Bishop Robert Barron is one of the leading evangelists for the Catholic Church. Bishop Thomas John Paprocki is one of the leading canon lawyers for the Catholic Church. The two have known each other for decades, going back to their time together as priests in Chicago. For the first time, they sat down together for a joint interview. Catholic Times editor, Andrew Hansen, interviewed them both on the diocesan podcast, Dive Deep, to get their thoughts on the “number one thing” on a variety of faith questions. This is the final installment of their interview (answers are edited for clarity). 

Q. What is the number one thing parents should be doing with their children when it comes to our faith?

Bishop Paprocki: I would say taking them to Mass on Sunday. I can’t over overemphasize how important that is, and in fact, I find it very sad when I sometimes talk to young children and we talk to them about the importance of going to Mass on Sunday, and they’ll say, “Well, I want to go to Mass on Sunday but my mom and dad don’t go, and they don’t want to take me.” I think that’s really sad because the children know that they should be going to Mass on Sunday, and they want to go, and their parents won’t take them. I know for a lot of adolescent children, you get this rebellious period. That didn’t happen in my life because it was just always a given, it wasn’t even a question: It’s Sunday, and we go to Mass on Sunday, it’s just what we do you. If you can develop that habit and children going to Mass on Sunday, that will be something that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Bishop Barron: Christian Smith is a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame who’s done a lot of work on this issue of disaffiliation and one thing he found that I thought was very interesting is that those who tend to stay in the faith are those who talked about religion around the table. Those who disaffiliated with the faith were those families that never talked about religion. Not only weren’t they going to Mass, but it never came up as a subject. I think in my own childhood, my dear mother, when I was a young kid, I’d come down Saturday morning, and my mother would be there with a cigarette and a cup of coffee and the newspaper, and you know what she loved to talk about was religion. I’d be 8 years old, 9 years old, and we’d be talking about God, about Heaven, about eternal life, about the Mass. She just liked talking about religion, so it was natural, it was just part of life. We went to Mass as a family, and then we did talk about faith in our spare time. So, I would encourage parents, bring it up, and if a kid has a question, find the answer. If you don’t know the answer, there’s all kinds of good apologetic material now, all kinds of places to go online, books to get. Find the answers and then let’s have a good discussion about it, so I think talking about the faith with kids is super important.

Q. What is the number one thing a single Catholic person should desire in a spouse?

Bishop Barron: I’ll be a little provocative. Look for someone who loves Christ more than you. So, if you’re a man looking for a spouse, see that she loves Christ more than she loves you. That’s important because then together, you’ll fall in love with the Transcendent Third. If Christ is not the center, if you become the center of your spouse’s life, there’s a problem. If Christ is the center of your life, then the marriage will come together. So, find someone that’s really in love with Christ. That’s the one you should be going after.

Bishop Paprocki: The whole idea is the sacrament of matrimony is a total giving of oneself to the other, so one should be looking at, is this the kind of person I want to dedicate my life to doing that with. In that regard, I’m also going to be a little provocative, and suggest that a person should look for a Catholic to marry. My background is in canon law, so I mention, canon law actually says that marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics is forbidden. Now, the Church regularly gives dispensations for that and so perhaps because we give them so easily people don’t even realize that there’s a prohibition on that. The prohibition is overcome by the non-Catholic party being aware that the Catholic is supposed to raise the children in the Catholic Church and the Catholic makes a promise to do all in their power to raise the children as Catholic. There’s a reason behind our laws, and it’s if you really want to be happy, you’re going to be happiest, I think, if you marry another Catholic. Now, I know that’s provocative because I have Catholic friends and relatives who are married to non-Catholics, and their marriages seem to be very happy and fine, and God bless them, but I think if we’re starting with, what ideally — what are you looking for — if you and your spouse want to share the totality of yourselves with each other, having the same faith is the most important thing to share with each other. Your faith, your love, and then to share that faith with your children because if you’re coming from two different faith backgrounds and you’re trying to pass on what you hold to be very important to your children, and you don’t share the same faith, that’s going to be problematic for your children, so I would really emphasize that as well.

Q. What is the number one thing one can do as a parishioner for their parish?

Bishop Paprocki: The word for this in the Church is “evangelization,” and the practical way to do that is go invite somebody to join your parish, invite somebody to come to Mass on Sunday. When I do parish visits, sometimes I’ll talk to the parish councils about this, and I’ll say, “You might think that it’s our duty as the priests and the religious and because we’re the full-time employees that we should go out and get new parishioners. You have more entry into people’s lives than we do.” Why do we read books? Word of mouth. Hey, I read a great book, or I saw a great movie — we should be talking about our faith that way, and I think pastors would be so grateful if their parishioners just started inviting more people to come and join the Church.

Bishop Barron: I agree with Bishop Paprocki. In my Diocese of Winona-Rochester, I’ve given the people two great goals: vocations — we need more priests, and then secondly, evangelization. What I always say when I go around to the parishes at the end of Mass, I’ll say, “You’re the evangelist.” I said, “Here’s my challenge. Everyone in this room, bring someone back in the course of this year,” and that’s low hanging fruit. You all know someone in your family, someone at work, some of your kids, whoever — bring that one person back, and we’ll double the size of this parish. Then, when people say to me as a bishop, “We’re worried that you might close our parish, it’s getting too small.” I say, “Good, then go out and find more people, bring more people into this parish.” So, I think the Catholic people themselves have to realize what Bishop Paprocki said, that they’re in many ways the prime evangelizers and the first thing for Catholics is to bring them to Mass. Vatican II wanted to revive the Mass, it wanted more people coming to the Source and Summit of the Christian life. That’s the best thing a person can do — bring someone back.

Q. What is the number one thing people get wrong about a bishop’s life?

Bishop Barron: I wonder if people think the bishop is just like in the chancery office 9 to 5, that we put our suits on and we go to the chancery office and we sit at the desk from 9 to 5. I’m in the chancy office some hours of the week for meetings and so on, but I think the priority is getting out to the parishes and getting out to events and to meet the people, and so I’m on the road a lot and confirmations obviously, but lots of other things. Most of it is I try to be out among the people.

Bishop Paprocki: I think a lot of people don’t realize that we have normal human interests. I think especially children. When I talked to confirmation candidates, they’re surprised when they find out that I play hockey. I’m a goalie. They call me the “holy goalie.” We laugh about that. And I run  — I’ve run marathons. The other thing I think people get wrong, and this is kind of a pet peeve of mine is that people think that the bishop is the “complaint department” at the diocese. I’ve joked, only half-jokingly sometimes, I should change the sign on my door from Bishop’s Office to Complaint Department. From the letters and the emails I get, whatever someone doesn’t like about the Church, they complain and think that maybe I can do something about it. In most cases, I can’t, but even if it’s something that I can, let’s say something that they don’t like what their pastor did, they come right to me, and I’ll write back to them sometimes, and I’ll just quote Matthew 18:15-17 where Jesus gives steps. So, they’ll complain about something about their pastor, and I’ll write, well first of all, that Gospel passage, Jesus says if somebody does something wrong, if that person sins, then go talk to that person privately, and if that doesn’t solve the problem, then bring two or three other people and then have a further conversation. If that doesn’t work, bring it to the Church. Well, people skip those first two steps and write to me. That’s like that’s bringing it to the Church. I say, “Have you gone back to those other steps? Have you talked to your pastor? Talk to him first and then if that doesn’t work, then come back to me.”

Q. What is the number one thing the Church is doing right today?

Bishop Paprocki: I’d say in terms of the Universal Church, what I see going on in Africa is just tremendous. The way the faith has grown there in the last 100 years is astronomical. Africa was basically evangelized — I’m not talking about Northern Africa because that goes all the way back to Augustine, but you know sub-Saharan Africa — basically, the Irish missionaries in the 19th century went out to Africa and they spread the Gospel. I’m praying the faith will spread from Africa throughout the rest of the world. In terms of the particular Church, I’ll speak for my own diocese. We are very blessed with vocations in our diocese. I’ve been a bishop there for 15 years. I’ve ordained 40 priests and for us, that’s a very good number. We have about 120,000 Catholics. We have about 100 priests total and so about 25 of those are senior status, and we’ve kept the same ratio 75 active out of 100. Also, vocations to the religious life — religious sisters. We have the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in our diocese in Alton, and they’re getting new vocations every year. So, it’s really wonderful to see young men and women embracing the faith and choosing to follow our Lord by taking on a religious vocation.

Bishop Barron: I’ll say maybe first a practical and then a more theoretical. I think practically, I agree with Bishop Paprocki, the way the Church is using the media and the social media especially. My Word on Fire ministry I think is part of that, but many others. You know the Church is using this means of communication that has been given to us, and it has a dark side as things always do but we’d be silly not to use it, and I think the Church is using it very effectively to evangelize especially among younger people, so I’d say that at a practical level. More theoretically, that the Church is talking about God, and that’s the problem in the West, is the forgetfulness of God. It’s the secular world that matters; it’s the pleasures right in front of me. That’s all that matters, materialism, a sort of soul suffocating secularism, that’s what’s bedeviling especially younger people. The Church, despite all opposition, despite our own scandals, and all of that, we’re speaking about God, and there’s nothing more important. At a time when the new atheists had a big impact 20 some years ago, who’s speaking about God in our culture? That’s the Church, season in and out. I think that’s the most important thing we’re doing right now.