Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Bishop Robert Barron this week issued a sharply critical statement of what he described as “inane” controversy involving a German Catholic institution from which he received an award in 2025.
Barron received the Josef Pieper Prize in Münster in July 2025, a decision that generated protests from Catholic groups and political organizations. The protesters criticized the bishop as promoting “exclusionary identity politics,” among other allegations.
The German news website katholisch.de reported on Oct. 21 that Barron’s 2025 receipt of the award was “still having repercussions.” It cited the Josef Pieper Foundation as reportedly having “acknowledged mistakes” in how it handled the controversy; the foundation is also reportedly developing a conference “on Barron and his theology.”
In a statement posted to X on Oct. 22, Barron quipped: “Gosh, I’d love to attend this debate. But I’m pretty sure I have a MAGA rally to attend that night…”
“If you have any doubt that the German Catholic academy has fallen into clownish irrelevance, look no further than this inane and ginned-up ‘controversy,’” the Chicago-born prelate wrote.
He critically dismissed the “protest” over his receipt of the award as having consisted of “25 desultory septuaginarians holding signs and a statement from the theological faculty of the University of Munster.”
He described that faculty statement as “an undergraduate level of sophistication … which betrayed not the slightest indication of any familiarity with my work.”
The bishop, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Oct. 23 via a spokesman, further suggested that the German foundation’s namesake Josef Pieper was “turning in his grave” over the controversy. The foundation also did not immediately respond to a request for comment from EWTN News.
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.
Amid the July 2025 controversy, Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau in Bavaria delivered a defense of Barron while sharply condemning what the Bavarian bishop called “beige Catholicism” in Germany.
The country has been home to “a mostly well-financed Catholicism of appeasement,” he argued, which “has essentially lost its spiritual power and attraction.”
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