Bishop Barron Says Marxist Ideology is Affecting American Political Leaders

Articles | February 17, 2026 | by Catholics for Catholics

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He mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Rep. of New York, who allegedly criticized culture.

By Catholics for Catholics

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Rep. of New York, has been both lauded and criticized for her comments during the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

But what caught Bishop Robert Barron’s attention was AOC’s Marxist slant during her comments, he said. He liked Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s impassioned comments regarding Western civilization and its bedrock found in the Catholic Church, but did not like that Cortez criticized the culture that spawned the best of modern western life.

“Just last week, Marco Rubio gave a talk that I thought was really good in Munich. He was talking about the shared culture of Europe and America. He referenced gothic cathedrals and Dante and Shakespeare and even The Beatles,” Barron said during a video Post on X, regarding Rubio’s speech at the Munich conference. “His point was, we got to get beyond just our political differences and find our sources in the culture that unites us. And then he took a further step that was very much in line with Pope Benedict the 16th and Christopher Dawson, namely that culture is grounded in cult at the root of all cultures, something like religion. He wasn’t afraid to reference the Christian faith as a key element in giving rise to the shared culture of. Europe and America.”

After Rubio’s speech, Barron, who is the Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and the founder of Word on Fire, said he was struck by AOC’s criticism of Rubio’s comments and how she downplayed culture, calling it thin and ephemeral. Instead, people should pay attention to the class struggles, AOC said.

The Chistian Culture gave us the Christian Civilization aka the West.

Very well said, Bishop Barron @BishopBarron We hope @AOC listens to what you say here! https://t.co/HEV62Kb5jJ

— Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 (@CforCatholics) February 17, 2026

“It’s right out of the Marxist playbook,” Barron said. “It’s the culture that gave us all those great figures that gave us the rule of law, that gave us respect for the rights of the individual, that gave us our democratic political system, that gave us the university system.”

But to criticize culture for allegedly being malleable is banal, Barron said. Of course, it sometimes changes but that does not mean you cannot identify the key elements within a culture, he added.

“But to characterize culture as thin is a Marxist move.” Barron said.

But what concerns Barron is that more political leaders in the U.S. like AOC and the current Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, are unapologetically Marxist, the Bishop said. And like Marx, he fears that their first target could be religion and God.

“The first thing that the Marxist tyrannies went after in most cases was religion. I’m getting a little concerned that in some of these leading figures in our own politics, a Marxist philosophy is taking hold. As a religious leader, this is concerning me quite a bit,” Barron said. “Take a look. Everybody attends to the language. In a way they’re telling us who they are and what they’re for, and I think that should be very concerning to everybody. God bless you.”