No Country for Kings

Bishop Barron & the Catholic Performance of Masculinity

Originally posted on Substack by Max Kuzma and Emma Cieslik Mar 10, 2025

Digital Illustration by Maxwell Kuzma showing Bishop Robert Barron placing a crown on Donald Trump’s head

Catholicism is a religion that understands high liturgy. With rich fabrics and vestments, vaulted ceilings, and pungent incense rising in the still air, ritual and ceremony are infused into every moment, making it feel set apart, holy, and sacred. There's the fire of the Easter candle, the water in the baptismal font, the oil of confirmation, and the ashes that mark the beginning of Lent. This is God's house after all. A little pomp and circumstance feels appropriate for human beings wanting to connect more deeply with the divine. A sacramental life is tactile, a feast for the senses.

Note: This is the first post in a new series on masculinity, co-authored by myself and Emma Cieslik (bio to follow at the end of the piece). A proper introduction of this series (and Emma!) will be posted on this Substack this coming Wednesday, March 12, 2025.

Old government buildings with their soaring stone columns and specular marble floors can evoke similar feelings of awe and wonder, but the purpose or “end” of those feelings is much different than what goes on in church. Contemplating God's majesty is a very different posture than organizing human society, though certainly reflections from the former can inform the latter. To confuse the two, however, weakens both, leaving them less effective or meaningful overall.

A Catholic bishop attended Donald Trump's State of the Union address on March 4, 2025 (never mind that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is currently suing the Trump administration) and uttered some dangerous words, saying the event was familiar to him as a form of “liturgy.” For an ordained man in a position of authority within the church to not see the danger in erasing the distinction between church and state calls into question his understanding of what Catholic liturgy even is in the first place.

Bishop Robert Barron is a celebrity prelate with a substantial digital flock to add to his physical one: the Diocese of Winona–Rochester, widely seen as a demotion by the holy father with whom he has clashed before from his former post in Los Angeles. Barron's celebrity comes from the videos he's released on YouTube, which tend to deal more with art and culture than the type of tangible concerns outlined in the Sermon on the Mount, (Barron’s not the only one—as we will delve deeper into this series—Catholic YouTubers play a key role in the performance of hypermasculinity). Barron has also shown favor to interviewing or mentoring men who have been credibly accused of sexual assault or who are just alt right shills and grifters like Jordan Peterson. There's also Barron’s appointment of bodybuilders to positions of authority at his non-profit, Word on Fire.

Now with his glowing review of the State of the Union, apparently it's “mask off” for some old-fashioned empire worship. Barron referred to the State of the Union as a “liturgy of democracy,” criticizing democrats for a long standing tradition of pushback and heckling during the proceedings. But a bishop does not get to walk into Congress and call it a church. The effect would be similar to a Christian walking into a mosque and saying that the worshipers are doing it wrong. You can love God and the Catholic Church and desire heaven for those of different beliefs without making it all about you. Jesus did not call us to be judge, jury, and executioner–He called us to love God, love our neighbor, and repent and follow Him. And if you follow Jesus, He will lead you to the lepers, not the Pharisees.

There's a damning Venn diagram of interests that men like Bishop Barron possess. Love of hierarchical authority—namely one that essentializes American religious experience and conflates it with political authority i.e. Christian nationalism,
attraction to patriarchal religion. And a pattern of platforming predatory men.

What Baron is attracted to and therefore amplifies is liturgical status as exclusive.

What Baron is attracted to and therefore amplifies is liturgical status as exclusive. He is quick to decide what is or what isn't “really” Catholic, and it doesn't actually matter what Catholic doctrine says because the point is that he gets to be right. He gets to be morally superior. He gets to scold the Democrats for not participating fully with their applause, as if he's exhorting some local parishioners to volunteer for a church picnic. The proximity to power is the point, never mind what that power is being used for. I'm sure it's fine, you can always trust men in authority. Right?

The optics of it all matter to Barron too. He was giddy to rub shoulders with RFK Jr. and Ben Shapiro. All of these men have cultivated the art of masculine performance at the cost of their soul: they feed an image-hungry world without regard for who gets eaten up. And they perform this masculinity through social media channels, despite Barron criticizing social media as platforms that “produce an obsession with body image, looks, and popularity” that largely enabled his access to social power.

The role of bishop is essential to Barron's masculine performance, (which is likely why he didn't follow in the footsteps of Joesph Strickland, who denounced the pope and lost his Bishopry in 2023) but he embraces all male stereotypes that feature patriarchal authority. This is where the bodybuilders come in.

Bodybuilding is again not so much about the reality of being strong as much as it is about the performance of strength. This is the same logic for embracing the image of Christ as an uber-buff warrior king. They want Jesus to perform hyper masculinity, not limp-wristed acts of woke kindness on DEI folks. It is the conflation of masculinity with spiritual power that not only reinforces patriarchal religious institutions but also mandates spiritual leaders and men as a whole to make themselves in the image of an Ostentatio genitalium Christ.

This image of hypermasculinity within Christianity is not new—arguably it ties to Catholic theologian Leon J. Podles’ 1999 book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, but within Christianity it represents the policing of “proper” masculinity, promoting gender essentialism, within real life Christian men. To further this goal has been the creation of a hypermasculine Jesus, what some have called “Jesus as Rambo.”

Back in 2010, Derik Hamby criticized Christian pastor Mark Driscoll who described Jesus “as a prize-fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand and the commitment to make someone bleed.” According to Hamby, the hypermasculinization of Christ is not the solution to bringing more young men into the Church; rather it emphasizes a vindictive, violent God and this interpretation serves racist, violent Christian pastors by justifying their behavior. These men are part of the growing “Manoverse,” or a conglomerate of YouTubers, streamers, and podcasters like Ben Shapiro that are advocating for “bro” culture. One of these Manoverse influencers—Andrew Tate—has been accused of rape and sexual assault, yet on January 13th, Eric Sammons—editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine and self-proclaimed dad of #CatholicTwitter posted a picture of Fr. James Martin with the caption “why Catholic young men are attracted to Andrew Tate’s message in one image.”

X user John David Soriano replied with “well they can instead look to,” accompanied by a GIF of Fr. Mike Schmitz, contributor to Ascension Media, raising his eyebrows. Fr. Schmitz appeared alongside Matt Fradd, an Australian Catholic YouTube personality, for a talk titled “Elevate Masculinity” at the 2017 Steubenville Youth Conference. Upon finding his platform—his popular podcast “Pints with Aquinas,” Fradd appeared on Ben Shapiro’s channel this past August where similar ideas of Catholic masculinity surfaced.

Screenshots from X

To say that Andrew Tate—a criminal sex trafficker—is a more attractive model for young Catholic men than a literal Priest who is in good standing with the Pope but dares to encourage love and understanding for LGBTQ people is a serious inversion of values: image above all else—the aesthetics of spiritual virility—which is its own form of idolatry. And Trump recently posted a video with a golden statue of himself in it… not far off from overt idolatry!

This ornamental masculinity can also be seen in “everyday carry” posts that show the items a man carries everyday: bibles, keys, and wallet alongside handguns. I’ve even seen a tattoo of a rosary with the text, “bring me the weapon.” Never mind that these performances are only as substantial as shadows on the walls of Plato's cave. These are the masculinities of men who literally have nothing else. They scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with these scraps, and now they've making it everyone's problem.

Screenshots from Amarillo Globe-News and ToppDogg Tattooz

On January 10th, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Stating that he believes that the corporate world has become “culturally neutered,” Zuckerburg said that “I think embracing aggression has merits that are really positive.” Despite the tech industry’s persistent gender gap, Zuckerburg’s comments reflect the “Trump bro” phenomenon, or the growth of men rallying behind President Trump who they believe represents American hypermasculinity.

While Zuckerburg’s comments may seem disconnected from Catholicism, his push for “masculine energy” is actually a growing phenomenon among young Catholic men. It’s a performance of artificial masculinity.

On the political stage we of course also have Elon Musk: with sunglasses on indoors to hide his ketamine and coke stupor, revving a chainsaw on stage and wearing his child on his shoulders like a Kevlar vest in an enactment of government as WrestleMania spectacle, where both Trump and Musk play villainous heels trying to crush the rest of us. And the fact that these optics are just that—a drag performance of Christian, masculine energy—makes it so much more damaging to young men, especially young Catholic men, seeking their place in the world and finding role models that ritually abuse others to assert their own power.

The performance of masculinity within the Catholic Church, as embodied by figures like Bishop Barron, demonstrates a troubling conflation of religious authority with political power, ultimately reinforcing hypermasculine ideals that distort the true message of Catholicism—the true message of Christ. This embrace of power and dominance, often linked with patriarchal structures, serves more to idolize certain forms of masculinity than to foster the genuine love, humility, and service that Christianity calls for. The danger lies not only in the superficial performance of these ideals but in the consequences they have on young Catholic men, who may be led to believe that the true essence of manhood lies in dominance, aggression, and an exaggerated image of strength.

As the world becomes more consumed by the optics of masculinity, it's essential for the Church and its leaders to rediscover the radical, countercultural example of Christ, who called men not to power but to self-sacrifice, love, and service. Only then can we reclaim a vision of masculinity that is truly reflective of Catholic values and faithful to the transformative power of the Gospel.

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Thank you for reading this first installment of our new masculinity series! Our introductory post will be coming out this Wednesday, with additional installments in the series forthcoming.

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Co-Writer Bio
Emma Cieslik (she/her) is a queer, disabled museum worker and writer based in the Washington, DC area. She researches the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion, and serves as director for the Queer and Catholic Oral History Project.