The End of Pop-Apologetics

The 1990s and early 2000s was the golden age of professional Catholic apologetics. If you wanted to get schooled about apologetics, you tuned into the Catholic Answers Live every afternoon. You read the tracts of Mark Shea, Karl Keating, and Jimmy Akin. You listened to the Al Kresta Show syndicated through Ave Maria Radio. You watched Fr. Mitch Pacwa on EWTN and owned sets of Fr. John Corapi's lectures on cassette. You probably owned several books and VHS tapes by Dr. Scott Hahn. These professional defenders of Catholic truth were the resources to turn to when you wanted to learn how to respond to objections to the faith, especially those leveled by evangelical Protestants.

If I had to bookend the period, I would say it began around 1988 with the publication of Karl Keating's perennial classic Catholicism and Fundamentalism, and went into decline around 2004-2006, the years the internet moved into "Web 2.0", the iteration of the Internet that generated masses of users participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites. At the beginning of the era, Keating's book demonstrated the need for quality Catholic apologetics done professionally; on the other end, the rise of independent content creators in the wake of Web 2.0 empowered regular folks to publish their own apologetical materials and post it directly to the internet, bypassing the professional apologetics institutions like Catholic Answers. So we are talking about roughly an 18 year reign of the professional apologist.

This period and these people served us well for the time. When I was first returning to the faith after a youth of irreligion and a few years dabbling in Protestant Pentecostalism, it was the resources of Catholic Answers and its affiliated apologists that provided me with the foundations I needed to build my faith upon. And, as I have mentioned many time on this blog, I owe my return to the Church in a very immediate way to the lectures of Dr. Hahn, whom I will always consider to be one of my fathers in Christ. The role of these institutions and cadre of writers and speakers was important, especially during the 1990s when internet access was radically less than today and so many Catholics relied on print material and physical media to educate themselves. Had Catholic Answers not been there⁠—had this group of apologists not been active—the English speaking Church would have been much the poorer.

However, it is undeniable that the heyday of this kind of institutional apologetics has come and gone. Certainly there will always be a place for skilled, professional apologists—I just emceed an event this summer with Tim Staples and he was sharp as ever. These sorts of folks will always find open ears. I am talking rather about institutional, professional apologetics as a model for the delivery of apologetical content. That model has been shattered by the rise of independent content creators, just like Spotify disrupted the studio model of delivering music and Netflix destroyed the cinema model for distributing film. Today Catholics are much more likely today to seek apologetical content from independent content creators like myself or other bloggers than by turning to institutional channels. The professional apologist and their institutions are no longer the gatekeepers of apologetical content.

In order to survive in this new environment, the professional apologists began expanding their output to include other forms of content creation: blogging, podcasts, and social media. Some managed to handle this transition very well; Dr. Scott Hahn, for example, has maintained the same level of professionalism, humor, and humility he has always demonstrated. Others, well, it got...interesting. Once unleashed on social media, a fair number of these apologists—loosed from the oversight of professional editors or accountability to larger institutions—went down some rather unsavory paths. Some could not resist the temptation to wed politics to faith, devolving into obnoxious Catholic political pundits, while others became proponents of bizarre conspiracy theories; still others outed themselves as committed leftists, alienating themselves from the largely conservative fanbase that consumes apologetical content. And then there are those who revealed themselves to be completely unhinged: ranting, insulting, belittling, and attacking others on social media with a vitriol on par with the blue checkmarks on Twitter. 

Those who have gone down this path—and admittedly, it is not all, but still a fair amount—have fallen in the same pit that many have today, which is to assume one's positions are so secure, so unassailable, so self-evident, that those who disagree with you are not simply mistaken, but are morally bad. As someone who formerly admired and learned from these people, it has been extraordinarily disappointing to see them behaving like the worst of the blue checkmarks. I'm not calling anybody out by name, but we have all seen them lurking around in comboxes and Twitter feeds and Facebook threads, spitefully belittling people whose only offense has been to disagree.

Is this behavior a pathetic attempt to "stay relevant" by imitating their endlessly irritating secular counterparts, the "talking head" media class? Is it fueled by bitterness at having lost the exclusive "gatekeeper" role they once enjoyed? Is it resentment that their own ecclesial visions, which they once argued eloquently before rapt audiences and in the pages of Catholic periodicals, seems less and less persuasive? Is it simply that they were always mean people whose lack of charity was kept in check by editorial teams and publishers? It's hard to say, but it's been illuminating to watch.

Whatever it's cause, it is clear that the age of pop-apologetics is over.