“Bp.” Robert Barron tells Jewish Man: No need to become Catholic, Jesus is only the “Privileged” Way

Setting the Word on fire…

“Bp.” Robert Barron tells Jewish Man: No need to become Catholic, Jesus is only the “Privileged” Way

Someone once said that what’s new about the “New Evangelization” of the Vatican II Church is that they never get around to actually evangelizing.

That would be bad enough, but as the Novus Ordo Sect’s rising media star, “Bishop” Robert Barron, demonstrated on a special edition of The Ben Shapiro Show the other day, the reality is much worse: The New Evangelization is actually an Anti-Evangelization, in which souls are not merely not taught the Gospel but are actually taught a false gospel (cf. Gal 1:8-9) that confirms them in their unbelief and tells them they need not convert to Catholicism if they wish to be saved.

This is no exaggeration. Have a look at the scandalous answer Barron gave when his host, the Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro, asked him directly what the Catholic Church teaches about the possibility of salvation for people like him. The tragedy begins at the 16:20 min mark and ends at 18:09:

We won’t fully transcribe the whole train wreck of an answer, but we’ll quote the salient portions.

Shapiro asks:

What’s the Catholic view on who gets into Heaven and who doesn’t? I feel like I lead a pretty good life, a very religiously-based life, in which I try to keep not just the Ten Commandments but a solid 603 other commandments as well. And I spend an awful lot of my time promulgating what I would consider to be Judeo-Christian virtues, particularly Western society’s. So, what’s the Catholic view of me? Am I basically screwed here?

Before we look at how Mr. Barron responds, let’s look at how a Catholic would answer this question. A Catholic would say something like this:

Mr. Shapiro, I have no doubt that you are of good will and are sincerely trying to lead a virtuous and God-fearing life, but ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, we have been deprived of the divine life which we need to have in our souls to be able to enjoy God’s Presence forever in Eternal Bliss. For this reason, try as you might, your attempts at keeping the commandments, however many in total, are necessarily doomed to failure. You were conceived in original sin and thus deprived of the supernatural grace you need to make it to Heaven, and even keeping all of the commandments cannot make up for that. In addition, you have sinned in the past and you will sin again in the future, and so it is clear you have already failed in your effort to keep all the commandments. This is why we all — we who are the physical offspring of Adam and Eve — need a Redeemer.

Only the Redeemer could expiate the offense Adam and Eve committed and repair the privation of supernatural grace they transmitted to their progeny. They offended an infinite God and therefore incurred an infinite debt. The violation of God’s law that they committed could only be expiated by infinite Atonement. But what finite being should be capable of rendering infinite Atonement? It is impossible to do for a mere creature.

God, who is all-just, demands that proper expiation be made. But God is also merciful, and therefore, instead of leaving man to his misery and to face his eternal punishment in hell, God took pity on us and decided to provide the remedy Himself. Thus the prophet Isaias foretold: “Say to the fainthearted: Take courage, and fear not: behold your God will bring the revenge of recompense: God himself will come and will save you” (Is 35:4).

Thus God Himself became the Redeemer, and this is Jesus of Nazareth, God’s very own Son. He is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity become incarnate. This Incarnation — a hypostatic union of the Divine Nature of God the Son with a created Human Nature from the house of David — was also prophesied by Isaias: “Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour” (Is 45:8). The Dew from Heaven, the Just One whom the clouds rain, is the Divine Nature, and That which buds forth from the earth that opens, is the Human Nature. That is why King David, though he knew the Redeemer would be his descendant, called him “Lord” (Ps 109:1; cf. Mt 22:41-46).

God sent us His Son, the Redeemer, to render on our behalf an infinite Sacrifice of Atonement for sin to the Most Holy Trinity. This He was to do by suffering the Passion, as foretold by Isaias (Is 53) and in the book of Wisdom (Ch. 2), and by offering Himself to be slaughtered on the Cross as the Passover Lamb of the New and Eternal Covenant, before rising again from the grave. This Sacrifice of God’s only Son was foreshadowed by Abraham, who, obeying God’s command, took his only son to be sacrificed, laid wood on his back (Gen 22:6), and said: “God will provide himself a victim for an holocaust” (Gen 22:8).

With Jesus Christ’s Sacrifice on Mount Calvary, all that was foreshadowed by the Temple sacrifices and the Mosaic ceremonial was fulfilled, and the Old Law ceased. This was signified by the rending of the veil in the temple in Jerusalem the moment Christ died (see Mt 27:51).

It was most fitting that man should be redeemed in this way. Being truly God, Jesus was able to render an infinite Atonement to the Trinity on behalf of mankind. Being truly man, He was able to render that infinite Atonement on behalf of mankind.

To benefit from this Perfect Sacrifice which Jesus Christ rendered on the Cross on Mount Calvary, all men must have Its merits communicated to their souls. The first condition for this to happen is that we must believe (see Jn 3:16; Mk 16:16; Heb 11:6). We must believe everything that God has revealed, especially that He is One God in Three Divine Persons, that He became incarnate in Jesus Christ, that He suffered and died for our sins, that He rose from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sent the Holy Ghost to sanctify our souls.

This Faith is a supernatural gift which is infused into our souls through grace, and this same grace enables us also to hope and to love, all three of which are necessary for salvation. Nothing we do has any supernatural merit before God if we do not have Faith (see Heb 11:6). We are condemned either to despair or to presumption if we do not have hope, for “we are saved by hope” (Rom 8:24). And if we do not love, if we do not have supernatural charity, we are “nothing” (1 Cor 13:2), for we are commanded to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves for God’s sake (see Mk 12:30-31), else our Faith is “dead in itself” (Jas 2:17).

To prove His Messiahship, Christ worked countless miracles, including the raising of dead men back to life, and ultimately, raising Himself from the dead. Jesus’ Messianic dignity is likewise confirmed by the fact that after His arrival, all prophets ceased. God sent no more prophets as He had done “at sundry times and in divers manners … in times past” because now He “hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world” (Heb 1:1-2).

Now Christ, once He had ascended into Heaven, did not leave us orphans. He sent the Holy Ghost and established a hierarchical society of men with the mission to make disciples of all nations (see Mt 28:19-20) and to teach, sanctify, and govern His sheep. This society He instituted to be the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), the Ark of Salvation to which all must belong if they wish to be saved, just as all who wanted to be saved from the Deluge in the days of Noah had to be inside his ark or else perish. This society is called the Catholic Church, because it is the universal (Greek: katholikos) Church established by God for all of mankind.

I would like to recommend to you a little booklet by Tertullian, For the Conversion of the Jews, which shows how Christ fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies. In addition, I urge you to read the apologetics material by the convert David Goldstein and the conversion story of Alphonse Ratisbonne as well as that of Eugenio Zolli, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome.

Ben, Jesus Christ is your Redeemer also. He has already redeemed you, but this Redemption is of no avail to you for as long as you deny Him (see Mk 16:16; Mt 10:32-33; 2 Tim 2:12): “This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12). Let your Redeemer, therefore, also become your Savior. Apart from the grace of Christ, which cannot be obtained without Faith, nothing you do will save you (see Jas 2:10).

I implore you, therefore, be blind no longer and see! See that the Redeemer foreshadowed in your own Scriptures (the Old Testament) is Jesus of Nazareth, who suffered and died for you and for all men so that the curse of Adam and Eve would be taken away from your soul and His divine life be infused into it abundantly (cf. Jn 10:10), to your eternal happiness and His eternal glory.

This is how a Catholic would respond to Ben Shapiro’s sincere question about the possibility of his eternal salvation.

By contrast, look at how Barron answers Shapiro’s question whether he, as an Orthodox Jew, will be damned if Catholicism is the true religion. The “great evangelizer” says:

No. The Catholic view — go back to the Second Vatican Council, [which] says it very clearly. I mean, Christ is the privileged route to salvation. I mean, God so loved the world He gave His only Son that we might find eternal life. So that’s the privileged route. However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the Christian Faith can be saved.

We’ll have to interrupt Barron here because this is intolerable: Christ is merely the privileged route to salvation!? What an audacious blasphemy!

How wrong this is can be seen, not just from the Scripture text Barron himself quotes, which says nothing about a privileged route whatsoever and in fact, in its unabridged full quotation, indicates the opposite: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting” (Jn 3:16). Barron conveniently left out the underlined part, which makes clear that unless we believe in Christ, we will perish. This same inconvenient truth is taught even more explicitly in Mk 16:16: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.”

There are, then, not two different routes, a first class privileged one for Catholics and then an economy class for all the rest, both with the same destination. Christ was rather clear on that: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6). Our Lord did not say: “I am the Privileged Way, and the Truer Truth, and the Better Life.” In fact, to the unbelieving Jews specifically he said: “[I]f you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sin” (Jn 8:24).

What Barron is spouting is the heresy of indifferentism. It was roundly condemned by Pope Gregory XVI:

Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism” [Eph 4:5] may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him” [Lk 11:23], and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate” [Athanasian Creed].

(Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical Mirari Vos, n. 13; underlining added; bold and italics removed.)

This is exactly what Barron is telling Shapiro, although in the following words he attempts to make it sound somewhat Catholic:

Now they’re saved through the grace of Christ, indirectly received. So, I mean, the grace is coming from Christ. But it might be received according to your conscience. So, if you’re following your conscience sincerely — or in your case, you’re following the commandments of the Law sincerely — yeah, you can be saved.

Here Barron tries to smooth over his indifferentism by claiming that those sincere practitioners of apostate Judaism are saved only because they receive grace from Christ our Lord in an indirect way. Clever though this idea may be, it has no support in Catholic Tradition or Sacred Scripture, nor in the magisterial pronouncements of the true Catholic Church, whose last known Pope was Pius XII (d. 1958).

So, what is Barron ultimately telling Shapiro? He’s telling him that as long as he’s trying his best to be a good person (“maintain morality”), he’s good to go, he will go to Heaven, his salvation is assured, courtesy of that “indirect” grace of Christ. That is heresy!

Evidently noticing that the subjectivism he’s preaching implies a kind of relativism, Barron attempts damage control:

Now that doesn’t conduce to a complete relativism. We still would say the privileged route, and the route that God has offered to humanity, is the route of His Son. But no, you can be saved.

Ah! So it’s not a “complete relativism”, only a partial one. Good to know. And there comes that “privileged route” again, which has no support in 1,900 years of Catholic teaching. But even there he cannot keep his lies straight, because he contradicts himself. If “the route that God has offered to humanity, is the route of His Son”, then obviously any other routes are not “the route of His Son”; and yet he also insists that those who take other routes are still saved by the grace of Christ, who is the route God offers to humanity. So in the end it is only one route, then, even in Barron’s convoluted thinking? Then why does he say Christ’s route is merely the privileged one, rather than the only one?

Alas, Barron proceeds to one-up himself. Here’s what he says next:

Even — Vatican II says — an atheist of good will can be saved. Because […] when I follow my conscience I’m following Him, whether I know it explicitly or not. So even the atheist — Vatican II teaches — of good will can be saved.

Following Christ by simply following your conscience, no matter how poorly formed? Wow! The world is full of followers of Christ, and they don’t even know it.

By saying that “even the atheist … of good will can be saved”, Barron is fully in line with his boss, “Pope” Francis, who said the exact same thing in April of this year. Remember?

The continual appeal to the condition “if you follow your conscience”, in addition to being false and misleading, is also beside the point. We are all sinners, and even if our consciences were the ultimate norm of all morality, the fact would remain that many times we simply do not follow our consciences. We sin. We do wrong. We fail to love God or our neighbor as we should. And this is true for everyone, whether it be Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or atheists.

So the real question is: What happens if one of those “indirect route” takers does not follow his conscience? Then what? How will he find forgiveness apart from Christ, apart from supernatural and perfect contrition? Knowing Barron, perhaps he would simply pull out an “indirect forgiveness” joker and consider the problem solved.

The “good atheist” who follows Christ without knowing it by following his conscience — that is the perfidious “anonymous Christian” doctrine of Karl Rahner (see Robert C. McCarthy, A Critical Examination of the Theology of Karl Rahner [Buchanan Dam, TX: Carthay Ventures, 2001], pp. 23-27). It is in harmony with the Vatican II error of the primacy of conscience.

Barron makes it seem as though conscience is God telling every man what is to be done and what is to be avoided. The true Catholic teaching on conscience, however, is simply this:

[Conscience] is an act of the intellect, judging that an action must be performed as obligatory, or must be omitted as sinful, or may be performed as lawful, or is advisable as the better course of action. Thus, we have four types of conscience — commanding, forbidding, permitting, counseling.

Conscience is not, therefore, in the strict sense, habitual knowledge of right and wrong. This is moral science. Neither is conscience in the strict sense an habitual attitude toward moral problems, although we use the term sometimes in this sense, as when we speak of a scrupulous conscience or a lax conscience. But in the true sense, conscience is an act of the practical intellect, concerned with a particular action which one is contemplating doing or omitting in the future. (Many people, particularly non-Catholics, regard conscience as an emotional faculty. They “feel” that something is right or wrong, and are guided in their conduct by this feeling. Of course, this norm is entirely unreliable. The more intelligence and the less feeling enter into conscience, the more likely it is to be correct.)

(Rev. Francis J. Connell, Outlines of Moral Theology, 2nd ed. [Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing, 1958], p. 38; italics given.)

It is true that conscience is a norm of morality, since it is a dictate of the practical intellect: “The voice of conscience is the authoritative guide of man’s moral conduct” (Rev. Thomas Slater, A Manual of Moral Theology, vol. 1, 5th ed. [London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1925], p. 29). However, a man’s conscience is not the ultimate norm of moral conduct by any stretch: “Not that the individual conscience is independent of all authority…” (A Manual of Moral Theology, p. 29). It is, rather, what is called the “proximate subjective norm” of morality. By contrast, the remote objective norm “is the eternal law of God [and] the proximate objective norm is the natural law…” (Connell, Outlines of Moral Theology, p. 20).

Barron is trying to place conscience above everything, even above the Gospel and Divine Revelation. In 1952, Pope Pius XII condemned this false view of conscience, which was already making its way into the Church by means of false teachers, who were promoting what the Pope called the “new morality”, also known as situation ethics or ethical existentialism:

The new ethic (adapted to circumstances), say its authors, is eminently “individual.” In this determination of conscience, each individual finds himself in direct relationship with God and decides before Him, without the slightest trace of intervention by any law, any authority, any community, any cult or religion. Here there is simply the “I” of man and the “I” of the personal God, not the God of the law, but of God the Father, with whom man must unite himself in filial love. Viewed thus, the decision of conscience is a personal “risk,” according to one’s own knowledge and evaluation, in all sincerity before God. These two things, right intention and sincere response, are what God considers! He is not concerned with the action. Hence the answer may be to exchange that Catholic faith for other principles, to seek divorce, to interrupt gestation, to refuse obedience to competent authority in the family, the Church, the State, and so forth.

(Pope Pius XII, Address Soyez les Bienvenues, n. 7)

Pope Pius proceeds to denounce this false new morality — which, incidentally, is also what underlies Francis’ Amoris Laetitia — as “alien to the Faith and Catholic principles”.

Tragically, in his conversation with Barron, Shapiro exhibits more or less the attitude of the Pharisee in the Gospel who went up to the temple and prayed: “O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess” (Lk 18:11-12). But he was not justified (see verse 14). However sincere Shapiro may be in the observance of 613 commandments, it will not merit eternal salvation for him because “whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all” (Jas 2:10).

The entire Old Covenant was meant to teach the people of Israel that they cannot save themselves by their own natural strength, that without God’s supernatural grace, it is not possible to attain eternal salvation. The purpose of the Law was to convict people of sin, to show them their neediness and weakness before God. And so St. Paul explained to the Galatians that “by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Gal 2:16). In fact, “if justice be by the law, then Christ died in vain” (Gal 2:21). Indeed! For had the Law been able to justify, then there would have been no need for a Redeemer.

In short: A merely natural goodness does not suffice for us to be able to enter God’s supernatural kingdom. Ours must be a supernatural goodness, and this can only be communicated to us in sanctifying grace, which cannot be had apart from Faith, hope, and charity.

“Bp.” Barron has committed not only a grave sin against God but also a grave injustice against Mr. Shapiro. Here he had the opportunity, served to him on a silver platter, to explain to this man, who is obviously very intelligent and seems of good will, that his observance of the Mosaic law is in vain and will never be able to merit him salvation if He does not convert to Jesus Christ. What does he do instead? He tells him, basically, that he is just fine as an apostate Jew, and that, as long as he is sincere in his beliefs, he will be saved inspite of his unbelief. As the profound theological explanation for how this can be, Barron proclaims that it will simply be Christ saving him anyway.

In other words: Be whatever religion you think is true — or none, as in the case of atheists — and in the end it will be Christ who saves you. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the New Evangelization in all its glory. Welcome to what the New Theology (Nouvelle Theologie) of Vatican II has accomplished. The heroic work of the Church’s missionaries was in vain. They could have simply announced to the pagans to keep following their consciences.

By teaching this false doctrine, the “great evangelist” Barron has blasphemously made Jesus Christ into a sort of soteriological stooge, who will save souls regardless of whether they have accepted His Truth, mercy, and grace, as long as they were convinced they didn’t need it. According to this perverted view, Christ can and will admit souls of merely natural goodness into supernatural bliss, even though they have not been made holy through His grace but are defiled with sin, in complete contradiction to Apoc 21:27: “There shall not enter into it any thing defiled….”

Barron is putting forward a kind of Pelagianism, a kind of salvation by human strength alone, which would imply the heresy of Naturalism. He tries to get around that by claiming that as long as one is sincere about it all, Christ will supply grace nonetheless. In other words, it is salvation by subjective sincerity.

Apparently sincerity is automatically transformed by God’s grace into a vehicle effecting salvation. This is the false Modernist gospel of Vatican II, and the pseudo-bishop is preaching it with a passion. Translation: “Don’t bother with Catholicism if you don’t want to. You are fine in whatever religion you choose, just make sure you are sincere about it.”

This is the anti-gospel that allows a “Pope” to kiss the Muslim Koran and a Mother Teresa to help Hindus become better Hindus rather than Catholics. It is what Pope Pius XI denounced as “that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule” (Encyclical Mortalium Animos, n. 2).

Barron’s thesis also runs afoul of the following two errors condemned by Pope Pius IX:

[CONDEMNED:] Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.

[CONDEMNED:] Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.

(Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, nn. 16-17)

Barron has reduced the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church to utter meaninglessness, as Pope Pius XII warned and lamented 68 years ago: “Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation” (Encyclical Humani Generis, n. 27). Were the great Mgr. Joseph C. Fenton still alive, he would rebuke Barron for trying to “restrict the meaning of the Church’s necessity for salvation to the fact that the gifts of grace whereby a man actually achieves salvation really belong to the Church” (The Catholic Church and Salvation [Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1958], p. 127).

It is telling that Barron bases his theology of salvation on the Second Vatican Council — the Modernist robber synod — because he obviously can’t get this heretical and nonsensical teaching from genuine Catholic doctrine. For example, it was a given that Barron wasn’t going to quote the 15th-century Council of Florence:

[This Council] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

(Council of Florence, Bull Cantate Domino; Denz. 714)

The Council of Florence didn’t bother to name atheists as excluded from the Church because it was no doubt inconceivable to the council fathers that anyone could put forward a doctrine so monstrous and stupid as the one Barron proposes, to wit, that even atheists, as long as they are of good will, could be saved by the God whom they denied and with whom they wanted no part!

To a man still searching for the true religion, what Barron said to Shapiro clearly conveys that he need not worry about examining the claims of Catholicism until the very end, for it (supposedly) teaches that even if he is in error, as long as he is sincere about it, his salvation is assured. This is truly an infernal, diabolical doctrine that Barron is preaching, and it is indeed Vatican II to the core. It is the precise opposite of evangelization!

At the same time, we must be fair and acknowledge once again that what Barron preaches is entirely in agreement with the doctrine of his “Pope”, Francis, who has made clear on numerous occasions that he does not seek people’s conversion to Catholicism — and neither does Benedict XVI:

• Francis: “Not interested in converting Evangelicals to Catholicism”
• Two more Protestants confirm Francis told them he’s not interested in converting them
• Francis told Anglican Tony Palmer NOT to convert to Catholicism
• Francis: Converting the Eastern Orthodox a “Great Sin against Ecumenism”
• Francis on meeting with his Jewish rabbi friend: “Neither of us attempted to convert the other”
• As “Cardinal” Ratzinger, Benedict XVI told Lutheran NOT to convert

Conversion to Catholicism? It’s optional at best. Conversion to clean energy? Now that’s a duty! It’s the Vatican II religion. That explains it.

Before we end this lengthy post, a few more words about who this pseudo-Catholic Robert Barron is.

Barron was a “priest” in Chicago until 2015, when he was appointed by Francis to serve as auxiliary “bishop” in the Novus Ordo archdiocese of Los Angeles, California. In the Modernist Sect he is considered a great and model evangelizer, one who uses social and traditional media to spread knowledge and love of the Roman Catholic Faith (ouch!). He founded an apologetics ministry called Word on Fire and produced a 10-part documentary grossly misnamed Catholicism, which aired on PBS and is available now on DVD and streaming. More recently he has founded the Word on Fire Institute. Barron is the author of numerous books, including the most recent Arguing Religion: A Bishop Speaks at Facebook and Google.

The Word on fire? “Bishop” Barron at work…

Some already consider Barron the new Fulton Sheen, who was a telegenic Catholic priest and later bishop who captivated and edified even secular audiences with his Catholic educational progams on American radio and television for decades before Vatican II. (Unfortunately, when the Modernist revolution began from the top in 1958, Sheen fell in line very quickly and became a mouthpiece promoting the Novus Ordo religion, but that’s not our topic now.) When Modernists like Barron are taken for heroes of the Catholic Faith in the Vatican II Sect, you’d hate to find out what Joe Sixpack in the pew believes.

Of course, for the cover of his misnamed Catholicism documentary, displayed above, Barron used the gorgeous Gothic-style Sainte-Chapelle church in Paris, a remnant from the days of true Catholicism. This is simply deceptive advertising on his part, for the churches of the religion he preaches look more like space ships, medical offices, or like the cathedral he himself now has to call home, the “Our Lady of the Angels” abomination in Los Angeles, which sums up architecturally the lasting theological legacy of “Cardinal” Roger Mahony, who commissioned it. It is nothing short of aesthetic terrorism.

Truth in advertising:
How come Barron didn’t use this as the cover for his work promoting the Vatican II religion?

Since Barron continually appeals to the Second Vatican Council for his theology, it is only fair that what he sells as “Catholicism” should also reflect the true architectural legacy of that infernal council. Shouldn’t it?

So now we know what Barron understands by “proclaiming Christ in the culture” (words found on the Word on Fire home page) and “proclaiming the power of Christ” (the subtitle of his book Word on Fire). When asked directly about the most important topic there is — “Can I be saved in any religion or must I become Catholic?” — he tells people, basically, that it really doesn’t matter, as long as they are sincere about it. After over 50 years of Vatican II, this is where they’re at in the Novus Ordo Church.

Robert Barron — we might call him the “Robber Baron” since he steals potential converts — fits the description given by St. Paul: “For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ” (2 Cor 11:13). Pray for this dangerous pseudo-bishop; but even more so, pray for the poor souls who fall victim to his false doctrines.

Salvation is by Faith, hope, and charity, not by being sincere in one’s lack of these infused virtues.

Tragically, some people will find out the hard way.

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