Tucker Carlson video screengrabs / YouTube
In a recent interview, Tucker Carlson and Bishop Robert Barron tackled some of today’s most urgent spiritual and cultural challenges — from rising despair and smartphone addiction to Christian persecution and the scars of the sex abuse crisis.
CatholicVote chose five moments from the wide-ranging interview that highlight the level of insight Bishop Barron offered.
A culture without God is a culture in despair
Carlson opened the interview with a sobering observation: “It seems like a lot of people in the West are unhappy — and it’s measurable. Suicide rates are at record highs, and birth rates are at record lows. Those are not signs of confidence in the future. Those are signs of despair.”
Bishop Barron responded with a spiritual diagnosis: “They’ve lost a sense of God. I mean, God is the supreme good. And when you lose that sense of God and you collapse back in on yourself … by definition, you [are] unhappy.”
He invoked St. Augustine’s classic definition of sin — curvatus in se, being curved in on oneself — as the fundamental state of a society that has rejected transcendence in favor of personal autonomy. The cultural idolization of autonomy, he said, leaves people hollow.
“You’ve now come to reverence your own freedom, your own autonomy… when you deify your own psyche, your own ego, you get lost,” the bishop said.
Bishop Barron emphasized that true joy is found in being drawn out of oneself in love toward something greater.
“The joy of life comes from forgetting — in this great ecstatic act — you forget about yourself and you lose yourself in some great value … the supreme value in which all the other ones participate, we call God.”
The smartphone is physically and spiritually damaging
The conversation turned to the isolating effects of smartphones, which, as Carlson noted, cuts off users like himself from other people and from the world around them, from nature and from themselves.
Bishop Barron agreed the devices “were designed to be addictive,” and that it worked.
He described his own Lenten resolution to put the phone away one day each week — an experience he found freeing. This principle is echoed in seminary formation, where aspiring priests begin their studies without phones.
“They all feel liberated,” Bishop Barron said. “They all come back saying, ‘It was the best year of my life. I read books again. I talked to people. I cultivated friendship. I played games. I played sports.’”
This collapse inward, the bishop noted, mirrors Augustine’s definition of sin as being caved in on oneself.
“That’s what it looks like,” he said, describing the hunched posture of someone glued to a screen.
He pointed to studies by psychologists Jean Twenge and Leonard Sax, both of whom found a direct correlation between screen time and depression in young people.
“Look how unhealthy it’s making our young kids,” Bishop Barron said.
The antidote? Remove the devices — at least “to some degree,” the bishop said.
Christianity is the most persecuted faith — but few are talking about it
Bishop Barron didn’t hesitate when asked if Christian persecution is on the rise.
“Oh, I know it is. It’s documented,” he said.
Highlighting the magnitude of the crisis, he said “the 20th century was the worst century for Christian martyrs … more than all the previous centuries combined.”
Despite this grim reality, he lamented how casually the topic is addressed, especially in the West. While Americans worry — rightly — about growing threats to religious liberty, “the real threat … is in different parts of the world. People are being killed for their Christian faith.”
“It’s a crime, it’s an outrage,” he said.
He later added, “It’s simply the case today that [Christianity] is the most persecuted religion.”
Looking at the broader historical canvas, he also described the 20th century as a “massive Christian slaughter bench,” where Christian nations waged brutal wars against each other.
“French Christians killing German Christians … Russian Christians killing American Christians,” he said.
This internal destruction, he believes, may explain the “spiritual wasteland” seen in many parts of postwar Europe.
Echoing the prophetic warnings of Pope Leo XIII — who composed the St. Michael prayer after a mystical experience in which he foresaw the 20th century under the influence of the devil — Bishop Barron emphasized the spiritual nature of this persecution.
“If you believe in the devil, as I do… it’s kind of hard to argue with that,” the bishop said.
The sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church
“The clergy sex abuse scandal has adversely affected the Church in every possible way,” Bishop Barron said.
He described its impact as so devastating it seemed diabolically engineered.
“Could that have just been an accident, or just human folly and sin?” he said. “It seemed [rather] to have been so designed by a wicked mind that wanted to undermine the Church.”
Bishop Barron revealed that the scandal played a major role in changing his own understanding of evil.
“When I was a young guy going through school,” he said, “we were still very much formed by [the view that] the devil is a literary device, a symbol for evil.”
But witnessing the depth and breadth of the 20th century, particularly the clergy abuse crisis, shifted that belief.
“You look at it… and it’s hard for me to imagine it’s just because of political forces or cultural [change],” he said.
Even in the face of such darkness, Bishop Barron insisted the Church must not retreat.
“The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church,” he said. “You’re not defensive here. You’re on the march, you’re on the offensive … We’re going after hatred, violence, stupidity, superstition, scapegoating — we’re on the march.”
He also pointed to the sexual revolution as the catalyst for the abuse crisis.
“There was a sense of, ‘we’ve repressed stuff too long,’” he recalled. “Be yourself, express what you’re feeling.”
That cultural current swept through seminaries and parishes alike.
“A lot of priests frankly got caught up in that cultural movement,” the bishop said.
The future of the Church under Pope Leo XIV
Bishop Barron noted that although he does not know the new pope personally, their paths had crossed at recent synods, and they share a common Midwestern upbringing.
“We grew up about a 25-minute drive from each other,” he said, referencing their roots in the Chicago area.
While describing Pope Leo as quiet and reserved, Bishop Barron recalled, “He was by far the quietest guy at the table,” during synodal discussions.
While the Pope’s long-term direction remains uncertain, Bishop Barron pointed to early symbolic gestures that he found interesting.
“He appeared on the Loggia with the mosetta and the elaborate stole,” he said, noting the traditional vestments that Pope Francis had famously “eschewed.”
“He’s used Latin a lot more, which is kind of interesting … I think it was a gesture toward the more traditional Catholics,” he added.
Most telling, according to the bishop, was the new pope’s choice of name: Leo XIV.
“The name is always a giveaway,” he explained, referencing the legacy of Pope Leo XIII — author of the foundational Catholic social encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Bishop Barron highlighted Leo XIII’s insistence on both the defense of private property and the moral obligation to the poor.
“Once the requirements of necessity and propriety have been met in your own life, everything else you own belongs to the poor,” he said, quoting the late pope’s striking principle of the “universal destination of goods.”
This balance — between economic freedom and moral responsibility — is central to Catholic social teaching. Bishop Barron emphasized that while the Church opposes socialism and Marxism, it also warns against “hyper concentrations of wealth and power.” Instead, it supports “a wide distribution of wealth and power throughout a society,” reflecting a model more akin to Tolkien’s beloved Shire than any centralized system.
