By the Old God and the New, Much Cooler One
Barron Mind, My First Series of Grievances
On all things wrong (and some things right) with the Catholic Church...
(CW: rape, violence against children)
Look, let’s be fair: I may consider the willing martyrdom of Fr. Stan Rother (alongside the very people his own government conspired to murder) to be pretty compelling, but, then again, I’m no bishop. As it happens, though (in an affront to decency and possibly God), one Robert Emmet Barron is, and so we take our first detour through the famed “big brain” of Bishop Bob, the proverbial white (christofascist) whale of this scrappy expository expedition. Let’s see if we can’t understand where these guys might be coming from! (You may want to pour yourself a drink…)
Barron, ordinary of the Rochester-Winona diocese and, more importantly (to him, I assure you), founder of Word on Fire ministries (aka Brother Loveless’ Traveling Salvation Show), is infamous for his pugilistic brand of “evangelization” (we’ll get into his rank befouling of this word in a subsequent issue), as well as for promoting and surrounding himself with a certain macho aesthetic. Given this, you would think a fellow white male cleric who went down swinging while doing literal missionary work would be a natural fit for Brawlin’ Bobby and his Pugnacious Pagan Punchers (the presumed name for the order of priests he hopes to found, so help us all). But a recent interview between Barron and actor Shia LaBeouf (more on that later, too) provides insight into the Barron line of saintly badassery.
They may be “holy,” but are they “on brand”?
As detailed in the National Catholic Reporter, Barron provides a single word assessment for the “soft, fragile, all-loving” (yuck!) and “too meek” (an unblessed attribute, to be sure) version of Jesus with whom LaBeouf (who was sued by a female romantic partner in 2020 for sexual battery, assault and emotional abuse) fails to connect: “feminized.” No siree, (Bishop) Bob! LaBeouf prefers his Jesus “dipped in blood” (umm…?) and with a “sword” (“Wait, actually, pick that back up, Peter…”). And judging by the frankly unhinged promo video (and possible Kentucky bourbon ad) for Word on Fire’s documentary on the life of Fr. Stephen Gadberry, The Making of a Catholic Priest, I’d venture to guess Barron agrees. (Please take a minute to watch, I’ll wait…)
Look, I have nothing personally against this “farm boy from the Arkansas delta” who “love[s] hard work and thrive[s] under pressure,” but in addition to being a bizarre thirst trap for a celibate priest, this video presents a stark (and bleak) ideological contrast with Rother’s witness unto death. In Bad News Barron’s world, priests carry guns and train as warriors (of both the literal and “American Ninja” varieties), and in this light Rother, another regular, human guy from Gadberry’s neighboring state of Oklahoma, got his SJW ass handed to him up in those Guatemalan mountains. After all, that right to Barron arms, so coveted by the Good Bishop and his loveable (because Jesus says so) lunks, is meant to protect you—what kind of (God who became hu)man goes down like such a chump!?
And that’s the thing: though theologically vegetative, these smooth-brained cultural flourishes make a lot more sense when viewed through the circumscribed lens of the current episcopal mindset. For instance (as a reader gently reminded me following the last issue), Rother may be the first US martyr officially recognized by the Vatican, but others preceded him in death. These include the four churchwomen of El Salvador (Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and Maryknoll lay missionary Jean Donovan), who were murdered in 1980, the year prior to Rother’s death. They are more widely known than Rother himself, but are still under-discussed outside of certain (mostly liberal) circles. In terms of the US Bishops, perhaps it has something to do with their being women (yes), as well as victims of rape (also yes).
To the latter point, sexual violence is a subject with which the Church has a fraught history, and, in relation to women and girls, one perhaps best illuminated by the often gross framing around St. Maria Goretti, an eleven-year-old victim of murder and attempted rape who “is called a martyr because she fought against…attempts at sexual sin” (again, her own rape as a child). Holding up the brave churchwomen of El Salvador also as true martyrs (as other missionaries fled the war-ravaged country, Jean Donovan resolved to remain alongside the children, whom she called “the poor, bruised victims of this insanity”) invites a re-contextualization of St. Maria’s sacrifice (an essay unto itself, especially post-Dobbs), and offers a forceful rebuttal to the Church’s persistent, insidious conflation of sexual victimization with “immodesty.”
(Before moving on, I do want to note that there’s another looming issue, both here and in Guatemala: the Cold War. We’ll get there.)
Hey, join the club!
In terms of other homegrown martyrs predating Rother, the US Bishops even have one of their own. Bishop Francis Xavier Ford’s claim to the title dates nearly 30 years prior, to 1952, when he died in a Chinese prison. Yet I’d posit not many Catholics in the US know his name, certainly fewer than those who know, say, that of Bishop Fulton Sheen (to clarify, not a martyr), an early pioneer in multimedia evangelization and, according to Barron, patron (not yet) saint of Word on Fire. To be fair, the issue here isn’t entirely episcopal: the stalling out of Bishop Ford’s cause for canonization is in rumored deference by the Vatican to the Chinese government, a sort of “Kundun”-ing of someone who gave their life for God.
But apart from being a nominal US Bishop, this Brooklyn-born priest also belonged to a religious community (like his cousin Ita, mentioned above, Francis Ford was a Maryknoll missionary). Typically, religious congregations are founded on the premise that the institution isn’t totally doing its job, and the bishops, when they think about them at all, tend to view them as a threat, siphoning congregants, young people and vocations away from the parishes which serve as their financial and jurisdictional lifeblood. (This tension increasingly erupts in public clashes between bishops and schools, run by religious orders, which dare to be a little less dickish about issues such as LGBTQ+ representation.)
They’re not completely wrong (on the siphoning; they’re ass-backwards on the queer stuff), but, as usual, are loathe to blame the diminished standing of the institution they govern on their own behavior (from the sinful mishandling of sexual abuse, to hypocritical political affiliations, to ingrained racism and sexism, to anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, to…well, everything, really). Instead, they rail against a culture they deem overly-secular, errant, and immoral. Put simply, then, these downplayed saints and martyrs are folk heroes, and for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), us “folk” are a big part of the problem. Thus, rather than inspire (or listen to) the people, they prefer to scold, admonish, and, at least in Barron’s case, give us the heroes they think we need.
Next up: How the USCCB is using the Holy Eucharist to drag Jesus literally into all of this. Until then…
Yours Most Aggrieved,
G. Fault