Avoiding gossip in the technological age

About a year ago while on a professional retreat, I was chatting with some of the other writers who also happened to be young women. As we were all news writers, I was asking them which content creators and podcasters they follow, and I was struck by one of my co-workers, who said cheerfully and simply, “I try not to follow things that I don’t need to know about!”

Her words reminded me of something my pastor has repeated several times: ”Don’t let your sphere of concern be bigger than your sphere of influence.” Every time I become invested in podcast host wars, X feuds, and other chronically online drama, these words come back to me.

It’s not bad to be informed

A lot of people will protest, “But it’s good to be informed!” And this is true. As American citizens, we must stay informed enough to vote well. We need some knowledge of the evils we are facing and our children may face.

But recently, the world of political commentary has descended into the backstabbing and gossip of a tabloid magazine or reality TV show, filled with personal attacks, divulging confidential information, and insinuations about other people’s characters. As Catholics, we must be discerning in what we consume, and how it affects our hearts and souls. 

A right to one’s reputation

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in its section on the eighth commandment (CCC 2479) that “everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation and to respect.” This right comes from each person’s God-given dignity.

The Catechism names three sins that violate another person’s right to their reputation (CCC 2477): calumny, which is spreading falsehoods about another person, detraction, which is spreading unkind truths about a person to other people who have no sufficient reason to know about those faults, and rash judgment, in which one assumes a neighbor’s moral fault, without having sufficient foundation. 

What do we have a right to know?

As I mentioned earlier, it is important to be informed to some extent about current events, including the people who run the government. But the Catechism, in its definition of rash judgment, gives us a key feature in discernment: We must have a sufficient reason to judge somebody else’s moral failing, and the person or persons divulging the information must have a valid reason for sharing the information.

Public figures’ lives, like politicians, operate under the spotlight of public knowledge and scrutiny, meaning we will know more about the good, the bad, and the ugly related to them. Public scandals or moral failings that reflect on their ability to fulfill their public duties, such as fraud or abuse in business or private dealings, ought to be known by the public. However, we have a responsibility to guard against sensationalism, assumptions, and gossip that demean their dignity as human persons and deny their legal and civil rights like due process.

By the same token, there are many things, even in the lives of public figures, the public does not have the right to know without sufficient reason, including private moral failings that do not affect the public. 

Does that mean we can never condemn actions as evil?

In St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life, the saint explains that refraining from rash judgment does not mean blinding oneself to evil, or pretending that evil actions are good. Instead, he writes, “rash judgment always presupposes something that is not clear, in spite of which we condemn another.”

He adds further, “If an action is in itself indifferent, it is a rash suspicion to imagine that it means evil, unless there is strong circumstantial evidence to prove such to be the case. And it is a rash judgment when we draw condemnatory inferences from an action which may be blameless.”

Unfortunately, rash judgment is also very prevalent in the world of commentary, especially when exacerbated by comment sections and social media. People will take somebody’s outfit choice or speaking mannerisms and extrapolate the person’s personal life, moral failings, and sometimes even accuse the person of crimes based on those suppositions.

Love, the healing balm

St. Francis compares the sin of rash judgment to the jaundice — just like jaundice makes everything look yellow, rash judgment “makes everything look amiss.”

The cure, the saint continues, is through the affections, meaning the man who judges rashly must grow in love. 

“If your affections are warm and tender,” the saint writes, “your judgment will not be harsh; if they are loving, your judgment will be the same.”

Love, he writes, dreads meeting with evil things, “and when such meeting is unavoidable, she shuts her eyes at the first symptom, and then in her holy simplicity she questions whether it were not merely a fantastic shadow which crossed her path rather than sin itself. Or if Love is forced to recognise the fact, she turns aside hastily, and strives to forget what she has seen. Of a truth, Love is the great healer of all ills, and of this above the rest.”

Thus, when we encounter evil in another person’s actions, we should not let it take over our mind and heart, becoming an all-consuming topic of our conversations.

Jesus Christ himself, the saint writes, “while He could not wholly ignore the sin of those who Crucified Him, yet made what excuse He might for them, pleading their ignorance.” If Our Lord attributed such an evil act to ignorance, we have no right to attribute evil motives to others when we could attribute their sin to “ignorance or infirmity.”

Applications to the modern world

The Church’s guidance on gossip, detraction, and rash judgment gives us the tools to navigate the modern technological world and what we consume with discernment. Does the content we consume unjustly disclose private information about others? Does it encourage us to presume that others have grave moral failings without due cause? Does it cause us to judge somebody rashly based on things as trivial as mannerisms or dress?

We should take to heart St. Francis’ conclusion on rash judgment: “Are we never, then, to judge our neighbour? you ask. Never, my child. It is God Who judges criminals brought before a court of law. He uses magistrates to convey His sentence to us; they are His interpreters, and have only to proclaim His law.”