Norway Bishop Erik Varden: Authentic Hope, Weaponized Christianity, AI Spirituality and More

Gina Christian of OSV News sits down with Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, for his thoughts on a range of topics, including hope amid an angst-ridden world; artificial intelligence (AI); countering -- and healing -- the weaponization of the Christian faith for political gain; and the need for patience. Bishop Varden also shared what he's reading right now, his favorite music, and one pastime he manages to fit into his busy schedule. Tune in and visit us online at osvnews.com, and visit Bishop Varden's website at coramfratribus.com. (Many thanks to St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland, for hosting this interview.)

Read our OSV News interview with Bishop Erik Varden.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hello, I'm Gina Christian of OSV News, and you're listening to a special edition of our OSV Newscast. I recently had the chance to speak with Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway. He was born in the Nordic Nation in 1974 and raised in a non-practicing Lutheran home. As a teen, he was an agnostic, but he later converted to the Catholic faith at the age of 19. He studied at Cambridge and in Rome, and in 2002 he became a Trappist monk, entering Mount St. Bernard Abbey in England. He was ordained a priest in 2011 and appointed Bishop of Trondheim by Pope Francis in 2020. Bishop Vodgen is the author of several books, including The Shattering of Loneliness on Christian Remembrance, Entering the Twofold Mystery on Christian Conversion, and Chastity, Reconciliation of the Senses. I met up with the Bishop during his visit this month to St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, and I asked for his insights on a number of topics, including hope, community, AI, and Christian nationalism. On the lighter side, I also asked him what he's reading these days and what he likes to do for fun. Let's take a listen to what he had to say on all of the above the Nordic aspect of your background. Talk about how that shaped you and also the kind of global interest in Nordic Noir. What is the appeal of that Nordic Noir?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Well, your question makes me smile. Because I well, I've I've lived in a number of different countries, mainly in Europe, and um I find that the more you move south in Europe, the more people have extravagant notions of the north. And the more they assume that it is an area of the world plunged in perpetual darkness where everyone is given to drink and excess and where everyone is on antidepressants and where people keep killing themselves with axes. And it isn't really quite like that. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

I'm so sorry. I bought into the stereotypes.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Um and I think this idea of the long Norwegian winter powerfully impacts on the imagination. What most people don't realize is the extreme luminosity of a Norwegian summer. Um and that exposure to light without any trace of darkness that is intrinsic to our way of just living the cycles of the year. And the phenomenon of the Nordic noir is interesting. But I I expect that it is a genre that has arisen precisely because a few cunning authors have noticed that that corresponds to what people expect. And so they feed the stereotype because it sells and because people find it entertaining in a slightly perverse sort of way. But when you look at our own literature and our poetry and our music, it is to such an overwhelming extent a celebration of light and of the spring. The amount of poetry, Norwegian poetry and Norwegian music dedicated to spring, to the melting of the ice and the appearance of the first flowers, is um fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Well, you know, it's interesting because as you were speaking, I was thinking of what the Victorians did to the Druids. We've kind of reconstructed them in our own image. But it still raises the question: why do we think that? Again, there's some maybe clever marketing that's happening there. I think so.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

And you see the same with, you know, Netflix Viking series that again present a society that is simply violent, predatory, um, unreservedly passionate and cruel. Uh whereas when you look at the artifacts of those centuries, you see a tremendous um delicacy of sensibility. By all means, I'm not trying for a moment to deny that the Vikings weren't all so brutal, um, but that wasn't all they were about. Right. So I think that that there is a constructed um Norse and Nordic identity that spans centuries.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yeah, and it's interesting though, because it does tie in with this kind of buy-in we have to hopelessness. And you really address that because I found your citation of the Gracie Abrams song Camden at the one concert and the fans' reaction to it to be so compelling. Because there is, and I can tell you when though I was reading the lines that you quoted, I have interviewed adjudicated youth who were guilty of gun violence and who had buried friends as very young teens and who didn't expect to sit to reach age 25. So this is a very real problem, a profound one. And I guess my question, my first question would be is you know, you coming to the United States, how do you see it? You know, when when you come to the US, how do you see, how do you kind of take the pulse of where we're at? Like what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Uh well, I'm not a physician, um, so I'm not particularly good at taking the pulse. Um and I don't really know this country well enough. I mean, I mean I I observe it from a distance the way everyone does. Um, but I can't begin to pretend to understand its intricacies. Um I feel a bit more confident in um making diagnostics about um Europe and what's going on there. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

What are you saying in the youth there then? If you're more comfortable speaking about that. I mean, obviously this is having global appeal, you know. I maybe even it's Western youth more than you know Asian youth, or maybe it's global.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

I think so. And there's a there's a curious sort of parallel. Because I I think one of the this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, um, but I find it to be the case that we so often assume now, on so many different levels, that we are in the year 2026 as a global community living through something which is so singular and so new and so without any precedent that nothing, no past experience can possibly be of any use to us. Well, I don't think that's right. Um and I think there is an intriguing parallel now to this nihilism that you referred to and the sort of romanticization of death and extinction that we find in romantic poetry. Um I think it's important to remember that we've been here before to some extent. I think what causes this, even as I think that was a causal factor in the nineteenth century, is an extinction of hope. The generally spread assumption that there's no sense to anything, an assumption of purposelessness, and that unless one is very, very strong, or unless one is extraordinarily apt at just living for the sake of enjoyment, that sense that nothing makes any sense and nothing has any meaning, and nothing that I do or think or say will ultimately have any impact on anything induces despair. And faced with the prospect of despair, even if I don't entertain despair myself as a thinking and feeling and sensitized subject, um, then somehow death and and the notion, the idea of extinction becomes with sex the only sort of possible conceptual framework for imagining transcendence and going beyond oneself, even if it is just into a black hole. I think that must have something to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

And I'm glad that you brought up transcendence, because that's the inner desire. I mean, that's just imprinted in our hearts. We're made for transcendence. But as you said, if the framework is that limited, then you're going to drive that to as far as you can take it, you know, even to the darkest of places. And and then that gets back to, you know, again, to your address, and this point I found so compelling. You talked about two contradictory tendencies in modern efforts to address wounds, either an attachment, where you so completely identify with it that you, I guess you would say you fetishize it, or it's the sum total of your identity, or you airbrush it. And to get very micro level here, how do we avoid both? What is that narrow gate? Because you see, even if people, even among people who are Christian, both going in these directions, absolutely. You know, where are we missing that narrow passage? What is it that we are doing or not doing in our daily lives? Is it lack of prayer? Is it the wrong kind of approaches to prayer? What what's happening there at the molecular level?

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I think this to some degree just a lack of realism and a lack of perspective. Um we tend to live now, and there is so much around us that encourages us to live enclosed in ourselves. Um and we live as if I live as if I were the only significant subject on planet Earth. Ummersed in my own experience and in my own sense of things, um, and in the pathos of that experience, its pain and its excitement, and I forget to look around, and I forget to consider others' experience, their exhilaration and their suffering. And so I shut myself off from the from the motor of compassion that enables community and even communion. I think it's largely because we absolutize our own experience that our wounds are so problematic and that we're drawn, I mean I can recognize this in myself, um, we're drawn either to think, oh, I'm carrying this thing, and this is my great tragedy, and this is the this is the great, you know, the drama of my existence, etc. Or I think, for God's sake, let's make absolutely sure that no one suspects this wound that I'm carrying. Rather than looking around and saying, well, actually, being wounded is the human norm. And my wound may not be all that dissimilar from my neighbor's wound. And if I learn to live with my wound, and if I learn to believe and to entertain the hope that it might actually be healable, and if I pursue the correct sort of remedies, I may even be able to step beyond it. And what will remain with me is a remembrance of healing.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

And you know, you brought up another key word, and one that is so unfortunately shattered in too many places in the world, and that is community. Because no one is saved alone, obviously, and the Trinity is communion and community, and we are called to that, as you said, instead of absolutizing our own experience. What can, you know, as a shepherd and you know, a minister of the teaching ministry of the church that you have, what do you want to see in your parishes take place? What do you want your priests and priests throughout the world and brother bishops to implement in their diocese so that again this reaches that kind of cellular level of the church?

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Well, I'm a little bit skeptical of master plans. Um I'm not sufficiently entrepreneurial. Um but what what I rejoice in um I thought of this recently, we had a um we had a gathering um for a study day at the Cathedral Parish in Trondheim, and it was a very, very mixed crowd, and lots of people came who didn't know one another. And in the evening we had a supper together, and the room was absolutely heaving with conversation, and I stood in a corner and just looked around, and I could see all these little clusters of people, um, people who'd met one another that day, um, enjoying one another's company, um, enjoying taking food and drink together, uh, listening to one another, learning from one another, and not even thinking of looking at their mobile phones. Um, and I think the more our parishes and communities can foster that sort of togetherness, um, the more they will have an impact also beyond themselves, because that's the sort of thing that draws other people in. It has to be said that, if I may just remain with that particular experience of the day, that it had been a day made up of some conferences, but also of prayer. Um, we'd had mass, we'd celebrated the office together, we'd had a time of quiet prayer together. And I think it was because our community of a day was rooted both in intellectual food and spiritual nourishment, shared silence and shared con shared conversation, um, that it could be so effective in such a short time. And those various elements, I think, have all got to be in place, the the spiritual, the intellectual, and the social and convivial.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

And you just describe monastic life. But what can what can the laity take from monastic life that could help bring about this sense of community? I find monastic life absolutely fascinating, and I know that I've drawn from it in my own life as a lay single woman, you know, praying the divine office, or at least being mindful of being in communion with monastic communities as part of the body of Christ. What what can we take from the monastic traditions to and better integrate it into our own lives?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

The great monastic grace and task is perseverance, just sticking with it. Um sticking with a call to conversion, sticking with your hope that God's mercy actually works, sticking with yourself notwithstanding all your inadequacies, and sticking with the brethren whom you haven't chosen and who haven't chosen you, and who may not be the sort of companions you would ideally have chosen for a desert island. That is the great mystery. It's at the same time the asceticism of monasticism that can occasion real suffering and its immense joy, the discovery that it is possible to construct on a supernatural basis, but with human warmth and credibility, a real community out of utterly disparate elements. And that I think is a really important message to convey to the church and to society now when we have such a tendency to withdraw in little groups of like-minded people.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

And you know, that leads into another question that I have. Well, actually, too. One thing that we're seeing, especially with AI, is people kind of turning to Chat GTGT or Claude as their spiritual advisor. You know, there's this kind of me and God, or and it's not really, you know, I mean, it's AI, it's an algorithm you're talking to, trained on data that's sometimes good, sometimes extremely questionable. What are your hopes, fears for AI and spirituality? I mean, where can it work and where do you just want to see it utterly dismantled?

SPEAKER_01 18:26

I'm afraid that if I may express my own nihilism now. That uh in terms of spirituality, I have absolutely no hopes at all for AI.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Really? Now talk about that because you do hear some people saying, well, there's hope here, this can be used as a tool.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

What would I mean in I mean anything can be used as a tool. Um but I don't think AI is going to generate any spiritual renewal because any spiritual renewal worthy of its name is one that pierces the human heart. And that is something that an algorithm can't do. Obviously there are all things I can I I I can use um digital media for, and I can use artificial intelligence for that may save time and even make me discover useful things. But um I have little faith in it as an agent of conversion.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

I wanted to talk, though, because unfortunately here in the US, we are experiencing a moment where we are seeing Christian nationalism, which used to be kind of fringy, um, being very mainstreamed in many respects. And you have spoken this to this previously, that you know, any attempt to kind of, you know, I'm not quoting you directly, but you know, manipulate symbols and such does need to be addressed. What are you seeing kind of globally where you feel comfortable speaking about it in terms of you know the weaponization of Christianity in particular? And how do we stop? How do we stop the process instead of continuing to admire the problem? What do we do?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Good question. And um, yes, you do see it all over the place. I see it in my own country as well. Um first of all, uh I would stress that any attempt the gospel of Jesus Christ is an end in itself, an end that is significant of a goal. Um any attempt to instrumentalize the gospel for a subsidiary purpose, um, be it cultural or ideological or political, um, is suspect. Um we must beware of any attempt to brandish Christianity void of the message and presence of the wounded and risen one. Any presentation of Christianity that abstracts the scandal of the cross, or perversely, uses the cross as a weapon with which to strike others, is daring to Towards heresy or even blasphemy. So we must remain resolutely Christocentric and resolutely committed to following Christ and to apply his commandments as well as his promises, first of all to ourselves, and beware of too much rhetoric. Beware of too many words. And consider how people live. Ultimately that is how that is how Christianity spread, and that is how Christianity renewed a weary world in late antiquity. By all means, there was an element of preaching and teaching and catechesis, but what bold people over and turned societies round was seeing a new way of being human and a new way of creating and fostering community, seeing and recognizing the possibility of reconciliation, of forgiveness, and of building a society, a new city, on the basis of reconciliation and forgiveness. And so when Christianity is invoked as a component of what is ultimately hate speech, we've just got to not jump on the train.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah. Two questions there, and I'm thinking, you know, of what you were basically saying, which is the love of the enemy, you know, which is the hallmark really of Christianity, to be able to there are many fathers who would say that love of enemies is the um it's the criterion of authenticity of the Christian. Yeah. How do those who are being wounded by those weaponizing Christianity, what advice would you give them for focusing on the you know the love of the other instead of kind of going off into the self-righteous, how dare you do this to my faith? Do you know what I mean? Like I almost see like, you know, if you're looking at it from Satan's perspective, which is not one we like to take, but you could kind of say, he's like, well, good, now I've got you upset too, and you're going in the wrong direction, and now you are too. So how do we make sure we're not heading down that path? And then the second question is, how do people who have fallen into that pit of weaponizing the faith get de-radicalized, so to speak, and and return, you know, that they're not lost causes?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Well, first of all, the the foundational principle, which is an old one, you know, it's there in St. Paul, is to train ourselves to speak the truth in love. Um, to love to love those who are or who make mistakes, um, is not to pretend that the mistakes don't exist, but it is to address them in a constructive way, um, instead of yielding, as you were just saying, um, to an exacerbation of conflicts. Um, so to speak the truth in love, to make sure I've really studied the truth, that I understand the truth, that I'm prepared to give an answer, that I'm prepared to give an account for the hope that is in me, um, and that I don't just hold on to some tribal instinct. Um, it's really important. So the best thing all of us can do is to study the faith more thoroughly, to read the scriptures, to become learned in the scriptures, um, to understand and live the sacramental grace of the church deeply in order to speak from within that. And I'd say that presents the ultimate healing remedy that you addressed in your second question. Because when one sees the splendor of the church as a community of the redeemed, living by grace and illumined by Christ's love, instantiated in a concrete community, then that that has an attractiveness and a beauty that makes any other allurement of allegiance just pale into insignificance.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Well, how do we regain that balance in our daily lives where we we have the already not yet sense, you know, that we can live that hope, live that, you know, assurance of God's glory through His, you know, as you said, the wounded risen Christ. I love that, you know, that that pairing. How do we regain that? Because I think the temptation to see it all happen here is still so very strong in us right now, and it gives rise to things like authoritarianism, you know, like we we need to take a firm hand and fix it all now. You know, that it's like authoritarianism, which I've been studying and the authoritarian follower mindset, is basically born of a cry of hopelessness and despair. Like we need to take a heavy hand to allay my fear and insecurity. But how do we walk that balance beam of already not yet?

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Above all, by practicing patience, which is uh not a very fashionable virtue.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

To say the least.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

And um one that everything militates again, because uh we we live now, all of us, with the illusion that if I have a need or a desire, it must be satisfied immediately. Um there must be something I can download, um, or a number I can ring, or some delivery man who can come to the door with stuff in his rucksack that will give me what I crave, or what I long for, or what I feel I can't live without. But that well that illusion is an illusion. Um it can it works out to some extent. I mean, if if we have you know money on our credit card, um it can keep us fed and clothed and to a certain extent entertained, but a human life is a drawn-out affair. And things take time, great things take time. That's a principle that Newman liked to stress. Great things take time, and to be a human being is a great thing. And so it would be good if we could relearn to consider our lives in a longer perspective and to consider other lives in longer perspectives. Read biographies, um, consider the lives of people dear to us. That's something which is very powerful in a monastery where you live you know very closely with other people, and we get to know one another's strengths and weaknesses and struggles, and you can see someone struggling with a bad habit or a bad temper or whatever it might be for years and it going nowhere. And then suddenly something happens. It might be, you know, at the hour of death, um, but a resolution takes place, and suddenly you realize that all those long, apparently wasted years of battle were a preparation for something. That is the truth of existence. So, first of all, I think there's a hermeneutic task before us above all to learn to interpret our lives uh not just as a sequence of instances, but as a wholeness. And to remember that we're caught up in something that is moving towards a fulfillment that we're invited to cooperate in.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

And it does, it changes your sense of time altogether. I uh you know, I often think in previous centuries the perception of time itself was so different to what we are now, uh what we have now, and as you said, that instantaneous satisfaction of needs, that sense that, oh, a download is taking too too long. I mean, it's it's actually fatal to our spirits that we do need to recalibrate, and that's gonna take some effort.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

So um to practice patience, to learn to begin to enjoy being patient. Um, and I mean a practical way of doing that is just switching off your blessed mobile phone and putting it in a drawer and locking it and giving the key to someone else.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

What are you reading these days? What in particular? Of course the scriptures, you know. But what else are you reading?

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Well, I've just I'm just finishing Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

I love Willa Cather. Song of the Lark destroyed me. Destroyed me. I love her. I love her. Wow. That was a great book, too. Yep. I've read Song of the Lark more times than I read Death Comes for the Archbishop. Wonderful. What do you like about Cather's writing?

SPEAKER_01 32:05

She's a great stylist. That's something I always enjoy. Um and Death Comes for the Archbishop is a series of vignettes. It's almost like a series of short stories with the same characters and the same heroes. Um she wonderfully evokes a very foreign universe. And um she's good, I think, at developing character. Um, you can see her characters developing and becoming more true to themselves, and you can see how early little hints that she has made fit into a f into a larger picture and a pattern of coherence.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

What are you listening to? And and I also want to talk about Gregorian chant, because you taught Gregorian chant, and sure, you studied it.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

What I listen to, well I I mainly I I usually listen to music every day. Um what I've been listening to over the last couple of days has chiefly been Mozart's clarinet concerto, because I I heard a program on the radio last week, um, a podcast, um, an interview with the English writer Francis Spufford, who speaks of a very powerful experience of hearing that concerto in a coffee house that he'd gone to for refuge on a very painful day of his life. And um he speaks of how the music conveyed to him in those circumstances just unbelievably beneficial news. So that made me want I I know that concerto well, but it's it's made me want to listen to it again and again.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Nice, nice. Now music is incredible and I I love the fact that music takes you out of words, especially instrumental music. I'm a big fan of cello music, so favorite Gregorian chant.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Oh, that's a difficult one. There's so much which is lovely. One piece that I I do love particularly is the the solemn version of the Marian antiphon Almaredem Toris Mater, which is set for for Christmas tide. Uh it has a soaring first cadence that really lifts the spirit.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Very nice. I'm gonna say Ave Maristella. That was my favorite one. And okay. Why is Trappist Ale superior to all other ales?

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Well, it's just how it is.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

I say that as someone who doesn't drink beer anymore years ago. I think I drank chimene. They still make chimene, yeah. That's the Belgian one, right? Yeah. One of the Belgian ones. One of the Belgian ones, yeah. Yeah. No, that's funny. What does what do you do? If you don't remember asking, you know, obviously we know that Pope Leo loves tennis. What do you do for fun that you would like to share? I mean, I don't want to be, you know, prying or nosy, but what what are some hobbies that you find help reset you with the Lord or that you enjoy spending time with the Lord doing?

SPEAKER_01 35:24

There isn't really all that much time for hobbies. Um I enjoy, I mean, I try to go for a walk every day just to get a bit of movement. And I enjoy I enjoy cooking for people.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Really? Um what's the best dish you can cook?

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Oh, what's the best dish? I make a pretty good salmon tartare.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Really?

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Very um and I find you know, one when one is a a bishop, one is faced with so many tasks that seem endless. Um, and that can be a bit dispiriting. So there's something very satisfying and healthy, I think, about coming home at the end of the day and cooking a meal. And at least when you go to bed, you can say, Well, I did cook a meal. You know, you you've got something to show for yourself for that day.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

And you've been listening to my conversation with Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway. Thanks to St. Mary Seminary in Baltimore for graciously hosting this interview. Check out the show notes for a link to my OSV news article with excerpts from this conversation, and for a link to Bishop Varden's website at korumfratribus.com. Don't worry if you didn't get the spelling, it's in the show notes. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast, follow us on social media, and of course, bookmark osvnews.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

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