Category: Polemics

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote an excellent article called “The Decline of Controversy.” He gave the Center permission to publish it in From the Housetops magazine. His major point was that false ecumenism and religious indifference were undermining the art of religious disputation. The good old days of vibrant argumentation were being replaced by soulless dialogue. The more controversy declines the more truth becomes relative.

Polemics can be called the art of disputation. It is more than debate; it is animated debate. By its very nature polemics is meant to be a stimulating exercise, which fortifies the mind by establishing the reasons that support the truths we believe in. And one way to do that is by exposing the fallacies of the arguments used to support false doctrine.  With liberals and Protestants, polemics employs arguments based on the authority of scripture and tradition. But the polemicist may also utilize contrast in exposing doctrinal or moral fallacies. Whatever tools are used, charity is the balm that softens the opponents hearts so that they may listen to or read arguments rather than ad hominems.

‘Born This Way’

The Supreme Court has recently begun to hear arguments in two cases related to “gay marriage” — a doubly-deceptive oxymoron which ought always to be put in quotes, if used at all. It is no surprise that, early in the … Continue reading

Sophists Running the Academy

You’ve no doubt heard the expressing “lunatics running the asylum.” Well, The Telegraph reports that a new article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. … Continue reading

Patriarchy and the Defenseless

On January 25, 500,000 pro-lifers marched on the Mall in Washington D.C. in defense of unborn human life. Four days before that, the most progressivist, pro-abortion, homosexualist president in American history gave his second inaugural address. In that address, Mr. … Continue reading

Vote Fraud vs. Reality

From the corner where I sit, I see much of the conservative reaction to last month’s election as more dismaying than the election itself. After all, whichever of the two principal candidates won, the country was not going to be … Continue reading

More Catholic Than the Popes

Dr. Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture website has misled his readers by putting his own gnostic interpretation on a thrice-defined dogma, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (no salvation outside the Church). In response to an article by John Vennari of Catholic … Continue reading

New York Times Contracepts Science

Donna Harrison, M.D., is an obstetrician-gynecologist in southwestern Michigan and director of research and public policy for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She wrote a rebuttal to a recent article in The New York Times. (National Review … Continue reading