Bishop Barron

 

Christ Rufo sends to me emailed publications that I subscribe to, and he sent one on 110/7/2023, entitled Weekend Listen, Bishop Barron on Faith and Ideology. I quote lines from the publication that interest me, and then comment on them.

 

Rufo: “I recently traveled to Minnesota to visit with Bishop Robert Barron, America’s most prominent Catholic intellectual. His Word on Fire ministry has brought the Catholic perspective to new media audiences . . .  On Gender Theory as a Neo-Gnostic Cult:

 

Bishop Barron: Do you find some of that neo-gnostic idea, the oldest heresy in the church that keeps reasserting itself century after century out, and the view that the ‘real me’ is hidden deep in there somewhere and the body is malleable, body can be changed according to the whims of the real inner self? And, of course, the Church recognized very early on—go back to Saint Irenaeus in the second century—that that’s gender, and identity. And I think that is part of the reason why so many Americans find themselves unmoored.”

 

My response: I believe Barron and Moore advocate the essentialist viewpoint about human nature, that it is basic, fixed, definable, solid, and permanent. Gender theory is anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist. There are only two genders and men and women are different from each other.

 

That is not to say that some people feel genuine gender dysphoria, and they should have our sympathy, but most of this faddish addiction of cisgender youngsters seeking to transgender, a is social media driven hysteria and copycatism for troubled teenagers looking for answers, which therapy and time will help most of them to grow out of.

 

I know nothing about neo-gnosticism, but I do know that we have basic genders assigned to us by God and nature at birth, but, as self-realizers, we can do so much to become who we want to be as self-realizers, as men come into touch with their feminine side and express it uniquely, and women come into touch with and express their masculine side. This self-realized level of taking our basic natures, and them customizing them as best we can is how, the spectrum of human roles to explore or adopt and personalize, does unfold.

 

Rufo does a nice job pointing out that gender theory, or neo-gnosticism, denies that gender is binary and fixed, backed by science and God. The gender theorists are anti-human, for to be pro-human is to listen to God’s plan for us, and that is, we are to live and procreate as men and women, and a few are intersexual, or transgender if self-gender identification and assignation, though still biologically a woman or a man.

 

“On the Secularization of Leftism:

 

Barron: The conspicuous lack of religious leadership struck me in the summer of 2020 when all the protests and riots were breaking out. Religious people were not involved in leading those movements and the movements were, in fact, explicitly anti-religious. When people say, ‘Oh, this is just another expression of what Martin Luther King was saying’—no, it’s not. This is another philosophical perspective.”

 

My response: The riots were street mini-revolts by secular, atheistic masses, infused with postmodernist Marxism, the current mass movement that they barely comprehend, this secularized Leftism is a fake religion, a substitute faith manifesting itself on the street in all of its pathological, destructive glory.

 

Rufo: “Absolutely, it’s an explicitly atheistic ideology from the beginning. They don’t appeal to the American Founding. They don’t appeal to any religious tradition. And I encourage people to look back at the old pictures from the 1960s civil rights marches—its people of a variety of racial backgrounds, dressed in their Sunday best, with nice hand-painted signs. It’s optimistic, hopeful, faithful. The speeches appeal to our best instincts and our best moments as a country. They were led by Southern Baptist preachers and the African-American churches. These are respectful, middle class people who are demanding recognition of their individual dignity.”

 

My response: I agree. The Baptists and pastor-led protests of the 50s and 60s were by reformers that were civilized, lawful, peaceful, nonviolent middle class Christian believers. By contrast, the rioters of 2020 were fueled by Leftist rage, hatred, a penchant for violent, property destruction, threatened violence to enforce surrender by those of the status quo, actual violence, and a desire to tear up society and people to bring about the revolution, their godless ideology, that, is at its heart, demonically orchestrated.

 

Rufo: “Compare this to the images of the crowds in 2020. Its people who, very frankly, are deranged, unwell, nihilistic. If you look at the slogans on the walls, it’s a very different tenor and vocabulary. It’s people who are masked and looking for destruction. If you look at the mugshots in Portland, Oregon, for example, it’s people who have nothing of the quality, even visually, as those civil rights marches of the past. Beneath the veneer of ‘civil rights,’ it was an atheistic, nihilistic, neo-Marxist ideology that sought to level all the structures of society.

 

My response: it seems that the civil rights movement of the 60s, godly and civilized, was reformist not radicalized to smash and overthrow society.

 

The rioters of 2020 were revolutionaries, offering Communist hell, their blighted utopian nightmare, to replace the great American system, needing some modest civil rights modifying.

 

“On the Inversion of Orthodox Marxism:

 

Rufo: This is the new status quo: to use orthodox Marxist terms, we have a hyper-capitalist economic base and a very left-wing, or neo-Marxist, cultural superstructure. These are the great tectonic plates of our society and they’re in a very strong opposition right now.”

 

My response: Rufo is mistaken here, in part, for our economy is mixed, still mostly capitalist, but deeply blended with socialism or governmental interference in the free economy. We have not been hyper-capitalist for 100 years or more. Still, he is right that our free-market economy is clashing against a neo-Marxist, cultural superstructure, but they intend to take us to a Communist economy and permanent one-party Bolshevik economy and totalitarian rule by their party elite, once they set up their soft dictatorship here.

 

We must offer a counter-revolution of near pure free markets, and small, strong, limited government people a culture set up, defined, and modified by a negotiated agreement among the rulers of society from the bottom up, 90 million anarchist individuators supercitizens, that have reached agreement for what the culture is, what is our metanarrative, and how shall our rulers be instructed to rule us.

 

Barron: “The weird thing is Marx thought the purpose of the superstructure was to protect the substructure. So capitalist economy would throw up around itself a protective. Now, as you are suggesting, I think correctly, they’re at odds with each other. The superstructure is at odds with the capitalist substructure. That’s completely unstable. I just wonder what bodes for the future because it goes against Marxist logic.

 

My response: Barron is sharp. Apparently, the Marxist term superstructure is the cultural story that justifies, surrounds, and undergirds the economic substructure. Usually, they align but in America the capitalist substructure, or economic system, is inconsistent with its Marxist superstructure or cultural story, and that clash is very destabilizing for a society. We need a Mavellonialist superstructure to go along with out free market economy within the political framework of our constitutional republic.

 

Rufo: “It goes against the orthodox Marxist logic, but, in one sense, you have a revolution on both fronts. You have a technological and economic revolution—an unprecedented increase in productivity in the economy. And then you have, actually, in some ways, a similar cultural revolution in family life, social life, conceptions of race, gender, and identity. And I think that is part of the reason why so many Americans find themselves unmoored. “

 

My response: Our cultural Marxists are seeking to overthrow the superstructure, but they seek to overthrow the substructure to, and, if they can divorce the American masses from their traditional loyalty to free markets, individualism and Judeo-Christian and Western customs, then the unmoored masses are desperate for answers, and ripe for conversion to cultural Marxism.