Some errors seem to never go away. I refer, in particular, to those that result from reasoning on the basis of statistical data. Last year I took it upon myself to challenge a particular priest, one rather averse to Pope Francis, who wrote that vocations to the priesthood began to drop in 2013, the year that Cardinal Bergoglio became pope. The implication, of course, is that Francis’s papacy is uninspiring to others, unlike that of John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and is the reason for the drop in vocations. Since then, I have come across that very claim more than once, from conservative Catholic writers who should know better.
For years I’ve maintained that inductive reasoning and, more specifically, plausibility theory is far more important for seminarians than classical Aristotelian logic — not to suggest that the latter can be neglected. A rigorous course in statistics would go a long way as well. However, statistics courses typically do not allot enough time for students to think about the epistemological implications of statistical principles; for I have watched young students, after a full semester of statistics, go on to embrace the most statistically problematic claims of applied postmodernism (critical whiteness theory, why police should be defunded, the pay gap between male and female soccer players). Students need time to ponder the implications for knowledge, especially the knowledge implications of analysis of variance (ANOVA), but they are not given the opportunity because strictly speaking, that takes us outside the realm of mathematical statistics, and time is short. Moreover, it is always a temptation to engage in “intuitive statistics,” for it is effortless, but as Daniel Kahneman showed, even professional statisticians, when engaging in “intuitive statistics” (outside the office), tend to make the same errors that non-professionals make regularly.
The inference that Pope Francis is the reason for the decline in vocations, given that the decline began in 2013, the year he became pope, is rooted in a very basic inductive error. Informal logic refers to this as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this). To achieve reasonable probability, there are so many variables that we would have to control for in order to properly discern the relationship between the independent and dependent variables in this case (i.e., the Francis papacy [independent variable] and the drop in vocations [dependent variable]). The reason for the need to test rigorously is that this reasoning by itself is invalid:
If p (independent variable), then q (dependent variable)
q (dependent variable)
Therefore, p
Using real terms, one easily sees the invalidity of this form:
If I get Covid 19 (p), then I will come down with a fever (q)
I have come down with a fever (q).
Therefore, I got Covid 19.
Not at all, for there are a number of possible hypotheses that can account for the fever. Similarly, there are many factors that are involved in the decline in vocations — an obvious one is birth control. People are having fewer children. That itself is going to be a significant factor in fewer men entering the seminary, and we know that vocations arise out of the family, and the family has been in decline since the late 1960s. We would have to look back to a quarter century before the time Cardinal Bergoglio became pope, which takes us to the late 1980s, a time when shows that mocked traditional family life were beginning to become popular, such as Married with Children or The Simpsons. This period was followed by the nihilism of the 90s, which was skeptical of the very possibility of moral adulthood (Seinfeld, Beavis and Butthead, South Park).
Other factors to consider are the state of our parishes in the 1980s and onwards, the quality of preaching perhaps, the sex abuse scandals, the general lack of outreach to youth at the parish level, lack of missionary zeal among complacent clergy, the tenor of postmodern culture, especially in the university environment, the relatively high level of prosperity in society, etc. Thirty years of these and other factors would inevitably take their toll on vocations in the West. In this light, it is highly unlikely that the principal factor for the decline in vocations was Francis’s papacy.
So, either these claimants have forgotten the statistics they allege to have studied, or like the vast majority of those who had to take statistics, they did not spend sufficient time pondering the epistemological implications of the mathematics of probability–or, they are simply engaging in “intuitive statistics” and are too blinded by their aversion towards Pope Francis to notice the unwarranted nature of their conclusion.
Image: Adobe Stock. By tampatra.
Douglas McManaman was born in Toronto and grew up in Montreal. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Jerome’s College (Waterloo) and theology at the University of Montreal. He is a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto and ministers to those with mental illness. He taught Religion, Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge for 32 years in Southern Ontario, and he is the current chaplain of the Toronto Chapter of the Catholic Teachers Guild. He is a Senior Lecturer at Niagara University and teach Marriage Prep for the Archdiocese of Toronto. His recent books include Why Be Afraid? (Justin Press, 2014) and The Logic of Anger (Justin Press, 2015), and Christ Lives! (Justin Press, 2017), as well as The Morally Beautiful (Amazon.ca), Introduction to Philosophy for Young People (Amazon.ca), Readings in the Theory of Knowledge, Basic Catholicism, and A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. He has two podcast channels: Podcasts for the Religious, and Podcasts for Young Philosophers. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Ontario, Canada.
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