The unique challenges of candidate Barron
Description
When the U.S. bishops’ conference elects a new president next week, the most famous of U.S. diocesan bishops will be among the candidates: Bishop Robert Barron, who is both the bishop of a rural Minnesota diocese, and the head of an international apostolate, with probably more reach and brand recognition than any other Catholic institution in the United States.
Barron’s position as leader of a global media apostolate makes him unique among the U.S. bishops, and an especially unique candidate to lead the bishops’ conference. But while the bishop’s leadership at Word on Fire presents some opportunities for the USCCB, it also presents some challenges. And the conference’s approach to handling the prospective election of an episcopal media superstar reveals as much about its present as about its future — especially regarding its commitment to transparency.
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Word on Fire is an immense apostolate, with nearly 27 million in revenue last year, a think tank, a huge social media presence, and a publishing arm. It has an extraordinary footprint, and is increasingly a significant force in the academic, catechetical, and devotional work of American Catholicism.
Barron is not a front-runner for the USCCB presidential position, but he is a candidate, and in elections, anything can happen — that’s why they count the votes!
In one sense, if Barron were to be elected president of the USCCB, his ability to marshall the resources of Word on Fire could broaden the work of the bishops’ conference, allowing it to draw from experts with versatility and take advantage of Word on Fire’s resources to take up projects quickly. When he has been head of USCCB committees, Barron has already shown a willingness to make available the resources and personnel of Word on Fire to assist the bishops’ conference.
In that way, a Barron presidency could offer the USCCB a kind of versatility it has never had before — coupling the gravitas and officialdom of the episcopal conference with the entrepreneurial tenacity of Word on Fire’s start-up culture, possibly giving the conference more flexibility on major initiatives.
But Barron’s fame could also present challenges for the bishops’ conference. At the helm of Word on Fire, the prelate is quick to comment on social and political issues; part of Word on Fire’s work seems to be a kind of charging into the fray, with Barron saying often that his aim is to bring the Gospel into conversation with the reality of contemporary experience. At times, this leads to controversy.
Even apart from the substance, Word on Fire’s is an approach temperamentally at odds with the conference’s general culture of reserve, and its practice of broad staff and episcopal weigh-in before statements are issued, with even very short statements or relatively uncontroversial ones given numerous drafts before issuance.
Those issues could be resolved, of course. And both externally and internally at the USCCB, there are Catholics who would prefer to see the conference become more flexible in its approach to public engagement, and might well welcome Barron’s use of social media at the conference.
But even if he might offer a refresh, the broader challenge in Barron’s public engagement would be even attempting to differentiate his profile as president of the bishops’ conference from his public engagement under the banner of Word on Fire. In truth, it would almost certainly prove ineffective for the conference’s public relations arm to aim at distinguishing between Barron statements on USCCB letterhead and the rest of his public profile — meaning three years of headlines beginning “USCCB leader says” to describe whatever Barron was doing on social media, or on his podcasts.
For the bishops who think Barron’s public profile meets the needs of the moment, that reality might well be a selling point to his possible presidency, but others will see it as a ceding of the conference’s collective voice to “the world according to Barron,” as one bishop put it to The Pillar.
But quite apart from the public profile of the U.S. bishops’ conference, there is a more prosaic issue that could be a challenge for the bishops’ conference in a potential Barron presidency. And the conference’s handling of the issue to date points to its ongoing difficulties with an ecclesiastical discipline long promised in recent years, namely transparency.
The publishing wing of Word on Fire has become in recent years a force in both academic and popular Catholic publishing, with more than 150 published titles, and more than 7 million books sold.
And Word on Fire is about to become a uniquely important player in liturgical publishing, after it announced last month that it had been selected as one of two approved publishers for a long-awaited new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours, prayed at least twice daily by clerics, religious, and many lay people — with the new edition expected to hit bookshelves sometime before 2030.
Word on Fire has already held a license from the U.S. bishops’ conference to print popular Liturgy of the Hours single-use booklets, designed seemingly for families and parishes, but its expansion into a text required for thousands of Catholics puts it in a new position — and it’s reached that position through a license granted by the USCCB.
The terms of that licensing arrangement have not been made public, but it seems likely to be a financial boon for both organizations — the books will no doubt be both high-quality and expensive, with some funds accruing to the USCCB as part of its licensing arrangement terms.
In short, Word on Fire has become a significant partner with the USCCB in a project where there will be revenue for both organizations— a situation which would seem to present the prospect of conflict of interest if Word on Fire’s head is the USCCB’s president.
If elected, Barron could have consistently good intentions towards the welfare of both organizations, and still find himself in conflict-of-interest situations as the publishing question gets underway — especially if Word on Fire aims to partner with the USCCB on the publication of other liturgical texts whose copyright is controlled by the bishops.
In the small world of the Church, conflicts of interest are sometimes inevitable — which is why the USCCB’s guidelines for diocesan financial managers makes clear that each diocese in the U.S. should “establish a conflict of interest policy” to “help establish and create a proper control environment” — in other words, to ensure that even those with the best intentions are not placed in a position in which dual interests presents an administrative challenge to good judgment.
Indeed, while Word on Fire has not responded to The Pillar’s questions about a potential conflict of interest, the USCCB has.
USCCB spokesperson Chieko Noguchi told The Pillar that “the USCCB’s conflict of interest policy does anticipate and identify procedures in the event that the President himself may have a conflict in a particular matter, so it does not present an obstacle to seeking election.”
But while Noguchi said there are measures in place to identify conflicts of interest and address them, she did not delineate or provide conference policies, declining to provide additional information beyond her initial response to The Pillar.
In other words, while the conference is clear that it has a policy to ensu
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