https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/why-does-bishop-barron-keep-attacking-pope-francis-allies

How arrogant he is for castigating the initial step of sharing the Good News, the first tentative but nevertheless essential step in the conversion process! Without this step, you cannot have a process as all processes begin somewhere. The first step is perhaps just as vital as the last and final step, just as the Alpha is essentially complementary to the Omega and you cannot have one without the other. How is it that someone supposedly as learned as Bishop Barron could make such a basely negative and ridiculous presumption that

“One might legitimately say, at this stage of the process, that one is not pressing the matter of conversion, but one is most definitely paving the way for it. Unless it conduces toward real evangelization, pre-evangelization is an absurdity.” ??

‘An absurdity’ he calls it! And ‘pre-evangelization’ at that!! According to Barron, unless one’s efforts are so blessed as to not be unwittingly curtailed by Satan acting on the other person, acting on the one whom the sharer or evangelizer is trying to reach, (who again btw, is essentially outside of the control of the one trying to help, as seen from C.S Lewis’ Screwtape Letters), then such base-line efforts as well-meaning as they are, are basically ‘futile’ and therefore it was ‘absurd’ of the well-meaning sharer to ever act on conscience, out of charitable concern for the other. Well, that’s the impression Bishop Barron gives when he implies that “putting first things first” is not all that important compared to the end-result at the far reaches of the process. What a load of Phariseic mumbo-jumbo! Barron is living up to his name literally in the negative and in no uncertain terms. Basically, he is insinuating that for most of those who are not as fortunate as him to have a well-rounded, founded, and grounded position in the academy, our efforts by comparison to his and others of like ilk, pale by comparison, and are therefore puney and starved of merit since they do not have the same weight of so-called authority that his mega-voiced efforts actually do.

It’s worth mentioning here that even before he became a bishop, he was throwing the same punches and basking in the same vain glory of his successes. For him, the opportunities of open doors to lead others to Christ are innumerable but pity the poor wretches who cannot even ‘get a word in’ because all their channels are blocked by circumstances outside their control. Hence the NCR article’s author Michael Winters calling Barron’s recommended approach to evangelization “Pelagian”. Such arrogance is what makes a man such as Bishop Robert Barron a pompous fool since he is touting the tropes of the world and parading them around in Catholic costumery but at the end of the day, it’s like the cup or dish that Jesus told them Pharisees was squeeky clean on the outside but guncky as a sty on the inside. And the Pelagians, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ own time were also staunchly legalistic about life in general, so much so that the rigidity of their legalism left barely any room for the Holy Spirit to do His share of the work.

Frankly the notion of ‘pre-evangelization’ is really nothing but a load of quackery from sophisticated snobs like Robert Barron who want to compartmentalize every part of every process and make the whole thing very complicated, and much more so at that, than what it needs to be. I don’t think Jesus was into complicating matters further but rather, simplifying them. It was again, His next to indomitable rivals, the ‘learned’ Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees who were far more pre-occupied with observing such painstaking trivialities than with liberating those around them from spiritual maladies, ailments, and hang-ups. Jesus by contrast, although He had “nowhere to lay His head”, knew exactly where to lay His heart. And this intimacy of the heart which Jesus rightfully called for and exhorted is what got the malice of these religious pundits so heated.

And let’s be frank here too about the inner depths of the story Jesus told about The Rich Man and Lazarus. This “richness” does not exclusively have to mean plentiful in money or material wealth although power and prestige unequivocally find themselves tied to wealth. This “richness” spoken about by Jesus in this story and in others too could have more to do with the good fortune or manifest availability of ability to do well in life in terms of opportunities and being able to see them for what they are and to harness them without impediment. Funnily enough, we see that this rich man could wield such power of being able to pick and choose what he could do with his life, and he had enormous decision-making power at his disposal but he only used it for his own selfish ends and didn’t care to share this abundance of opportunity and power to make a difference with that poor man who begged in-person at his door by day and by night. He could have like St Don Bosco or St Mother Teresa of Calcutta offered his talents and gifts at the disposal of helping raise Lazarus from the depths of his heart-ache and decrepid despair to a brotherly sharing in life’s abundant blessings. But he didn’t and instead ignored the plight of this poor man to the point where Lazarus died on the Rich Man’s doorstep. It begs our attention to the similarily all-too-common attitude of blithe indifference on the part of way too many clergy to the impact that certain sufferings have on the lives of people round about. It appears that like the Rich Man, clergy are on the whole immune in this life from having to contend on a personal level with the banalities of life that non-clergy tend to be routinely subjected to, and what’s even more infuriating is that far too many want to avoid having to take to task the types of pastoral responsibility indicated by this parable as well as that of the Good Samaritan. It is almost accursed that clergy are not required to undergo some form of supernaturally executed life crisis or challenge from which they would have to dig deep into their inner survival resources in order make sense of what is actually happening to them and to force them circumstantially to cultivate a truly robust interior disposition that has as its central support structure an intrinsic need to go to God first for everything for if they were mandatorially required by divine decree to undergo such a rock-bottoming, they would be readily equipped and perfectly primed for the task at hand in every respect so that nothing of the pastoral charism is lacking. In many cultures, some of these still extant to this day from the Noahide period, this kind of pastoral charism was directly chosen by God in a manner similar to the calling of Aaron and David in the Old Testament. And usually there was intrinsic to this a period of intense preparation that involved spiritual battles with God’s adversaries and required the one undergoing these rites of passage to be supernaturally delivered from the clutches of this adversary prior to confirmation in the ministerial role. Fr Benedict Groschel in one of the episodes from his EWTN teleseries Sunday Best with Benedict Groschel mentions similar themes and attributes monographic research into this fascinating area of the spiritual life to both anthropologists Mircea Illeade and Joseph Campbell, and psychologist Carl Jung. And that’s research into what is essentially the Noahide tradition of pastoral responsibility. Jesus exemplified this traditional rite of passage in His own 40 days in the Judean desert. This was His vision quest, His journey of preparation through the trials and temptations thrown at Him by the Adversary of God and He was allured into this rite by the Holy Spirit. The Devil lost the battle because Jesus overcame Him in all the respective temptations that were thrown at Him. And for our sakes He did this as well as for the sake of the entirity of His adorable Kingdom.

And to think this Bishop Robert Barron would take offence with what I am saying to the point of labelling my critique of him a ‘libel’ or ‘defamation’ would also amount to none other than an instance of him taking things out of proportion and in the wrong spirit since using ideas of worldly flattery or taking those from within the secularist domain to try and exact some kind of egotistical revenge is almost an eternity away from the spirit of authentic Christian witness and charity. And further, it would be a disgraceful act of megalomania on his part since it would be nothing other than an instance of him wielding some measure of power for the sake of lording it over others and this too is another thing which Jesus sternly warns His followers against. And so such actions are inherently sinful but are made in the eyes of the world to look ‘legit’ since worldly reasoning is by contrast to that of Biblical truth, a ‘lording it over’ type of reasoning in that those in positions of certain types of authority consider it a duty to ‘save face’ should their public reputation be brought under some kind of scrutiny or come into a position of an objective disgrace.

And here’s where the Scribes and Pharisees took it to task with Jesus because their public reputation was being undone as a result of Jesus making light of the very things they were trying to keep in the dark as well as those which they were trying to use to keep others outside of their own circles, in a position of bondage. These unscrupulous men had a hold and sway of power that was considered levels above that of many of the other people in Jewish society at the time Jesus walked the earth, and because of this, they held themselves up in front of and amongst everyone else as the ‘creme de la creme’ of Israeli society. As social high flyers and academic elites, they boasted right of way in many areas of public life not open to others and it is this same pattern that today we are still seeing repeated in our very own Holy Mother Church. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING! It ought to have ended with the tearing in two of the Temple curtain at 3 o’clock on Good Friday. But the reality of the matter is that it is a spectre that still haunts us and still ravages our Church and world which is a huge part of the reason why our societies have struggled to improve in certain areas and have actually declined in others that were previously robust and healthy. It seems that when certain areas in our collective life and spiritual maturity and vision improve, the Devil will react and retaliate by causing other areas to decline and be propelled backwards. And this his does under our noses. And which is again why we are all too often twice if not thrice deceived.

Hence we need to be getting more in tune with the stark reality of the spiritual battle we are facing instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. Way too many pastors as well as religious and lay people are hoodwinked into a spiritually desolate form of theological apprehension. It is presented as a swathe of ideas tainted by modernist secularism that lulls people into thinking about the Gospel themes in an unspiritual manner. It de-spiritualizes everyday life so that spirituality is confined to the rudiments of ritual in church and outside of this domain it is as if all other activity exclusively belongs to the secular domain and therefore is not subject to any supernatural or spiritual influences or activity. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Every single event or circumstance in our world, every single happening has a spiritual reality behind the scenes. I’m probably borrowing this example cited above about contrasting the sacredness of ritual in liturgical life with the banality of events as they happen in melieu of everyday life from St Jose Maria eScriva but it serves well to illustrate the extent of the horrendous spiritual vaccum in our Church and world today. Our lives need to be spiritually enriched with the ritualistic and liturgical life of the Church within the context of our everyday lives and in ways that are compatible with where we are at in our respective state in life. And this needs to be robustly fashioned in conjunction with a contemplative inner spirit which takes quality time out from the humdrum in order to seek the holy will of God for our own lives personally as well as seeking for the same quality of holiness and goodness in the lives of others around us, those we care about near and far, and those we need to develop a more conscientious care about also.

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