Fiducia Supplicans and Hobson’s Choice
/When I saw the headline—Catholics Cannot be Anti-Semites—I immediately wrote to Bishop Barron and asked him to inform the ADL that E. Michael Jones cannot be an anti-Semite because he is a Catholic. I have been maintaining that position for years, and it was heartening to have a famous bishop take my side in this argument.
When I read his article, however, I found that his headline had an entirely different meaning. According to his excellency, “Christianity collapses in on itself without constant reference to its Jewish antecedents.” Were the people of the Old Testament Jews? The term arrives relatively late in Scripture, and when it appears in the Gospel of St. John, it is pejorative.
If we are talking about Hebrews, on the other hand, there is no continuity between the people who followed Moses out of Egypt and the Jews who are now engaged in genocide in Gaza. Jesus Christ made that clear when he told the Jews of his day that they were not the children of Moses because they refused to accept Him as their Messiah. He then went on to say that their father was Satan. Does this mean that Jesus Christ was an anti-Semite? Bishop Barron denounced anyone who used the term “Synagogue of Satan” as anti-Semitic, even though the term is taken from the Book of Revelations.
“Producer” Joseph Gloor and Bishop Robert Barron
Instead of mentioning any of these relevant passages, Barron, citing St. Paul, tells us that Jesus Christ is: “the yes to all the promises made to Israel,” which is certainly true, but only if the Jews accept baptism, something Bishop Barron failed to bring up in his dialogue with Ben Shapiro. Barron then tells us that “Pope Pius XI declared, ‘We are all spiritually Semites,’ and then as if finishing his syllogism, Barron concludes, “Hence, if you don’t get the Jews, you won’t get Jesus. It’s as simple and important as that.”
Barron then brings up the red herring of Marcionism, “One of the very earliest doctrinal disputes within Christianity.” Marcion claimed that the god of the Old Testament is Satan. Marcionism has made a comeback lately, but generally it is not an issue unless you’re talking to Marek Glogoczowski or Adam Green.
In the speech to the disciples who did not recognize Jesus on the way to Emmaus, Barron tells us that Jesus: “presents himself as the fulfillment of salvation history, the culminating point of the story of the Jews, the full expression of Torah, temple, and prophecy. And it was in the course of that speech that the hearts of the disciples commenced to burn within them.”
And we agree with what his excellency said there, but then he has to impose his tendentious interpretation of his exercise in proof texting on the unsuspecting read by claiming “It was that deeply Jewish speech that led them to conversion.”[1]
What does Barron mean by “deeply Jewish”? Why is that speech “deeply Jewish”? Why is it any more or less Jewish than any other speech in Scripture? Has he read the Gospel of St. John, who uses the term Jew 71 times and in every instance but one as a pejorative term?
Barron muddies the water further by citing the eminent theologian William F. Buckley. Buckley was the commissar who policed the perimeter of the concentration camp known as “conservatism.”
“When William F. Buckley was endeavoring to launch his journal National Review in the 1950s, he was eager to recruit the best and brightest among the conservative thinkers in the Anglosphere. But he was scrupulous in eliminating from consideration any who exhibited anti-Semitic attitudes, for he knew that they would undermine his project, both morally and intellectually.”
Missing from Barron’s claim is the fact that the early Buckley brought up Jewish participation in the Bolshevik Revolution with prominent Jews like David Suskind on Firing Line. By 1990, however, he had learned his lesson from Jewish “conservative” handlers like Norman Podhoretz and obligingly stabbed Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran in the back in a monumental piece of incoherent bombast entitled “In Search of Anti-Semitism.”
With Buckley as his mentor, Bishop Barron now assumes the role of commissar for the Catholic Church, whose job is to expel “anti-Semites” from the Church “because they are, by definition, enemies of Christ.”
The phrase “enemies of Christ” brought another scriptural passage to mind, which Barron’s exercise in proof texting conveniently omitted. In I Thess 2, St. Paul refers to the Jews as “the people who put the Lord Jesus to death, and the prophets too. And now they have been persecuting us, and acting a way that cannot please God and makes them the enemies of the whole human race” (I Thess 2: 14-16).
Is Bishop Barron saying that St. Paul is an enemy of Christ because he said that the Jews were “enemies of the whole human race”? Is he saying that St. John is an anti-Semite because in his Gospel Jesus tells the Jews “Your father is Satan”?
Why is Bishop Barron determined to ignore these passages? Why is he no longer in California? Why is he determined to curry favor with the people who killed Christ? There are generally two answers to this question: sex or money or both via blackmail. Which brings us to Bishop Barron’s “disturbing muscleman fetish.”[2]
One year ago, an article appeared on the Internet claiming that Bishop Barron was causing scandal because he is “always surrounded by one or more muscular, tattooed men.... everywhere he goes.... What’s more disturbing, he employs them, he pays them higher than high salaries, and it appears that one or more of them lives with him.”[3] One of those men is Joseph (Joey) Gloor, Barron’s “producer, travel companion, roommate and closest friend.” Gloor is a male model who posts half-naked pictures of himself which emphasize his muscles and tattoos in ways that homosexuals find attractive. In return for this dubious activity, Gloor receives a $135,000 salary from Barron, something the author finds “extremely troubling,” troubling enough to bring to the attention of Barron’s new ordinary in Minnesota.
Virtually all of the allegations in this article appeared in June of 2022 in the National Catholic Reporter.[4] But that article ignored the homosexual muscleman fetish angle of the article which appeared one year later. The NCR article focused exclusively on women who raised charges of sexual harassment against Gloor and Barron’s handling of the charges. It did not mention the homoerotic atmosphere at Word on Fire ministries or the other body builders in Barron’s employ.
Barron was incardinated in the archdiocese of Los Angeles when rumors of his muscleman fetish began circulating. Apparently, Archbishop Gomez, ordinary of the LA archdiocese, was not amused. One month after the NCR article appeared, Barron was transferred to Minnesota, where the climate is not conducive to half-naked photo shoots.
The Barron saga had uncanny similarities to the saga of Michael Voris’s fall at Church Militant TV over the fall of 2023. Voris’s fall was precipitated by sending out naked and near naked photos of himself at the gym engaged in body building of the sort that were virtually identical to the homoerotic photos that Gloor was posting. But The National Catholic Reporter ignored the homosexual angle completely, leading us to believe that homosexuality was the black hole which determined policy at both apostolates. Homosexuality determined policy at Church Militant TV from its inception, as I pointed out in The Man Behind the Curtain six years ago. When the same homoerotic atmosphere became apparent at Word on Fire, NCR distracted everyone’s attention by focusing our attention on heterosexual harassment. But the question remains. Is homosexuality distorting Barron’s ability to read the Gospel? Is homosexuality the best explanation of his distorted reading of the Gospel passages on the Jews?
Barron fired Gloor in early 2022 before the NCR article came out. His sudden departure to Minnesota after the NCR article appeared is an indication that the atmosphere of homosexual body building at WOF was at the very least a source of scandal and at worst the suspicion that the bishop is vulnerable to blackmail by the Jews who control the media. That is the best explanation of his distortion of the Church’s teaching on the Jews.
But does it explain his take on Fiducia Supplicans? The answer is no because he doesn’t have to distort that document. It is what it is. The best indication that something other than a desire to know and tell the truth is ignoring what documents like the Bible and Fiducia Supplicans actually say. Like Traditiones Custodes, FS had its source in the Jesuits, a group that is intensely uncomfortable with the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. Like Traditiones Custodes, Fiducia Supplicans tried to globalize a provincial issue in the Church which has no application to places like Africa.
In his attempt to clear up the ambiguity surrounding the word “blessing” in Fiducia Supplicans, Barron claims that “blessing as approval is excluded from consideration” in that document. Homosexuals requesting this blessing “do not claim a legitimization of their own status” by “recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help.” Barron goes on to cite another passage from the same document which proclaims that “there is no intention to legitimize anything” because “the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.”[5]
Like many in the Church, Rev. Brian Harrison was outraged by what he thought was Fiducia Supplicans’s endorsement of homosexual marriage. Father Harrison, however, backed down from his initial reaction upon re-reading the document:
After an initial, shell-shocked reaction to “FC” [sic FS] that was totally negative (and which some of you read in my email of several days ago headed, “He’s done the unthinkable”), I subsequently gave some calmer and more careful attention to the document, and now think that it does teach with adequate (though not crystal) clarity what the Prefect says it teaches. I don’t think it’s heretical. Nor, pace Cardinal Mueller, do I find it self-contradictory. (I think the over-meticulous logical niceties His Eminence depends on to arrive at that conclusion tend to lose sight of the wood for the trees – the “wood” being that a text should be taken as meaning what its author clearly intends it to mean, even if he may have overlooked a bit of imprecision in his wording.) But how pastorally prudent the issuance of this Declaration is under present historical and cultural circumstances is another question altogether.
By flagrantly ignoring the actual text of FS, both The National Catholic Reporter and Life Site News showed themselves determined to turn Fiducia Supplicans into a first step in the direction of gay marriage, if not gay marriage itself, in a clear contradiction of the equally clear statements to the contrary in the text of the document. To ignore what the document says is dishonest. To ignore its effects and how it has been manipulated would be naïve. Catholics are now caught up in a dynamic which forces us to side with either James Martin or Michael Voris without the slightest indication that by framing the issue in those terms, every Catholic is confronted with Hobson’s Choice.
Faced with unprecedented opposition, the CDF was forced to issue a clarification to its document Fiducia Supplicans:
The understandable statements of some Episcopal Conferences regarding the document Fiducia supplicans have the value of highlighting the need for a more extended period of pastoral reflection. What is expressed by these Episcopal Conferences cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition, because the document is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality.[6]
The Guild Prophets were quick to respond. John Henry Weston chopped this quote off at “doctrinal opposition” calling that claim “baloney” without allowing Fernandez to finish his sentence, which stated that the document “is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality.” Is it? This is what it says. There are several indisputable phrases in the Declaration that leave this in no doubt:
This Declaration remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion”. One acts in these situations of couples in irregular situations “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage” (Presentation). Therefore, rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage – which is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children” – and what contradicts it are inadmissible. This conviction is grounded in the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage; it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.[7]
Why didn’t John Henry Weston talk about this part of the document? Why didn’t’ he mention that the Church already has blessings for heterosexual couples in irregular situations. The Fiducia Supplicans clarification continues:
Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.” (5) “For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.” (11)
Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this Declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or blasphemous.
The rest of the guild prophets fell in line behind John Henry Weston by refusing to give an accurate account of Fiducia Supplicans or the Vatican’s subsequent clarification. Taylor Marshall referred to Fiducia Supplicans as “an example of Francis and Fernandez engaging in Gaslighting.” For those of you who learned English before 2010, gaslighting is “a colloquialism, loosely defined as making someone question their own perception of reality.” The expression, which derives from the title of the 1944 film Gaslight, became popular in the mid-2010s. Merriam-Webster cites “to psychologically manipulate” so that the person questions his own memory, reality, and mental stability. Michael Matt, referring to Fiducia Supplicans as “Fernandez’s new doozy,” ridiculed the claim that FS did not change the Church’s teaching on marriage in the following way “We didn’t change the doctrine on MARRIAGE, remember? Get off our backs.” Followed by “A blessing is not an endorsement. DUH!” The tendentious nature of Matt’s commentary indicates a desire not to persuade or enlighten but to preach to a choir full of people with itching ears, as he has been doing for decades now.
Matt’s forthrightness reached its limits, however, when Luis Alvarez Primo asked him at one of his meetings of the “clans,” his word for Judaizing schismatics like the Donatists, why he never talked about Bergoglio’s relationship with the Jews. Life Site News enforced the same line of demarcation separating true Catholics from “Novus Ordo” Catholics when it published an article by Alan Fimister which claimed that to be truly prolife one had to fight “anti-Semitism.” This outrageous claim prompted me to post a rebuttal on their comment box which explained that “Abortion is a fundamental Jewish value. If pro-lifers fight anti-Semitism, they promote Jewish power. If they promote Jewish power, they are promoting abortion. Why is Life Site News promoting abortion?” That comment got taken down within minutes, leaving my question unanswered.
[…] This is just an excerpt from the Feb 2024 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!
Articles:
Culture of Death Watch
Fiducia Supplicans and Hobson’s Choice by E. Michael Jones
Features
Confessions of an Ivy League Shiksa by Delphine Lavoie
Reviews
The Jewish Moral Corruption of Germany and America by Jonas Alexis
(Endnotes)
[1] Bishop Barron, “Catholics Cannot be Anti-Semites,” Word on Fire, Dec. 21, 2023, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/catholics-cannot-be-anti-semites/ [2] “Bishop Robert Barron’s Disturbing Musclemen Fetish is a Scandal by Itself,” Clean the Church, Jan. 28, 2023, https://cleanthechurch.com/bishop-robert-barrons-disturbing-musclemen-fetish-is-a-scandal-by-itself/ [3] “Bishop Robert Barron’s Disturbing Musclemen Fetish is a Scandal by Itself,” Clean the Church, Jan. 28, 2023, https://cleanthechurch.com/bishop-robert-barrons-disturbing-musclemen-fetish-is-a-scandal-by-itself/ [4] Brian Fraga and Jenn Morson, “Multiple Resignations at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire after allegations into staffer’s personal life,” National Catholic Reporter, June 1, 2022, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/multiple-resignations-bishop-barrons-word-fire-after-allegations-staffers [5] Richard Declue, “Clarity in Confusion: An Approach to “Fiducia Supplicans,” Word on Fire, Dec. 21, 2023, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/clarity-in-confusion-an-approach-to-fiducia-supplicans/ [6] Victor Manuel Card. Fernandez and Armando Matteo, Armand“Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Press Release Concerning the Reception of Fiducia Supplicans,” Vatian.va, January 4, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240104_comunicato-fiducia-supplicans_en.html [7] Victor Manuel Card. Fernandez and Armando Matteo, Armand“Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Press Release Concerning the Reception of Fiducia Supplicans,” Vatian.va, January 4, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240104_comunicato-fiducia-supplicans_en.html [8] Personal correspondence. [9] Personal correspondence. [10] Robert Morrison, “Lightning in Argentina and the Progressive Manifestation of Satan’s Influence Over Francis,” The Remnant, Jan. 4, 2024, https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/6972-lightning-in-argentina-and-the-progressive-manifestation-of-satan-s-influence-over-francis [11] Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023, https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god-cannot-and-does-not-bless-sin/ [12] Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023, https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god-cannot-and-does-not-bless-sin/ [13] Brian M. McCall, The Church and the Usurers: Unprofitable Lending for the Modern Economy (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press at Ave Maria University: 2013), p. 10. [14] McCall, p. 11. [15] McCall, p. 11. [16] McCall, pp. 130-1. [17] McCall, p. 134. [18] McCall, p. 134n, Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter on Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth, June 29, 2009, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html, #65. [19] Jones, Barren Metal, p. 1363. [20] PBS NewsHour, “Watch Pope Francis’ full address to the UN General Assembly,” YouTube, Sept. 25, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJXnTb47GEc [21] McCall, p. 135. [22] McCall, p. 15. [23] https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god-cannot-and-does-not-bless-sin/ 
