing to do so or is causing confusion and disunity, then in brotherly love it should be pointed out.
I couldn’t agree with you more…. One boss-GOD
Richard: We’re talking here of the Church’s polity. Bishops as a College serve and function “with” and “under” the Pope, “cum Petro, sub Petro.” The Archbishop like a few other American prelates (only in America!) who are openly and disloyally critical of the Pope should quit their post or be investigated/visited. They can look at the case of Archbishop Vigano who was mothballed and called back to head office for botching the 2015 U.S. papal visit. To CWR’s good judgment it has not propagated his weird conspiracy theories and unfounded accusations against the Pope in retaliation for having been sidelined in his clericalist careerism.
The Pope is very, very wrong because supporting, promoting, legislating and financing abortion is not a matter of choice of conscience according to Evangelium Vitae.
The Pope is very wrong to say Bidens position is only “incoherent”. Biden’s position is directly opposed to and an attack on Catholic infallible dogma condemning abortion. Biden is a heretic against and infallible dogma condemning abortion in Evangelium Vitae.
Nonsense. It has nothing at all to do with being “happy.” It has EVERYTHING to do with the teaching of the Catholic Church and the pastoral care of the flock. To callously consign someone’s immortal soul to damnation by doing and saying nothing in the face of their support for the murder of innocent children is to compound the evil.
If you endorse the crimes against humanity by Pope Francis who directly promotes undermining the Church’s moral authority to condemn crimes against humanity, then you too support crimes against humanity. And the Pope is no one’s “boss.”
Argument is given by those, and they’re not a paltry number, who despite their opposition to abortion either firmly believe [or harbor doubts of Biden’s, Pelosi’s guilt] Biden and Pelosi may be wrong, but are abiding to a conscience, formulated in such a way that absolves them from sin.
Morality is determined by acts, what we do. If there is some mysterious conscientious proposition by which a man may commit cold blooded murder, kill the innocent man without just cause and be free of grave sin it defies reason. Example. Aristotle taught that the virtues are determined virtuous acts by a reasonable mean. That the mean of fortitude is somewhere between audacity and cowardice. However, Aristotle [Aquinas agrees with Aristotle on the virtues] held that justice, what is right, of all the virtues has no mean [or median]. There are no degrees by which murder is more or less murder. Which indicates there is in us an inherent capacity to apprehend with certitude that certain acts, murder, sexual acts with a child, false witness. Certitude of these acts is realized when major and minor premises are apprehended in one act of knowing. As simple as immediately knowing this act is murder, false witness, rape of a child.
As regards abortion they’re are mitigating dynamics, fear, lack of knowledge ignorance is common among subcultures, extreme duress. The Church recognizes these although despite proponents of mitigation theory [John Paul II warned not to make mitigation a category] that cast doubt of grave sin on all abortions. Biden will say abortion is wrong, and similarly say it’s not. His rationale is we’re unsure when a human being is present in the womb, that Aquinas determined there’s a hiatus between conception and the presence of a soul. Nevertheless, he poses these opinions contrary to what the Church teaches, that human life begins at conception. The argument of ensoulment is frivolous at best and nonsensical at worst, because the notion of soul as understood stems from the Gk definition of anything that is self motivation. A plant was said to have a soul, as well as a grasshopper. We know with certitude that human life begins with conception. It really is not up to us to determine when that human life has rights in recognition that it is a human life, since that determination belongs to the Creator. It’s right to life starts with its life at the moment of conception.
Biden rejects what the Church teaches which places him in the heretic category. Pelosi argues on the basis of hardship, undue burden [some canonists consider all pregnancy and birth an undue burden].
Archbishop Naumann [it’s obvious why Naumann, Aquila, Cordileone are not cardinals] is taking the stand of reason that not all abortions are hardship cases to the degree that the woman who aborts might be absolved from grave sin. That the vast majority of abortions are frivolously decided, often for cosmetic reason or maintaining a lifestyle. The monumental number of abortions hang over the head of Biden [and] Pelosi like the Sword of Damocles.
En effet. Francis in defense of Biden argues the case he makes in Amoris on conscience that inherently grave sin like murder of the innocent is not murder when we determine that it’s not.
Dear pastor and brother in Christ:
Blessings and thanks. You strive to help Biden and Pelosi come to the knowledge of truth and peace with God. If they are unwilling to accept the teaching of the Catholic Church, what kinship do they have then? You are well acquainted with the following verses and yet, if someone struggles with their conscience, God always guides us to paths of righteousness. God will forgive us of all sins if we ask Him in Jesus name!
Genesis 9:5-6 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
Psalm 139:13-16 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Leviticus 24:17 “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.
Proverbs 24:11-12 Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?
Your fellow servant in Christ,
Brian
May our Lord Jesus who knows all hearts deliver His children from the spirit of Error in this evil days.
Plaudits to a bishop who has the courage to speak the truth to power. Would that we had a Church today where it wouldn’t be necessary to even single a bishop out for such courage.
How these bishops cover for their abusive “pope”!
Their excuses for Bergoglio are tragic.
They are fools.
“I wasn’t aware of that statement by the Holy Father and I do think that’s helpful,” Naumann told CNA. “It’s very helpful because I think that’s exactly true, that his position is incoherent with Catholic teaching. So I’m grateful for that clarification by the Holy Father.”
It is so sad that you, Archbishop, was not aware of that statement made by Pope Francis. That was an important statement that was published in many good Catholic sites. And, by the way, it was not offered as a clarification. That is Church teaching. Yes, people who are not in communion with the Church should not receive communion. Hey Archbishop, Pope Francis would have received Pelosi and others because she is an American official. Even us laypeople know that.
COREECTION: What you write should read, “Even WE laypeople know that.” You see, “we” is in the subjective case and should be used for the subject of a sentence. However “us” is in the objective case, and you’ve used it wrongly.
Parenthetically, you do realize that you castigate some here for admonishing Pontiff Francis while you have no problem admonishing Bishop Naumann. Both men are bishops, you know. Aren’t you a bit inconsistent? Or perhaps, to quote Pontiff Francis, aren’t you being “incoherent.”
Mal, the nature of evil is to combine itself with the good.
It’s one thing to receive an American official, your point, but it’s another to combine such a courtesy with distribution and reception of the Eucharist. But, you are correct that Pope Francis’ statement “was not offered as a clarification.” It clarified nothing. Like stupidity, mere incoherence (as for Biden) is likely more of a hall pass than it is a sin. A new category, while moral theology remains about good and evil.
How can it clarify something, Peter, when it was not meant to clarify anything. It was a straightforward statement that reflects Church teaching. Secondly, where did you get the idea that Pope Francis combined his reception of Pelosi, mthe American official, with an invitation to receive Holy communion. That is a fabrication.
Who said “invitation?”
My comment is “combine,” a combination that coherent popes or pastors would have acted to prevent. The issue is inaction. As for “Church teaching,” it might be that such teaching is above the level of whether something is incoherent or not. There’s even something in there about inaction or “sins of omission.” Pay attention.
It is so sad that you, Mal, are not aware that the statement made by Pope Francis is NOT Church teaching. If it were, Francis would have said that Biden’s position is a REPUDIATION of Catholic teaching and a spitting in the face of God, and not use a wimpy word like incoherent, a CONTRADICTION so grievance, so obvious a crime against humanity, as to warrant his excommunication, and he would have said it last fall when Francis called him “a good Catholic,” and it would have been a reoccurring theme for nine years that any Catholic in high office is obligated to oppose the principalities of mass murder and not serve as an instrumentality. Even laypeople who are not involved in personality cults know this.
Edward, you are the last person I would ask about the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Again, maybe the controversy isn’t even about “the teachings of the Catholic Church,” but rather about affirming the teachings, while then ALSO (are you listening?) creating a surrounding climate of ambiguity within which these teachings can be pastorally or synodally set aside. The issue is the “smoke(stacks) of Satan” and this new kind of “climate change”!
Explaining this simple observation incisively to some readers is like trying to kill a deep-sea sponge with a needle, but let this internet discourse continue, because it does serve to clarify.
The archbishop just had knee surgery this week. So cut him some slack.
The Church teaches now and always has that life begins at the instant of conception and lasts until natural death. This is not difficult to understand.
The Church teaches now and always has that abortion is FORBIDDEN and always will be, in other words it is a mortal sin. THIS is not difficult to understand.
So called ‘catholic’ politicians going all the way back to Kerry and Kennedy – remember Kennedy’s anti-Bork rant about “backyard abortions’ during the Senate hearings as far back as the 80s – have been openly defying for decades the very tenets of the faith they say they follow regarding this issue. This has been going on so long that it has, sadly, become the norm.
Given this, Archbishop Naumann’s statement, while welcome, is a bit silly.
“Sad” continues to well describe my response. However, Mrs. Pelosi is also a cause of sorrow, and I intentionally use her matrimonial title as that should be her primary vocation. I cannot envision a more pastoral figure—with her—than Archbishop Cordileone who provided her soul with thousands of Rosaries and white roses after years of petitioning her conscience to realize the error of her thinking and disconnect in her actions. It was appallingly condescending to suggest that Archbishop Cordileone’s ultimate declaration was not consequentially pastoral, as well.
Then, how did Mrs. Pelosi respond to the Pope’s smiling encounter—she rebelliously rebuked him even recently, thrusting the same bitter uline about giving birth to five children (something the Pope could not understand). Incredibly, she remains blind to the enormous blessings God gave or permitted her,throwing the greatest possible one, co-creation, back in His Holy Face. (Now, granted even devout Catholic Moms, pregnant again, might look heaven bound and cry, really?, but they do not publicly resent this gift and use its perceived “burden” to justify tens of millions of abortions—up to birth, no less.)
Yet, returning to Pope Francis, I also pray he emphasizes the need to protect the great pastoral work of crisis pregnancy centers—which neither Pelosi nor Biden have done—and most importantly speak of the right of persons in the womb to be pastorally delivered into Baptism and even their First Communion.
Over 70 years of Catholic upbringing and teaching for both Biden and Pelosi and look what you get! That church needs to stop relying on human traditions and false teaching/interpreting scriptures to fit their narrative. It’s no wonder God has turned his back on this church.
Most of the time the fault lies with the individual, and NOT the church. I seem to recall Martin Luther disposing of 7 Books of the bible because they didnt fit his preferred theological narrative. The same books which had been accepted by Christians for 1500 years to that point. I would suggest that moves into “false teaching”. Or at the very least, the twisting of scripture. I see no evidence God has abandoned the Catholic Church. Although many are unhappy with Frances as its head.
We need another St. Ambrose in the Church today to set the record straight on what the Church teaches, and whips everyone into shape.
Even though the grammar is atrocious (i.e., “someone”, “that person”, “they”), the Archbishop does a good job of identifying hypocrisy when he sees it:
“‘However, it is not pastoral to tell someone they are a good Catholic and can receive Communion as a matter of course, when that person has committed a grave evil,’ he continued. ‘The fact that the pope received Pelosi was politically exploited. In doing so, Francis is doing exactly what he warns others not to do.'”
I think Abp. Naumann is right that Pope Francis doesn’t understand America, as he doesn’t understand the American Church. Yet he presumes to wade in. Whose job is it to enlighten him? Or is he as closed to insight as Pelosi and Biden seem/pretend to be?
The collective Bishops authority to teach about the Eucharist at this point is the same as a known adulterer teaching about fidelity in a marriage.
After approximately two years of starving their children telling us Walmart was more essential than Jesus Christ, trying to teach the faithful about the importance of the Eucharist just shows how collectively out of touch they are.
We shouldn’t expect anything out of them at this point as they will collectively cave again for the next “emergency” with a 99% survival rate.
Hate the sin not the sinner
“I think the Pope doesn’t understand the U.S., just as he doesn’t understand the Church in the U.S..”
Kansas’ vote to protect abortion rights ironically shows that Archbishop Naumann is the one who doesn’t really understand the U.S..