Bishop Barron Slams Democratic Party's Leftward Shift and Borderline Communists

Bishop Robert Barron criticized 'borderline communists' in the Democratic Party and said its extreme leftward shift poses a serious danger to the American way of life, in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Barron leads the Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota and founded Word On Fire Ministries. He plans to speak at President Donald Trump’s 'Rededicate 250' prayer event on the National Mall this weekend. A high-ranking Catholic leader, he gained fame for defending Christianity and Western civilization on social media.

This January, Barron rebuked socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for praising the 'warmth of collectivism' in his inaugural speech. Barron posted on X, 'for God’s sake, spare me.'

In the Fox News Digital interview this month, Barron said Mamdani’s remark 'just triggered something in me.' He noted that some, even in the Catholic Church, call capitalism the 'economy that kills.'

'Capitalism, like all economic systems, is going to be flawed because it's made up of flawed human beings, but the economy that kills? Socialism is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people,' he said. He added that 'collectivism has been such a disastrous concept.'

Barron said he opposes socialism as a Catholic, since church social teaching condemns the theory.

He expressed surprise at the Democratic Party's extreme leftward drift in recent years, shown by acceptance of socialist candidates like Mamdani.

'We have a two-party system. If one of our two parties has gone that far to the left where explicit socialists, even, I would say, borderline communists, are being proposed as serious candidates, I think we've got a problem in our body politic,' Barron said.

As a bishop, he has watched with concern as Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, shifted from a fringe figure to the norm for new party members.

'When Bernie Sanders first emerged … I thought, ‘Well, he'll never go anywhere.’ But of course, he was quite successful,' he said. 'But to go from let's say Bill Clinton style Democratic Party to Bernie Sanders, that's a pretty big shift in a relatively short time.'

Barron urged Christians not to retreat into privacy but to stand against socialism.

'There are forces that want us to withdraw into privacy, to be on the margins of society. [But] it's especially now that the religious, I think, have to assert themselves in the public square,' he said.

To Barron, this involves talking about faith publicly with confidence, entering dialogue and debate, living faith openly, and engaging university culture and institutions without aggression or apology.

He called this public faith an unrealized dream of the Catholic Church’s Vatican II Council.

'What we have to fight for is a democratic civilization predicated upon objective moral value and finally upon God who presides over the very freedom that we exercise,' he said. 'Fight for that culture in entertainment and in politics and in communication and in every aspect of life. That is a cultural war worth fighting.'

Fox News Digital sought comment from Sanders and Mamdani.