Robert Barron and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The theological justification for mocking the bishop of Winona-Rochester.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece on the greatest theologian in the history of Catholicism, Blaise Pascal, and my favorite work of theology of all time, Pascal’s Penseés. The piece was more abstract than most things I write on here, but I was happy with how it turned out and it was about a work of theology I love very much, that still influences my thinking to this day. Now, my second favorite work of theology of all time is also by Pascal: it’s his other theological masterpiece, the Provincial Letters, which were a huge hit across France in Pascal’s lifetime, even though he had to write them anonymously and they were denounced by the church, suppressed by the king, and eventually forced to be printed and distributed secretly, and which were cited by later French Enlightenment authors like Voltaire as a major influence on their own work.
We will make fun of Robert Barron later in this essay, I promise you (G.O.T.H.S. has never fallen short on that particular promise). But first I want to just take a minute to talk about the main reason why the Provincial Letters are important to me personally, and to the history of Catholic theology overall. It’s because that, unlike pretty much anything else written in two millennia of Catholic theology, the Provincial Letters are intentionally, viciously, absolutely hilarious.
There’s a phrase I’ve been using in several recent G.O.T.H.S. essays: “Gee, that’s not very pro-life of you”. I used it here and here and here, and each time, I used it in the same context to say the same thing: if you catch some right-wing Catholic asshole being an idiot or a hypocrite, you have to do more than say “gee, that’s not very pro-life of you”. It’s an easy thing for a liberal or left-leaning Catholic to say - I’ve said it plenty of times in my life - but you have to start assessing who is actually getting materially hurt by these people, and has the power to change things, and why, and what material pressures you and the people around you can exert on the right-wing assholes. Pointing out hypocrisy doesn’t change anything by itself.
But I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that if you have said “gee, that’s not very pro-life of you” about someone, you were probably correct. You were still identifying an actual gap between what someone said they believed and what they actually believed, and “it turns out words don’t actually mean anything” is still a situation that I would rather the church not be in right now. Abby Johnson brands herself as pro-life but also was in a mob that tried to murder the vice president. Salvatore Cordileone wants to ban Democrats from Communion because they don’t respect life, but he refuses to get vaccinated against COVID. Thomas Tobin is an annoying moral scold on Twitter, and he enabled widespread sexual abuse of minors in the archdiocese of Pittsburgh. Greg Abbott puts together posses to sue anyone who “aids and abets” anyone trying to get reproductive care, and also shoves child asylum seekers on buses to Chicago because he thinks it’s funny. It is not difficult to find more examples, but it feels so trite and tired and old to point out how stupid and hypocritical and self-contradictory these people are, and pointing it out doesn’t really change anything. Of course, these people are still really stupid and hypocritical and self-contradictory, it just feels trite and tired and old because this sort of thing has been happening for a while. The “words don’t actually mean anything” problem has existed in the church for centuries, and specifically, it tends to be a problem for people who style themselves as bedrock moral authorities in the church, who say that they are the right ones who actually care about the right things for the right reasons and you’re just not moral or smart enough to get it, but none of what they do actually lines up with their words or their status or their title. Every era gets its own version of this problem; Pascal had his own version of this problem in his church, so he wrote a series of essays in which he would attempt a new approach to dealing with the bankrupt moral authorities that he thought were ruining the church that he loved:
He decided that he was going to make fun of them.
This is how the first Provincial Letter, which came out of nowhere, signed by a person who didn't exist, on January 23 1656, in the middle of a heated debate burning through the church and the academy, opened:
"Sir: We were entirely mistaken. It was only yesterday that I was undeceived. Until that time I had laboured under the impression that the disputes in the Sorbonne were vastly important, and deeply affected the interests of religion."
In the middle of a nationwide argument between powerful institutions in which all sides were arguing that the salvation of souls hung in the balance, an anonymous writer cannonballed in and started things off with "I really thought I'd be dealing with something more impressive than this." See, Pascal wrote during the initial rumblings of the European Enlightenment; for the first time in the history of this part of the world, people who weren’t royalty or clergy finally had the chance to start reading books and asking questions about the world they lived in, and why the people in charge got to stay in charge. In about another century, the French Revolution would start, because enough people would have read enough books to ask the question “hey why the hell does the king get to tell us what to do”. The French hadn’t gotten there yet when Pascal was writing, but they had gotten to “hey why the hell does the church get to tell us what to do”. These eighteen “letters” - plus an incomplete nineteenth letter and a “response” which Pascal also wrote - were Pascal giving voice to the frustration, from the newly-educated faithful, with church leaders who were torturing logic and morality beyond belief to justify their own relevance as their moral authority eroded. People were starting to question the leadership of their church, and the church leadership responded by doubling down on the importance of their own authority. Perhaps that situation sounds familiar to you.
So the Provincial Letters, ultimately, were Pascal repeatedly owning the leaders of a church who had most recently become famous for prosecuting Galileo and trying to enforce draconian morality with "because I said so" as their strongest justification. Pascal was a very devout Catholic, he argued from a place of faith: the arguments were not about what people believed, but who was in charge, and whether they should really be in charge if they weren’t actually living up to what they believed. To chronicle all of the devastating owns that Pascal got in over the course of the Letters would take thousands of words, but there are a few I’d like to highlight so we can track the evolution of Pascal’s arguments as he kept publishing essays.
The first few Letters were more focused on specific debates in the church around knotty and conflicting definitions of “grace” from different church councils and theologians, and how those definitions differed from the ones being pushed by the clergy of Pascal’s time. The clergy were arguing over terms like “sufficient grace”, which the seventeenth-century Dominicans argued meant the exact opposite of what its name suggested - that is, that it wasn’t grace that was actually “sufficient” for salvation, or good moral judgment, or anything. So Pascal had to roast them for being the only idiots who couldn’t figure this out:
“All the women, who form one-half of the world, all courtiers, all military men, all magistrates, all lawyers, merchants, artisans, the whole populace - in short, all sorts of men, except the Dominicans, understand the word ‘sufficient’.” (Letter 2)
But after you get past the first three or four letters, you can see Pascal starting to get away from these definitions and arguing that the problem is broader than some guys who are twisting the meaning of the word ‘sufficient’. The problem, as Pascal illustrates through quotes from actual contemporary theologians and “recounting” imagined conversations with a chipper priest, is that the clergy of his time, especially the Jesuits (it’s always something with those guys) are doing really shitty things, all of the time, and writing loopholes into their theology to justify themselves. You can visit the brothel as long as you take off your clerical garb beforehand, since you’re technically demonstrating the virtue of “avoiding scandal” (Letter 6). You can murder another guy, just as long as it’s for “defense of honor” and not “vengeance”, you just have to make sure you’re thinking of the right reason at the moment you pull the trigger (Letter 7). You can lie as long as you very quickly whisper in an equivocation to your statement like a fourth grader saying “homosayswhat?” (also Letter 7). Hell, you only really sin if you’re thinking about God while you do it, so if you can stop yourself from thinking about God for a little bit, nothing you do is really a sin (Letter 4). The cheerful priest who delivers all of these moral teachings to a bewildered Pascal is a comedic character on par with Forrest McNeill, happily ticking off everything on his piece of paper while tuning out all of the suffering and misery he causes. As the priest gladly explains, you can find any exception you want and convince yourself that you’re a good moral person who has technically followed all of the rules as you fuck and kill and lie and steal your way through life. Words don’t mean anything, and in Pascal’s estimation, the clergy “are ruining Christian morality by divorcing it from the love of God, and dispensing with its obligation” (Letter 17). This is no longer a debate about the proper terms for the proper types of grace; it’s no longer worth arguing over terms with those for whom words don’t actually mean anything. This has become an all-out attack on a group of amoral idiots, who unfortunately for all of us, happen to be running the Catholic church.
It’s in the later letters - the last ten or so - where Pascal really starts throwing heat as he starts pointing out every contradiction in the moral codes of the clergy, in every loophole that the priests wrote for themselves:
“Fathers, if you should now like to have the pleasure of seeing, within a short compass, a course of conduct directly at variance with each of these rules, and bearing the genuine stamp of the spirit of buffoonery, envy, and hatred, I shall give you a few examples of it; and, that they may be of the sort best known and most familiar to you, I shall extract them from your own writings.” (Letter 11)
“What an advantage it is, fathers, to have to do with people that deal in contradictions! I need not the aid of any but yourselves to confute you.” (Letter 15)
“Do not expect me to answer this, fathers. If you have got no common sense, I am not able to furnish you with it. All who possess any share of it will enjoy a hearty laugh at your expense.” (Letter 16)
I’ll be honest: I find a certain amount of comfort in knowing that these problems - problems where words don’t mean anything and terrible people who brand themselves as Catholic justify the terrible things they do - existed long before I did, and that I'm not alone in my instinct of finding a way to laugh at the people causing these problems. I've been writing these goofy essays for almost three years now, and I also find a certain amount of comfort in knowing that there are readers out there, more readers than I would have expected, who find something useful in it, and who laugh with me at these people, and who help me feel a little less alone. I am very grateful for that.
Okay, now it's time to make fun of Robert Barron.
A week and a half ago, Bishop Robert Barron, a man who begins every public-facing action and statement with an implied "oh yeah, well would an idiot do THIS?", sat down with actor Shia LeBeouf, best known for playing an intellectually disabled be-afro'd child in the Disney Channel original movie Tru Confessions.
It turns out that LaBeouf will also be in an upcoming dramatic biopic in which he'll play beloved Italian saint Padre Pio, and that's what brought him to Bishop Barron's show for a glowing interview, during which LaBeouf shared that he was in the process of converting to Catholicism. In the interview, Barron - who looks like a giant Beanie Baby doll of the one owl who wasn’t smart enough to wear a graduation cap - called LaBeouf “one of the most compelling actors of his generation”, presumably because he had never watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and discussed LaBeouf’s ongoing process of conversion and how he has found a home in Catholicism after a turbulent Hollywood life.
That “home in Catholicism” is interesting, since LaBeouf claims that he found himself drawn to the pre-1962 Latin Mass, which is a little harder to find than it used to be, since the Vatican has had to dial back the availability of the pre-1962 Mass because it was becoming a haven for right-wing psychopaths. This, of course, does not mean that LaBeouf is a right-wing psychopath himself, nor does it mean that he associates with them, and I would never suggest that, unless he specifically cited the biggest right-wing psychopath imaginable as the guy who introduced him to the Latin Mass and was helping guide him through the conversion process.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what LaBeouf did, because his Catholic mentor is Mel Gibson (seen above in 2011’s The Beaver), who thinks the Pope is a satanic puppet and that Jewish people have deliberately started every war in human history. Gibson was also in 2011’s The Beaver, which is not as bad as those other two things but is still very bad. And the warped Catholic thinking of Gibson, who of course has a years-long track record of very unambiguous misogyny and anti-Semitism and is still active in supporting the hardest-of-the-hard-right Catholic clergy, may end up having an influence on this younger actor who said his image of Jesus growing up was too “feminized” - the word was suggested by Barron - and he felt more comfortable once he got introduced to a more “masculine” and “John Wayne” version of Catholicism, and I don’t think any of that bodes well for LaBeouf’s ongoing process of conversion.
Here’s something else “ongoing” with LaBeouf: his lawsuit in which his ex-girlfriend - British singer FKA twigs - alleges that he repeatedly and violently abused her, citing multiple instances of sexual battery, including allegedly giving her an STI on purpose. The lawsuit also includes similar allegations from another ex. This didn’t really come up in Barron’s interview at all; LaBeouf got harder questions about these allegations on an episode of Real Ones than he did from Barron (LaBeouf seems willing to make general statements like “I hurt that woman”, and he clearly was very unwell and has done a lot of work since as a recovering addict, but he still denies the allegations from the lawsuit and doesn’t seem interested in facing any consequences for his actions as of now). You couple that with the recent reporting on Robert Barron’s own dismissal of sexual assault allegations about one of his own employees - which is the nicest way I can summarize “he named the accuser in an all-hands meeting, asked all of his employees to pray for the accused person, threatened people with termination if they ever went public about the issues, and a whole bunch of other bad stuff” leading to an exodus of Word On Fire staffers - and what you’re left with, watching this interview, is two guys with very close connections to recent and terrifying sexual abuse, laughing it up and jawing about how Mel Gibson is a neat guy and their favorite thing about Jesus is how masculine he is. This strikes me as, overall, bad for Catholicism, and it raised a lot of eyebrows in the media, as you’d expect. There are good pieces at Black Catholic Messenger or FemCatholic or National Catholic Reporter or Where Peter Is summarizing the holes in Barron’s judgment, and the theological message that you send when a bishop appears to be giving yet another accused sexual predator a free pass, this time because he was in the fourth-best Indiana Jones film.
But how did we get here in the first place? Is Barron just a really bad judge of character? Is he trying to spread a toxic theology, or is he just an idiot? Going back to those allegations against Barron’s former employee: that guy’s name is Joseph Gloor, a former YouTube bodybuilder turned YouTube Catholic (this strikes me as a step down, professionally). Gloor is the third YouTube bodybuilder employed by Barron’s Word On Fire media ministry, which is not a typo. Barron just seems to find himself drawn to people, not because of any credentials or background or professional connections, but because they get a lot of play online. That they ended up accused of terrible things is, to Barron, an unfortunate coincidence, and it’s never occurred to him that his relentless pursuit of online clout has led him to associate with some of the worst people imaginable.
What we’re dealing with is not a complex theological argument over the proper criteria for forgiveness, we’re dealing with a very simple argument about a bishop who cannot distinguish moral judgement from search engine optimization. You can say Barron has a warped or poor understanding of key parts of Catholic theology, but I’m not even sure he knows what “Catholic theology” is. I legitimately think he chooses friends and allies like these purely based on what’s going to drive his views and clicks, and I think that we can find plenty of examples that bear the genuine stamp of the spirit of buffoonery, envy, and hatred.
Robert Barron has said in the past that he considers himself some sort of politically neutral voice in Catholic media, and that he must be doing something right because people from across the political spectrum dislike him. But he's wrong: there are actually quite a few people who like Robert Barron, and they're all on the same end of the political spectrum, and Barron has worked very hard to make sure that they like him. Sohrab Ahmari likes Barron, because Barron interviewed him on the same “Bishop Barron Presents” show, long after Ahmari advocated for the summary execution of Black Lives Matter protestors, fantasized about murdering them with his car, and also said we should abolish democracy so he wouldn't have to see a drag queen. Bill Barr likes Robert Barron, because Robert Barron gave Barr an award at the 2020 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast long after Barr had gone through the express checkout lane for federal executions, even after other bishops wrote to the NCPB to tell them not to give that award to Barr. The right-wing Napa Institute likes Robert Barron because he gives keynotes at their annual conferences where they lament that they're not building an oppressive theocratic state quickly enough. The producers at Fox News like Robert Barron because Barron gives them soundbites to explain that the whole "violent nationalists bragging about their rosaries" thing probably isn't real. Joseph Gloor likes Robert Barron because Barron gave him a six-figure job and then did everything he could to protect Gloor as he was accused of assaulting and stalking a co-worker. Taylor Marshall doesn't "like" Robert Barron, but when he mustered his followers to harass Barron online, the strongest language Barron used in response was "cut it out", as though he didn't want to upset those folks too much. They were very engaged viewers, after all.
Barron works tirelessly to make sure that the right people like him, as long as they are people who can get a lot of hits on YouTube and raise Barron’s own profile. Because of the landscape of YouTube and Catholic online media more generally, this audience that Barron cultivates skews heavily towards those who believe that Catholicism is primarily a tool for power and dominance and oppression. Barron does not care about this, and possibly doesn’t even notice. The only thing he cares about is watching the little “views” counter go up on his videos. When given the choice to tick up his little “views” counter or do anything related to being a bishop, or more broadly a Catholic, he will choose whatever makes the counter tick up, every time; I feel very comfortable forecasting this based on every single public-facing decision he has ever made. I expect that in his head, he has worked out a simple formula where the more his views go up, the more Catholicism he’s doing. That’s why it’s okay if he defends or ignores sexual abuse, or executions, or open racism, or anti-Semitism, or conspiracy theories about the Pope, or openly wishing for the fall of democracy. Those things all make the little view counter go up, and that is what Barron - who would have died in a gas explosion years ago if the “Momo Challenge” had actually been real - thinks is the most important part of Catholicism that excuses everything else.
I don’t think I’m saying anything surprising about Barron. His allies have figured this out and exploit it. His opponents - a group which appears to include “people who think sexual assault is bad” and “people who are not racist” - have figured this out and criticize him for it. Everyone who has watched any of Barron’s YouTube videos or read any of his books has figured this out. Every Catholic media outlet has figured this out and views him through that lens. The only person that has apparently not figured this out is Robert Barron, who has a popcorn machine where his brain should be. You can easily best him in a theological argument by jingling your keys in his face, and you should be insulted that the church thought he could make a competent bishop. He embodies the church's "words don't mean anything" problem: to Barron, words like “conversion”, “bishop”, “morality”, “authority”, and “conscience” are merely video tags of varying effectiveness at driving online engagement. Addressing this problem properly does not require you to look up the correct theological terms and critique Barron’s vocabulary, it requires you to recognize that Barron is an idiot deserving of mockery, and to make everyone else aware of that fact.
But you can't just point out that someone is being an idiot or a hypocrite and end it there. I wrote this essay, but Robert Barron will never read it, and even if he did, he'd wake up the next morning and still be a bishop. This essay doesn’t change anything. Pascal’s essays did change things - his targets definitely read them and got very very mad about them, and eventually the Vatican had to denouce the warped moral reasoning that Pascal highlighted in his writing - and Pascal also knew something very important: when you mock someone, they’re not scary anymore. And once they’re not scary anymore, it becomes easier to take that first action to pressure them to act differently.
Bishops have fancy titles and fancy clothes and are well-educated and well-heeled and have access to other powerful and rich people and they can hire and fire employees and they can denounce people using fancy terms like “intrinsic evil” and “state of grace” and “Eucharistic coherence”, and all of that can intimidate the faithful. Robert Barron has the ability to intimidate and pressure and harangue and infuriate people because he’s in charge of a diocese and has a very large media operation that he’s been running for years. But Robert Barron also gets easily distracted by beefy YouTube weightlifters, once got outsmarted by someone as dumb as Taylor Marshall, and has a face that looks like a stale pancake. The fancy words and fancy videos he uses hinge on people having respect for what he has to say, and if we don’t give him that respect, it puts a dent in his power, and it might lead others to wonder what they can do to put some more dents in that power. Pascal wrote the Provincial Letters and became the voice of a church that was no longer intimidated by its leaders, of a church that knew that they were smarter and worked harder and had stronger moral character and, yes, had a better sense of humor than the assholes who were trying to cling to their power and status. Pascal wrote in the “reply” to the first two Letters:
“Take my word for it, then, and continue your letters; and let the censure come when it may, we are quite prepared for receiving it. These words ‘proximate power’ and ‘sufficient grace’, with which we are threatened, will frighten us no longer. We have learned from the Jesuits, the Jacobins, and M. le Moine, in how many different ways they may be turned, and how little solidity there is in these new-fangled terms, to give ourselves any trouble about them."
I’m just an idiot with a computer that’s trying to make you laugh, but the people I criticize are just bigger idiots with computers who are trying to make you miserable. Hopefully I can show you that you’re not alone in being angry at them, and that the people you’re angry at aren’t as intimidating as they first appear (I also try to convince myself of this with each essay I write). If we realize that we're not alone and we're not afraid, it might be easier for us to work collectively to change things down the road. A few centuries ago, Pascal decided that he wasn’t going to give up on his faith just because of some asshole priests, he was going to laugh at those guys instead, and get others to laugh with him. I find inspiration in that. Unfortunately, Robert Barron finds inspiration in the asshole priests.