CNA Newsroom, Jul 30, 2025 / 09:45 am (CNA).
Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau in Bavaria delivered a spirited defense of American Bishop Robert Barron while sharply condemning what he called “beige Catholicism” in Germany on Sunday.
The defense came as Barron received the Josef Pieper Prize in Münster on July 27 amid fierce protests from Catholic groups and political organizations.
Critics accused the American prelate of promoting “exclusionary identity politics” and cooperating with networks that “ideologically support autocratic political forces,” reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
Protesters — including the local Green Party, a diocesan lay association, and the Catholic youth organization BDKJ — staged a public vigil Sunday, citing concerns over Barron’s alleged support for U.S. President Donald Trump and anti-LGBTQ+ positions.
The Catholic-Theological Faculty at the University of Münster added its concerns, expressing “bewilderment” at the award choice.
Oster tackled the protests in his laudatio.
“When I hear how some voices in our country try to reflexively defame [Barron] as right-wing or as a supporter of Trump, such a categorization, which usually happens very quickly, tells us much more about the person making the judgment and often enough about the Church system and its media processes in our country than about the person being judged,” Oster said.
The bishop offered a broader critique of contemporary Catholicism in Germany, which he suggested has risked abandoning magisterial teaching in favor of cultural accommodation.
He described a phenomenon where “many in our Church have largely left behind binding doctrinal positions” on fundamental anthropological questions and sacramental theology.
Oster warned particularly against what Barron terms “beige Catholicism.” The Bavarian prelate described this as “a phenomenon in which the prevailing culture dominates the faith and adapts it to itself” without faith transforming culture in return.
This, he said, results in “a mostly well-financed Catholicism of appeasement” in Germany, which “has essentially lost its spiritual power and attraction.”
Oster said that much of the German criticism stemmed from discomfort with authentic evangelization. “New evangelization has no easy standing in our specifically German form of church,” he observed.
“Many find it annoying or suspicious. But because ‘new evangelization’ is at the heart of Bishop Barron’s faithful commitment, it seems almost inevitable to his critics that he must somehow come from the right-wing corner.”
Oster predicted a future reckoning: “In the foreseeable future, many more people will ask themselves: How can it be that Bishop Barron has such a reach in our country and has long been one of the beacons of hope for renewal among many young people in our country? How can that be, even though he is so loyal to the magisterium?”
The Josef Pieper Foundation noted Barron’s “unmistakable affinity for Pieper’s philosophy of religion” and his work to restore “an insight-supported access to the unabridged Catholic confession of faith” in contemporary missionary situations.
Barron, who has over 6 million followers across social media platforms and has received nine honorary doctorates, is the founder of the Word on Fire ministry, which reaches millions globally through digital evangelization efforts.
His signature exhortation is to not “dumb down the faith.”
The Josef Pieper Prize honors the legacy of the German Catholic philosopher (1904–1997), who was renowned for his accessible writings on Thomistic philosophy and his insights into leisure, contemplation, and the relationship between faith and reason.
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