Bp Barron Promoted

In my e-mail yesterday was an announcement from the Word on Fire Institute that linked to this statement from Bp Barron:

Friends, I am overjoyed and humbled to learn that Pope Francis has appointed me the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota).

The bishop of a diocese is, first and foremost, a spiritual father to the priests and people who have been entrusted to his care. My prayer this morning is that the Lord will give me the grace always to be a good father. The bishop is also, as Pope Francis often teaches, a shepherd with the smell of the sheep—out in front of the flock in one sense, leading the way, but also with the flock, giving encouragement, and in back of the flock in order to gather in those who have fallen behind. I pray also for the grace to be just that kind of shepherd to the Catholics of southern Minnesota.

It has been an extraordinary privilege these past seven years to serve as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where the priests and people received me, from the beginning, with warmth and enthusiasm, and where I had the good fortune to observe close up the ministry of Archbishop Jose Gomez, one of the great churchmen on the scene today. Watching him govern the largest Archdiocese in the country was a master-class in ecclesial leadership.

Visitors here know I've been an unabashed Bp Barron fan, especially since my wife and I sat not far from him at a concert, and I watched him pretty carefully. What struck me then was that he wasn't surrounded with an entourage, and as an instantly recognizable figure, many people approached him to greet him. He appeared to be genuinely friendly and gracious with everyone. Not long afterward, our parish distributed copies of his Letter to a Suffering Church about the clergy abuse crisis. I appreciate both his erudition and his clarity.

My wife suggests his new duties could cause conflicts with the work of his Word on Fire Institute. My impression is that he is a figurehead and an outside man there, although he does contribute essays and scholarly theological commentary to some of the institute's editions of scripture and liturgy. However, he does not manage the institute from day to day. Thus personnel issues can and do arise:

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, founded by Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron, issued a brief statement May 2 saying it had fired an employee possibly over an incident involving some unwelcome advances.

“The accusations against this employee surrounded events in the employee’s personal life, not the Word on Fire workplace, and did not involve any other Word on Fire employees,” said the statement on the organization’s website.

The statement was issued after accusations of unwelcome sexual advances involving the employee surfaced in a substack — an email newsletter platform — and were widely discussed on Twitter.

. . .The newsletter detailing the accusation called to task the ministry because of Bishop Barron’s efforts, via the book “Letter to a Suffering Church,” to combat abuse in the church.

“Ultimately, Word on Fire and Bishop Barron have been leading voices for accountability in the Church. The organization has zero tolerance for abuse or harassment of any kind,” the organization’s statement said.

My own view is that where Bp Barron is directly involved with Word on Fire publications, they are extremely well produced, inspiring, informative, and indeed highly attractive. However, Word on Fire is a brand that covers many other writers who simply aren't at that level, and indeed, as an organization run by humans, it carries many human characteristics, including the squabbles over the personnel issues above. The National Catholic Reporter, not a Bp Barron fan, had this story:

Frustrated by poor communication and a workplace culture they say has been warped by secrecy and hypermasculinity, at least a half-dozen Word on Fire employees in recent months have resigned from the Catholic outlet founded by Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron.

Those who remain at the Illinois-based multimedia nonprofit are working in an environment that a few recently departed workers described to NCR as beset by low morale, damaged trust and a "boys' club" culture that made some female employees uncomfortable and others unwilling to raise concerns to leadership.

"To put it bluntly, I do not feel that if I had been one of the victims, I would have been protected in any way," said a former staff member, who left Word on Fire after working there for about a year.

But if the unwelcome advances occurred outside the workplace, I'm not sure precisely what the institute could or should have done to protect its staff members -- it sounds like the one quoted above was constructing a purely hypothetical situation "if" she had been a victim, though neither she nor any of her colleagues was affected. In any case, even unsympathetic accounts are making it clear that the institute was "founded by" Bp Barron but is not managed by him.

What I'm finding most interesting is that Bp Barron is being criticized by the Catholic left here, when earlier he's been a target of the far right, like Michael Voris, who calls him A clear and present danger to souls.

Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Robert Barron continues to advance a type of Catholicism that undermines the glories of the teachings while at the same time promoting a "half-gospel." He is, in fact, the poster-child cleric for this watered-down, self-serving gospel-lite.

If the far left and the far right both hate the guy, he must be doing something right. In any case, at 62, it looks like he'll be active for some years to come, and if he's advancing iin the contemporary US Church, the Church is functioning as it should.