Conversation with Bishop Robert Barron on political philosophy

Of course, good to see you.

Yeah. Well, [sighs] it's it's funny you you you drawn that parallel and I think others have drawn that parallel. It's not something I was even aware of entirely, just the there are certainly parallels between our lives, but what what always attracted me to to St. Augustine was more the intellectual piece of it than the personal piece of it. I definitely read, you know, confessions at some point.

Actually, the the Dominican frier who baptized me, gifted me a copy and I read it and I was, you know, very moved by it. But I was much more interested in the city of God and some of the things that he had written about, you know, Roman politics and Roman philosophy and sort of the the way in which Christianity was in some ways an antidote to the things that he had seen in his own in his own life. and and frankly some of the problems that he saw in the Roman Empire around him. And you know in particular there there are two two things that I point out that you know I was definitely in my kind of atheist phase because I was raised evangelical as I talk about in the book fell away from my faith called myself an atheist for some time. Uh I was in college and we read the city of god in a political philosophy class and I was just really moved and affected by I was like this is like clearly a very profound person.

Yeah. And you know and when you're in that kind of atheist phase or at least when I was there was sort of this idea that I had categorized religious people as simple as subrational or anti-rational whereas it was the atheists especially the new atheists who were super smart with the rights. That's right. and and and there were many ways in which that story is obviously wrong, but St. St.

Augustine is one of the people who sort of pierced that in a very early phase for me.

That's right. Well, and I think that the subtext of it is that every society, whether it considers itself secular or not, every society has an underlying theology.

It worships something. And I think the the Roman Empire and I guess the 4th century that Augustine was surrounded by had become very corrupted. And you know, there's there's this there's this passage, I'm going to butcher it if I try to quote it, but I I talk about in the book where, you know, Augustine sort of criticizes the Roman elites where, you know, they they hang out and they care about money and then they get really drunk and then they it's just like it's a very vivid criticism of the decadence of the Roman elite. And it's like any society led by people like this is eventually going to go by the wayside. And that that is again it sounded very resonant to me because I do think that there is something very corrupt about American elites in in 2026 certainly in 20 you know 13 2014 when I'm sort of struggling with this stuff and thinking about this stuff.

So that that is all true but fundamentally every society worships something and I think that if you are worshiping the right things a lot of virtue and a lot of goodness will flow from it. If you're worshiping the wrong things, eventually you're going to go off track.

Mhm. That's right. No, that's exactly right. So, I I don't know that this evangelical um you know, theologian you just mentioned, um Paul Pelic, it sounds fascinating to me and sounds like something I I should take a look at, but but no, I mean, so so I get to this this phase in my life and I'm, you know, I've gotten into law school. I worship success and it's it's not I I try to draw this distinction in some of the interviews, certainly in the book, where it it's not that ambition is always bad, right?

That's not that's not the argument. But it's like there are two kinds of ambition here. Um there's the ambition to do something amazing or to do something transformative or to help a lot of people or to build a beautiful building. Like you don't build I mean speak of Milan if you've ever seen the Milan Cathedral, one of those beautiful buildings in the world. Ambitious people built this thing.

But there's a separate kind of ambition that I think is much more endemic in our our society in 2026. again especially among our leaders which is like the desire to just get ahead for its own sake. You sort of have this sense of social rank and you assign value based on where did people go to school or how much money do they make or what are their credentials and that is I think very very common among the set that I was running in. So, you know, I'm in my mid20s. I'm at Yale Law School.

And I just realized almost instinctively the social currency is credential. People don't care about what you've achieved. They don't care about what you're going to achieve. They don't care about your family. This is a very weird thing to me because I grew up in a community where like the thing that people were most interested in you is how are your kids doing?

How's your wife doing? How's your husband doing? And yet at Yale it was who is going to get ahead in this game of life. And I found that very unsatisfying.

That's exactly. And you care way too much about what they think. You allow what other people think to influence again, not just what you do, but even the thoughts in your head. And this was another thing that I picked up when I was at Yale Law School is like again I I assumed that there was this hyperrational element to American elites. Yeah, these these are high IQ.

These are high achieving. These are people who are people of the mind. They're not superstitious religious people like the ones that I discarded. And yet their way of thinking about the world is much more narrow and constrained for this very reason because their opinions are so based on just what other people believe that it becomes derivative of the social set in which they run in. And this, you know, leads me to another like Catholic philosopher where, you know, Renee Gerard talks about this idea that human beings are look, we're naturally social.

Yeah. And and this can lead to certain virtues and certain vices. But one of the vices that it leads to is that we very often identify what we want based on what other people want.

Metic desire. And that's exactly what was happening. It it describes so perfectly the world that I saw around me. Yeah. And then again you start saying well okay so I had this idea of what's right and what's wrong that's become unsatisfying to me and there are all of these people who happen to be like famous Catholics and famous Christians who seem to be identifying that there's like a fundamental weakness in this way of seeing the world and again that was that was very powerful to me and that kind of got me back on the right path.

No, I think that's very interesting. He is certainly the prophet of social media because the thing about mimemetic desire again, this this idea that we identify what we want based on what other people want. And and again, once you see it, like you said, it's very hard to unsee it. I mean, look, I I have a nine-year-old, I have a six-year-old, I have a four-year-old. To see it with children is unbelievable.

Like my 9-year-old will pick up a toy that none of the kids has played with in 6 months. And instantly, all of them want that toy. You again, it is such a powerful explanation of of human psychology. But here's the thing. In a normal society, preocial media, right?

This takes time, right? Like like mimemetic desire happens through normal social interactions. You see what somebody else is is focused on. You see what somebody else cares about. But social media sort of taken this and supercharged it.

It can spread like wildfire. And so you see what other people are talking about, what other people are thinking, what other people are desiring much more quickly because the virality of social media puts it in front of you at such a quick speed. And so again, because it sets that desire a flame and and makes it spread so rapidly, it also makes the conflict side of it spread so rapidly. And how many times I mean you not even on on X or you know Twitter or whatever we're calling it these days but if if you go to like Facebook back in its early days how many times would I see people that I knew and loved get into arguments on the internet where I I would think to myself the this is not who you are the these are two really lovely human beings that are calling each other these terrible names on social media. Like how did we even get here?

Yeah. And and I think it can become even the desire. This is again the social element to human beings. It's not always a vice. It's it can very often lead to virtue, right?

But it has to be ordered in in the right way. And so, you know, if if let's say you take two politicians who both are trying to achieve the common good, now that can lead to them working together, them recognizing their respective strengths and weaknesses and actually trying to sort of do that together, right? That could also lead to well, if we both want the same common good and then we both, let's say, we both want the same office in order to get to that common good, then that leads to rivalry again for rivalry sake. And so I I do think that one of the takeaways of sort of this this throughine of Augustine to um to Gerard is that you constantly have to be on guard and recognize that something that is good in you can be ordered to something very positive but can also be distorted. And this is you know you talk about Satan like I I think of of of you know I forget who's who has this quote but the devil's greatest trick is to convince people that he didn't exist.

There is this this thing where it's like a very very good thing and pointed in the right direction. If you just get a little off pace, it can become quite malicious very quickly.

well there are a few things I mean one is I I was just I was compelled by the fact that it was trying to strike a balance very industrializing communism, fascism, all these things rising up. And yet even though that you know like Leo the 13th doesn't talk about the fascist movement 70 years later 60 years later you can kind of see he's very worried about the tumult and he's very worried that if we don't strike the right balance between human dignity and prosperity between workers and capital owners that that it's going to inevitably lead to this conflict. So that's that's that's one thing that I found profounding profound about it is just the recognition that the balance really mattered. The other thing that I think is very interesting and I actually was was sort of thinking about Rum Narum in the speech that I gave on July 4th. There's this idea that in in Markx that the classes have to inevitably eveitably be in conflict against each other.

And then I think that there's this idea in more traditional libertarian or free market thinking that you know there there's there's sort of never any real conflict. It's and to the extent that it is it's all a violation of individual rights. Whereas I think what Rio Nvaram is saying is that yes conflict can sometimes be an inevitable part of these social changes but the way to solve the conflict is by cooperating between these different sort of segments of society. And what a statesman should be doing, what somebody who's focused on the common good should be doing is not pretending that like there isn't a problem if you have destitution on the one hand and extreme wealth on the other. But also not pretend that the solution to that is conflict.

The powerlessness versus the powerful and then the powerless sometimes win and the powerful sometimes win. There there can be a real compromise. And what you know in some ways the idea of a of a labor union you know there's sort of the classical Marxist understanding of a labor union which is conflict between the owners and the workers. But in the Catholic view it it's actually not conflict it's this is an institution that is meant to give the workers some say certainly some bargaining power some anchoring and there can be a more cooperative arrangement from there. doesn't always have to be a zero sum battle of one against the other.

And I I I try to think about that a lot is how how can we how can we gear certain policy outcomes in a way that doesn't ignore the problems that come with destitution but tries to solve it through cooperation as opposed to conflict.

No. No. I I I would say like not popular most of the time. And even in my own life and I I think about this all the time with our own economic policies in the administration is you're trying to strike that balance between promoting prosperity but also promoting the dignity of the poor, the dignity of workers. It it's it it is again it's a hard balance to strike.

I'm not saying that it's easy, but again I I do think at its best what Catholic social teaching is doing is sort of asking very difficult questions and posing very difficult challenges to people like me. And I I like one of the the the basic axioms or the basic principles that I try to apply when I think about this stuff is to the extent that I get really comfortable that a thing that we're doing fits within Catholic teaching, I that's the thing that I should resist because it's not easy. It's it's demanding a lot of both public officials but also of all of us. And we, you know, we talk about this, of course, Bishop, with um w- with with the immigration question, right? And I I I think again there there is this demand that you treat people with dignity.

There's also an acceptance, maybe even endorsement of the fact that nations are allowed to control their borders. How do you balance these things when controlling your borders inevitably leads to law enforcement operations that sometimes can uh can create can create issues? That's the balance that we we fundamentally have to strike. And I think to the extent that we ever feel comfortable, that's probably a sign that we should get out of the comfort zone.

That's right. And that that that's how I think of it, too. And I think that for that to happen the right way, for you to play your role correctly and for me to play my role correctly, it just requires a constant ongoing dialogue because as you get into the nitty-gritty of applying these principles in the real world, you're not always going to do it perfectly. There are going to be ways in which the pastoral duties sort of maybe we're not taking proper account of it. Yeah.

So I I I think at its best again there is going to be an inherent sort of there's going to be a relationship where the clergy are constantly sort of trying to engage on these issues in a positive way and then we're constantly trying to apply these principles in the best way and the most consistent way and and that will you know as we've seen sometimes with uh the the Vatican and and our own immigration policies that sometimes does lead to conflict. But, you know, one of the things I've I've tried to drive home just over the last, you know, few months where I've been talking a lot about this and there's been a lot of discussion about, you know, the Catholic clergy disagreeing with Trump administration on this or that issue is I I try to say, you know what, like that's actually okay because that dialogue is sort of how the clergy does its job and it's how we sort of respond and and that's not a bad thing to me. like the there's this idea and it's again it's because of our like hyper mimedic political media but like every time the pope says something mildly critical of a Trump administration policy it's like oh the Trump hat the the pope hates the Trump administration well you know actually no maybe the pope is trying to provide the kind of moral teaching that is inherently part of his job and then we have to take that and try to apply it which is part of our job

Exactly. Which is why I kind of, you know, not to take this obviously you ask whatever questions you want to, father, but I always found the conservative reaction to Pope Francis. I say this as a very conservative Catholic. I take the teachings of the church very seriously. I'm obviously very politically conservative.

But I always kind of liked that Pope Francis would just throw these bombs out there in the media because it would force a conversation. Now sometimes, yeah, he would say things that I would say, wait a second, is that actually consistent or is that correct? But it forced a dialogue and he was kind of a genius at that.

Well, and that's again back to the point of the the devil being a deceiver is one way to try to turn people's minds off of very traditional and I think ultimately true Christian teaching Yeah. is to name it as something else. Again, the right to your point, Catholics have very serious theological problems with Markx like we are not Marx Marxists, but there are ideas that are very not Marxist, but are also extremely Christian about the universal destination of goods that we have to contend with. And and again, like I I talk about this a little bit in the book. I'm not saying I have all the answers.

I'm not saying I I know how to apply all these principles in the perfect way. there's always this kind of balance between, you know, promoting economic growth, but then ensuring that everybody has their sort of, you know, a good a good opportunity to get their piece of the pie, so to speak. But I I I find this just one of the things that I liked and one of the things that more importantly spoke to some deep part of me about the Catholic social teaching is this idea that Jesus Christ does not confine himself to little spheres of your life. That if it's true, it has to be true everywhere.

Exactly. And he and he and Yes. like Jesus really cares about how you treat your wife and he really cares about how you treat your kids, but he also cares about everything else too. And I I do think that this is, you know, one of the frustrations I had growing up as a again as a young conservative Christian is this this idea that it sometimes felt like whenever Christians engaged in politics, we were very comfortable engaging with this or that social or cultural issue, but but not anything else. Mhm.

And I actually think there's there's an opportunity for us to rediscover a more fully Christian politics that says that actually Jesus has opinions about all these things. And and in fact, if you don't get all of it right, you risk getting the most important parts wrong. You can't just confine your faith to these narrow little slices of society or of culture or of your own life. It's got to be true for the whole thing.

Yeah. No. And and I I think I gave into this again more in my sort of anti-Christian age. But there was a part of me that wanted to say God should be about God and religion. Churches should be about churches.

Leave the politics to the politicians. But but again, I if you really believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and you believe all the truths that flow from that, to your point, he actually has a lot to say about all parts of your life.

Yeah. And [snorts] and it's not to say that, you know, growth doesn't matter. If you don't have growth, if you don't have prosperity, then obviously a lot of people will suffer. But, you know, a friend of mine made this observation. He called it economic piety, which you know, he was he was it's it's a play on words p i e t y.

Okay. Which this idea is that we we have become so obsessed with the economic measurements that that's how we judge ourselves. That's how we judge our success as policy makers. and and like fundamentally let's just take like a a very simple example when a you know let's say you have a young married couple both are in the labor force okay let's say mom gets pregnant they have their first child and like a majority of American women right if you actually look at the data what most American young moms say that they want is that they want to spend a little bit more time with their kids when the kids are young but they also want to have access to their career Okay, economically, right, if you're purely measuring it by the economic statistics, the very best thing is for that young mom to literally go back to work the day after she has the baby. So, if if and this is like obviously it's an absurd argument that's meant to illustrate something, which is that if you obsess purely on what you're measuring economically, then you can come to all these like very distorted conclusions.

And you will sometimes hear as as absurd as that example is, obviously we want, you know, even even the moms who want to go right back to their careers need a couple of weeks just to recover from obviously [clears throat] the stress of delivering a baby. But sometimes, you know, you will hear politicians on the other side say things like, well, you know, abortion is is really good because if you didn't have abortion, then you'd have way too many women who weren't able to join the workforce. It's like, wait, wait, wait a second. I I if I if if that's our argument here, our argument is that it's good because it allows people to join the workforce, then we have made an idol out of the American corporation. We've made an idol out of economic growth.

And again, that is what I think is a deeply anti-Christian idea because the economy exists to serve the human person. We don't order our society so that we have a line on a chart go up. And if you do then it leads to a lot of absurd outcomes

of course. Yeah. And and it can also lead I I think if you're obsessed again with the short-term economic numbers, it can lead to a lot of short-term thinking. Like one of the criticisms that I have of the the 20th century economy and I and I think it actually previewed the rise of Donald Trump and his ascension within Republican politics is that we didn't think enough about long-term investment and you know oh let's let's ship the factory to Mexico or to China. Now if you measure it by the economic statistics shareholder price goes up by 2.2% 2% and you know maybe GDP goes up by.1% and that actually was a rational decision but then all of a sudden after 25 years of that you look and you realize you've atrophied the skills of your workers you've atrophied your industrial base you've made yourself less self-sufficient as a nation and so again even by its purely economic logic this short-term financial thinking can lead to some very bad outcomes

There's a lot there's a lot there, but I I do think the single biggest change is in the way that President Trump thinks about the economic development of the country versus versus President Reagan. And again, I think we're all in some ways subjects of our time. I don't mean this as a a great criticism of Ronald Reagan, but I I I do think that this idea that globalization in the economy was just an inevitable law that was going to march along and to the extent that your economic policy mattered, you should be facilitating it rather than pushing back against it. And I think what President Trump has brought is a recognition obviously I agree with this a recognition that there is a national and community element to economics that like you know if you look at it again purely by the economic numbers it doesn't matter whether your antibiotics are manufactured in China or whether they're manufactured in Milwaukee or Indianapolis but if you look at it from the perspective of what actually makes nations strong of course you have to manufacture antibiotics closer to home because if god forbid there was some conflict ICT or even just a coidl like supply chain disruption. You don't want to wake up in a country as we did in late 2020 where our doctors didn't have enough hospital gowns and hospital masks because of the supply disruptions.

So I I I think there's just this recognition that, you know, yeah, you can buy and sell with other countries, you can trade with other countries, but you have to have some native economic self-sufficiency. And and that is a big difference. If you go back to the early Reagan era, if you look at what Milton Freriedman was writing about economic policy at the time, there are a lot of things where he would say, you know, particularly like let's say tariffs to protect your pharmaceutical industry. Milton Friedman would say that's insane, right? I think that Donald Trump clearly had the better of the argument then.

I don't know how you even, again, I'm biased, but now the president saying, of course, we have to protect our pharmaceutical industry, our steel industry. that has now I think become almost conventional wisdom to the point where you know one one way of measuring success politically is at what point does a given idea become broadly accepted and then it's just a question of how to accomplish it. So if you go back to, you know, one of Reagan's great successes, Bill Clinton famously said the era of big government is over, right? He had sort of won that argument to the point where even the Democrats were mirroring his talking points. If you look today in 2026, Democrats may disagree about how we're doing it.

But everybody pretty much agrees we have to bring more of our industry back to the United States of America. We have to be more self-sufficient.

Yeah. So, I think a few things have happened. First of all, I do think that the the most fundamental change is religious. And in in you know, my my grandparents were classic blue dog Democrats. My grandfather was a Union Steel worker.

This is the man who raised me.

Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, voted for Reagan in ' 84 and otherwise never voted for Republican ever in his life. Right. So what what what happened though is if you go back to that that Democratic party in the 1980s and I actually talk about this I think some in the book that you know religious identification religious attendance both Republicans and Democrats were equally Christian.

Yeah. They may have went to different churches and obviously, you know, Jewish Americans at the time were more in the in the Democratic party and the Republican party, but there there's still just this sense of we're like a broadly speaking ecumenical god-fearing country. You see that in both the Democrat and the Republican parties. I I think that what has happened is that religion itself has become very disfavored among democratic elites in in some ways for the reasons that I talk about in the book. And I and I think one of the really troubling trends in democratic politics and I always ask this question when I think about who is a really compelling Democratic politician on the other side.

I always ask myself, who are the black candidates who came out of the black church because that is such a core anchor of the the Democratic party in this country. And if you look today, like go to go to the US Congress and ask yourself what Democrats under 50 came out of the black church, the answer may be none.

The answer may be none. So, so I I I I do think that what has happened is that, you know, Christianity has always had this moderating influence on politics and unfortunately the Democrats have become less and less comfortable with any sort of religious role in politics and I think that's again as Jester said that doesn't mean they believe in nothing that believes they believe in anything and I think you see that very much in today's modern Democrats.

That's right. Yeah. So, so this is a very formative thing for me. So, I just become a United States senator. Yeah.

I was, you know, young. I was sort of up and coming and I go to the security conference which really is it's the defense conference in the world especially for the United States and its allies. And of course, you know, the Ukraine conflict is sort of top of mind there in Munich, but there are a lot of other sort of bigger and deeper questions like what is the Western Alliance stand for? And what I realized is there is an extraordinary Christian foundation to the entire Western security alliance. like the person who founded the Munich Security Conference was one of the Christians who was involved in the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and he was one of the few who survived.

But then you you actually look at, you know, that that early postwar western alliance. Look at Eisenhower, some of the things that he said. I mean, he religious be called a theocrat if you gave anything like Eisenhower's speeches today.

Absolutely. And and and but all of these western leaders, they thought that they were creating something very influenced founded on a Christian concept. And now and what I saw in Munich was was a certain sense of tragedy or sorrow. There was a nostalgia for that era. Like the Western Alliance in 1950 was so strong and everybody felt and this is I guess in 2023.

Well, now it's so weak. And I I I was kind of struck by the fact that people weren't asking the question, well, what had really changed about the West from 1955 to 2023?

and it's obvious, right? It's it's that our societies kind of lost that binding moral vision, that unifying moral vision, and they were trying to recapture all of the good things out of it without the underlying foundation. and they're and they're and they're they're almost, you know, there was something because I went into this conference and I remember I was kind of angry at them. I felt they were naive. I felt like they were dumb.

I felt like they weren't really understanding what was really going on in the world. And I came out actually with this deep sense of respect but also sorrow because they're nostalgic for a world that doesn't exist anymore, but they can't quite bring themselves to get it back.

That's exactly right.

No, I look I I totally agree. And this is, you know, again, I think this scares certain non-religious people because they assume, okay, you know, Senator JD Vance, when I was a senator, I'm going to pick up the the phone and call Bishop Baron to tell me how to vote on a particular piece of legislation. No, no, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is a more morally and spiritually assertive church. and the country just it needs it.

And this is there are all these reasons why I wrote this book. I think the main reason I wrote this book is because I was trying to sort of puzzle through as a parent. Why does religion take for some kids and not for others? Well, why not start with me? Because I I I myself was raised in a religious family and then fell away from it and came back.

But I I do think there is an implied message to the church itself and this is why I talk so much about Francis is like don't be so afraid to speak the truth of the gospel. The country actually needs it. And I and I, you know, I I talk about this a little bit, but okay, one of the craziest experiences I've had since being vice president is I went to do a TPUSA event and I was talking backstage to the kids and you I hate to say that, but they are kids to me, right? I'm 41 years old. They're all in their their late teens, early 20s to me.

Yeah, that's right. Um, but you know, I I just like was hanging out for a little while and talking to him and and and one just sort of crazy throughout, you know, she was like, you know, I think social media and AI is totally changing dating. And I was like, oh, really? Well, tell tell me more about that. And, you know, I live in a bubble.

I'm surrounded by secret service agents. So, like whenever I like get in front of a crowd and I'm actually able to have a conversation, it's almost like, you know, a thirsty man gets to a well. I just like tell me all about this because it's so fascinating to me. And she was explaining that her and her friends were like engaged in in text conversations with with boys that they were seeing was to feed the conversation into chat GBT and then to have chat GBT spit out

And I'm like, whoa, this is this is crazy. And then and then I I realized actually talking to these these kids like you cuz some of them were, you know, they were actually close to getting married, some of them were dating, some of them were just like very very down on and it was almost like an itch had been scratched cuz all of them just all of a sudden were telling me what what a bad situation there was in the dating culture. And I realized that, you know, the the the technology that actually brings man and woman together successfully is the church. Yeah. And yet, so you have young people who are using chat GBT and they don't want to.

And meanwhile, you've got a church that actually is really good on this stuff and is an amazing institution to bring young men and women together and yet still feels to me a little bit like what you talked about sensitive or almost there's a lack of self-confidence that I see in the church. But the country needs a more assertive church, I think, to get back on track.

Yeah. So and I should say it's it's um the archbishop there who's who's from uh I think he's from Ireland Gallagher. Yeah. So, you know, he and and Cardinal Perilin, I I've spent a fair amount of time with them over the past year and a half. I have a lot of respect for them, but I also think that there was in in the first meeting that I ever had with them, I I found Cardinal Peril particularly fascinating, especially when it's just you and him one-on-one, but in this formal diplomatic setting, you're in this beautiful castle at the Vatican and you're in this amazing room.

It just felt like they were they didn't want to move past the diplomatic platitudes and you know they they would say well of course a country has a right to control its borders but you know we would really prefer that you show more respect for the dignity of the migrant and it's like okay father

Exactly. Like father I don't disagree with that. Yeah, but like let's talk what what do you actually mean here or here's here's my my basic summary of that is is again I I think that there is a an impulse within the church that is very comfortable in dealing with the highest level of generality because then it's not challenging to anybody but I think what the country actually needs what society what the entire world actually needs again is not there's like the nitty-gritty We we don't need the pope to be the president or a king, but we I think need more than the level of generality that we currently see coming out of of the clergy today. And that's of course a difficult balance to strike. You know, you get sometimes too close to the details, sometimes too general, but I feel very strongly that right now the current hierarchy is way too uncomfortable dealing with anything other than abstraction.

And that has that just really has to change. And like I you know I'm the vice president of the United States encouraging them to be more active even though I know it will mean they sometimes are going to be more critical of the things that I do or the things the conversation is very important. And I I think you know Pope Leo obviously is is is very new in his his pontificate. He's a very young man. Obviously, he understands American culture better than any any um pope in history.

I really hope that he he actually changes this because I I think that he has he's clearly a brilliant guy. He's clearly a very holy man.

He's an Augustinian. And I I think that at its best, he could make the church engage with the world in a much more direct way. And I, you know, we'll we'll see. I I think you see signs of that happening. I thought the AI encyclical was very very good.

But I I think that is what the world actually needs out of the church in this moment. It is in a period of crisis. And the church in some ways is in a technological age. It's the most ancient technology that's ever existed. And the reason it survived this long is because it actually works.

Yeah. Well, I'm trying to get better on this. This is one of these things where you get out of practice on it and it's hard to fully get back into practice,

That's right. So what I I I normally will do and and this is you know a bit of practice is in the morning I will try to do a decade of the rosary and then before I go to bed as well and that's just kind of you know do the ala our father do the glory be do the Hail Mary um you know of course you know pray with the kids before dinner time but the thing that I'm I'm trying to do a little bit more is to get is to get the kids into it as well so to say prayers before bedtime, but probably 80% of the time I I fail on that because either bedtime is too chaotic or because I'm at the White House. So there's the thing I I I one of the things that I lost from going from my Christian upbringing to becoming an atheist is I just got out of practice with it. Yeah. And I found actually one of the things that really attracted me to Catholicism is that when I got back into prayer, it's like I didn't have a natural voice for prayer anymore.

And it's hard to describe, but it's like when I was 17 and I would get on my knees and clasp my hands together, I would know what to say. When I was 28, I didn't know what to say anymore. But there are all these prayers Yeah. that you don't, you know, you just doing it, getting into the practice of it. And this is one of the things that I always encourage people to do is you don't have to be perfect.

You don't have to say you don't have to have this like super eloquent prayer. Sometimes just doing it is the most important thing. And so that's what I try to do at least once in the morning and once at night.

Jesus, I trust in you is sort of I I probably say that a dozen times,

Yeah. No, that's that's absolutely right. And and I I just want to be, you know, the one piece of advice I'd give is you don't have to be perfect at it, right? Like I there are just all of these ways in which, you know, it's 8:15 and I'm like, "All right, I'm going to get home and make the kids pray before bed and then I get home and, you know, it's like one we're trying to get the pull-up on and the other is, you know, arguing about brushing their teeth and then it just doesn't happen." what what I try to do is is like just try just do as much as you can. And one thing that I again the devil is a deceiver.

One thing that was definitely true when I was like, you know, first getting back into the faith was this idea that, you know, this should be easier than it is, right? This should come more naturally. If God's actually speaking to me, then why why does this require so much like practice? And you know that that I think is the exact wrong way to think about it. You know sometime the reason it requires so much practice is because you know we are fallen creatures.

Yeah. We're offer and the way that we get back to that good place is through the practices heaven will do. Yes. But we're in this fallen state where our our minds and souls and bodies are offkilter. And so but prayer is this conscious effort to say okay I'm going to I'm trying to get back online here.

Thank you.

God bless you. Thank you.