When it comes to apologetics: caveat emptor.

blog—any blog, includ­ing this one (maybe espe­cial­ly this one)—is only as good as the evi­dence. Blogs aren’t peer-reviewed and pri­vate­ly-run blogs don’t have fact check­ers. (Even when they do, errors noto­ri­ous­ly creep in—sometimes inad­ver­tent­ly, but some­times from bias or, just as often, the writer’s blithe dis­re­gard for truth.) Any schmo can start a Catholic blog and call him­self an apol­o­gist; it’s not like it’s a doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion or any­thing, and there’s no such thing as an offi­cial apos­to­late of Catholic apol­o­gists super­vised by some bish­op. A Catholic apol­o­gist is account­able to no one.

This is a prob­lem, because Catholic apol­o­gists often get (or claim for them­selves) far too much cred­it for turn­ing peo­ple into con­verts or keep­ing Catholics in the Church. It is not thus. The Holy Spir­it alone makes con­verts. The Holy Spir­it alone keeps Catholics in the Church. It’s cer­tain­ly not men who do this. Some­one who says, “I con­vert­ed to Catholi­cism based on Dan Ari­cel­li’s 30,000 blog arti­cles” like­ly con­vert­ed to Ari­cel­lism, not Catholi­cism.

Was Paul cru­ci­fied for you? Were you bap­tized in the name of Paul? Were you received in the name of Dan Ari­cel­li? Or Matthew Schrank?

Or of Christ?

Here’s a sim­ple exam­ple of what I mean. One of the com­mon talk­ing points among Catholic apol­o­gists has been “33,000 Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions.” We’re sup­posed to believe that sola scrip­tura has caused out-of-con­trol dis­uni­ty among Protes­tants and that only the Mag­is­teri­um can keep the wild­ness in check. Nev­er mind that the Mag­is­teri­um has done a pret­ty poor job of main­tain­ing uni­ty among Catholics and the 33,000 fig­ure is so wild an exag­ger­a­tion it is mean­ing­less. There are far bet­ter argu­ments against sola scrip­tura and in favor of the Mag­is­teri­um, but too many Catholic apol­o­gists grav­i­tate toward pro­pa­gan­da and stub­born­ly cling to it even when called on it. Pro­pa­gan­da acquires con­verts on false grounds; that is, it does not acquire a con­vert at all.

Who cares how many Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions there are? Does becom­ing Catholic help you to con­form to the image of Christ? That’s the real issue, I would think.

•••

I used to do a lot more rec­om­mend­ing of Catholic apol­o­gists than I do now. There was a time when I would say, “This apol­o­gist helped me become Catholic,” or “that apol­o­gist helped me become Catholic,” but I’ve stopped say­ing those things. One rea­son is because I’ve con­tin­ued con­vert­ing long after becom­ing Catholic. (The con­ver­sion process is not ever sup­posed to end, you know.) But the more impor­tant rea­son is because apolo­getic argu­ments that once res­onat­ed with me don’t res­onate with me any more. This does­n’t mean I doubt any­thing the Church teach­es, only that many of the ratio­nales I had for becom­ing Catholic strike me as over­ly sim­plis­tic and even a bit sil­ly now. And I find that a lot of apol­o­gists end­less­ly regur­gi­tate the same simplistic—and some­times demon­stra­bly false—arguments and stop seek­ing bet­ter ones. They’ve cal­ci­fied.

•••

Recent­ly a Catholic apol­o­gist known for his ver­bosi­ty was forced into a retrac­tion when he spec­u­lat­ed that Audrey Assad’s “decon­ver­sion” came of not read­ing enough apolo­get­ics. As it turned out, Assad is very well-read in apolo­get­ics.

Think for a moment about what this inci­dent real­ly tells us. It’s a small thing to retract an obvi­ous fac­tu­al error about whether or not Assad knows apolo­get­ics. But there’s a larg­er error behind it that explains why this apol­o­gist made the assump­tion he did; and that error has to do with how impor­tant apolo­get­ics real­ly is in mak­ing Catholics and retain­ing Catholics.

To my knowl­edge, that error was not recant­ed.

But why should any­one assume that, wher­ev­er there is a “decon­ver­sion,” it must have to do with igno­rance of apolo­get­ics? That’s a large, unproven, and even self-reflex­ive assump­tion to make.

I sup­pose that, for many Catholics and many Chris­tians, apolo­get­ics means a great deal. And I get the ten­den­cy to want to think that the work you do is impor­tant.

But for a great many oth­ers, argu­ment has not a thing to do with whether you come into the Church or stay in the Church. That’s why, when C.S. Lewis com­posed his prayer for apol­o­gists, warn­ing them not to get cocky, he said that “thoughts are but coins” bear­ing only a “thin-worn image” of Jesus Christ.

The faith is not about an argu­ment. It is about a per­son. And that per­son is not the apol­o­gist.

Caveat emp­tor.