No, Virginia, blogs are not the magisterium. 7QT XXI, seriatim.

his is real­ly a post about the New Evan­ge­liza­tion and how blogs fit in (and how they do not), but I must go through some set-up first. I had already cho­sen the new title for this blog, secured the new URL, and was fast at work mak­ing it pret­ty, when lo! over on Face­book someone—let us call him A.—shared a pre­sump­tu­ous post to my time­line. (I real­ly should turn that bane­ful fea­ture off that allows peo­ple to just post to your time­line.) The post in ques­tion was a pod­cast pro­mot­ing some obscure Mar­i­an appari­tion, reject­ed by the local bish­op. I won’t give it fur­ther atten­tion by nam­ing it here; it is that bad.

I delet­ed the post, cast A. to the winds, and sent out the fol­low­ing sta­tus to my remain­ing peo­ple: “I do not, on my wall, pro­mote Mar­i­an appari­tions that are not approved by the Church. Only the Church has com­pe­tence to judge these things. Pod­casts are not the Mag­is­teri­um. That is all.”

In the com­ments, B. showed up to exclaim: “Oh right! And I guess blogs aren’t the Mag­is­teri­um either!”

How for­tu­itous, since I sat at work on this wery site.

But B. was cor­rect: Blogs are not the Mag­is­teri­um. 1 Tim. 3:15 does not men­tion blogs. Christ was not talk­ing to blog­gers when he said, in John 16:13, that the Holy Spir­it will “guide you into all truth.”

(Col. 4:6, how­ev­er, is good advice for blog­gers: “Let your speech be alway with grace, sea­soned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”)

It is nec­es­sary to remind our­selves dai­ly of such things; which is one good rea­son I chose the title this blog now has. I will see it each time I sit down to write. I may need to. Many Catholics have a recur­ring feel­ing that such reminders are need­ful. Blogs do oft pro­ceed as though they are equal to the Mag­is­teri­um, or judge the Mag­is­teri­um, or inter­pret the Mag­is­teri­um, or replace the Mag­is­teri­um, or scorn the Mag­is­teri­um, or wield the Mag­is­teri­um like a thun­der­bolt to strike the bad ones down. Blogs do oft pro­ceed as though they are giv­ing their read­ers the tru­ly true, insid­er, Gnos­tic truth; or the dan­ger­ous threat to the Church uncov­ered in an exclu­sive by brave anony­mous sources, or the secret Mar­i­an rev­e­la­tion about the end of days, or the defin­i­tive list of here­sies of those who must not ever by any means call them­selves Catholic. But no. There is no “blo­gis­teri­um.” Blog­gers (and pod­cast­ers and peo­ple on Twit­ter and Face­book) do not dis­cern the spir­its, or the signs of the times, or the here­sies of the pope, or the here­sies in the pews, or the here­sies on oth­er blogs.

Back in 2010, the blog In Cælo et in Ter­ra was remind­ing blog­gers of this:

The Mag­is­teri­um con­sists of the pope and the bish­ops in union with him. Their author­i­ty does not belong to man, but to God, although men can wield it, so to speak. It is not an author­i­ty that belongs to every­one, and we must not pre­tend it does. A blog­ger who claims to live and act in uni­ty with the Church can cer­tain­ly speak truth, even has an oblig­a­tion to do so. But he (or she) should not attack or use ‘hurt­ful, judg­men­tal lan­guage.’ You are not the Mag­is­teri­um.

Just last year, Ter­ry Nel­son at Abbey Roads wrote sim­i­lar words:

Don’t believe me though—you can’t trust me either. Believe what the Church teach­es. Do what the Pope and the Syn­od Fathers say—and if some give bad example—don’t do as they do—but do as they say. Don’t go to strangers online who some­times are in it to make a living—they are ‘divid­ed’ by that very fact. Remem­ber, you can’t be holi­er than the Church. Don’t go to strangers online for spir­i­tu­al direc­tion.

Now, I have no prob­lem with blog­gers who make all or part of their liv­ing doing what they do. Kudos to them. I do not think that cre­ates, of itself, a divid­ed loy­al­ty. But the warn­ing is well-tak­en against blog­gers who have acquired a “fol­low­ing” that clings to their every post as though that’s the very place the real truth, and what’s real­ly going on, is to be found. In the com­box is a cheer­ing sec­tion for the our brave hero the blog­ger, or a hiss­ing sec­tion for the whole lot of bane­ful heretics who would bring the Church down were it not for our brave hero the blog­ger. (One more rea­son I don’t have a com­box.)

What Mr. Nel­son says, I say of myself and my own blog: Don’t believe me. Believe the Church. Hold me, as I try to hold myself and all that I write, to what the Church has said. If I say it here, check it out. I am not Sacred Scrip­ture. I am not the Mag­is­teri­um. The con­clave did not choose me. God is not giv­ing me pri­vate rev­e­la­tions. I have no under­cov­er sources in felt hats brav­ing it all. I am not in the busi­ness of pro­nounc­ing anath­e­mas on oth­er Catholics. I’m a guy with a blog who has a cer­tain abil­i­ty to put one word after anoth­er.

•••

None of this means that blogs have no role to play in lead­ing peo­ple to the Church, and to the truth. Both Pope Bene­dict XVI and Pope Fran­cis have told us that they do. Bene­dict XVI said they have the abil­i­ty to be “por­tals of truth and faith” as well as “new spaces for evan­ge­liza­tion.” And Fran­cis has called the Inter­net “a gift from God.”

Blogs, like all online media, have an impor­tant role to play in the New Evan­ge­liza­tion. That is par­tic­u­lar­ly so in a world in which, as George Weigel has point­ed out, the cul­ture is no longer pass­ing on the faith. (For indeed the cul­ture is hos­tile to the faith; and as you know, dear read­er, I have spilled much vir­tu­al ink on this wery blog answer­ing media fic­tions about the Church, and in par­tic­u­lar about the pope.)

If you are Catholic, and you have a blog, that is what you do: You pass on the faith. You explain it. You defend it. But your blog is not itself the faith and does not replace the teach­ing Church. You are not a Protes­tant, and I have no time for your pri­vate judg­ment or what the Lord spoke to you. Your blog is not an Ora­cle or a list of Canons or the Quid­di­ty of Catholic.

So for what it may be worth, here is my list of All the Things That Catholic Blog­gers Must. (And one Must Not.)

• Catholic blog­gers must know the faith.

Real­ly well. This means read­ing, and read­ing a lot: the Bible, the Fathers and Doc­tors of the Church, the Cat­e­chism, the Com­pendi­um, Coun­cils, exhor­ta­tions, encycli­cals. This means tak­ing time and care to get Church teach­ing right, and to under­stand why the Church says what she does.

• Catholic blog­gers must be obe­di­ent to the faith and sub­mis­sive to Church author­i­ty.

All of it. This is not an option. If you are in dis­sent from some teach­ing of the Church—well, I’ll let the pope speak to that. You are not at war with the Church or the pope. It is not for you to stir up dis­con­tent. The pope sits in Peter’s seat, and the bish­ops in place of the apos­tles. You don’t.

This means, too, that you must not shave the faith down to a nar­row sliv­er of “infal­li­ble,” ex cathe­dra state­ments, as though the pope must say the mag­ic words or you will dis­re­gard what does not sit well on your own pri­vate stom­ach. Lumen Gen­tium 25 puts an end to any such talk:

This reli­gious sub­mis­sion of mind and will must be shown in a spe­cial way to the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um of the Roman Pon­tiff, even when he is not speak­ing ex cathe­dra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme mag­is­teri­um is acknowl­edged with rev­er­ence, the judg­ments made by him are sin­cere­ly adhered to, accord­ing to his man­i­fest mind and will.

• Catholic blog­gers must not pre­sume where the Church is silent.

This means, for exam­ple, no pros­e­ly­tiz­ing on Mar­i­an appari­tions that the Church has not approved. I have been urged by—let us call him C.—to be care­ful here because (as C. tells me) even unap­proved appari­tions can bring much grace.

Maybe. It is not with­in my com­pe­tence to say, or to get peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in some sup­posed pri­vate rev­e­la­tion the Church is neu­tral on, still less one it has reject­ed. (Which was the case with the Mar­i­an appari­tion that was nailed to my wall like the 96th the­sis.) Once you are emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed, it is too easy to put your own judg­ment above that of the Church.

• Catholic blog­gers must link to their sources.

And make sure they are faith­ful sources that speak with real author­i­ty. This should go with­out say­ing for any­one who pub­lish­es. But when you are try­ing to evan­ge­lize oth­ers, even fel­low Catholics, about Church teach­ing, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to link to the pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments. That way they can check you out, and that way you can assure even your­self that you are not in error. Hyper­link is your friend.

• Catholic blog­gers must choose their bat­tles.

It is not for you to right every wrong, cor­rect every error, or con­demn every heresy. It is very unlike­ly that God has appoint­ed you the scourge of the age or sav­ior of Church and Man. Your only job is to speak the truth in char­i­ty. Remem­ber Col. 4:6; and 1 Pet. 3:15. (I real­ly strug­gle with this one myself.)

• Catholic blog­gers must fre­quent Mass, ado­ra­tion, and the con­fes­sion­al.

Dai­ly Mass, if pos­si­ble, and fre­quent con­fes­sion. I do mean fre­quent; some blog­gers need it. I know I do. Blog­gers, who are teach­ers of the faith, who evan­ge­lize a pagan and sec­u­lar cul­ture igno­rant of and hos­tile to it (a cul­ture for whom Chris­tian­i­ty is, at best, an exot­ic and alien curios­i­ty), need the grace of the sacra­ments to strength­en their mind and puri­fy their heart and learn char­i­ty. We are called to salt­ness and holi­ness. Con­fes­sion and the Eucharist and a lot of prayer are key.

• Catholic blog­gers must be learn­ers and always strive for new knowl­edge.

This means, also, prac­tic­ing the virtue of humil­i­ty and being cor­rectible when wrong. You are not infal­li­ble. Too many blogs missed the chance to call them­selves Know­ing All Things; Being Wis­er Than the Rest; Heretics Among Us; Why the Church Must Change or Die; The Smoke of Satan Exposed!; Blog­gana­sius Con­tra Eccle­si­am; Rebuk­ing Peter With Paul; and so on.

It does not fall to you to sit in judg­ment on the Church of Nice, or the Church of Mean, or the Church of What­ev­er Adjec­tive You Hate. It does not fall to you to lead mass­es into your cultish angst or para­noia and say to the stom­ach or the head, “I have no need of you.”

The role of a Catholic blog­ger is one thing and one thing only: to evan­ge­lize the cul­ture. Dif­fer­ent blog­gers will do that in dif­fer­ent ways. This com­mis­sion comes from Christ (Mark 16:15) and the Church (see here and here). But it must be car­ried out in sub­mis­sion to Christ and the Church, with­out replac­ing them. Blogs are not the pil­lar and ground of truth; the Church is.

A last caveat here. I have been blog­ging about the Church for three years now, and in my expe­ri­ence most Catholic blog­gers are very good at the above and very good not to con­fuse them­selves with the Mag­is­teri­um. And they can admit when they are wrong. But there are those, at either fringe, who acquire a very large fol­low­ing, act bad­ly, and give the lot of us a bad name. That is why these fre­quent reminders need to be giv­en, so each of us can exam­ine our own con­science on how we blog.

Read more of this week’s quick takes at This Ain’t the Lyceum.