So as the Regime unleashes a wave of terror around the world–attacking Venezuela to steal oil and stick the profits in Trump’s care (and claiming an unearned Nobel Peace Prize along the way) as well as threatening NATO allies with war because the Manchild knows that stealing a Peace Prize is not the same as winning one)…
…he is also vengefully unleashing a wave of terror right here at home. He has sent his Gestapo thugs to rape, beat, kidnap, and murder innocents, both citizen and non-citizen. In addition to asphyxiating babies and children with tear gas (which is, fun fact, an abortifacient), he is also directing his ICE orcs to racially profile victims in what are now know as “Kavanaugh stops“: a power given him by the conservative Catholic whores on the Supreme Court. One such victim was this woman:
Speaking of conservative Catholic whores, here is Bishop Robert Barron, who happens to be a bishop in Minnesota, bringing his gimlet eye to bear on the real issues that really matter to his terrorized flock:
It is, no doubt, a great consolation to a Muslim woman traumatized into a seizure to know that the man responsible for her brutal abuse had such high respect for her religious liberty as he did so.
Not that Bishop Barron was silent on the subject of persecution of minority populations in his state. Nosirree, when ICE drags elderly US citizens out of their houses half-naked and into sub-zero weather and puts guns to the heads of their children, all for the crime of being Hmong and having no criminal record…
…Bishop Barron springs into action and targets the real threat: the mayor of a city a thousand miles away:
or, if that doesn’t gin up a Panic du Jour, Somalis!
But that is not the limit to his courage.
Bishop Barron also bravely suggests that the Tyrant, “perhaps for the time being” keep up the violence, beating, rapes, kidnapping and murder against plausible-seeming victims while the harsh glare of the cameras is on the Regime and, evidently, let the goons resume going apeshit on everybody once national attention dies down. And, for a capper, he tells the victims of this vicious war on a a subject population that a state-sponsored campaign of terror is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who!
I have been crushingly disappointed by many a Catholic I once looked up to. But no Catholic has disappointed me more than this one.
Where Peter Is performs a brief autopsy on Bp. Barron’s credibility as a witness to the Faith.
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22 Responses
Bishop Barron is a Trump sycophant. All he does is praise Trump. It gets him on various boards and commissions, and a lot of favorable right Wing press. Also, Republicans seem to think he is somehow a spokesman for American Catholics. Well, he does not speak for me.
Paul Fahey made a substack post yesterday comparing these last Barron tweets to the 1963 “A Call for Unity” letter, which resulted in MLKs “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”.
We do well to study the actions of Empire, and their enablers, in history….
One of the critical turning points for the late great Pope Francis, was being sent to the poorest parishes in the back country of Argentina. He suffered with those people. Many were addicted and living in irregular situations due to the chaos that grinding poverty creates.
There were no wine and cheese soirees, no crystal chandeliers, no musing over fine works of art.
Bishop Barron and Robert Francis Prevost are about the same age. The cardinals overwhelmingly chose a nobody who had quietly and faithfully served in Chiclayo, Peru for a reason.
Maybe some time in a place like Guayaquil Ecuador would recalibrate our wayward bon vivant, Bishop Barron.
I mean, in theory Winona-Rochester kind of fits that bill. Midwestern, plenty of rural working class people, etc. Lots of opportunities for good everyday local bishop-ing there. The diocese Leo served had in the past been controlled by Opus Dei (including recent bishops). He carefully cleaned up and reformed it.
You reach a point where you realize some of these guys are going to push their own agendas, no matter where you send them.
To be a guy who is going to “push their own agendas, no matter where you send them”–is the difference –in priestly vocation between Robert Prevost and Robert Barron.
They are both from Chicago, both scholars and exceptionally gifted, –but worlds apart.
“And if I know the language of angels but have not love…”
I think a poor village in Latin America would make or break Bishop Barron. Gold in the fire. Maybe he would regain some of the joy and fervor of his youth.
@taco…I think you got it. Humility. Being ground into the humus with victims of our Empire I suspect creates a different perspective.
Machado is no Nobel Prize winner. She’s a despicable woman, a fascist who has arguably incited violence (see “La salida”) and even signed on her support to a dictatorial coup d’etat attempt in Venezuela in 2002, and who’s been “advocating” for “US intervention” in Venezuela (i.e., propagandistic, ‘regime change’ slaughter for mammon and power) for decades, even going as far as enticing Donald Trump Jr. on his podcast with the notion that this “intervention” will US businessmen get rich. She has also backed Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and praised Israel for their “war” (genocide) against Palestinians. She also had no problem groveling to Trump and FREELY giving him the award in the White House. Plenty of people have protested her award. Simply put, this is not someone you would want to babysit your children or grandchildren.
Then again, if Henry Kissinger (war criminal), Barack Obama (war criminal who has also congratulated Machado for her award “win”, which should tell you everything you need to know about the “opposition” to Trump) and Machado can win the award, then Trump should have every right to be jealous, I guess…
Except that she, y’know, *is* a Nobel Prize winner.
You know exactly what I meant, Mark: she’s not *WORTHY* of the award, any more than the coward you didn’t spare a single second calling out in your blog entry. Talking about Trump “stealing” that award from Machado (who gifted Trump that award anyway, in one of the most desperate displays of sycophancy you’ll ever see) is like complaining about theft amongst a bunch of petty mobsters. He didn’t exactly rob from the modern-day Desmond Tutu here.
(Not to mention that Machado’s NP “candicacy” received a major boost from Trump’s right-hand man Marco Rubio, who is obviously *such* a saint and has absolutely *zero* hidden agendas or evil motives; of course had Machado to gift Trump the award in her “gratitude”…)
Two things can be true at once. He did, in fact, steal her Nobel, which she did, in fact, win and she did, in fact, abase herself grotesquely currying favor with the Manchild.
I’m not sure if you are aware of it, but I am not your enemy. You however, certainly act like you regard me as one. Every word you say to me drips with rage and contempt. It is, alas, one of the most common features of leftist Puritanism to bayonet your own troops for insufficient purity. Try using a carrot instead of a stick. If you treat even those empathize with your point like shit all the time, you will continue to occupy that delightful niche of the Lone Prophet Speaking Truth, but you will not be acting in truth or love, just narcissism. Believe it or not, I am aware of the flaws of capitalism, racism, and the structures of sin endemic to America. I appreciate you stooping down from Sinai to tell me Martin Luther King loathes me as much as you do and I appreciate your talent for ventriloquizing that. But the main thing that comes through is not building the Kingdom, but simply your contempt for me, who do not know you from Adam, but who thought you offered a perspective that needs to be heard. I’ll be happy to have you keep posting. But I hope you will dial back the mysteriously personal contempt and loathing you seem to have for me. I’m doing my best here. Consider working *with* allies instead of reflexively treating us like shit.
Sorry Mark, but after spending the last decade or so on your blog having no problem forcefully critiquing the MAGA sub-cult and even persons within the cult (which you SHOULD do), you don’t then get to turn around and cry “contempt”, “please try carrots”, and “Leftist puritanism” when your OWN terrible politics are now called to the carpet. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? Your reply doesn’t help at all, because it reveals that you’re indeed well-aware of other voices (including white voices) that recognize the systemic blight of “Americanism” and want to eradicate it, but YOU strangely and largely avoid those voices (as well as my posts, which you could’ve engaged in good faith from before, but didn’t until now only to complain about “ally”-attacking, which I’ll get to in a moment). Instead of listening to those voices, you continue to parrot the liberal/Democratic party line. Which is why you had no problem saying this last year in a statement that sums up your continued failure to read the “country”-wide room:
“Here’s the reality about living in a democracy: If you did not vote for Harris, you voted for… all this.”
Since you’ve shown (or want to show) that you’re not just posting out of honest ignorance, then I’m sure you already know that ~40% of eligible voters didn’t vote for EITHER of these losers. Instead of asking seriously asking WHY, however, even ~10 years after the Dems have deliberately played Lucy and the football with their voters, you trod right along with their usual party line of “lesser evil-ism” (or lessening evil, a Catholic principle that you badly apply to the benefit and delight of the Dems). This is a regression from your own political views before Trump even entered the presidential spotlight.
It’s also a hallmark of the white moderate (as well as racism) to automatically assume he or she is an ally when, in fact, he or she is not. Your own actions NOW show that you wouldn’t have supported King back THEN, who made white moderates and liberals squirm with their refusal to break out of their racist, imperialist conception of the US and the world. That’s why you keep sidestepping my actual point about Machado (as if I don’t know that she technically won the award) so you can maintain your myopic focus on Trump/MAGA, who is only a manifestation of a much BIGGER problem that you still don’t want to address.
YOU are part of the cult. YOU are the white moderate, Mark. Fix it.
Got it. You could have have had way better, but because it was not perfect, you prefer instead to stand amidst the ruins and play the Lone Prophet of Absolute Political Perfection. Enjoy posturing. I will continue thinking politics the Art of the Possible and not believing in making the perfect the enemy of the good while you keep demonizing those who fail to immanentize the Eschaton.
And, for the record: You did vote for Trump. Good job.
Machado is just trying to suck up to Trump to get appointed as the new dictator for Venezuela. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
It’s funny watching people like her grovel and debase themselves before another evil dictator and walk away with nothing at the end.
I also laughed when MAGA tried to excuse the Venezuela kidnapping and piracy as some kind of move to “liberate” the Venezuelan people. Maduro’s party, and agenda, is being left in charge with the understanding that they will let Trump loot the country of its oil.
But either way, the Nobel Peace Prize is worthy of no respect. They give it out freely to warlords, war criminals and the architects of genocide. They’ll probably award Trump one of his own at some point as part of a deal to not invade NATO allies. They’ll likely give one to Putin and call him a “peacemaker” when he decides to leave 20% of Ukraine for another day.
I very, very briefly talked about how USians should be viewing other countries here (https://markpshea.com/2026/01/22/mark-what-do-you-think-of-the-american-solidarity-party/#comment-15418). USians unfortunately tend to believe every single thing that their billionaire-bought media tells them about the world, which is both obviously a lie and also weakens their ability to identify abuses where they actually exist, both domestically and internationally. But you’re 100% right about Machado and the Nobel Prize being a joke. At least you see the clear problems here.
(NATO shouldn’t be around, by the way. They’re not interested in “defense”; they’re a a war-mongering institution that, even by the West’s own depraved standards, is WAY past its sell-by date.)
“Good job” for what, Mark? Caping for the “American” empire and its “two-party” dictatorship? You can keep that praise for yourself.
You’re not going to save it, though.
I’m not interested in saving the American empire. I’m interested in not destroying the world. You appear to be interested in being the Last Righteous Prophet Standing Over the Ashes. Narcissism is a helluva drug.
Narcissism is calling ~40% of your own electorate “Trump voters” even though they didn’t vote for Trump.
But sadly you don’t seem to be too interested in NOT destroying the world, either. Because the party you falsely believe “lessens evil” certainly is.
Roger that. You demand utter perfection or let the world burn. Classic leftist Puritanism. Smort!
Has anyone noticed that in group photos with Trump and Vance, Marco Rubio looks like a hostage?
It might have something to do with the fact that Rubio’s parents were not citizens of the US when Rubio was born in the US. The 14th Amendment, though, states that one born in the US, even of non-citizen parents, is yet a citizen.
I think Trump wants to delete the 14th Amendment’s protection of such citizens.
The good Bishop, with his incessant praise of Trump is a favorite of the Administration. They look to him as a spokesman for American Catholics. I wonder just how far he will go in his quest to be Trump’s lapdog?
The good Bishop has made a Faustian bargain. His primary allegiance is to Trump. This will not end well.