In the latest example of a bully is Minnesota Bishop Robert Barron's Word on Fire organisation threatened Commonweal magazine and theologian Massimo Faggioli over Faggioli's April 22 essay, "Will Trumpism Spare Catholicism?"

The commotion is too weird to behold.

Sticks and stones

It began like all schoolyard fights.

Barron, or someone who works for him, thought Faggioli, who teaches at Villanova University, called the bishop a name.

In best fourth-grade fashion, an unsigned "cease and desist" email went to Faggioli and to Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi.

Apparently without a lawyer or even a dictionary nearby, the email claimed Commonweal and Faggioli were guilty of "slander,".

That name is usually applied to spoken defamatory statements, instead of published ones, which are libel.

Faggioli's opinion piece examined the influence of conservative, anti-Francis bishops.

He described them as the ones whose political alliances mix "ahistorical, magisterial fundamentalism in militant Catholicism with nationalistic impulses masquerading as concern for the ‘forgotten' common American."

He apparently included Barron in what he called the "'Trump-Strickland' axis,".

He was referring to former Texas Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, a named supporter of the pro-Trump "Catholics for Catholics" organisation.

That organisation counts among its supporters former Trump advisers Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.

Barron's company complained about his inclusion, and Commonweal indulged him, writing in an editor's note:

"With the author's permission, the editors have removed a paragraph that originally appeared here because Bishop Robert Barron's media ministry, Word on Fire, informed us that they consider it slander for them to be in any way associated with Donald Trump or Trumpism."

Unwilling to take yes for an answer, Barron's folks sent another unsigned email, this time to the entire Commonweal staff.

It said that the retraction notice was "clearly malicious" and that the email was "a formal notice to preserve all records in anticipation of litigation."

Strange and bullying

To be clear, no Catholic, let alone a bishop, should want to be connected to Trump, whose ongoing legal entanglements and documented disrespect for women and migrants are outside the pale.

That Trump benefited from a strange Catholics for Catholics fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago is enough to warn anyone.

It was there a man identified as Father Dennis led what he called "the meal prayer" and former Trump national security adviser Flynn said they would "do the rosary,".

But bullying a 100-year-old liberal Catholic opinion journal emphasises the conservative bent of Barron's enterprises.

It smacks of the sort of "conservatism" Pope Francis recently called "suicidal" on CBS' "60 Minutes."

The "suicidal conservatism" Francis worries about stifles growth and, he said, leaves people "closed inside a dogmatic box."

Those U.S. bishops who cannot think out of the box — and there are many — daily damage the beliefs of Catholics who think Catholic social teaching is a good thing and who wish for less clericalism and more transparency in church matters.

To to start with, where, exactly, does the money go?

The ubiquitous Catholic bully

Bully clerics abound at every level, in the United States and around the world. And bullying Catholic lay initiatives is not new.

In the 19th century, Mother Cabrini, the champion of immigrants, had her problems with Archbishop Michael Corrigan, who wanted her out of New York.

In the 20th century, another archbishop of New York might have wished the same for Dorothy Day.

Now, in the 21st century, a group of lay Catholics suffers a legal threat come some 1,300 miles from Minnesota to a small office suite on New York's Upper West Side.

It may be a good thing that Barron wants to distance himself from Trumpism, because many of his followers may still think Trump is OK.

But bullying is not the way to do it.

• First published in Religion News Service
• Phyllis Zagano PhD is a Senior Research Associate in Residence at Hofstra University. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons. Phyllis is also an author at Religion News Service

"Evil cannot be fought on its own terms," Fr. Barron said, riffing on Jack Nicholson's character. "You fight fire with fire, the world becomes hotter. You meet violence with violence, you just get more violence. Go back to Goodfellas, go back to Mean Streets, his really great movies, you'll see that motif played out over and over again."

It was the first of many video commentaries from Fr. Barron's Word on Fire, a nonprofit global ministry that has quickly become the new face of Catholicism in the culture.

Armed with social media, highly produced documentaries, and a steady torrent of article and video commentary, Fr. Barron and his team are marrying philosophical depth with what's trending, excavating truth, goodness, and beauty everywhere they turn.

The approach has caught on: Darren Aronofsky praised Fr. Barron's review of his film Noah over Twitter; his YouTube channel has raked in over 12 million views; and a series of videos on the music of Bob Dylan so impressed one young nineteen year old that it brought him to the doorstep of the Church.

"Up came one of your videos," the teenager wrote to him. "It came up, and I saw the Roman collar, and I just wanted to close the window. But I watched it, and I liked it and so I watched another one of your Bob Dylan commentaries, and then a third one. That led me to lots of your other videos and that led me back to your website, and then I got drawn into it…now I am in the RCIA program." Continue reading

Sources

• aleteia
• Image: Word on Fire

This year, his Word on Fire ministry plans to complete the first six episodes of a follow-up series to his acclaimed 2011 documentary "Catholicism," which aired on 250 PBS stations nationwide.

He has also posted 416 cultural commentaries onYouTube, and this past fall, he surpassed 10 million online viewers.

The seven- to 13-minute clips range in subject matter from disquisitions on original sin and hell to commentaries on the Stephen Hawking biopic "The Theory of Everything" and Martin Scorsese's "The Departed."

And in September, Barron, 55, will be the opening speaker at the World Meeting of Families, a Philadelphia mega-event that will culminate with Pope Francis celebrating Mass to conclude his first visit to the United States.

For Catholics tired of the highly politicized public image of their faith, Barron provides easily digestible, no-nonsense eloquence.

Skirting hot-button issues such as gay marriage, women's ordination, the sexual abuse scandal, and abortion, he takes a broad view of the Church as many Catholics experience it and still toes a traditional line.

The Church, he said in an interview, "is extreme in its demands. At the same time, it's extreme in its mercy. We shouldn't dial down the expectations. Love has to dominate every aspect of your life."

Beauty — be it of artwork, literature, music, architecture, or ideas — dominates Barron's. His mandate, he said, is to preach "the good, the true, and the beautiful," and he believes that if people first encounter what's beautiful in the Church, they will later discover what's good and true. Continue reading

Sources

• Crux
• Image: Facebook

What is it about these stories—and the Spider-Man tale in particular—that fascinate us? May I suggest that it has something to do with Christianity, more precisely, with the strange hybrid figure around which all of the Christian religion revolves. St. Athanasius's most significant contribution to the Christological debates of the early centuries of the Church's life was a soteriological argument for the dual nature of Jesus. In the saint's pithy formula: only a human being could save us; and only God could save us. If Jesus were only divine—as the Monophysites argued—then his saving power wouldn't be truly applied to us. If he were only human—as the Arians and Nestorians argued—then he could not really lift us out of the morass of sin and guilt in which we find ourselves mired. In a word, salvation was possible only through a God-man, someone in the world but not of it, someone like us in all things but sin, and at the same time utterly unlike us. Read more

Sources

• Rev Robert Barron, Word on Fire
• Image: Collider

Father Robert Barron is the rector of Mundelein Seminary near Chicago and the founder of Word On Fire.