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F r o n t i s p i e c e
Worth Doing Badly
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume 16, Number 3
 March 2005 
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No one is omnicompetent. Aside from God, no one knows everything about everything or even everything about one thing.
The human expert is expert only in his own field, not in all fields, and even then his expertise is limited. He is termed an expert only because he knows more about his field than do the rest of us. An expert in history might be able to answer questions about the War of 1812 but not questions about the Thirty Years War, if he is an expert in American history but not in European history. An expert in theology might be able to explain matters of systematic theology but not of moral theology.
There are experts in knowing and experts in doing. Some people can take a wrench to an engine and fix a problem in minutes. The rest of us can do nothing but sit back and marvel, not even being able to identify the problem. Some people can speak a few words in public and bring the most recalcitrant audience over to their side. The rest of us open our mouths and drive people further away.
The fact is that most of us are not expert in anything. That does not mean we are omni-incompetent. We have varying levels of competence in different areas, but in none of those areas does our competence rise to the level of expertise. This is as true in religion as in other matters. In my quarter century of "doing" apologetics I have met several people I consider to be experts in the field (I am not among their number), and I know many more who enjoy a lesser degree of competence (I think of myself as fitting in here). But never have I met someone who is omnicompetent in apologetics.
G. K. Chesterton remarked that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. He was not advocating making a botch of things; he was saying that few of us can do an ideal job, but all of us, in one matter or another, can do a competent job. If that particular job is important—to ourselves or to our neighbors or to the Church—we should undertake it. We should not sit back, hoping someone better qualified will roll up his sleeves.
This is how I think about apologetics. If only ideally qualified apologists "went public" in explaining and defending the faith, the most sensitive seismometer would not be able to measure the effect of the apologetics movement—because there would be no such movement, there being no ideally qualified apologists. Sure, some are more knowledgeable or more skillful than others, but no one has apologetics down pat. Bring up any name you wish: those who write in these pages, those who write popular books, those who record widely disseminated audio tapes. Not a single one can do it all, but what they are doing is worth doing, and therefore it is worth doing even if it is done with less finesse than St. Michael the Archangel might show.
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