Stop Assuming What Catholics Believe Based On Politics Or Internet Memes

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(OPINION) There are moments in journalism that stand out more than others. One of those moments is when a certain piece — whether it’s a news story, analysis or opinion — gets a lot of attention by a large group of people for good and/or for bad reasons. 

For a set of bad reasons, The Atlantic piece on the weaponization of the rosary was that piece for many Catholics and those who keep a watchful eye on media coverage of matters pertaining to the largest Christian denomination in the United States. 

The piece — not necessarily a news story, but it was not labeled as commentary or even analysis — became a viral conversation topic among many family and friends over the last week. While the issue of Christian nationalism is important to understand, the bigger discussion — and question I had to field — was more like this: What’s wrong with journalism these days? 

That’s the central preoccupation of many — especially those of us who have been doing this for decades. (For more on that, please check out Terry Mattingly’s post and podcast from this past Friday. This view of what was going on in this piece may shock you.) There were many lines from The Atlantic piece that stood out, but one that did most was this one: 

The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.

There’s the thesis of the piece, the connect-the-dots language linking strange behavior to current tensions in Catholic life in America. There’s plenty to unpack here, but the reality is that citing a few political websites claiming to represent Catholic thought and then adding a smattering of social media memes is no way to gauge what anyone really thinks and believes. These attitudes certainly are fringe, something easily proven when reading the wide array of Catholic media that provide accurate information about the church and what Catholics actually believe. 

Anyone can pervert a symbol, but is doing so a NEWS story? How widespread is this extremist behavior? These are all things you can’t quantify and certainly part of a job that The Atlantic team failed to do. The rosary has always been something the press has failed to understand or perhaps even feared. I wrote about that very issue back in 2017.

It remains invaluable to hear and read the viewpoints of Catholics across the doctrinal spectrum. Whether those people are writing for religious news outlets or have their own social media channels, the reaction to The Atlantic piece was swift and widespread — exactly the type of viewpoints and opinions that should have been contained in the original article. 

They weren’t included, of course. If anything, this article highlights the rise of one-sided reporting to spotlight a trend or issue. But reporting just one side of any story often portrays an inaccurate picture — again exactly the case when you read other viewpoints on the rosary. Here at GetReligion, this is called “Kellerism.” Catholic News Agency, in its coverage of the rosary story, reported this:

The article set off a frenzy of reactions among Catholics, ranging from amusement to grave concern over what some see as anti-Catholic sentiment.

The magazine later changed the article’s headline from "How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol" to "How Extremist Gun Culture is Trying to Co-Opt the Rosary." Among other edits to the text, an image of bullet holes forming the shape of rosary was replaced with a picture of a rosary.

These editorial changes, nonetheless, left the article’s thesis that there is a connection between the rosary and extremism intact. The author's contention was based, in part, on his observations about the use of the rosary on social media and rosaries sold online.

And yes, the article actually quotes experts that professionals at The Atlantic could have easily consulted with a few clicks of a computer mouse and a smartphone. Here is a sampling, starting with a Catholic scholar with an impeccable resume:

Asked to comment on the article, Robert P. George, professor of political theory at Princeton University and former chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told CNA:

"It looks to me like the guy who is politicizing the rosary and treating it as a weapon in the culture war is … Daniel Panneton. I know nothing about the guy other than what he says in the article. I hadn’t heard of him before. Although it’s hard to miss the classic anti-Catholic tropes in the piece, perhaps he isn’t actually a bigot. Maybe he just overwrought and needs to take an aspirin or two and lie down for a while."

Chad Pecknold, theology professor at Catholic University of America, told CNA the publication of the article points to a "theo-political" conflict in the culture.

"The politically elite core in left-liberal media hate Western civilization and they mean to topple every natural and supernatural sign of it. That’s why it’s not sufficient to simply run a piece on right-wing gun cultures, but they must tie it to something which is theologically central to the civilization they feel most threatens their progressive ziggurat. It’s a sign of the theo-political conflict which now grips us; even still, they severely underestimate the power of Our Lady to reign victorious over evil," Pecknold said.

Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, a Dominican priest of the Province of St. Joseph, told CNA, "The article is a long-running stream of inaccuracies, logical fallacies, and distortions.”

Over at Catholic Culture, the always quotable conservative Phil Lawlor wasn’t so forgiving in his assessment. Here’s the key section:

The intent of the article by Daniel Panneton is, quite obviously, to introduce the notion that a traditional Catholic prayer is a sign of extremism, with the corollary that people who pray the Rosary should be viewed with suspicion. Panneton hopes to alarm readers by reporting that many traditional Catholics, in addition to praying the Rosary, also use military metaphors to describe the struggle against evil, and some of them also own guns. Which more or less proves, he hints, that these people are a danger to society:

On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.

Unpack those two sentences, and you notice that Panneton is first stapling together the Rosary culture and the “absolutist gun culture,” and then drawing the conclusion that the Rosary culture is dangerous. Non sequitur. How, I wonder, could a prayer pose a threat to society?

To answer that question, Panneton invokes the ubiquitous Massimo Faggioli, who complains about a “Catholic cyber-militia that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church.” Aha! So the grave threat to society is posed by a cyber-militia, which presumably uses such dangerous weapons as Tweets and Instagram posts, rather than AR-15s and firebombs. And notice that the campaign is not aimed against anyone’s life or property; it is aimed against efforts to change the teaching of the Church. Thus the “rad-trad” Catholics portrayed by Panneton (in very vague terms; the article does not name names) are not a threat to anyone’s security; they are a threat to an ideology.

And yet that is enough. The custodians of liberal ideology cannot tolerate resistance, and so the rad-trads must be defeated, banished, isolated. And Panneton is not alone is taking this stand; the editors of The Atlantic must have been sympathetic; otherwise they would not have allowed the appearance of such an ignorant and illogical article.

Bishop Robert Barron, a theologian and author, took to his YouTube channel to dismiss the article. The takeaway from another frequent voice in media reports: This was “offensive” for “the insinuation that somehow the rosary as Catholics pray it is caught up in some sort of, you know, mindless militancy.”

To Barron’s point, the confusion over what Catholics believe isn’t limited to the rosary. There are many topics — from abortion to immigration and euthanasia to the death penalty — that put Catholics all over the political spectrum. This is why equating religion with political thought is often like trying to put a square peg into a circular hole. It doesn’t always fit so well. 

For a look at some hot-button topics, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops provides on its website a handy page dedicated to an array of topics. Every reporter or editor who ever wants to do a story about Catholicism and politics needs to have this page bookmarked.

At the same time, a recent piece comes to mind from New Jersey, one of the few places where the Synod on Synodality — a two-year process initiated by Pope Francis that asks Catholics around the world for their thoughts on the church — is being reporting on. Here’s what The Bergen Record reported in an Aug. 12 news story:

Thousands of New Jersey Catholics gathered over the past year in an unprecedented series of meetings designed to help steer the future of the church.

The consensus, officials say, was clear: The Catholic Church needs to open its arms more to women, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and others who feel marginalized by the faith.

The desire for more inclusivity was a major theme in discussions with 16,000 parishioners in four of New Jersey's Catholic dioceses, according to summaries released recently by each diocese. While responses varied widely, many at the listening sessions said they too often feel unwelcome. Participants also cited distress at the church's handling of the clergy abuse scandal.

Does this sound like a bunch of people The Atlantic described? Not at all. And before you proclaim that New Jersey is a politically blue state, you should also know that there are plenty of Republicans there as well. There are even political progressives who, on issues like abortion, support the church’s teachings for reasons that are consistent with their other stances on human rights — think this candidate for sainthood Dorothy Day.

As usual, Crux is a great place for context on what’s happening at the Vatican and how that reverberates across the world and in the United States. Here’s an observation by John L. Allen that reporters should know about. In his Aug. 17 column — aptly titled “Why politics may not be the magic bullet in terms of refilling the pews” — he noted the following:

It’s at least worth pondering the possibility that the religious decisions people make are driven far more by personal considerations – such as the experience they’ve had of an individual Catholic parish, the people who make it up, and how welcome they felt there – than by abstract matters of church politics.

By extension, maybe it’s not as simple as implementing a series of policy changes. Maybe, if Catholicism wants people to stick around, the battle has to be fought at the retail level, in direct pastoral care and attention, and not whether popes or bishops veer to the left or the right.

Granted, the U.S. isn’t the rest of the world. However, it’s worth noting that as Catholic membership in Germany has gone down the ethos in the German hierarchy has been fairly liberal, suggesting that mere ideological realignment may not be the magic bullet there either.

Perhaps the hard truth is that politics just doesn’t drive religious choices in the linear fashion we wish it did, and if we want more people in church, we’ve got to deal with them more as human beings rather than as voters.

That may not be the answer partisans in today’s religious debates want, but it’s at least worth considering whether that’s what the data is telling us.

Allen is correct that “politics just doesn’t drive religious choices in the linear fashion we wish it did.” Such a true statement, especially for the times we live in. I have said this before and I’ll reiterate it again: Seeking news and commentary from Catholic media is now a must read for anyone who wants to write about the church.

It’s clear that journalists who work for mainstream news publications don’t do this. Otherwise, they would know that there is more nuance to what Catholics believe and how they vote. Politics and internet memes often show a distorted lens of reality, much like a funhouse mirror. The best way to know what’s happening is through old-fashioned reporting and reading Catholic news websites. Had The Atlantic done this, the rosary story wouldn’t have been one at all.

This post originally appeared at GetReligion.