In Appreciation of Bishop Barron, by Eric Sammons

By Eric Sammons, Crisis Magazine, June 5, 2025

Eric Sammons is the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.

I’ve been critical of Bishop Barron in the past, but he’s still one of our best bishops today.

Bishop Robert Barron recently appeared on the Tucker Carlson Show, in a wide-ranging discussion that covered prayer, evolution, AI, the New Atheist Movement, and about a dozen more topics. Naturally, the Catholic world was excited by a Catholic bishop—and one of our most well-spoken—appearing in front of such a large, and mostly non-Catholic, audience. How would he do? What would he say?

I was not immune from the excitement, but I admit I was nervous as well. You see, I’ve never been a Bishop Barron fanboy. I’ve even been a critic at times. In my book Deadly Indifference I detail my disappointment with Barron’s appearance on the Ben Shapiro Show in 2018. When asked point-blank by the Jewish Shapiro if he should become Catholic, Barron—the de facto Chief Evangelist of the Catholic Church in America—hedged and gave what I thought was a weak, ambiguous answer. I pointed it out as a tremendous missed opportunity, and I was worried something similar would happen on Carlson’s show. …

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