I’ve encountered a tendency amongst many fellow believers—especially in more traditional quarters—to express skepticism about the need to read the news. The sentiment seems to be that the wordiness and accompanying matters of the world are distractions. Instead, so the argument goes, we ought to direct our minds to higher plains and the divine.
Such thoughts are understandable, especially in the face of much of the trivia that passes for “news” these days, not to mention the often anti-religious slant and aggressively progressive agenda of much of the mainstream media nowadays. But a tendency to overly focus on the otherworldly can come at the cost of taking part in the necessary daily battles we must face as Catholics rooted in the world. And at a time in which the world needs Catholics more than ever.
It was a friend of mine who first cured me of my own aversion to the news. With some pride I had told him that for several years the only newspaper article I had read was an article from an 18th-century paper describing a speech by Edmund Burke in the House of Commons. My friend was not impressed. As a Catholic, he informed me, it was, in fact, my duty to know what was happening in the world. How else could I pray for those who suffer, stay informed about the time in which we find ourselves, and better equip myself to change it for the better.
In a previous Catholic Herald article I cited Father Frederick William Faber, the English hymnwriter and theologian who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1845, and his point about reverent submission to the Church leadership of today. Yet his point was broader—and helps us in how to approach the intimidating noise and scale of today’s news offerings—stating that the essence of heresy lies in a “disobedient and antiquarian worship of some pet past ages of the Church, in contradistinction to the present age, in which a man’s duties lie”.
It is in the here and now that our efforts must be exerted, not in conjuring up an image of a world that no longer exists with its material trappings—no matter how much more comfortable it might be to “reside” there.
The idea of retreating from the world seems to have increased in popularity of late, especially following the publication of Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option, which suggests, as I understand it, that the faithful are meant to retreat into smaller communities and live together in prayer away from a world that has lost the plot.
We tend to romanticise this vision of devotion and contemplation, largely idealised through reverent notions of the Middle Ages. Those times were not, as many moderns have supposed, Dark, but nor were they as religiously ideal as their wistful defenders like to make out. The “either/or” mentality is easy to adopt, but rarely takes into account the complexities of life, both in the past and now.
Like us, the early Christians were men and women in the world. Although monastic life has brought us a lot—including the free market by some accounts, with many late scholastic friars and monks writing about economic theory long before Adam Smith—we have more in common with these early Christians than with recluse medieval monks.
St Gregory the Great reminded us of the fact that sanctity is not reserved for those in holy orders, writing: “The grace of contemplation is not something given to the great but denied to the lowly. Many great people receive it, as do many of the lowly, both among those who live apart from the world and those who are married. So if no state among the faithful is excluded from the grace of contemplation, anyone who guards his heart interiorly can be enlightened by this grace.”
Similarly, John Chrysostom, one of the early church Fathers who served as archbishop of Constantinople, wrote, “I do not say to you that you should forsake the cities, and leave aside the business citizens do. No. You should remain where you are, but practise virtue. In truth, I would prefer that those who live in the midst of cities should shine out on account of their virtue rather than those who have gone to live in the mountains.”
In other words, for most of us our lot is to live in the world, but not to be of it. That’s not an easy distinction to straddle. And when reading competing narratives in the news, it can seem difficult to discern what the truth is. Should we in the West side entirely with our allies in Israel, or have they gone too far through the scale of their counterattack into Gaza as some news outlets report? I cannot give you the answer, but only say that it is our duty to ask these questions and not disengage from the plight of fellow humans.
It is always to the divine that we must look to direct our lives. Even secular authors concede that such wisdom cannot be found here on earth. In his influential 2007 book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that there is no real advantage in reading the news if you want to predict the future or stay ahead of the game in understanding the world.
Nevertheless, if we want to fulfil our duties as Christians, approaching the news, with a critical mind, is far from antithetical to our mission. When doing so, we may well come to the conclusion that many media outlets are more of a hindrance than a help in understanding the world. One remedy is to support “alternative” options such as Catholic journalism (you could even subscribe to the Catholic Herald!). Or by reading competing narratives while approaching them through the light of the Gospel.
There is certainly plenty of ”fake news” out there—but the assertion that knowledge of the contemporary world is a hindrance to holiness is as bad a case of inaccurate news. Catholics need to stay up to speed with events, and to engage with the world as they find it.
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