When Gatekeepers Attack!

After all this time we’ve spent wrestling the control of information out of the hands of a few, we now self-select gatekeepers to tell us what we need to know.

Sometimes this works out. If we find good sources of information, voices we can trust, they can help us to filter the fire hose of information we’re trying to drink out of every day. The danger, of course, is that we become too dependent on them to tell us what we want to hear, and they become too dependent on us liking what they have to say.

This co-dependency damages the relationship between gatekeeper and consumer. It creates an echo chamber. A feedback loop. They have to keep us clicking so they can make a buck (which I have no problem with) and we only keep clicking if what they say fits our worldview.

When we trust gatekeepers to do our thinking for us, we are effectively putting on blinders and shutting out any information that we find challenging. We’re self-selecting comfort over truth. We begin to lose the instinct to do our homework, think for ourselves, and make sure we’re on the right path. Basically, we all — gatekeepers and consumers alike — become lazy and uninquisitive.

Inevitably, a disruptive force comes along and starts making trouble. Starts challenging assumptions. Starts throwing chum in the water. And that threatens the status quo, which makes just about everyone in the gatekeeper/consumer continuum get ants in their pants.

And this, my friends, is when gatekeepers ATTACK! (Cue dramatic music!)

This is what we saw happen over the past few days, and in a lesser way, the past year. The big-name writers in the Catholic online media world have been challenged in a way that makes them incredibly uncomfortable. A few upstarts with opinions of their own have been making waves and finding resonance with ideas that shake the status quo in Catholic thinking to its foundations. The comfy, cozy, orthodox Catholic bubble where everyone was on the same team and all The Bad was on the outside is suddenly full of dangerous ideas that are really flipping hard to process or explain. Uncertainty and doubt are becoming a daily struggle. And the clarity of, “Hey, the pope’s in charge and everything is fine!” isn’t convincing people any more. Well, some people. But lots of people are waking up and asking questions.

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we need new Catholic gatekeepers. The current crop have done their part, and for a time, they probably did it well. But in my opinion, they’ve lost their way. Maybe it isn’t intentional on their part, but they are serving an agenda, not the truth. I’m not electing myself as a replacement. You should go where you want to go. Do your homework. Read what makes sense. Question everything, including me.  (the rest here...)

When Gatekeepers Attack!