Australian Bishop Creates His Own Viral Meme - With a Tough Message for His Brother Bishops

Well, it’s happening. We now have bishops making their own memes. Talk about 21st century Catholicism!

This isn’t the first time Bishop Richard Umbers, auxiliary bishop of Sydney, has dabbled with memes online. We previously reported how the new bishop has built up quite the following on social media and regularly shares memes – from the serious to the silly.

And he even wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last fall about how he “makes memes for Jesus.”

But his latest creation seems to have struck a serious nerve in the Church.

Here’s his post on Twitter:

For those who don’t know, the picture comes from Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, when J.R. Smith (bottom right) seemingly misunderstood what was going on in the game and made a bad play, upsetting his teammate Lebron James (left). The image has been used thousands of times with different text. In this case, Bishop Umbers added “Laity” next to Lebron James and “Bishops not speaking out on moral issues” next to J.R. Smith.

In other words, he’s saying that the laity in the Church can often be upset that bishops are not more forcefully speaking out on moral issues, as though the bishops are missing the importance of what’s going on in the world.

So far on Twitter, the post has been retweeted 179 times and likes 739 – and growing.