Geoff W. Sutton Blog: Claire's Catholic Conspiracy Coverage

On 5 March 2021, Claire Giangravé wrote a conspiracy theory opinion piece for Religion News Service.

Photo G Sutton Vatican 2019

In this post, I comment on a problem with articles like this one that offer selected quotes from people as a basis for supporting a premise without any obvious attempt to counterbalance the voices or either offer supporting data or a statement of limitations where there are no data.

In short, readers are left with the notion that the author has presented factual news when we mostly have a collection of opinions. Following is the RNS title.

Where is the evidence for a "breeding ground" that warrants singling out the Catholic church as worthy of an opinion article in a news source?

Her opening statement offers a premise that allows us to pause and consider if the statement is true or false:

"If it’s true that all roads lead to Rome, it’s also true that in one way or another, all conspiracy theories lead to the Vatican."

In a literal sense, the statement is false. In a metaphorical sense, it isn't very helpful. Perhaps she just wanted to get our attention with a catchy phrase?

How useful are experts?

In the third paragraph, we learn about her news sources -- "experts."

I realize we all rely on experts for one thing or another. The problem we all have is which experts really know the truth about one thing or another.

At least in the best scientific studies, the experts are referring to studies which we can read and evaluate the evidence. In this article, we are limited to the experts selected by the author.

I am looking for experts to give me some data but what I get are opinions. Now, to be fair to the author, so many news stories interview experts to get an opinion on something. Sadly, we rarely know enough to challenge either the credibility of the expert or the data that form their opinions.

Is there really a "perfect storm?"

It isn't worth it to me to challenge the rhetoric of a perfect storm. So, Catholics have had some challenges. I'm not a Catholic but I follow the news and know the events she mentions.

I do not see any data suggesting the Catholic tradition is any more fertile than the imaginations of humans in religious and nonreligious groups as a result of their perfect storm.

How useful are the data?

As you read on, below the stunning photo of St Peter's Square, there's a reference to Pew Research, which happens to be before the recent explosion of conspiracy theories (did you notice the date?). A tiny percentage of "cradle American evangelicals" became Catholics (2%). There's an unidentified "small cohort" of Protestants opposing the current Pope.

So, 98% of Catholics did not come from American evangelical stock.

How big is the conspiracy problem in the church?

When all is said and done, we are left with the author's belief that there is a substantial problem with conspiracy theories in the Catholic church.

We have no data documenting the size of the conspiracy problem and no comparison to anything that might give us a clue that Catholics have a troublesome storm or "perfect storm" that is somehow raging out of control.

We have opinions. They can become hypotheses. In my view, the best case for articles like this is to consider opinions as hypotheses to be tested.

Perhaps some Catholic scholars will offer some data. It would be interesting to know the nature and extent of conspiracy theories within the church.

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