Editorial – November 2020

Last June I watched a Channel 4 interview in which a young woman – the chair of the Lambeth Independent Police Advisory Group and a community activist – was asked her opinion on the attempts by Black Lives Matter protestors to damage the statue of Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square. Her reply was: “I’ve heard many arguments on both sides. Some say that he’s a racist. Some say that he’s a hero. I haven’t personally met him.” It is sobering to think that this woman was expounding her clearly worthless opinions on the matter on Channel 4 – a TV channel which reaches an audience of about fifty million people annually.

This episode reminded me of something written by the US writer of the last century, Napoleon Hill: “Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by ‘opinions’ when you reach DECISIONS, you will not succeed in any undertaking.”

This is the age of opinion, and often those opinions have little more weight than that of the London community activist. In recent weeks, for instance, veritable fire-storms of opinion have been generated by the Islamist attacks in France and Austria, by Pope Francis’ reported endorsement of civil unions for homosexual couples, and by, of course, the US election. How many of the thousands upon thousands of opinions expressed in these storms were worthy of attention, especially since they often fail to establish even most fundamental facts of the matter? How often do we later discover that the facts have been misreported or misrepresented, statements in foreign languages have been incorrectly translated, and events spun in ways designed to prejudice our judgement?

Uninformed opinions tend to oversimplify issues and jump to rash conclusions to what are often immensely complex questions – such as how to respond to growing Islamism in Europe, what the Pope really meant with those remarks, or what are the best solutions to socio-political problems facing US society.

Pope Francis has addressed this question in his most recent encyclical letter, where he reflects on the increased polarisation and militancy apparent in the current mode of expression of opinions on social questions:  “Dialogue is often confused with something quite different: the feverish exchange of opinions on social networks, frequently based on media information that is not always reliable. These exchanges are merely parallel monologues. They may attract some attention by their sharp and aggressive tone. But monologues engage no one, and their content is frequently self-serving and contradictory” (Fratelli Tutti, 200).

We should be slow to form an opinion, let alone express an opinion on such matters. Serious study is needed before we have an “informed” opinion, normally requiring much reading around a topic. Having watched a single documentary, or read a single article, hardly qualifies one to hold forth on some burning issue. Indeed typically it is those who have read widely and deeply on a topic who recognise the complexities of an issue, and who are least likely to see socio-political questions in black and white terms.

Perhaps one of the effects of the web, and especially of social media over the past decade has been to give us the impression of having a wide knowledge of many things, when in fact that knowledge is so shallow as to make it hardly count as such at all. We have replaced reading books with reading at best articles (even those in Position Papers!) and at worst tweets. For these reasons Position Papers will be concentrating increasingly on carrying reviews of important books on cultural matters. We would like to encourage our readers to go deeper, and perhaps order some of the books we review here. It is also the case that a person who has gone to the trouble to research and write a book has earned the right to an opinion on certain matters, and so surely a book review carries more weight than a simple opinion piece. 

Saint John Paul II – a great reader – once wrote of the difficulty he faced when reading: “This has always been a dilemma for me: What am I to read? I have always tried to choose what was most essential. So much has been published and not everything is valuable and useful. It is important to know how to choose and to consult others about what is worth reading” (John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way). We hope that our book reviews will bring to the attention of our readers books which are genuinely worthwhile reading.