Verification

Verification is the process of establishing truth, accuracy, or validity of something:  a statement, a story, or happening.  Verification is an increasingly difficult thing to do, given the rise of social media and user-generated content.  Just because it is on TV, Twitter, or Facebook does not mean it is true. Just because a story, statement or happening is repeated over and over again doesn’t mean it is true or that it is a fact.  Every statement, every story, every happening must be verified.  Is it true?  Is it accurate?  Is it fact?

In the fast-moving multi-media world of today verification becomes a monumental task.  The sheer rapidity of events hardly gives us time to verify the former event that happened only an hour or so ago with the event happening now.  The barrage of material introduced and repeated over and over again on social media smothers the verification process, producing a lot of “fake news.”  

It reminds me of Mark Twain’s comment in Innocents Abroad.  He tells how the Church has managed over the years to verify the truth and fact of St. Veronica’s meeting with Christ on the Via Dolorosa.  It seems to me that the repetitive display of St. Veronica’s handkerchief in a variety of places is very similar to what happens with statements, stories, and happenings in our multi-media age.  “No tradition,” Twain writes, “is so amply verified,” the handkerchief is everywhere.  So it is that we assume a statement, story, or happening to be “amply verified” simply by its being “said” and repeated everywhere.

“We crossed a street, and came presently to the former residence of St. Veronica. When the Saviour passed there, she came out, full of womanly compassion, and spoke pitying words to him, undaunted by the hootings and the threatenings of the mob, and wiped the perspiration from his face with her handkerchief. We had heard so much of St. Veronica, and seen her picture by so many masters, that it was like meeting an old friend unexpectedly to come upon her ancient home in Jerusalem. The strangest thing about the incident that has made her name so famous, is, that when she wiped the perspiration away, the print of the Saviour's face remained upon the handkerchief, a perfect portrait, and so remains unto this day. We knew this, because we saw this handkerchief in a cathedral in Paris, in another in Spain, and in two others in Italy. In the Milan cathedral it costs five francs to see it, and at St. Peter's, at Rome, it is almost impossible to see it at any price. No tradition is so amply verified as this of St. Veronica and her handkerchief.”  (Mark Twain)

The azalea yesterday