Radical Synodalists have rounded on Bishop Robert Barron after he went to the margins to speak with Jewish journalist Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, real named Benjamin Aaron Shapiro, is one of the most prominent journalists in the United States of America, working with Breitbart and The Daily Wire over the past decade.
Bishop Robert Barron is known internationally for his Word on Fire platform, which has seen him produce documentaries, release books and host interviews with prominent individuals. His recent interview with actor Shia LaBeouf.
Just as was the case when he sat down with ethnically Jewish LaBeouf, Barron came in for an avalanche of criticism for speaking with Shapiro.
Radical Synodalists did not hold back in their views, with one tweeting ‘What does is say about the relationship between bishops and their church?’
Another suggested that Bishop Barron was ‘not a friend of the poor’ for meeting with the Jewish broadcaster.
Another Synod supporter, in a complete rejection of Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate, suggested that the meeting with a Jewish man was ‘the AntiChrist’.
Another bizarrely mentioned that ‘He knows the demographic he wants’.
Another referred to Shapiro as a ‘liar’ and his colleagues as ‘weirdos’.
With the Synod claiming to welcome all, these sorts of comments will be yet another blow to its image as an exclusivist event.
Those criticising Barron would do well to remember Vatican II, which states:
Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
