Thoughts on Truth and Sincerely Believed Error

I’ve been encountering a lot more conspiracy theories—though not by choice—on social media lately. The tendency always seems to be based on the taking the facts of a case and giving dubious interpretation to those facts. There might be liars out there who feed this information to those who believe it, but many of them seem sincere in their belief and are shocked if you question their ideas. Because it’s “obvious” to them, they think it should be obvious to everyone.

Of course, we can all think of examples among certain groups of people. The anti-Francis Catholics and the like immediately come to my mind. Others might immediately think of the COVID-19 deniers. But it goes way back. I don’t doubt that the people who believe Jack Chick tracts or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion get equally shocked by our disbelief, thinking their bizarre ideas are true. 

But other falsehoods are given more widespread credibility. I’ve seen people allege Christian conspiracies against whatever sinful behavior gets transformed into a “minority.” So, our objections to certain behaviors—especially by those who work at Catholic schools and can cause public scandal—is often treated as a sort of conspiracy to discriminate. Our teaching on contraception and abortion becomes a “war on women.” These are just as dubious as the rest of the conspiracy theories, but they are repeated and believed by many more than the wingnuts of society that we’re alarmed by.

In all of these cases, we have people who feel threatened by a certain Church teaching or government policy. They cannot perceive any other reason for that action than hostility to what they hold. That results in a belief that hostility towards X must be the cause for the position. It’s true we do need to beware of extremists and factional media who believe that legitimate policies or teachings are malicious. But we also need to beware of the mainstream media leading others to think this way about causes they simply disagree with.

Ultimately, we must scrutinize whatever we hear. Just because what we hear goes along with what we want to be true doesn’t make it so. Yes, our enemies can do evil, but so can our allies. And our allies can cause harm with good intention, but so can our enemies.

We cannot assume the worst of our enemies while being silent on the wrongs of our allies. Truth and charity are obligations for the Catholic. If we want others to speak truthfully and charitably about us (even if they’re sincere in believing their errors), we have an obligation to speak truthfully and charitably about others (even if we are sincere about believing our errors). That’s the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), and it applies to us even if others do not respond in kind. God will judge those who bear false witness against us, and He will judge us if we bear false against others.