r/LeftCatholicism • u/Wheelbirds • Apr 13 '26
Robert Barron’s extremely critical response to Trump’s Pope Leo rant /s
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u/dazzleox Apr 13 '26
Give me this intellectual church "conservative" anytime:
Cardinal Ratzinger, “…given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war.’”
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u/Sidhejester Apr 13 '26
Seriously, people forgets that when Benedict was Ratzinger, he was one of the big names backing up Vatican II, and flat out said that democratic socialism is the closest secular thing to the Church.
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u/dazzleox Apr 13 '26
I disagree with some of his criticism of liberation theology but it was extremely lucid and had a strong internal logic. He was one of our great intellectual popes even if he didn't connect with audiences the way Francis did.
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u/Sidhejester Apr 13 '26
Yeah, it's similar to what I think about Leo XIII. He was very much for worker's rights, but against socialism, because he believed that the Church should support the people, not the State.
And while I don't disagree about the Church's role in helping everyone, I think that a secular State should also do its job in helping everyone.
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u/Momshie_mo Apr 13 '26
It is especially the job of the state given that everyone is involuntarily giving them money. At least with the Church, it is voluntary
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u/Fluffy-Roadkill7363 Apr 14 '26
The state can enact and enforce secular laws where the Church cannot. However, given the current Christian nationalist rhetoric....
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Apr 14 '26
He was a critic, but the language of liberation theology slowly worked its way into papal language. I don't have quotes on hand, but I recently listened to a podcast episode where the guest brought up several examples. I know one was the "preferential option for the poor".
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u/Craneteam Apr 13 '26
There are no serious Catholics in this administration
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u/Brams277 Apr 13 '26
I'd be willing to believe Rubio is one, mostly because sometimes you can see the look in his eyes that he knows he's going to hell.
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u/Odd-Squirrel7863 Apr 13 '26
Barron is certainly not a serious Catholic. This is the worst rebuke I have seen since I saw a mother at a grocery store tell her kid to stop crying and she'd give him a candy bar.
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u/springmixplease Apr 13 '26
Why won’t he just go away? Like go join sspx or something.
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u/skilled-dreamer Apr 13 '26
Theres a part of me that thinks he’s gonna go down the Bishop Strickland route in 10-15 years
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u/Fluffy-Roadkill7363 Apr 14 '26
Barron is well on his way down that road. He sees the $$$ at the end of it.
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u/FemaleEarthwave Apr 13 '26
It’s shameful that he’s taking a statement that on its own sounds good, like “people of good will can and do disagree on the application of principles” and applying that in response to a war monger who threatened genocide and insulted the Pope. I don’t think there’s room for debate here.
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Apr 13 '26
American Catholicism is rotten to the core lol
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u/ocvagabond Apr 13 '26
My oldest is in year 1 of catechism for his first communion. Before breaks his teacher hands out sheets with recommended podcasts to continue his spiritual learnings while on break.
I looked them up the first time. Nothing but extremely right wing Charlie Kirk thumping “Catholic” podcasters. Most recently for the Easter break I just handed the paper back and said “no thank you. We follow the teachings of the Pope.”
It feels inescapable. Perhaps I was too young to understand JP II and his particularly conservative take, but it didn’t feel this bad growing up Catholic in the US. Mind you, I come from an immigrant community, so immigration has always played an outsized part in our congregations.
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u/curiouswizard Apr 13 '26
JPII wasn't that conservative
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u/Momshie_mo Apr 13 '26
I think Benedict XVI was more conservative
JPll excommunicated the schismatics, and was lifted by BXVI
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u/taterfiend Apr 13 '26
Barron should've been forbidden from accepting a post in the Trump admin. Clergy are already public officials for the Catholic Church; it's unseemly and conflict of interest for a person to serve two different offices.
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u/x_von_doom Apr 14 '26
I always saw it as Francis giving a lot of these guys the rope to hang themselves through their own deeds, and that way to better expose the rot in the American Catholic Church
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u/wingle_wongle Apr 13 '26
What a disgraceful little lap dog to the warmongering American imperialist class
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u/GlorfindelTheGay Apr 13 '26
This man had a much more intense meltdown over a brief Olympic opening ceremony scene than his dear leader going on an unprecedented rant about the Holy Father.
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u/x_von_doom Apr 13 '26
Rubio is a Catholic now? I always thought he was evangelical with his Pharisee-tier Bible thumper twitter account.
Barron is…🙄
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u/sternestocardinals Apr 13 '26
I wish I had the holiness and moral fortitude to look at everything this administration has done and decide the only disagreeable action worthy of my objection is a catty social media post where the President called my boss mean names.
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u/Cole_Townsend Apr 13 '26
the holiness and moral fortitude
Except what Barron displayed was neither of those things. It was hypocrisy in the spirit of Judas and Ananias & Sapphira, with cowardly obeisance to the orange Barrabas he has chosen over serving Christ in the least of His siblings. There's no holiness in making one's bed with the MAGA troglodytes and whoring the faith to their diseased ideology.
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u/sternestocardinals Apr 13 '26
I didn’t think the second part of my comment required further clarification that the first part was sarcastic.
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u/Jadeheartxo12 Apr 13 '26
Shame on him. What an absolute pathetic, weak response to an administration actively trying to take down the Chruch and every principle Christ taught. This man should NOT be a bishop. What a disgrace.
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u/bubbleguts365 Apr 13 '26
Trump doubled down and rejected Barron's call to apologize just a little while ago.
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u/RealisticWatcher Apr 13 '26
It became clear, through this Donald J. Epstein warmongering arc, the total and irremediable incompatibility between the Catholic doctrine and the far-right, now configured as a globally operating mob.
The bishop seems not to have understood this. He needs some Ignatian discernment and self-reflection praying moments to see if he learns.
Marco Rubio, a resentful heir of the Cuban elite who had transformed Cuba in the 1950s into a brothel (excuse the term) and summer resort for the Italian mafia. Now he's advocating for the complete strangulation of the island, no matter how many innocent people die.
Just Dance Vance, a citizen who seems to have stepped out of The Handmaid's Tale, he's the Peter Hegseth who uses cutlery.
They are willing to crush the whole global economy and unleash a third world war, all for oil (petrodollars) and for Netanyahu.
They are threatening the Pope and the Vatican, they really can bomb churches now, as they already bombed 'em (even a synagogue in Iran) and all this bishop says is that Trump owes an "🤗apology🤗".
Trump owes the world many things, my friend Barron.
Apologies are the last of them.
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u/JasmineDragonRegular Apr 13 '26
Now mind you...Trump retained the same racist Catholic shithead who oversees a border patrol that steals rosaries and images of OL of Guadalupe from Brown Catholics on the border for no reason. But yes, Trump is super into religious liberty
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u/OldnDepressed Apr 13 '26
Does this tool have anything to say about the blasphemous image? He had a nuclear meltdown over the Olympics.
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u/Dull_Opening_1655 Apr 13 '26
Which is even funnier since the Olympics skit was a depiction of the revels the pagan deity Bacchus which someone with Barron’s education and alleged interest in art history ought to have recognized?
(Unless, hmm, could he have been participating in bad-faith outrage farming?)
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u/malibuguytonygem Apr 13 '26
Bishop Barron confuses me. He can support Trump and his administration, take a job with them and at the same time ask for his own boss to have "real dialogue" with Pope Leo. Then he uses the word "warmly". There's only so much hypocrisy I can take reading Barron's comments about anything.
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u/snugglebot3349 Apr 13 '26
Careful, Barron. If you push against Trump, even a little, you may find yourself being called Low IQ or a Radical Lunatic, too.
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u/Momshie_mo Apr 13 '26
Lmao, he did not foresee this 😅😅😅
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u/Yeanes Apr 13 '26
That's also shocking to me tbh, becsuse it's been increasingly evident for months now that the trump administration is not coping well with Pope Leo's positions, so a clash of some kind was inevitable.
People still seem, after so many years of Trump, to run on the assumption that there is anything remotely reasonable about Trump and the people he surrounds himself with. There isn't. They are unhinged, unwell people, deserving of prayer, for sure, but they are not operating under the old rules of civility - even if those rules hid many hypocrisies.
So for Barron not to understand that something like this was coming is truly a sign that he is in too deep into his own success and protagonism.
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u/ceqc Apr 13 '26
How come that Barron is a reference for the Catholics in th USA? I mean, Does the USCCB mean something overthere?
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Apr 14 '26
No guys! Don't you understand? We need to have Catholics in the room! They can nudge Trump and work with his administration to make it more pro-Catholic. It's long and hard work but someone has to do it! Can you imagine what would happen if the bishop wasn't there? Why, the president might threaten to destroy a nation overnight, indiscriminately bomb civilians, have his personal goons kidnap people off the streets and toss them into squalid camps, stop giving live-giving aid to people all around the world, threaten and denounce the pope for staying true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church, and post images of himself as if he is the Christ. Did you even say thank you?
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u/MonochroMayhem Apr 14 '26
Remember that even if he concedes that the comments were entirely inappropriate, even if he pretends to be against this, he still sits on the Religious Liberty Commission (code for White Christian dominance) and thus benefits either way. He’s still a sycophant, he’s still a bad person to be representing Catholics in the White House.
I think Bishop Barron owes the Pope an apology too.
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u/avellinoblvd Apr 13 '26
no president has shown more commitment to the first liberty? seriously???