“Fake News”, about which we hear so much at the moment, is as old as human communication itself. It’s fuelled by Original Sin, and its birth and growth is hardly a surprise to the Church. For if anyone has felt the sting of fake news - with all its menacing consequences – it has been practising Catholics.
As Rodney Stark amply documents in his work, Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History, few institutions have been the victim of “fake news” more often than the Roman Catholic Church.
