I recently finished Robert Barron’s “Catholicism- A Journey to the Heart of the Faith". It was probably the most effective and intellectual work of apologetics, not just for the Catholic Church but for the Christian faith in general, I have read.
I honestly don't think the man who wrote that beautiful book in 2011 would recognize the sycophant, licking at the boots of a morally destitute administration, he has become in recent years.
First, thank you for writing this. It actually caused me to do a much deeper dive into both Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Barron than I otherwise would have, and for that alone I'm grateful.
As I was reading your article, I found myself agreeing with much of your central argument. But as I dug deeper into the history, I also found myself asking whether there was another historical layer worth considering. Not because I was trying to overturn your conclusion or defend either Cardinal Spellman or Bishop Barron, but because I wanted to better understand how faithful bishops can arrive at such different prudential judgments while sincerely believing they are defending the Church.
One of the things I appreciate about studying Church history is that it reminds me to distinguish between understanding someone's motivations and agreeing with their conclusions. Historical context can help explain why a bishop believed he was defending the faith without necessarily justifying the prudential decisions he ultimately made. I think that distinction allows us to extend charity to the person while still evaluating the judgment in light of the Gospel, the Magisterium, and history itself.
History is often richest when we ask not only what someone did, but what they sincerely believed they were defending.
Take Cardinal Spellman.
Reading him through a twenty-first century lens, it is easy to see only an American cardinal blessing an increasingly unpopular war. But that was not the world that formed him.
Spellman belonged to a generation of bishops whose entire priestly lives had been shaped by militant atheistic communism. They witnessed the Russian Revolution, the persecution of Christians throughout the Soviet Union, the Cristero War in Mexico, the murder of clergy during the Spanish Civil War, and the imprisonment of bishops across Eastern Europe after World War II. Pope Pius XI condemned atheistic communism in Divini Redemptoris, and Pope Pius XII spent much of his pontificate defending persecuted Christians behind the Iron Curtain.
As a bit of a sidebar, I've recently been reading about the Cristero War in Mexico, and one thing that really struck me was that, while faithful Catholics overwhelmingly agreed that the Mexican government's anti-Catholic and anti-clerical laws were unjust, they didn't all agree on how Christians should respond. Some priests ministered alongside the Cristeros, and the conflict ultimately gave the Church many martyrs and saints. Others believed that taking up arms was incompatible with the Gospel, while still others urged diplomacy, patience, and reconciliation. Reading about that reminded me that Church history is often less about good Catholics versus bad Catholics and more about faithful men wrestling with extraordinarily difficult questions while sincerely trying to remain faithful to Christ.
anyways continuing..
To bishops of Spellman's generation, communism was not simply another political philosophy. It represented a system that had repeatedly imprisoned bishops, closed churches, executed priests, and attempted to eradicate Christianity from public life.
Vietnam naturally became part of that worldview.
After the Geneva Accords in 1954, nearly 900,000 civilians fled North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom, approximately 700,000–800,000 of whom were Catholics. Whether or not Spellman correctly judged that American military intervention was the proper response, it is understandable why he perceived communist expansion as another chapter in a story he had already watched unfold throughout Europe and elsewhere.
None of this vindicates his prudential judgment.
In fact, I think your article is right to remind us that Pope Paul VI consistently called the Church toward negotiation, peace, and reconciliation rather than military victory. Catholic discernment ultimately requires measuring every prudential judgment—even those made with sincere intentions—against the Gospel, the Church's moral teaching, and the guidance of the successor of Peter.
But understanding why Spellman believed he was defending the Church is not the same as excusing the judgment he ultimately made.
I think a similar historical context is worth considering when discussing Bishop Barron.
Barron was born in 1959 and grew up in Chicago during an era when Catholic identity was deeply intertwined with working-class neighborhoods, organized labor, parish life, and Democratic politics. For many ethnic Catholics of that generation, being Catholic and being a Democrat were almost assumed to go together. Catholic social teaching concerning labor, solidarity, and care for the poor found considerable overlap with the Democratic coalition of that era.
Barron himself has remarked that, growing up, to be Catholic in Chicago largely meant to be a Democrat.
But the political landscape changed dramatically over the next several decades.
Questions surrounding abortion, euthanasia, marriage, gender ideology, religious liberty, and increasing secularization created growing tension between many practicing Catholics and portions of the Democratic Party. At the same time, American politics became increasingly polarized, leaving fewer distinctly Catholic voices within either political coalition.
Whether one agrees with Bishop Barron's engagement with the Trump administration or not, I suspect he understands his role differently than many of his critics do.
He may sincerely believe that someone should bring an authentically Catholic voice into conversations that might otherwise be dominated by evangelical nationalism, Christian nationalism, or purely secular political interests. That does not necessarily mean endorsing every policy or every political figure. It may instead reflect a conviction that Catholicism should remain present wherever significant decisions affecting society are being made.
Again, whether that is the wisest prudential strategy is entirely open to discussion.
My point is simply that understanding his motivation is different from endorsing his conclusions.
Perhaps this is where St. Thomas Aquinas helps us most.
Aquinas distinguishes between the goodness of an intended end and the prudence of the means chosen to achieve it. A bishop may sincerely identify a genuine evil—whether militant communism, aggressive secularism, or the erosion of human dignity—and yet still reach an imprudent conclusion regarding how best to confront that evil.
Good intentions alone do not settle prudential questions.
Likewise, identifying a real cultural threat does not automatically justify every political alliance formed in response to it.
That, I think, is where the Church continually calls all of us—including bishops—to humility.
Historical context can help explain why a bishop believed he was defending the Church, but Catholic evaluation ultimately asks a different question: Did those prudential judgments serve the Church's moral ends of justice, peace, human dignity, and fidelity to the Gospel?
Those are not always easy questions, and history often judges them differently than contemporaries do.
In the end, I appreciate your article because it reminds us that no bishop, no matter how influential, stands above the Church's call to continual discernment.
I would simply add one thought to the discussion: before evaluating a bishop's prudential judgment, it is worth first understanding the historical world that shaped it. Charity asks us to understand motives. Fidelity asks us to evaluate judgments according to the Gospel and the Magisterium.
Thank you for reading and engaging with the history and the issues. I would point out that neither Spellman nor Barron lived any part of their life in a Communist regime. The evil they identified was far away from them and their flock and it took no courage on their part to oppose. Rather, it served to ingratiate themselves with the ruling powers of their own time and place. The evils in their own societies — for example, racism, xenophobia, chauvinistic and belligerent nationalism — that is, the evils that it would take courage for them to confront — they either ignored or applauded.
We do not honor the bishop in Berlin who joined with the Nazis in criticizing Communism in 1943 or the bishop in Prague who joined with the Communist Party in criticizing American racism in 1959. These actions took no courage whatsoever and merely demonstrated support for, and give aid and comfort to, their current regimes. That is what I think Cardinal Spellman did then and what Bishop Barron is doing now.
What I find really amusing and frustrating: seeing Christian persecution in every closet and every blue state, yet not understanding the clear and present danger of sucking up to an ascendant authoritarian regime.
I guess the future ruling class will need a patriotic state church, so why not get cozy now? There might even be spoils for early adopters.
The problem with mixing politics with theology , is the means to the ends. Religion holds that the means justifies the ends. While politics holds that the ends justifies the means. Not recognizing the different approaches is what gets religious figures in trouble. Franklin Graham is reported to to support Putin's approach to gays and same sex marriages. Failing to condemn his murderous approach to political rivals. Barron's fealty to Trump cannot be defended. One cannot pick and choose the awful things to condemn Trump for. While seemingly to support other reasonable things which Trump does without becoming a hypocrite. To me justice is only possible if one is faithful to means justifies the ends. Barron has made a pact with the devil. Pure and simple.
"The prelate who fuses the faith with American power can hold the media, the money, and the access, and the Church will still move past him to the pope, when the pope speaks the gospel of Jesus Christ." Thank goodness!!!
What a great comparison. It is so sad, Bishop Barron has an important legacy, but it is being tarnished. And worse, the scandal of his association with this regime is a roadblock to evangelization. Which is exactly what WOF is supposed to be about.
Thank you for writing this. History is always instructive. We all bear the image and likeness of God. Those who forget this foundational tenet stray from the Gospel. Thank goodness for those souls that had and have moral courage- they truly are saints.
Thank you..... Spellman told Day not to use "Catholic" in her "Catholic Worker" identification. She ignored him. Courage.
Dolan and Barron - silence on Epstein.
- silence on cuts to the poor.
- silence on cuts to USAID
- silence on healthcare cuts
-silence on hate.
Did you and Dolan preach the new testament using more than words?
Mb
I recently finished Robert Barron’s “Catholicism- A Journey to the Heart of the Faith". It was probably the most effective and intellectual work of apologetics, not just for the Catholic Church but for the Christian faith in general, I have read.
I honestly don't think the man who wrote that beautiful book in 2011 would recognize the sycophant, licking at the boots of a morally destitute administration, he has become in recent years.
Very sad.
I will never ever understand the transformation.
First, thank you for writing this. It actually caused me to do a much deeper dive into both Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Barron than I otherwise would have, and for that alone I'm grateful.
As I was reading your article, I found myself agreeing with much of your central argument. But as I dug deeper into the history, I also found myself asking whether there was another historical layer worth considering. Not because I was trying to overturn your conclusion or defend either Cardinal Spellman or Bishop Barron, but because I wanted to better understand how faithful bishops can arrive at such different prudential judgments while sincerely believing they are defending the Church.
One of the things I appreciate about studying Church history is that it reminds me to distinguish between understanding someone's motivations and agreeing with their conclusions. Historical context can help explain why a bishop believed he was defending the faith without necessarily justifying the prudential decisions he ultimately made. I think that distinction allows us to extend charity to the person while still evaluating the judgment in light of the Gospel, the Magisterium, and history itself.
History is often richest when we ask not only what someone did, but what they sincerely believed they were defending.
Take Cardinal Spellman.
Reading him through a twenty-first century lens, it is easy to see only an American cardinal blessing an increasingly unpopular war. But that was not the world that formed him.
Spellman belonged to a generation of bishops whose entire priestly lives had been shaped by militant atheistic communism. They witnessed the Russian Revolution, the persecution of Christians throughout the Soviet Union, the Cristero War in Mexico, the murder of clergy during the Spanish Civil War, and the imprisonment of bishops across Eastern Europe after World War II. Pope Pius XI condemned atheistic communism in Divini Redemptoris, and Pope Pius XII spent much of his pontificate defending persecuted Christians behind the Iron Curtain.
As a bit of a sidebar, I've recently been reading about the Cristero War in Mexico, and one thing that really struck me was that, while faithful Catholics overwhelmingly agreed that the Mexican government's anti-Catholic and anti-clerical laws were unjust, they didn't all agree on how Christians should respond. Some priests ministered alongside the Cristeros, and the conflict ultimately gave the Church many martyrs and saints. Others believed that taking up arms was incompatible with the Gospel, while still others urged diplomacy, patience, and reconciliation. Reading about that reminded me that Church history is often less about good Catholics versus bad Catholics and more about faithful men wrestling with extraordinarily difficult questions while sincerely trying to remain faithful to Christ.
anyways continuing..
To bishops of Spellman's generation, communism was not simply another political philosophy. It represented a system that had repeatedly imprisoned bishops, closed churches, executed priests, and attempted to eradicate Christianity from public life.
Vietnam naturally became part of that worldview.
After the Geneva Accords in 1954, nearly 900,000 civilians fled North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom, approximately 700,000–800,000 of whom were Catholics. Whether or not Spellman correctly judged that American military intervention was the proper response, it is understandable why he perceived communist expansion as another chapter in a story he had already watched unfold throughout Europe and elsewhere.
None of this vindicates his prudential judgment.
In fact, I think your article is right to remind us that Pope Paul VI consistently called the Church toward negotiation, peace, and reconciliation rather than military victory. Catholic discernment ultimately requires measuring every prudential judgment—even those made with sincere intentions—against the Gospel, the Church's moral teaching, and the guidance of the successor of Peter.
But understanding why Spellman believed he was defending the Church is not the same as excusing the judgment he ultimately made.
I think a similar historical context is worth considering when discussing Bishop Barron.
Barron was born in 1959 and grew up in Chicago during an era when Catholic identity was deeply intertwined with working-class neighborhoods, organized labor, parish life, and Democratic politics. For many ethnic Catholics of that generation, being Catholic and being a Democrat were almost assumed to go together. Catholic social teaching concerning labor, solidarity, and care for the poor found considerable overlap with the Democratic coalition of that era.
Barron himself has remarked that, growing up, to be Catholic in Chicago largely meant to be a Democrat.
But the political landscape changed dramatically over the next several decades.
Questions surrounding abortion, euthanasia, marriage, gender ideology, religious liberty, and increasing secularization created growing tension between many practicing Catholics and portions of the Democratic Party. At the same time, American politics became increasingly polarized, leaving fewer distinctly Catholic voices within either political coalition.
Whether one agrees with Bishop Barron's engagement with the Trump administration or not, I suspect he understands his role differently than many of his critics do.
He may sincerely believe that someone should bring an authentically Catholic voice into conversations that might otherwise be dominated by evangelical nationalism, Christian nationalism, or purely secular political interests. That does not necessarily mean endorsing every policy or every political figure. It may instead reflect a conviction that Catholicism should remain present wherever significant decisions affecting society are being made.
Again, whether that is the wisest prudential strategy is entirely open to discussion.
My point is simply that understanding his motivation is different from endorsing his conclusions.
Perhaps this is where St. Thomas Aquinas helps us most.
Aquinas distinguishes between the goodness of an intended end and the prudence of the means chosen to achieve it. A bishop may sincerely identify a genuine evil—whether militant communism, aggressive secularism, or the erosion of human dignity—and yet still reach an imprudent conclusion regarding how best to confront that evil.
Good intentions alone do not settle prudential questions.
Likewise, identifying a real cultural threat does not automatically justify every political alliance formed in response to it.
That, I think, is where the Church continually calls all of us—including bishops—to humility.
Historical context can help explain why a bishop believed he was defending the Church, but Catholic evaluation ultimately asks a different question: Did those prudential judgments serve the Church's moral ends of justice, peace, human dignity, and fidelity to the Gospel?
Those are not always easy questions, and history often judges them differently than contemporaries do.
In the end, I appreciate your article because it reminds us that no bishop, no matter how influential, stands above the Church's call to continual discernment.
I would simply add one thought to the discussion: before evaluating a bishop's prudential judgment, it is worth first understanding the historical world that shaped it. Charity asks us to understand motives. Fidelity asks us to evaluate judgments according to the Gospel and the Magisterium.
I think both belong together.
Thank you for reading and engaging with the history and the issues. I would point out that neither Spellman nor Barron lived any part of their life in a Communist regime. The evil they identified was far away from them and their flock and it took no courage on their part to oppose. Rather, it served to ingratiate themselves with the ruling powers of their own time and place. The evils in their own societies — for example, racism, xenophobia, chauvinistic and belligerent nationalism — that is, the evils that it would take courage for them to confront — they either ignored or applauded.
We do not honor the bishop in Berlin who joined with the Nazis in criticizing Communism in 1943 or the bishop in Prague who joined with the Communist Party in criticizing American racism in 1959. These actions took no courage whatsoever and merely demonstrated support for, and give aid and comfort to, their current regimes. That is what I think Cardinal Spellman did then and what Bishop Barron is doing now.
Thanks for responding! I have started following your Substack.
Yep, it takes no courage at all.
What I find really amusing and frustrating: seeing Christian persecution in every closet and every blue state, yet not understanding the clear and present danger of sucking up to an ascendant authoritarian regime.
I guess the future ruling class will need a patriotic state church, so why not get cozy now? There might even be spoils for early adopters.
The problem with mixing politics with theology , is the means to the ends. Religion holds that the means justifies the ends. While politics holds that the ends justifies the means. Not recognizing the different approaches is what gets religious figures in trouble. Franklin Graham is reported to to support Putin's approach to gays and same sex marriages. Failing to condemn his murderous approach to political rivals. Barron's fealty to Trump cannot be defended. One cannot pick and choose the awful things to condemn Trump for. While seemingly to support other reasonable things which Trump does without becoming a hypocrite. To me justice is only possible if one is faithful to means justifies the ends. Barron has made a pact with the devil. Pure and simple.
"The prelate who fuses the faith with American power can hold the media, the money, and the access, and the Church will still move past him to the pope, when the pope speaks the gospel of Jesus Christ." Thank goodness!!!
What a great comparison. It is so sad, Bishop Barron has an important legacy, but it is being tarnished. And worse, the scandal of his association with this regime is a roadblock to evangelization. Which is exactly what WOF is supposed to be about.
Thanks for sharing this history. Wow. I had no idea. The siren call of Power still resounds in our time. Some find its call overwhelming, it seems.
<Edit>... Wasn't power one of the four or so temptations the Bishop previously warned against.....wealth, pleasure, honor, power, etc?
Yes.
It is a temptation for all of us.
We see parts of it played out in the liturgy of Passion Week every year.
...."Lord, should we strike with the sword?"
Tthank you so much. Your article will be shared many times.
A must read for Catholics
Thank you, Mary Kane!
You are spot on. Thanks to the Jesuits who taught me well when I was getting my PhD in historical theology
Thank you for the perspective. I have felt so betrayed by him.
Thanks! Barron keeps sucking up to the Powerful, probably to get $$$for WOF. No Red Hat for him
Thank you for writing this. History is always instructive. We all bear the image and likeness of God. Those who forget this foundational tenet stray from the Gospel. Thank goodness for those souls that had and have moral courage- they truly are saints.
Thank you for this. And for further reading - James Carroll's An American Requiem: God, my father, and the war that came between us.
Well said, Michael.
Brilliant--thanks for this.
Thank you!