Bishop Barron Responds To Democrats Minimizing And Belittling Prayer After Annunciation Catholic Church Shooting
Bishop Robert Barron who presides over the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Southern Minnesota responded to Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey and his minimization of prayer following the horrific school shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church.
Following the shooting at the Church that took the lives of 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski, Frey launched an attack on prayer telling members of the media during a press conference, “And just don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers, right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.”
Frey’s comments were then amplified by CNN’s Dana Bash who said, “Forget about thoughts and prayers, these kids were literally praying when they were murdered through a church window.”
Former Traveling Press Secretary to Barack Obama and White House Press Secretary to Joe Biden Jen Psaki took it a step further. She posted on X, “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is seemingly attempting to position himself as a Presidential candidate in 2028, also echoed Frey’s comments on X writing, “These children were literally praying as they got shot at.”
Bishop Barron spoke to Fox News and rebuked Frey’s comments telling the outlet that they were “completely asinine.”
He then explained, “Catholics don’t think that prayer magically protects them from all suffering. After all, Jesus prayed fervently from the cross on which he was dying.”
“Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God, which strikes me as altogether appropriate precisely at times of great pain,” he elaborated. “"And prayer by no means stands in contrast to decisive moral action. Martin Luther King was a man of deep prayer, who also effected a social revolution in our country. This is not an either/or proposition.”
The Bishop also shared, “We know that God is all-good and all-powerful, and yet we also know that there are wicked people in the world who do terrible things. And so we must say that the just and merciful God permits some evils so as to bring about a good that we might not be able immediately to see. God is faithful in his love, but the ways of his providence are often inscrutable to us. We also know that, in Jesus, God journeyed all the way to the bottom of our suffering, accepting, as St. Paul said, 'even death, death on a cross.' We cannot always understand why God permits evil, but we know for sure that he accompanies us in our suffering.”
Bishop Barron reiterated these comments in an appearance on Fox & Friends saying, “I think they don’t understand the nature of prayer. They’re treating prayer as if its some kind of magic protection from all evil, and, you know, Jesus himself prays from the cross on which he’s dying. We pray in the midst of suffering. We raise up our minds and hearts to God. To praise him, yes. To thank him, but also to seek his help in these times. But we don’t think of prayer as some magical protection. And some of this rhetoric strikes me as that. ‘Well, they were praying, but still bad things happened to them.’ Well, no serious Christians thinks that prayer plays that role.”
Democrats shocked a priest said priest things.
Alltogether better than getting a mob together and killng the wrong person. Cause thats allways worked in the past.
If Democrats had expressed their position by saying, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." (James 2:26, KJV) right out of the gate, that would have been fine. It would have been an astute observation and respectful of the Christians who were murdered.
Because their true source of authority is themselves and not God, they just said it from their own mouths and (conveniently) omitted anything about faith or spirit. By claiming authority for themselves, they also claim the authority to say what "deeds" are called for, and (conveniently again) the only "deed" that Democrats prescribe is to disarm the American citizenry, leaving us as defenseless as Europeans when they import state-subsidized criminals to globalize our neighborhoods.