I’m just going to do some linking here.

Fr. Robert Barron is a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Francis Cardinal George Chair of Faith and Culture at University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary (I didn’t know that position existed until I wrote it just now).  When I was a seminarian at St. Joseph College Seminary (Loyola University Chicago), Fr. Barron came to speak on occasion.  He was always insightful and well-spoken, one of my favorite guest speakers.

He has a blog (www.wordonfire.org) and recently wrote an article for the Catholic New World (newspaper for the Archdiocese of Chicago) on the Hitchens brothers, Christopher and Peter.  The former is a renowned atheist, and the latter eventually came to espouse Christianity.  The two have sometimes debated the subjects of religion and God’s existence in public presentations.  While searching for Fr. Barron’s article, I encountered this video which hits all of the same points, sometimes verbatim.   It’s six minutes long, and thought-provoking.

Namely, he hits the point which seems so obvious that I am always surprised when intelligent atheists (Christopher Hitchens, in this case) miss it:  God is not the cause of society’s ills or tragedies.  When God is “involved” in these evils, what you’re really seeing is an abuse of the name of God and a misinterpretation of His Will.  Rather, the desire to eliminate God from our social fabric something worse than short-sighted.  It’s an inversion of the reality.  To promote ethics at the expense of God is like dumping your parachute because opening it will be jarring.  And you can follow the analogy all…the way…down…