Judging a Book by its Cover
and content and jacket blurbs and marketing plan and intended audience and works by the same author and
INT. DAY - WORD ON FIRE PUBLISHING OFFICES
His Excellency the Most Reverend ROBERT BARRON, bishop of Winona-Rochester, enters. His employee, SOME DIPSHIT, is seated at a desk.
DIPSHIT: Good morning, Robert.
BARRON: (humbly) Please. Call me Your Excellency. How are the numbers looking for the latest sale?
DIPSHIT: Well, the numbers still look good, Your Excellency, but we’ve been getting some questions about your 2021 book Eucharist.
BARRON: Questions? What do you mean?
DIPSHIT: A lot of people find the cover unsettling.
BARRON: What’s unsettling about an image of our savior? About the image of the bread and wine, His presence among us today?
DIPSHIT: There’s just been…I would say, a lot of pushback, on the way that the cover was designed. The placement of the chalice is…I mean, I don’t have to say it.
BARRON: I’m not following. I think you do have to say it.
DIPSHIT: I’m sorry, and please keep in mind, it’s not just me saying this, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback-
BARRON: No, go ahead, it’s fine, what is it?
DIPSHIT: It just…it looks very phallic.
DIPSHIT points to his computer. BARRON crosses the room and squints at the screen.
BARRON: I’ll be honest, I’m not seeing it.
DIPSHIT: You’re not seeing it?! The chalice is placed right over Jesus’ crotch, and like…I’m sorry, it’s just…the grapes and wheat are all…embushened around it-
BARRON: Embushened?
DIPSHIT: I don’t know the word I’m supposed to use! I didn’t come in to work this morning expecting to have this conversation!
BARRON: [Waving it off] Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. People like the content, they’re not going to notice the cover. I just sent one to my friend Riley Moore.
DIPSHIT: Who?
BARRON: Riley Moore, he’s a Republican Congressman representing West Virginia. We’re friends.
DIPSHIT: You’re friends with a sitting Congressman? You send him books?
BARRON: Well, I was his guest at the State of the Union earlier this year, and then I posted a video about going to the State of the Union where I mentioned that he was an “ardent Catholic” - my words - and was really cool for hosting me.
DIPSHIT: Okay, that’s…fine I guess. What sort of stuff does he work on? Is it like coal policy or something?
BARRON: [Cheerfully] He actually just travelled to El Salvador to tour their CECOT megaprison! You can see, he took a selfie giving two big thumbs up in front of a crowd of detainees who are, according to external reports, subject to horrifying conditions!
DIPSHIT types on his keyboard, searching for the photo. He recoils.
DIPSHIT: Jesus Christ!
BARRON: Hey, language.
DIPSHIT: This is the Congressman? He looks like he’s doing a bus ad for a concentration camp! [Turns to BARRON] He did this after he hosted you?
BARRON: Yeah, like, a few weeks after, I guess.
DIPSHIT: Have you put out any statements? We have to get ahead of this!
BARRON: How do you mean?
DIPSHIT: Maybe an essay on Word on Fire or something-
BARRON: We don’t have time to write about prisons on Word on Fire, we have to really allocate the apostolate’s resources carefully and only focus on urgent issues like the time Chappell Roan went on Call Her Daddy, which merited a little over 1,000 words on April 7th, at least a week after American residents started being sent to foreign prisons without a trial.
DIPSHIT: [Sputters] But- but Robert-
BARRON: [gently] I think you mean Your Excellency…
DIPSHIT: If a Congressman meets you, becomes friends with you, and then a few weeks later he’s giving two thumbs up at a notorious megaprison, that’s a brutal indictment of you as a bishop! Even if you put aside every other professional criticism you've ever recieved, this makes you look completely unqualified to carry the teaching authority of the church! People are going to ask what kind of bishop you are where someone close to you can even do such a thing with such a big grin on his face!
BARRON: I think it’s obvious what kind of bishop I am? I’m a bishop who’s a big fan of megaprisons?
DIPSHIT: Wh- what? What are you trying to say
BARRON: I, Robert Barron, the current bishop of Winona-Rochester, think that the things that are currently happening to immigrants in America - or, in some cases, to American citizens who are confused for immigrants! - are all good, cool things, and I endorse them both personally and in my capacity as a bishop. This is me, Robert Barron, saying this, without irony or sarcasm. When you consider how many things I bitch and moan about - I needed everyone to know right away that I didn’t like the Conclave movie! - it's become reasonable to assume that my not bitching and moaning is a deliberate choice. If my apostolate can rush to the defense of JD Vance when he rationalizes deportations and that same apostolate can ignore the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia - can ignore the effects of the policy from the administration that we were just defending - it's because my apostolate is making a pretty obvious choice. Specifically, it's a choice to express my personal belief that it’s good that we’re abusing and detaining people in horrifying conditions, and I think that when Catholics in public life cheer it on, that’s also good.
DIPSHIT: But then should people say that you’re aligned with Trumpism?
BARRON: Hey, don’t even joke about that, we threaten to sue people who say we’re aligned with Trumpism. I don’t care who is running the camps. The important thing is that someone is running them, and, of course, that people are being held there.
DIPSHIT: I…do you understand-
BARRON: I absolutely understand. See, the thing I really don’t get about my critics, I feel like they always assume that I’m just ignorant, or incompetent, or lazy, and that’s why, for example, I’ve done nothing to speak out about these horrors that are now closely tied to a government official with whom I’ve chosen to associate loudly and publicly. But really, if you look at my entire career, and what I’ve chosen to adopt as pet issues, and who I’ve chosen to become friends with, that’s kind of insulting to me. I really feel like Catholic need to stop asking if I’m incompetent and start asking if I - again, Robert Barron, currently a Catholic bishop - am actually just a true force for evil in America and the broader Catholic church. It seems like a rational conclusion to draw after observing the choices that I have made as a highly visible bishop: I, Bishop Robert Barron, just love seeing people suffer and die needlessly, and I hope that it keeps happening, and I’m going to, for as long as I can, continue enabling the people who make it happen, and work as hard as I can to make the general public think that the Catholic church approves of it. I want people to think of the legacy of Saint Oscar Romero, and then think ‘what would the complete opposite of this be?’, and then think of me, Bishop Robert Barron.
DIPSHIT is at a loss for words for a long beat.
DIPSHIT: I just…I thought this was going to be an absurdist and kind of funny conversation about a book cover that my friend texted me this week that looks kind of ridiculous, but this…just took such a dark turn…
BARRON: I know, Some Dipshit, [claps him on the shoulder] but my whole career has just been one giant dark turn. It’s only fair that satirical critiques of me also take some dark turns. And hey, let’s hope there are some more dark turns in the future, all right?
BARRON crosses back to the door, then turns back to DIPSHIT.
BARRON: Also I was lying earlier, all the sexual stuff on the book cover was intentional, don’t kinkshame me it's just that I, Bishop Robert Barron, have a weird sex thing about chalices.
“When I was growing up in El Salvador, there was a man who was not afraid to speak out. His name was Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador. It seems to me that we need more Óscar Romeros today.”
-Evelio Menjivar, auxiliary bishop of Washington DC
