Bishop Barron Weighs In On Iran & Minnesota
Such s refreshing change from the hectoring we so often hear from such leaders
Bishop Robert Barron is not your ordinary Catholic Bishop. He runs Word On Fire, which has built up an enormous online audience mainly by taking questions of faith seriously.
Domestically and internationally, two stories are capturing the imagination of the news pundit class. Bishop Barron, himself a bishop of Minnesota since the summer of 2022, is weighing in on both.
On a crowded world stage where much is happening at any given time, the world has been watching with bated breath to see what would come of the uprisings in Iran.
Here’s what he has to say about Iran on social media:
I want to celebrate the bravery of thousands of people who are engaging in protest against the oppressive regime in Iran. I remember vividly when the Ayatollah Khomeini was swept to power some forty-six years ago, and I have witnessed the steady and vicious attacks on human dignity perpetrated by the corrupt theocracy he established. Moreover, I’ve watched as the Iranian kleptocracy has systematically de-stabilized the Middle East by fostering Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. Please God that this dishonorable government, which has been a source of so much mischief and suffering these past several decades, will find its way to the trash-heap of history.
He minces no words there.
In another post, he offers some context and perspective to the question of Minnesota which began (however hard activists might try to make us forget) as a response to mounting evidence, including a mounting number of arrests and successful convictions, involving fraudulent appropriations of tax dollars at an industrial scale. The surge of ICE (and other agents) is directly related to not only the recent revelations by Nick Shirley, but also the ongoing investigation Patel began there in the summer and — let’s not forget — Congressional whistleblower testimony, including the wrongful punishment of whistleblowers, pointing either to willful ineptitude or corrupt complicity by elected officials at the highest state levels, leading to criminal referrals against both Tim Walz and Keith Ellison for specific alleged violations of the criminal code.
The protests, the events leading to the death of Renee Good, the mob violence targeting hotels since then… all of it came in response to the inciting event of the revealing of a massive crime ring of bogus entities taking millions and eveb billions of taxpayer money intended to help the most marginalized that instead was shipped overseas, millions of which is reported to have fallen in the hands of Al Qaeda-affiliated terror group Al Shabab. It goes there, instead of going to, say… GENUINE homeless people, child care needs, or helping serve people with (in particular) severe and debilitating autism.
When weighing in on Minnesota, the bishop directed his observations toward the inciting incident itself, reminding us that corruption itself is a source of grave moral evil.
As we wrestle in my home state of Minnesota with the fact of deep corruption in the political and economic orders, I want to draw attention to the “social justice” dimension of this problem. Catholic social teaching has a good deal to say about official corruption, insisting that it undermines confidence in our leaders, compromises the integrity of the institutions of government, and subverts the rule of law. But even more importantly, it deeply harms the poor, stealing resources from them, increasing inequality, and blocking essential services such as health and education. And if the widespread fraud in Minnesota is also present in a number of other states, we are dealing with a massive violation of human rights and a heinous attack upon the poor and needy. This should not be a matter of partisan politics. Rather, wherever this corruption exists, it should be fought and those responsible for it brought to justice.
In other words, the very people who wrap themselves in banners of ‘social justice’ and ‘the poor’ while opposing federal investigations into systemic corruption are defending those who exploit the poor for either money or power. And they are defending them from the very system to which the poor and exploited must appeal — our legal system.
Any clown can call himself a ‘good guy’ and a ‘defender of justice’ or an ‘ally of the poor’. But the rest of us can call such clowns liars when their actions betray their beliefs.