Bishop Robert Barron said Tuesday that the Harvard University chaplains made a complete and abject surrender by electing an atheist as the president of their association.

What does bother me, Bishop Barron wrote in an August 31 op-ed for the New York Post, is the complete and abject surrender on the part of the presumably religious leaders at Harvard who chose this man.

If a professed atheist counts as a chaplain which is to say, a leader of religious services in a chapel then religion has quite obviously come to mean nothing at all, he continued.

Bishop Barron is the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and founder of Word on Fire Catholic media.

Last week The New York Times announced that Greg Epstein, an atheist and humanist chaplain at Harvard University, was unanimously elected as the chief chaplain of the Harvard Chaplains, the association of more than 40 chaplains serving Harvard students of various religious denominations.

However, the Harvard Catholic Centre and a Christian alumni association took issue with some reporting of Mr Epsteins new role. The Harvard Catholic Centre clarified to CNA this week that Mr Epsteins role as chaplain facilitator is administrative, and has no effect on its ministry at Harvard.

There really is no influence in the role other than the fact that he has the title as the president as the Harvard Chaplains and that hes the liaison between that group and the president of Harvard,said Nico Quesada, marketing and media director at the Harvard Catholic Center, to CNA on Monday.

Mr Epstein will also convene all the university chaplains when they have matters to discuss, he said, and thus will be representing the entire group but hes not representing his own opinions if that makes sense.

The Harvard Catholic Center is the chaplaincy to the universitys Catholic students, based at nearby St Pauls parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is staffed by three priests serving as part of the universitys chaplains association.

Bishop Barron on Tuesday urged Harvard religious chaplains who elected an atheist to lead their association to [s]how a little self-respect. Being a chaplain has something to do with the worship of God and you shouldnt be ashamed to say it.

My point is, Bishop Barron said, that the relativising of doctrine has led, by steady steps through two centuries, to the situation at Harvard today: Even that most elemental of doctrines belief in God doesnt matter. One can still, evidently, be perfectly religious without it

Before his election as president, Mr Epstein previously served as the vice president of the university chaplains association. He has been the humanist chaplain at Harvard since 2005, and also serves as humanist chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During the 2020 presidential election, he served as the national chair of Humanists for Biden on behalf of humanists, atheists, agnostics, and others. He has authored the book, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, a response to prominent atheists on humanism.

CNA

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Election of atheist as Harvard chaplain president 'complete and abject surrender' Bishop Barron - The Irish Catholic