The Responsibility of Bloggers

Reverend Michael P. Orsi in an article called Calumny in the Blogosphere reflects how our words can affect the spiritual well-being of others. The anonymity of blogging can create an impersonal distance from the issues and people about which one is commenting. A blogger can produce a harsh judgment of another based off of little or no evidence and remain largely unaccountable for accusations.

Calumny is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (1992) as a “false statement maliciously made to injure another’s reputation.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) places calumny as a serious sin under the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The Catechism states, “He becomes guilty of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them” (2447). The Catechism notes that calumny offends “against the virtues of justice and charity” (2479).

The internet has become a new forum for the age-old vices including derogatory gossip. With the easy steps of creating a blog, every person with internet access can have a free method of global communication. Although there is the opportunity for evangelization, temptation always looms around the corner to use blogs in an unholy manner. As the article comments:

The essential problem with anonymous blogging is that masked comments can easily turn malicious, intentionally or otherwise. Growing concern about online threats and character assassination among teenagers using social networking services like MySpace and Facebook has spawned the terms “cyber-bullying” and “cyber-stalking.” There have been cases of violence—even suicide—attributed to blog campaigns launched against targeted individuals. The walking wounded are showing up in hospitals, psychiatrists’ offices and high school drop-out statistics.

Calumny does not exist apart from the other realities of life. Like all sin, it is nurtured by social conditions and the particular circumstances in which individuals find themselves, circumstances that can provide the rationalizations and self-deception that blind us to the seriousness of our words and actions. For instance, we live in a society that puts a high premium on winning. It’s easy to convince ourselves that anything goes, as long as we achieve the results we want and don’t get caught doing what we know in our hearts we shouldn’t do.

Concrete example of calumny among Christian bloggers:

Sad to say, Christian circles are not free of such machinations. A recent occurrence in my own diocese serves as an example. Allegations of moral lapses on the part of a brother priest were circulated by interlinked blogs, magnifying the actual facts of the case being investigated, and layering on multiple rumors that featured a colorful variety of imagined illicit behaviors—all before anything was proven. While a ministry was seriously (perhaps fatally) compromised, no allowance was given for the political conflicts existing within the parish or the motives of those who spread the stories. What were little more than assumptions took on a life of their own when a chain of bloggers spread them within minutes throughout the diocese and well beyond.

Challenge to Bloggers:

Bloggers of such a mindset ignore a basic precept of morality: evil means may never be employed to achieve a good end (perhaps their skewed thinking can be compared to that of people who believe it’s moral to kill abortion doctors in order to end the horror of abortion). They forget that the standards of the world—or of law courts—don’t apply when we’re judged in the highest court: at the throne of God. Jesus warned the Pharisees against legal dodges and contrived justifications. God sees the heart.

I offer the following recommendations about points that should be made regarding blogging:

• Pastors should speak on the Eighth Commandment and its corollary injunctions against calumny and detraction.
• People should be warned that what they read on blogs is not necessarily true.
• Any anonymous blog or unsigned response has the weight of an unsigned letter and so should be quickly dismissed.
• A blog that is particularly vicious toward persons can be indicative of psychological illness, or simply an evil person, and is therefore suspect.
• Any blog that is unedifying and demeaning to another person should not be read. It is the equivalent of pornography.
• Responding to these calumnious blogs, even for defense of the individual or for clarification, only encourages the offender and prolongs the life of the calumny.
• Those who suffer calumny on anonymous blogs are, for the most part, better off enduring it. Seeking to correct misrepresentations usually has the effect of keeping controversy alive and adding to its interest value.
• While reading such blogs is damaging to its target (since it causes unwarranted negative speculation about another’s character), it also hurts the reader since it causes scandal, sowing pessimism and despondency.
• Calumnious blogging is a serious offense against God’s law. Those who engage
  in it are jeopardizing their immortal souls and the souls of others.
• For anyone to make a judgment concerning a person’s character based on what is read on a negative blog is to be a formal cooperator in the evil perpetrated by the blogger.

Those involved in blogging would do well to keep in mind the words of Isaiah 33:15, which says of the good person: “He who acts with integrity, who speaks sincerely …, shuts suggestion of murder out of his ears, and closes his eyes against crime, this man will dwell in the heights.”