Sep 24, 2026 · 1 hr 23 min · 10 segments
Heidi, Daniel, and David continue their explorations of the new papal encyclical, and they bring a critical eye to Bishop Barron's recent attacks on so-called "toxic empathy." Heidi brings us an…
Edward HahnenbergGuest
David DaultHost
Dan HoranHost
Heidi SchlumpfHost
Bishop Barron has already been serving on the Religious Liberty Commission, which focuses on domestic policy.
These appointments make Bishop Barron among the most visible and central religious leaders in the current Trump administration.
Listeners will probably also be familiar with Bishop Barron's long tenure as the founder of Word on Fire, a Catholic-focused media ministry and publishing company that he started when he was serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago.
He produced and was the host for the very popular television series Catholicism for PBS and has gone on to produce and host a variety of video, podcast, and print resources on ecclesial and cultural issues.
Recently, Bishop Barron has become a very visible critic of the Democratic Party, as well as so-called woke cultural issues.
Through Word on Fire, he has platformed a number of figures on the cultural right and far right, including Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and he has praised the late Charlie Kirk as, quote, an apostle of civil discourse, unquote.
Again, as NCR has reported, Pope Leo made remarks this past May in which he lent his support for empathy, saying, quote, David, I've focused on empathy here in this introduction, but you have mentioned to me that you see this as part of a larger set of issues surrounding the ministry of Bishop Barron.
and I want to frame my remarks here in light of something that we're going to be discussing later in the program, and that is this encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.
And in paragraph 25, Pope Leo lifts up and notes that St. Pope John Paul II invited us to examine honestly the times when acquiescence was given to, quote, And that's really the framework that I want to give to this attack on empathy.
Because I think that Bishop Barron is part of a longstanding Christian tradition, a group of people that come into the Christian faith because it gives them an opportunity to find ways to do violence against others, to create isolation, to create feelings of distrust, to create even sources of attack.
And so when we are looking at his criticism of empathy and this kind of wider conversation of I don't think that anyone looking at the late 20th century and early 21st century is going to look at the Catholic Church and say, they have just been too nice.
And in fact, this is not just Pope Leo, but Pope Francis before him, criticizing the Church for failing to go, as Pope Francis would say, beyond the streetlights.
into the spaces where those that have been maligned by the Church, those that have been left behind by the Church, those that have been harmed by the Church, are living their lives and trying to have their existence and to create something that we might call flourishing.
And so if it sounds like I'm being critical of Bishop Barron here, I am, because as we have noted in passing, comments in the past here on the Francis Effect, it is so often that Bishop Barron will be in the midst or even in the center of a real kind of cultural maelstrom.
Trans people not being able to go to the bathroom or people being literally rounded up off of the street here in America and put in concentration camps, some of them being killed or dying in malign ways.
Bishop Barron has already been serving on the Religious Liberty Commission, which focuses on domestic policy.
These appointments make Bishop Barron among the most visible and central religious leaders in the current Trump administration.
Listeners will probably also be familiar with Bishop Barron's long tenure as the founder of Word on Fire, a Catholic-focused media ministry and publishing company that he started when he was serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago.
He produced and was the host for the very popular television series Catholicism for PBS and has gone on to produce and host a variety of video, podcast, and print resources on ecclesial and cultural issues.
Recently, Bishop Barron has become a very visible critic of the Democratic Party, as well as so-called woke cultural issues.
Through Word on Fire, he has platformed a number of figures on the cultural right and far right, including Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and he has praised the late Charlie Kirk as, quote, an apostle of civil discourse, unquote.
Again, as NCR has reported, Pope Leo made remarks this past May in which he lent his support for empathy, saying, quote, David, I've focused on empathy here in this introduction, but you have mentioned to me that you see this as part of a larger set of issues surrounding the ministry of Bishop Barron.
and I want to frame my remarks here in light of something that we're going to be discussing later in the program, and that is this encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.
And in paragraph 25, Pope Leo lifts up and notes that St. Pope John Paul II invited us to examine honestly the times when acquiescence was given to, quote, And that's really the framework that I want to give to this attack on empathy.
Because I think that Bishop Barron is part of a longstanding Christian tradition, a group of people that come into the Christian faith because it gives them an opportunity to find ways to do violence against others, to create isolation, to create feelings of distrust, to create even sources of attack.
And so when we are looking at his criticism of empathy and this kind of wider conversation of I don't think that anyone looking at the late 20th century and early 21st century is going to look at the Catholic Church and say, they have just been too nice.
And in fact, this is not just Pope Leo, but Pope Francis before him, criticizing the Church for failing to go, as Pope Francis would say, beyond the streetlights.
into the spaces where those that have been maligned by the Church, those that have been left behind by the Church, those that have been harmed by the Church, are living their lives and trying to have their existence and to create something that we might call flourishing.
And so if it sounds like I'm being critical of Bishop Barron here, I am, because as we have noted in passing, comments in the past here on the Francis Effect, it is so often that Bishop Barron will be in the midst or even in the center of a real kind of cultural maelstrom.
Trans people not being able to go to the bathroom or people being literally rounded up off of the street here in America and put in concentration camps, some of them being killed or dying in malign ways.
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