Why is Friendly Christian Opus Dei Grifter Prelate Robert Barron So Jittery About "Conclave"?

“The hierarchy of the Church is a hotbed of ambition, corruption, and desperate egotism …Conservatives are xenophobic extremists…None can escape this irredeemable situation.”

— Robert Barron, Catholic News Agency

“The hierarchy of the Church is a hotbed of ambition, corruption, and desperate egotism …Conservatives are xenophobic extremists…None can escape this irredeemable situation.”

— Robert Barron, Catholic News Agency

I couldn’t agree more.

Let’s start with the fact that the most useful thing Robert Barron did when he commented on the new film, which is brilliant, an extremely accomplished director, Edward Berger, and features the work of several first tier genius actors. Let us not loose sight of the fact this film came into existence because of the god-given talents of a multitude of set builders, costuming experts, ecclesiology experts, sound and audio experts, writers, experts, many of them Catholics.

There is nothing at all wrong with giving a film of a negative review. But itis critical that we notice Barron’s handling of this. While triggered and in a moment of jittery gutlessness and very bad faith, Barron deployed a spoiler. Not only did he desecrate a creative work on which many creative folks and artists, many Catholic, many apolitical, worked. This grifter prelate who waxes prosaic often on the splendor of art, who belongs to the apostolic succession that put fig leaves on Michelangelo’s nudes, who pretends to respect artists and art, took a hammer to a film he didn’t like, and revealed the spoiler, because he is a bully, a fascist, an intellectual lightweight, and a meglomaniac.

Film reviewers don’t generally do that. It’s small-minded and mean. It’s also low. It’s like embarrassing a student in a seminar or outing a queer person.

I saw Conclave last night and will happily pay to see it again.

Do not read Barron’s commentary on the film if spoilers ruin films for you.

If you have read Barron’s commentary, I do want to let you know, that because the writing is so expert, because the acting is so complex and pulsing with authentic artistic spirit and mind, because the interpersonal dynamics feel so true to me, a Catholic who has read and continues to read a great deal about the Vatican, Church history, there is so much to be learned about the way the Curia governs and about the deep flaws and beauty of the men who run the empire that is the Roman Catholic Church.

So why did Robert Barron throw a tantrum after seeing the film?

OPUS by Gareth Gore

One reason —and we should be grateful to have it!— Robert Barron was jittery before Conclave debuted because he is an Opus Dei bishop whose cover is in the process of being blown. Gore’s book is wonderful and reading is helpful to any American Catholic who is interested in in how and why the Catholic schism in the United States will play out.

I have been following Opus Dei’s largely successful, this far, attempt to take over the Roman Catholic Church in the United States for six or seven years, but now, the cat’s out of the bag. In part thanks to reporting on the Federalist Society, Napa Institute, even EWTN, we all know about the “ends justify the means" “No Scruples” theological orientation of “La Obra.”

We all know that selling Catholic merch, e.g,e Word on Fire socks, and putting the proceeds back into the “La Obra” operation —Word on Fire, in this case — and interviewing fascists for Catholic Youtubes is a tell. A big hunk of Catholic world now knows that perseverating pseudo-intellectual bloviating like Barron’s, on Plato, Aristotle, Thomas and Augustine to the exclusion of a lineup of modern and contemporary theologians that even included Ratzinger, is an Opus Dei indicator tell.

The problem is not so much that Barron’s wind-bag prolixity is devoid of precious Catholic intellectual treasure; it’s not! Sometimes Barron alludes to art and poetry and makes worthy observations. Sometimes one even derives a sense that Barron cares about art. The problem is with Barron’s blowhard disserting is that it is being monetized and deployed for the purpose of dumbing down the minds of lay Catholics. Barron uses that “When I was doing my doctoral studies in Parish” bullshit for a kind of bullying mind control. He’s not teaching, he’s indoctrinating people to get their money.

The pretense that art matters recurs in his speechifying. But it’s pretense.

It is likely that vexation about presidential politics and the condition of. the U.S. Church are adding to Barron’s cinematically-triggered decompensation. The institutional Roman Catholic Church in the United States is in very big trouble. The trouble has less to do with the exodus of Catholics who are tired of paying the child rape tariff, women who are tired of the humiliation of chasing the “deaconess carrot”and being the “strawberries on the cake,” and more to do with the treasonable fear that the next generation of Catholics who are unlikely to rear families in the roman Catholic Church. He wants to be a cardinal and a saint. He’s had his eye on getting “the youth” more involved. But parents who are walking away because they know that to keep a queer kid or a girl in the pews is to subject that child on a regular basis to teaching that not only classifies them as “disordered,” but which also uses resources it ought to use to demand changes in teaching now, is possibly not a choice made in Christ. The institution knows this. It is one of the reasons they are moving away from the parish model and ordaining so many young, not very smart, and broken men.

Very often who talk about the schism in the Roman Catholic Church have it wrong. The schism is not a chasm that exists between traditional and progressive wings of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s between Catholics who leave because they are Beatitudinally oriented and those who remain because they worship both God and the clerical caste, the hierarchy, the sanitized hagiographies and the smells and bells.

In the United States, the feminist, progressive, queer, and justice-oriented Catholics are leaving, and as the victors become more and more entrenched, more and more moderate Catholics will depart. Think of it as a calculus. More Latin Masses, a far more conservative pope, a quieting down after which the deep Opus Dei pockets buys up more and more spiritual and literal Catholic real estate, a priest shortage which forces the Roman Catholic Church to ordain those psycho-sexually arrested, often doltish, woman-hating men send younger, more educated and less fetishistic Catholics running. The bequest-hunting digital selling of Catholicism will continue and, I believe, what happened in Spain after the fall of Franco will happen. Catholics who aren’t fully Opus Dei will attend Mass maybe twice a year and carry the giant “pasos” through the streets at Holy Week. Parish life will wane. People who want a church wedding will buy one.

Robert Barron had a good game at the start of his media career. He hid his fascist leanings at the start of his Word of Fire “ministry.” He tempered his “I studied in Paris” intellectual gassing thing with folksy motes of pop culture references. Barron is one of the guys who will win the schism but the only booty he’s going to collect are the Catholics he wasn’t really after in the first place: the trads, soft trads, and his fellow Opus Dei adherents.

I like this comment “Since it checks practically every woke box, I’m sure it will win a boatload of awards,” he wrote. Hope so!

Barron doesn’t want Catholics to see this film because it hits a nerve. It reveals a glimpse of “no scruples” depravity much like his own.

Again, as most film mavens know, mature adult film critics and reviewers don’t use spoilers for revenge. It’s sleazy, small-minded, anti-artist, and mean. It’s low — like embarrassing a student in a seminar or outing a queer person. But I guess that’s okay with the bishop.

MMS

November 5, 2024

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