A Catholic bishop seems to think he knows why there is a mental health crisis
affecting children. Well, if anyone knows how to drive children into a downward
spiral, it is certainly a member of the Catholic clergy. They have expertise
in covering up sexual assault and demanding young girls into thinking that they're inferior to
men. Richard, what is it that this child psychology expert attributes to mental
health crisis or crises affecting children? I assume you are saying child psychology expert
end quotes. Oh, that's right, that is a quote unquote remark.
In his recent address, US Catholic Bishop Robert Baron raised the concerns about the
burgeoning mental health crisis, attributing it to what he terms a second pandemic.
Highlighting the staggering rise and depression and suicide rates, especially among youth, Baron
points to the social media as a significant contributor. He emphasizes the adverse effects
of increased screen time, particularly during the pandemic lockdowns, leading individuals to retreat
into their virtual worlds and losing meaningful direct social connections. Barn underscores the importance
of genuine human connections for happiness and argues against the culture of self centeredness perpetuated
by social media. Drawing on insights from psychologists like Jordan Peterson and Carl Jung,
Bishop Baron suggests a spiritual dimension to psychological problems, linking the decline in
religious belief to declining mental health. He advocates for a return to spiritual values,
positing that true fulfillment lies in transcending self preoccupation and embracing genuine connection with
others. Bishop Baron stated, and I quote the greatest source of human suffering
is idolatry, false worship and a quote. Perhaps the bishop should produce some
evidence to substantiate that the worship he encourages is to a God that actually exists.
I also think that this Catholic bishop should research how much sex abuse of
children by authority figures contributes to depression and other lifelong psychological problems for the victims
and the nearby children worrying if they're going to be the next victims. This
story comes from a Farmer's Forum dot com. Article was written by A Patrick
Mager and it's out of Canada on April tenth, twenty twenty four, with
some Questions and Commentary by Richard Allen. Yeah. So you bring up some
good points there, and you know, I want to turn to Scott and
get his opinion. You know, Scott, is this bishop kind of grasping
its straws here in order to establish a narrative that the church will solve problems
created by social media. I think it's significant to mention that they stave the
way from problems created by the church itself and instead look to find some other
scapegoat for maybe a decline in youth mental health stability, if you will.
It seems like that article anyway, was built up to this idea. What
are your thoughts on that? I think absolutely he was grasping at stris.
I mean, this would be a textbook case. It amazes me how much
this man was able to pull straight out of his ass and put into this
article. It was just utterly bereft of any anything of value. With one
small exception. He did point out that there was studies. He didn't specify
any particular studies, but he said that there's been studies that have shown an
association between use of social media and depression in youths. What he failed to
mention is that there's also numerous studies that show that there's no association between the
two. Some even show that there's a positive association between the two. But
most importantly, what he failed to mention is that in none of those studies,
at least none of the ones that I found, and I did a
pretty exhaustive search, none of them indicate any kind of causation. And you
know, and we could certainly even imagine a revi first causation there, like,
if somebody is depressed, it's it's easy to imagine that that would drive
them to increase their social media use. If they're feeling Now, if they
don't want to get out of the house, they don't want to do things,
you could easily see somebody turning to social media to to have, you
know, a certain kind of outlets or something. And so the fact that
it's just so up in the air, you know, the fact that he
was drawing any kind of conclusion at all is dubious. But the fact that
he was trying to present that in such a way that, oh, and
we happen to have this unique solution right this Christ right there, and it
was just utterly, utterly ridiculous, and it was difficult to read, I'll
tell you that much. Yeah, I agree with you there, But even
in the midst of that difficulty, I thought Jonathan had some good points that
he's bringing into the show tonight. So, Jonathan, I want to ask
you about the thoughts you had on hyper access to information. Is it maybe
not necessarily social media itself that's the problem, but the accessibility of social media
that causes people to have certain expectations that, when unfulfilled, maybe cause anxiety
or depression. What is this hyper access to information relationship with what what we're
talking about tonight? Well? What what? I what I first thought about
this? I thought about Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and how that affects people.
Uh, when we get overloaded with information, we tend to want to simplify
things. And when we do that, we start simplifying things about ourselves and
then we you can you can follow that road into a depression. You can
follow over stimulus and overpowering your mind. Ability to process all that information can
be rather overwhelming. You start feeling overwhelmed. It leads to other emotional issues.
I don't think that that it's social media is causing that kind of depression.
I think social media actually gives people connection with other people. It may
not be physical, and I think people do need physical contact with friends in
that to really feel that connection, but it helps the when they're not able
to do that. And so I'm kind of in this position of saying I
think a lot of the issues we're having with social media is that a they're
not and I hate to say it this way because I'm going to get jumped
on, they're not governed well. The people who are running it are running
it for the usual capital that they get for running a business, instead of
trying to keep the content under some sort of control that isn't going to denegrate
people. Students aren't going to get bullied by fellows students that sort of thing,
which causes a lot of that. But the access to other people,
and some of them not very nice people, can also be contributing to it.
Well, I think you raise a good point. I mean, they're
not governed well. But let's not just blame the media companies, but let's
also take a look at parents. Me being a parent of a teenager myself,
you know, I think there's a bout empathies on that one. Yeah,
it's been the greatest reward of my life, but also among the most
challenging. And I'll take the challenge every day. But I will say,
you know, parents have some role to play in this. I can tell
you that from what I have seen so far, Jesus or Catholic churches are
not helping at all. In fact, you know, I want to jump
over to Richard and ask, you're Richard, this Catholic official, you know,
say it's a Catholic bishop saying that you know he's got the answer,
and social media is to blame. But isn't this a case of the pot
calling the kettle black? Doesn't the church own some cause at least for mental
health issues with respect to their doctrine, especially how it affects children. What
are your thoughts there? Well, I think broadly, there's a lot of
things about the Catholic I mean, this guy is a bishop, so he's
not you know, maybe this maybe that he's doctrinaire. Otherwise you don't get
to become a bishop. Where he says the decline a religious belief to declining
mental health? How does how does religious belief that you put it a wafer
in your mouth and it becomes part of the body of Jesus. How does
that help kids become rational and understand the world better? I mean, this
is this is you know, what was what was Dawkins's major book on religion
to God Delusion. There's lots of psychologists that will say that, you know,
if you took a religious thing and took it outside of the group and
did it, you'd be delusional. I mean, imagine if somebody like Abraham
today talked about wanting to take his kid up on a hill and tie him
down to a bunch of wood and burn him to death they lock him up,
that would be that would be at least a seventy two hour hold,
and probably you know, longer than that. It'd be a lot more complicated
than that. Well, but let's face it. The point is, these
are people here who again are distinctly outside of the range of reality, trying
to tell other people what is causing them psychological problems. And I think what
Scott said earlier is you know, the proper orifice that he's bringing this stuff
from. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, I want to pivot to
Scott because you know, Scott had some concerns or some thoughts on the fact
that atheism. How is atheism to blame? I mean, the title of
this article is atheism and smartphones lead to depression. But Scott, you make
a point that atheism isn't even hardly mentioned in this article. You know,
what do we have to take away from that? Well, the impression that
I got is that, well, first of all, in the headline he
mentions atheism first before he mentioned social media, and in the article he spends
ninety percent of it talking talking about social media. And then it was like
at the end he's like, oh yeah, I got to mention, I
got to tie this to atheism somehow, And again, you know, it
was just ridiculous and dubious and spurious conclusions. And so he just mentions briefly
at the end that uh he and this one he didn't even pretend to cite
a study. He just says, you know, atheism leads to that,
you know, spiritual deficit, and and and so forth, when the and
and again, we have a situation where studies show a variety of things.
There, Sure, there are some studies that show that there is an association
at least at least some sort of association between a person's religiosity and their their
happiness level and their depression level, and and and uh and their you know,
frequency of that of those types of issues. Uh. The study,
some of the studies that I found though, showed that there was kind of
a U shaped curve that result, meaning that people that were strongly committed to
to one end of the spectrum or the other, the very religious and the
very non religious tended to be the most comfortable in themselves and we're the most
satisfied with their can with their situation. And it was those people in the
middle. A lot of the uh, you know, the spiritual but not
religious, or the you know, the fence sitters and that kind of thing.
Those that's where the highest incidents of depression and those types of issues came
up. And so at best, at best, he's he's telling half the
story. But I think really what he's doing is he is, like you
said before, he's just grasping at straws. I think it's no small amount
of irony that the word scapegoat has religious origins. Right back in the days
when they used to take a pig or a goat or something and they would
take the curses and the demons and the devils out of out of an individual
and throw them into the pig and then kill the pig or eat the pig
or whatever they did with it. And you know, that's what's happening here.
He doesn't, as as was already mentioned before, he does the eyes
do not look back on himself. He doesn't look at the problems that the
that the Catholic Church and religion in general can cause. He's just saying,
oh, there's a problem, must be them. And and it's really kind
of as you bring up a great point to so the sacrificing of animals and
things like that. You know, this kind of old style thought process,
I thought. Jonathan h. Jonathan comes in with a good point when he
mentions the bishop quoting Carl Carl Young. Jonathan, can you can you talk
to us a little bit about that. You had a very interesting quote that
I'm not going to steal your thunder by by reciting, but I'd like to
hear your thoughts on this bishop's relationship with Carl Young. Oh yeah, Well,
Young said that all problems are spiritual, So imagine that as a as
a deal, you know. And the thing is that even Jordan Peterson's quote
in there was was bad enough. But his quote, of course, is
that misery is due to you know, uh oh shoot, I'm messing it
up here, all I, Jonathan, before you move on to Peterson,
But what when you talk about the Carl Jung quote, you say this bishop
had to dig up a quote from a sixty plus year old means right?
I mean this is because Young Young died in nineteen sixty one, you know,
So it's like and he was, you know, and he was an
afficionado of Freud as well. So you're talking late eighteen hundreds and to the
early and him through the you know, early nineteen hundreds. So somebody who's
working in psychology through the probably the teens, twenties and thirties and forties,
you know, if you have like a forty year work life, and this
guy's most of his things. He was the father of a whole bunch of
analytical psychology. I'm not detegrating his original work for the period of time,
however, we have moved on from Freud and Young and Young really with his
whole thing about the over soul or the soul, the consciousness of everybody,
and the archaeotypes, it's been long kind of disproven, so It's like anybody
who's going to quote young that goes back that far to find a scientist or
somebody who's you know, a valid in some field. You know, it's
like like we always run into the problem people going back to Darwin for evolution.
We've come a long, long, right way. I mean, you
have a bishop making an argument against social media and using somebody who's been dead
for I don't know sixty years. You kind of run into an issue right
of legitimacy. And that is a great point. And you know, Richard
had some other points. Richard, you have some thoughts about the demeaning of
women in scripture by the church, the massive wealth increase. How are these
things exacerbating by other means, you know, or means other than screen time.
They're clearly studies right now that show a lot of young people are not
looking toward a very bright future because they've got so much college debt, they've
got problems with, you know, thinking about getting jobs that are going to
be move them up. You know, the whole paradigm before was were your
kids going to have a better life than their parents? I can consciously say
I did economically at least. I mean, you know, there's a lot
of other factors, but with regard to this thing about happiness and depression,
I just want to point out a little bit of worldview. You know,
they do these studies every year or two. I don't know if it's a
un or some other group that does it about happiness index. The happy the
happiest countries are the least religious countries. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
Amsterdam, you know, Holland, Switzerland, you know, and we
are yeah, we or most of the time, right around eighteen and I
think in the last one we fell down at about twenty five. So and
we are one of the of the of the industrialized nations, we are the
most religious. So you know, those kinds of things show you a lot
in terms of what really worked in a social environment, as opposed to some
guy who's spent most of his life studying theology, which which some people say
shouldn't even be a subject because it's about nothing. Yeah, I would tend
to agree. I think this article was a little bit strange. I think
this Catholic bishop having an opinion on mental health and blaming it on everybody else.
But the kind of threads the fabrics that create society that have Christian influences
is a little bits misguided, you know, it's it's misdirected. Scott.
I wanted to get your take. You know, we talked a lot,
We talked a lot about of different points tonight on this article completely, uh
specifically, what did you think about the article overall? I mean any were
there any points that made any sense? Or was this whole thing just ridiculous?
I mean there was there was a you know, like I said,
he mentioned some actual studies, but other than that, it was just it
just seemed like it was just rhetoric, and you know he was just trying
to uh, you know, kind of dredge up a reason to point fingers.
And you know, we mentioned how he didn't really say anything about atheism
until the end, even though that was like not the number one word right
right at the top of the headline, and so you know, it was
uh, he was definitely reaching uh and failing to make that connection. And
so uh, I mean, you know, it was it was a blog
post, and so you know, he's entitled to his opinion. He's entitled
to share his opinion, but you know, as far as getting any kind
of worthwhile information or even sharing any worthwhile information with his uh, with his
readers. I think it was just an utter failure. Uh. Quick comment
on the Jordan Peterson comment. Uh, Jordan. He quoted Jordan Peterson who
said there is no technical difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable. And
I think that to us, to me at least, that's more of a
com comment on Jordan Peter Peterson's frame of mind than anything else. I just
want to ask, Jordan, are you okay? And you know it is
there something we can do for you here? But yeah, it was just
uh, it was just vacuous and uh uh you know it was you know,
school yard name calling is really all it was. And on that note,
you know, Jonathan, I I did cut you off before when you
started talking about Jordan Peterson, uh, you know, trying to keep things
on topic. But now we're back and I wanted to just kind of let
you continue your thought. Uh that I saw abruptly kind of shifted gears on.
No, No, that's fine. I think that the comment about yourself
and being miserable, thinking about yourself and being miserable or so centeredness, I
guess what he was thinking, if thinking about yourself is a misery to you,
You probably have deeper issue than just the thought that you were told you
were ugly and your breast stinks by the middle school bully. You know,
it's like, you know, it's just such an absolute red hairing in a
sense to try and blame something on something that's not even related. You know.
So you know, if you think about yourself, and you think about
yourself in a positive light, that's good for your self esteem and causes good
things to happen. So if you you know, it doesn't have anything to
do with misery necessarily, it's it's just a separate thing. So I just
find that is absolutely disingenuous in a way. Richard, we talked about some
Oh go ahead, Richard, I actually have a couple of thoughts I want
to throw out there. Number one, Scott brought this up a little bit,
but I want to amplify it. And then I've got one other final
little thought. But you know, you talked about the way this thing was
done. This was a classic example of a manipulation article where they put they
use the theory of primacy. What you've put out first has the most impact,
so they throw in the thing they hate the most. Then they don't
talk about it, and they bring up all this other stuff, and then
they bring it back again. This was you know, if this guy was
in an English class somewhere I'm getting graded for right, he would have got
an F. I mean it was terrible. It was. It was totally
manipulative. Now one final thought in the theme of what we're here about.
What there's a lot of correlation between people's self esteem and depression. People with
good self esteem don't find themselves depressed very often. Okay, this is a
reality. What is one of the fundamental principles of Catholicism that causes a lack
of self esteem? Original sin? You're bad from the beginning, so you
know you have to grow up with that if you're really indoctrinated into that,
and you're not going to feel good about yourself until maybe you have some you
know, supposed meeting with Jesus or something. But that's the kuy that goes
back to what Scott said before too. They throw all this stuff out there,
but they don't deal with their own stuff at all exactly. And on
that note, you know, this bishop is offering Jesus or God as a
fix to some kind of depression. Yet we don't see any depression being fixed
within the church itself, So why would that even be attracted, Why would
that even be attractive to skeptics or atheists at all? In any case, U