My youngest son woke from a nightmare at 4:00 a.m. He is 11 years old and nightmares happen, but this dream was very specific: Government agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had come to take him from us. After calming him down and getting him back to sleep, I was angry. As any parent would be.
My wife’s family emigrated from South Korea when she was a child, and her stories have shaped him. Since our family has the privilege of citizenship, my son knows he is technically safe. But he was still afraid. Many migrant students at his school had stopped showing up due to fear of ICE. More school fights were happening, and racial slurs were being slung about with more regularity.
Stories of cruelty abound. The current administration has been extrajudicially abducting migrants and sending them to prisons in other countries and forcibly removing children from their families. And now they are turning an abandoned airport site in Florida into a mass incarceration facility.
The administration is also attacking academic and intellectual liberty, including via a targeted removal of “dangerous books” from government libraries. One such book, Catholic theologian Father Bryan Massingale’s Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (Orbis), was removedfrom the U.S. Naval Academy’s library.
Many people are not even aware that these things are happening. This might be because of the type of media they choose to consume. But also, during times of chaos and crisis, people can be tempted to look away from reality. And people in media can be tempted to accommodate them, putting the desire for comfort above the vocation of truth-telling to which anyone in media is called.
Catholic media can and should be a powerful voice for truth and justice in difficult times—not because of any journalistic tool others in media lack, but because Catholics can tap into a spirituality that offers strength, resilience, and inspiration—as well as trust in the movement of God’s spirit, which inspires courage and truth-telling.
Catholic media also has access to a rich theological tradition, which gives us added resources for communicating truth. For instance, Pope Francis’ letter to the U.S. bishops in February 2025 offered a needed corrective to Vice President JD Vance’s distortion of the traditional Catholic idea of the ordo amoris.
Yet Catholics also need to make a choice to seek out media sources that prioritize truth-telling over sensationalism.
Most communications media, religious and secular, have had a basic difficulty with the MAGA movement in two ways. First, because the very truth-telling and reporting that is their mandate is dismissed by a movement that treats its political leadership as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Second, mass media (including social media) is the preferred vehicle for carrying out a communications strategy sometimes called a “shock doctrine” or “flooding the zone.”
Regarding the latter, John Naughton from The Guardian reminds us that Steve Bannon outlined in a 2020 TV interview a strategy for managing information: “The opposition party is the media,” he said, “And because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time…All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang.”
And it works. When the world is overwhelmed by tariff wars, ICE abductions, speculation about an unconstitutional third term, rumors of martial law and suspension of habeus corpus, the decimation of funding for health care, charities, and basic infrastructure, or bizarre proposals to annex Gaza or Greenland, we’re less likely to find the energy to protest injustice.
Authoritarian movements may crack down on freedom of the press, but they also thrive on political theater that keeps people overwhelmed. And a relentless news cycle provokes strong emotions, which can be exploited to foster deception and division. Then the spectacle repeats. This occurs so frequently—sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis—that the public becomes both exhilarated and exhausted, depending on how one identifies politically.
The point is to overwhelm the consciences and sensibilities of everyone, especially the opposition, and to make them weary, despairing, and burned out. It is a communications strategy, an identity politics, and a mechanism for governing all at the same time.
Thus, many Americans presently live in a perpetual state of it dread, not knowing what bad news a new day may bring. But the truth can set us free.
Catholic spirituality and theology offer an alternative to either/or thinking, as well as a to the us-versus-them mentality. But it also reminds us that all God’s people, not just church leaders, and not just media professionals, have an obligation to seek and defend the truth.
This is why it is so important for the faithful to be guided by wisdom when choosing how they approach media, news, and journalism. There is a reason why scripture refers to “powers and principalities” and why Jesus instructed his followers to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves when navigating religion and politics in their own context.
The church has traditionally encouraged vigilance, discernment, and truth-telling as constitutive of a healthy ecclesial community.
Vigilance means to pay attention to what’s going on and to not get complacent. Cruelty, injustice, and malice are wreaking havoc in the lives of many in our nation, and we must bear witness to any who will listen, especially those with power.
In this media climate, however, vigilance must be paired with discernment. The tools of the “shock doctrine” and “flooding the zone” prey on unrestrained vigilance. Discernment reminds us to remain at the intersection of the global and the local, attentive to world events but also rooted in our daily lives and aware of what we can do in our immediate spheres of influence. Sometimes it may seem small—signing a petition, contacting elected officials and church power-brokers, giving money to individuals in need or organizations fighting the good fight, having challenging conversation with a friend or family member, attending a local protest with only a handful of others—but, as Dorothy Day reminded us, it is “by little and by little” that the works of justice and mercy bear fruit.
Truth-telling is also essential. Human beings are social creatures who live in a shared reality, and we must have some social consensus on what the fundamentals of that reality entail. If we choose to ignore reality or to only accept interpretations that feed our preconceived biases, we are not engaged in truth-telling. And without this basic shared truth we cannot build a community of conscience. This means we need to seek media literacy, fact check information through reputable sources, and pause and reflect on whether the information we share is spreading falsehood or doing harm.
Truth-telling cannot be done in isolation. It is a communal activity, so being part of a healthy community matters. And here again, Catholic consumers of media have an extra resource, just as Catholic media professionals do. We have a tradition of an ecclesial community of unity-in-diversity that mirrors the Trinity. St. Paul wrote that we are one body with many members who have different gifts. Each of us can use our small gifts not only to support the common but to build a culture of truthfulness, where people have access to accurate and reliable information.
As Christians, we belong to a faith tradition beholden to the prophet from Nazareth and not to any political movement or episcopal alliance with power. We have non-negotiable values of faith, hope, and love that we discover in God’s presence and that aid us in pursuit of the goals of doing no harm and promoting human dignity and the common good. Knowing this may help us remain motivated and resilient in the face of adversity, deception, and cruelty—and help us resist participation in a political theater created for the benefit of the powerful.
Our obligation to the truth, as Catholics, comes with duties that may be demanding. We may need to shine a spotlight on the emperor who has no clothes, as well as his enablers. And we have to work to develop a healthy, informed skepticism when confronted with propaganda. We must shine the light, too, on those laboring in love to create beloved community in a time of crisis. This shows the humane possibilities of the world we wish to build for our children and the people we wish to be.
Calling out the present harm, while envisioning a better future—this is our work. And it is nurtured by a spirituality that brings us into God’s presence, reminds us we are beloved and never alone, and helps us to see the world through God’s heart. With fresh eyes of divine compassion and justice, we are emboldened to recognize the facts of daily life as well as the larger social and political truths they suggest, even if we are being pressured to deny reality. Just as a child with a nightmare is soothed by their parent, God’s love can give us peace in difficult times.
Shortly after the conclave, Pope Leo XIV spoke to a gathering of Catholic journalists. “Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred,” he said. “Let us disarm words, and we will help disarm the world.”
This is good advice for all God’s people. May all of us follow the new pontiff’s guidance.
Image: Unsplash/Julio Lopez
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