Bishop Barron criticizes ‘tired arguments’ used against Christianity every Easter, offers new sign of hope

Catholic Bishop Robert Barron took exception to a "rather annoying article" from The New Yorker this week that attempted to downplay Christianity’s legitimacy.

The New Yorker released a piece last month headlined, "We’re Still Not Done with Jesus," summarizing how "Scholars debate whether the Gospel stories preserve ancient memories or are just Greek literature in disguise." The piece was centered around reviewing "Miracles and Wonder," a book by Elaine Pagels that analyzes Christianity, and according to the article, "concludes that the most improbable Gospel stories enlist tropes and myths to smooth over inconsistencies and inconvenient circumstances."

Bishop Barron derided the article in a video shared on social media as an attempt to debunk Christianity.

"As I finished reading it, I noticed, ‘Oh yeah, it’s in the March 31st edition of The New Yorker. It’s almost Easter time.’ And so, as the swallows come back to Capistrano, predictably, so the mainstream media typically chooses Easter as their time to ‘debunk’ Christianity," he said.

The first key fact, he said, is that throughout the entire article, not one orthodox Christian is cited among the numerous scholars from a variety of backgrounds, saying, "The game here is not objective scholarship, it’s very much to attack Christianity."

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Bishop Robert Barron speaks in a past interview with Fox News Digital. (Fox News Digital )

Barron then slammed numerous "tired" critiques of Christianity mentioned in the piece, such as it being founded on "unsettled sources" about Jesus’ life and death.

"Give me a break," the Bishop said in his response video, released midway through the season of Lent. "Jesus is the best attested-to figure in the ancient world. We have more reliable information about Jesus historically than we do about Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or Hammurabi. Does anyone doubt the historicity of these characters?"

He also addressed the New Yorker article, mentioning that the four Gospels are "written in Greek some 40 to 60 years after the Crucifixion is thought to have happened."

"This old canard about ‘Oh, they’re written long after the events,’" Barron said. "If you picked up a book about the JFK assassination written in 2003, would you say, ‘Oh, that’s just a tissue of lies and fabrications and mythology? Oh, that guy, you know, he couldn’t have been an eyewitness to the event.’ Well, so what? He's relying on testimonies and so on, going back to the eyewitnesses to the event, which is exactly what the Gospel writers are doing."

"If you’ve got to be an eyewitness to the event to have any historical veracity, we’d eliminate every history book that exists," he said. 

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Three crosses on top of a mountain with the sunset in the background representing the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (iStock)

After rejecting the argument that the cross is a symbol of appeasing God’s wrath rather than divine love, Barron noted one last argument he found particularly "outrageous."

Gopnik’s piece cited Notre Dame professor Candida Moss’ book "The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom." This book, Gopnik wrote, argued that Christianity "constructed a cult of victimhood while stamping out dissent and violently opposing any pluralism of thought."

"Tell that to Saint Peter. Tell that to Saint Paul. Tell that to every apostle-except John-who died proclaiming the gospel," Barron responded, continuing to cite historic members of the Church who were killed for defending the faith. "Tell that to this whole army of martyrs in the early church. ‘Oh, it’s just a cult of victimhood.’ Come on!"

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Bishop Barron said that the world is experiencing a "revival of Christianity."  (Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

While the Bishop said he doesn’t like how "old, tired arguments against Christianity" are deployed predictably at this time of year, he argued that the world outside the media is telling a very different story.

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"What’s really going on in the world today is a revival of Christianity, especially among the young, and I, for one, take that as a sign of great Easter hope," Barron said.

The New Yorker didn't respond to a request for comment.