Instead, Bp Barron has chosen this moment to promote a USCCB pastoral letter against racism adopted last November in Baltimore, when the bishops were otherwise doing what they could to sidestep misconduct among their own. He posted the video below on YouTube yesterday:
I've said here that I'm eager to believe Bp Barron is on the side of the angels, but I'm always ready to be disappointed. I'm not sure when this was recorded; he speaks of the letter as though it were very recent, when it was in fact approved last November 14. I get the impression that he's not entirely comfortable with making the presentation -- the Baltimore conference was not a happy event, and the letter was not given much attention at the time.
Nevertheless, it's not hard to figure out why he's issued the video now, and I've got to hope he was pressured into doing it. I've noted here already that he's publicly characterized the circumstances of the Covington Catholic episode in Washington as "at best, ambiguous", when the archdiocese's own report and their bishop made it plain that the boys' conduct was "one might even say laudatory". I don't believe Bp Barron has changed his characterization, though.
But the Covington hoax that led to the investigation was only the first of two media stampedes to promote a fraudulent narrative that Americans have suddenly become violent racists. The lugubrious figure of Jussie Smollett has dominated the news cycle for a full three weeks immediately after the Covington hoax was disproven. The clear problem now is that the elites -- clearly including many bishops -- want to believe some kind of consistent truth behind the hoaxes even when the hoaxes themselves are shown to have been amateurish stunts.
As one commentator put it after the Smollett fiasco,
AP began its story, "The national outrage that simmered after actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked by people shouting racial and anti-gay slurs was fueled in part by celebrities who spoke out loud and strong on social media."There's another puzzling feature to the Smollett story that may also be behind why Bp Barron spoke now, or at least released the video now. One development the story reflects is the number of skeptical black commentators on YouTube, a remarkable number of whom are black Trump supporters, but others, whatever their political alignment, who feel the Smollett story damages the black community. This is not simply because false claims of racial attacks damage the credibility of those who may experience real attacks, but because Smollett is claiming dual victimhood as both black and gay.. . . A man was not beaten up. That is a good thing, is it not?
The only bad reaction is from liberals who are sad, sullen and silent because a man was not beaten up because the story shows homophobia and racial bigotry are dying.
These commentators make the point that gays, closeted or open, have never experienced anything like the level of suffering blacks have -- note what we've learned here, that for at least much of the 20th century (and probably longer), Adams House, an upper-crust dormitory at elite Harvard, has had a reputation for gay-friendliness, while blacks were not accepted at Princeton at all until the 1940s. Thus there's justifiable resentment among blacks across the political spectrum that gays are trying to hitchhike on the prestige of the black civil rights movement.
Indeed, these commentators make the point that Smollett, who has lived a life of privilege himself, promotes himself primarily as a gay victim, not a black victim. Another commentator, an outside observer in Rumania, makes the intriguing point that as far as he can tell, racism is so unusual in the US that Smollett had to outsource the role of white racists to black Nigerian actors! (Another commentator said that Smollett wanted to hire white actors, but people complained the cast wasn't diverse enough.)
Bp Barron doesn't mention either the Covington or the Smollett incidents in his presentation, and it's possible that it was recorded before either took place. But it's pretty clearly been issued in the wake of both, on the apparent desire of the liberal faction of bishops to sustain a narrative that's less and less sustainable of American racism, and perhaps as well to deflect attention from the impending failure again of the bishops to resolve their own scandals in the upcoming synod.
Indeed, I've got to assume some of the bishops would in fact like to hitchhike their gay rights agenda on the prestige of black civil rights, and this is part of the context of Bp Barron's video. This is a truly disappointing impression.
