Heaven in Stone & Glass – A New Feature Film by Bishop Barron

Bishop Robert Barron joins host Matthew Petrusek to discuss Barron’s new documentary feature film, "Heaven in Stone and Glass", and the theological ideas the film draws from France’s Gothic cathedrals, particularly in the wake of the 2019 Notre-Dame fire. Barron recounts his personal connection to Notre-Dame and Chartres, including his time studying in Paris and his early exposure to sacred art through courses and documentary filmmaking.

A central argument is that cathedrals were designed as embodied “gateways to heaven”, expressing a biblical vision of heaven and earth meeting rather than a Platonic “escape from matter”. Barron says Gothic architecture reflects Catholic “both/and” sacramentality, linking themes such as the heavenly Jerusalem, the mystical Body of Christ, Marian symbolism, and sacred geometry. He contrasts this with modern trends that downplay church buildings, sharply criticising a 1970s liturgical-environment document for treating buildings as merely functional.

Barron also addresses the presence of grotesques and obscene imagery on cathedrals, suggesting medieval builders incorporated humour, reversals of power, and a sense that even the distorted can be drawn into salvation. He argues beauty is objective—alongside truth and goodness—drawing on Aquinas’s criteria of wholeness, harmony and radiance. In a listener question, he points laypeople towards existing training and resources for ecclesiastical arts and church beautification.

• Barron says he has ordained nine priests since becoming bishop of Winona–Rochester and expects 28 seminarians next year.
• He says the Notre-Dame fire prompted him to write the script for the film, delayed by Covid-era travel restrictions and his move to Minnesota.
• Barron argues Gothic cathedrals were built as anticipatory images of the heavenly Jerusalem and as expressions of Christianity’s embodied theology.
• He criticises the 1970s document "Art and Environment in Catholic Worship" and calls its ‘tent/skin’ view of buildings a harmful de-emphasis of sacred architecture.
• Barron contends beauty is objective, citing Aquinas’s integritas, consonantia and claritas as marks of the beautiful.
• He interprets grotesques and profane carvings on cathedrals as part of a medieval theological imagination that held together light and darkness.
• In response to a listener, Barron says there are still US-based options for training and commissioning ecclesiastical art and renovation work.