Confessions of a Catholic Writer

By Robert Royal Someone asked recently what it's like to be a Catholic writer these days. That brought me up short. Because the situation of a Catholic writer at present is pretty much like that of any Catholic – we're all bewildered by the many things now that seem to have passed beyond human, rational thought and action. Except, it's worse for the writer because he has to set down words to try to make some kind of sense about not only deep mysteries and moral controversies, but how they relate to our current chaos. The best thing he can do as he faces a blank sheet of paper – or more often now an empty screen – is to implore the Divine Mercy to send down a few decent sentences that might spread a ray of hope amid the darkness and noise. Our time is marked by what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called a "hermeneutic of suspicion" – about everything, in both the Church and the world. Which is not entirely misguided, so long as it doesn't become the only lens through which we view the world. But social media has had the additional effect of whipping up doubts and conflicts into what often borders on hysteria. On such "platforms," every event becomes either the final cosmic apocalypse – or a "new outpouring of the Holy Spirit." A Catholic writer has to tell what truth he can, soberly, and without fear or favor, in the face of all that, without adding to the hysteria or despair. But given the nature of modern communications, we're all barely afloat on a very iffy sea of half-understood facts, much-jumped-to conclusions, and therefore uncertainties about serious matters that call for caution, reflection, and considered judgment – an asceticism in the use of the word. In my experience? I've been physically present in Rome for almost every controversial Church event since Pope Francis was elected in 2013. There are some things about the past dozen and more years that I'm quite certain about amidst many large gaps and ambiguities. (When the distinguished historian Henry Sire's Dictator Pope about Francis appeared in 2018, I thought he already had the basic story at least 75 percent right. And still do.) But more often, especially in comments disseminated on social media, I've observed people guessing, usually badly, and seeing sinister motives – even conspiracies – where often enough Roman ignorance, laziness, and incompetence suffice as explanations. The papacy is a non-hereditary monarchy with a disproportionate share of palace intrigues. There have also obviously been efforts at heterodox coups in recent years that have largely fizzled owing to their inherent emptiness. (See under heading: "synodality.") The nearest analogy to all this is what George Orwell, that troubling truth-teller, said about the Spanish Civil War (which he covered in person as a reporter). It's even more true of various disputes in our social-media age: I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. ("Looking Back on the Spanish War") Most of this, now as then, is clearly a product of journalists and intellectuals wanting to feel passionately and say something significant about what they wish to see as a radical moral or political question – but abstractly, not in what is going on, verifiably. Most of the time, a few actual facts are spun into a "news" story or opinion piece, but then yoked to some grand "narrative" that is, at best, only loosely tethered to reality. People now also routinely make severe judgments of others online, at a distance – ou...