Plea for dialogue with Bishop Barron lacks reference to God, Father, Son or Holy Spirit

What's "on the table" now - Reflections on the conference on the occasion of the Pieper Prize being awarded to Bishop Robert Barron

Dr. Johannes Sabel, Director of the Franz Hitze Haus Academy, July 31, 2025

Just a few days after the weekend on which the conference and the awarding of the Josef Pieper Prize to Bishop Robert Barron by the Josef Pieper Foundation took place, it is appropriate, in my view as a representative of the Franz Hitze Haus Academy, which hosted the conference, to look back on what has happened and ask what this might mean for the Academy and, in the long term, beyond.

The Josef Pieper Foundation's symposium took place as a guest conference on the premises of the Franz Hitze Haus Academy. Bishop Barron had been criticized in advance from various quarters within and outside the church, particularly with regard to his relationship with Donald Trump, his view of queer people, and, more fundamentally, his understanding and practice of evangelization. Media attention was high in the run-up to the conference – Deutschlandfunk, WDR, Kirche und Leben, Tagespost, katholisch.de, and many others described and commented on the controversies surrounding the award ceremony.

The Academy's position was consistently that even critical positions and statements, which are visible or suspected in Bishop Barron's work, must nevertheless have a place within the Academy. I, as the Academy's representative, particularly emphasized the need for the opportunity to engage, discuss, and understand other, potentially even irritating, positions. This was not least due to the fundamental consideration that an increasingly polarised and heterogeneous society and church need places and forms of mutual understanding, especially when there are very diverging views. The Academy works with this fundamental understanding; it is part of its culture and its self-image. The conference took place under these conditions, which the Academy had publicly emphasized in various places beforehand.

The Josef Pieper Foundation decided during the conference process not to allow questions from the audience. No collaborative discussion took place. The speakers offered many, some unexpected, interpretations of Pieper, and the panel discussion with Bishop Barron, not least, suggested a number of questions that, in light of the public debate, would have deserved to be raised and discussed jointly. However, the path to dialogue was not made possible, particularly in light of the critical inquiries prior to the conference. In my view, this is a missed opportunity for the foundation, because it could have demonstrated that it is in tune with the present, perceiving its ambivalences, reflecting on them, and bringing them into dialogue. That this did not take place is irritating, especially in light of the philosopher Josef Pieper, who is a highly debate-minded person and whose name is of programmatic importance for the award ceremony. Apart from that, avoiding opportunities for discussion does not correspond to the idea and fundamental understanding of an academy that sees itself as a place of exchange and dialogue. The methodological exclusion of even a few questions at the conference seems like a discursive isolation from the discursive reality that had been so clearly evident before the conference.

The Pieper Foundation admitted certain media to the conference while denying accreditation to public broadcasters such as WDR. This also contradicts the public nature and fundamental openness to discourse of an academy – and reinforces the impression that the Pieper Foundation is concerned with discourse control. For the academy, this means that such regulations may no longer apply to guest conferences in the future.

On the other hand, it was noteworthy that no critics were present at the conference. Each may have their own individual reason for this – no time, no "desire" to be exposed to the expected form of theology or the expected view of church and society, etc. But formulating criticism solely in "distance battles" and then reinforcing this via Instagram posts, without taking the opportunity to form a direct impression of the person being criticized on site – does not indicate that direct argumentative exchange with a view to advancing knowledge is being given a chance. And it shows that there is apparently little effort on either side to move beyond the friend-enemy schema. Overcoming the friend-enemy schema should not be seen as an end in itself, for there are positions that are rightly irreconcilable, especially when it comes to questions of recognition, human dignity, and democracy. But not attempting to engage in direct dialogue with the other party, to exchange arguments, and to still have some faith in reason and our interconnectedness as human beings, worries me.

It shows that we have a difficult task ahead of us – as an Academy, as a Church, and beyond. It has become clear to the academy that our confidence in the possibility of a genuine dialogue at this event was too high. As an academy, we should have exerted significantly more influence on the structure of the conference vis-à-vis the Josef Pieper Foundation, ensuring that there is at least a phase in which questions and discussion are possible. I believe this would have ultimately been beneficial for all parties – the Pieper Foundation, Bishop Barron, the participants, the critics – because it would have made it clear that we wanted to engage. We could at least listen to each other and acknowledge each other in this simple way, as people with histories, perspectives, and questions. We missed this opportunity and also spared the Josef Pieper Foundation the opportunity to demonstrate its own willingness to engage in exchange and discussion.

In any case, the Academy will promptly take up and pursue the now so obviously posed question of how we can conduct appropriate discussions on polarizing, emotionally (often rightly) charged topics in a productive way, both within the Church and society, and for the benefit of all.

Source