In 2016 Oxford Dictionaries chose "post-truth" as the Word of the Year, signaling that our public discourse has become rooted more in appeals to emotion and personal opinion than in objective fact. As political polarization has increased over the past few years, I've grown increasingly concerned that the "left" and the "right" not only have different biases - this is to be expected - but seem to have absolutely irreconcilable accounts of what is happening in the world around us. To give just one broad, timely example, many on the left view President-Elect Biden's inauguration as the beginning of a time of healing for our nation after four terrible years, and some on the right fear that it will mean the end of the American constitutional republic itself.

I tend to stay clear of pontificating on partisan politics, because I have neither political expertise nor a desire to unnecessarily chain Catholicism to a particular political party. My approach, for better or for worse, is to highlight the truths and demands of the Catholic faith and allow others to draw appropriate conclusions within those boundaries. I have no interest, therefore, in trying to predict what Biden's presidency will mean for our nation or in offering any partisan political prescription. In this short post, however, I would like to reiterate how Catholic truth and charity provide the antidote for the post-truth politics of both the left and the right.

The longstanding post-truth politics of the left is perhaps most obvious with regard to sexual morality. Since the time of the sexual revolution, there has been a deliberate denial of any objective, metaphysical truths about marriage, human nature, gender, or the sexual act. Things that were once universally considered immoral - e.g., abortion, abortion, homosexual acts, and premarital sex, to name just a few examples - are now celebrated. Because of the relativistic idea that we each have a right to determine our own truth, we have now reached a point where even gender itself is thought to be self-defined, and anyone who disagrees is at risk of being labeled a hateful bigot and "canceled" from the cultural conversation.

In response to such post-truth tactics of many on the left, all Catholics have the difficult responsibility of responding with both truth and charity. Charity demands that we ourselves never demonize or dehumanize those with whom we disagree, even when our disagreements are significant. Truth demands, however, that we never compromise the unchanging moral law that is inscribed in nature itself and in divine revelation. Without the two anchors of truth and charity, we will be helplessly adrift in the ever-changing tides of public opinion.

In more recent years, we've also seen a rise of post-truth politics on the right that presents a very different kind of threat. In reaction to the liberal biases of many mainstream media outlets, some on the right have latched onto networks of conspiracy theories that have little or no basis in reality. To cite the most prominent example, QAnon was once an online phenomenon that seemed easily dismissable but has since been prominently represented among those who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6. The QAnon movement is now undeniably a factor, though largely unwelcome, in the politics of the right.

I'm quite comfortable with evaluating abstract philosophies by appealing to faith and reason, but refuting conspiracy theories presents a unique difficulty. The English Catholic journalist G.K. Chesterton pointed out the problem a century ago:

If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.

In other words, a source that denies a conspiracy theory can be viewed as proof of one of two things: Either (1) the conspiracy theory is wrong, or (2) this source is part of the conspiracy! Those who are attached to a conspiracy theory can easily be led to assume the very worst about their ideological opponents without sufficient evidence, which is itself a sin against both truth and charity called "rash judgment" (see CCC 2477-2488). Like the "cancel culture" on the left, the conspiracy theory culture that has emerged on the right is more likely to demean and dismiss its opposition than rationally, charitably engage with them.

There are no simple patches for the deep political and cultural fractures in our post-truth nation, but truth and charity are the adhesives necessary to hold together or repair any community. In his 2018 Message for World Communications Day, Pope Francis similarly said that "freedom from falsehood and the search for relationship" are the two things necessary to counter "fake news" in the media. We must be willing to set aside the hyperbole and hysteria that dominate the news cycle in order to have honest conversations with one another, remaining firmly rooted in the Word of God and in the verifiable facts about what is really happening in the world around us. Only then will Catholics be an effective positive witness in our post-truth culture.

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