Summary
Living with strong convictions in a free and diverse society requires a clear distinction between private and public life. In private life, individuals may order their actions entirely according to their own beliefs. In public life, however, they must respect the equal rights and freedoms of others and cannot treat shared spaces as extensions of their own authority.
The expression of beliefs requires prudence. While individuals are free to speak according to their convictions, public and professional contexts impose real consequences, which must be accepted as part of living in a free society rather than interpreted as violations of freedom.
All human judgments are subject to error, and this possibility should temper how strongly one asserts opinions in public. For this reason, arguments should rely on reason and shared principles rather than appeals to divine authority, especially when such authority cannot be demonstrated or is not accepted by others.
Effective discussion depends on identifying common ground. Where shared beliefs exist, reasoning can proceed from those agreed principles. Where no common ground exists, the focus shifts to examining opposing views and showing their inconsistencies rather than attempting to prove one’s own position directly.
Patience and humility are essential in public discourse. Meaningful changes in belief are gradual, and discussions should aim at understanding and clarity rather than immediate persuasion.
Finally, there is a distinction between true persecution and the ordinary consequences of one’s actions. Disagreement, criticism, or professional repercussions do not constitute persecution. True persecution involves unjust targeting and punishment independent of one’s behavior.
By observing these principles, it is possible to maintain firm convictions while engaging in peaceful, rational, and respectful public life.
Transcript
I’d like to share some thoughts today on how to live with convictions in a diverse society, and I’m particularly thinking of American society, even though I know listeners will be from other countries. I’m particularly thinking of life in American society, where diversity is protected by our Constitution and there is no established state religion and everyone is welcome, without respect to any creed or school of thought, culture and so on.
As human beings, we have convictions, we have preferences. And just to be frank, we like for things to be our way, and yet we live in a society where our next door neighbors, our workmates, even our relatives may hold very different views, live according to very different principles, and there is really nowhere to turn for the enforcement of our preferences, because we live in a free society and the people around us are free to do as they please, just as we’re free to do as we please.
And so living together can be challenging, and at the same time for those of us who hold the Christian faith, we’re tormented, in a way—again, to speak frankly—we’re tormented by what appears to be pressure from Christian teaching, the sacred scriptures, pressure to preach the gospel, to share the faith, to defend the faith, to represent what we consider to be the truth, and even more importantly, to represent Christ Himself. Or tormented, in a way, by thoughts that if we’re not faithful to our convictions, we may, in fact, be denying them. And it’s no secret that Jesus makes it quite clear in the Gospel that if anyone is ashamed of him, he warns that he will also be ashamed of us. And when we confess him to be our Lord and judge and Savior, losing his advocacy, losing his support, losing him as our advocate and defender leaves us in a state where we would consider ourselves to not be saved.
So this becomes a very, very serious, very, very emotional, very challenging conflict to deal with. There is no difficulty in being friendly if we simply ignore our convictions and yet at the same time, if we stand firm for our convictions, it’s difficult to be friendly. It’s difficult to be professional when our religion is being mocked or contradicted or our moral convictions being trampled. It’s difficult to be professional, it’s difficult to be tolerant, to be friendly, and so on.
And as Christians, and I think not only as Christians, but I think everyone struggles with this in America, because this idea of freedom sounds great on paper, but it’s very difficult to actually practice. It’s difficult to enjoy freedom provided by our Constitution, and also allow others to enjoy freedom allowed by our Constitution. So living in that conflict is difficult. It’s not difficult if we set aside our convictions every day, but for those of us who consider our convictions, whether they be religious or philosophical, to really be the foundation and pillar of our life, it’s difficult to know how we ought to live.
And so as a 50-year-old who’s been working under the pressure of this conflict for a long time, I’d like to share some thoughts as to how I think this is to be done. And I don’t present this as some kind of authoritative, inspired solution to the problem, but I would like to share it as the conclusion of my experience, and I’ve been quite active in a number of different spheres where this has really been put to the test.
I’m a Christian with strong convictions, and I’m not afraid to admit that I’m emotionally attached to my convictions, and I’ve been so since I was 18 years old. I attended a public university where those convictions were really challenged, and I was surrounded by representatives of almost every imaginable religion, culture, philosophical school, lifestyle and so on. And yet, to be honest, I was more comfortable in that open and diverse community than I am in my own family, than I am in Catholic circles or Christian circles more generally, political circles, where people are supposedly of the same persuasions I am.
When I do write on a topic or speak on an issue or engage in a discussion, I try to be as persuasive as possible. I think that’s the whole purpose and benefit of discussions. It’s for everyone involved to seek to be as persuasive as possible, being free to argue their position as strongly as they can, and then after the discussion ends, to take time to reflect, to consider all that was said on all sides, and make adjustments to our beliefs or practices as a result of those discussions or to study them further when something is revealed to us. And things can be revealed to us in unexpected ways by unexpected friends or colleagues.
Once, I was teaching a debate class with high school students, and I was quite confident in my view that stealing was wrong in all circumstances. And a student objected, and he had searched out St. Thomas’s teaching on the subject in the Summa and showed me that St. Thomas says that a man may take what is not his if he is poor or hungry, because the right to life is greater than the right to private property. And so that’s an example where a student who happened to be a freshman at the time raised an argument that corrected my thoughts and sent me to the Summa, looking to study it further, to see what was actually said. And what was said was what the student had objected in class.
So even the sources of corrections—they don’t necessarily come from people who are smarter than us or more authoritative than us, even older than us. They often can come from people who just happen to have the right book or passage in front of them, something that we haven’t considered. So those debates and discussions, I engage in them constantly because I sincerely believe that they’re one of the best ways to learn and grow, because we’ll often hear ideas, arguments, objections from our opponents that we would never encounter by ourselves among like-minded friends.
So I love debating and arguing, discussing things, and when I communicate, I tend to try to do so as persuasively as possible. Some people take that the wrong way, but it’s not my intention to force anything, only to contribute to the discussion from my own perspective, and I think that those who enter into the discussions with the right intention would appreciate that. But anyway, sometimes we can’t make that assumption, and we have to learn when we can and can’t do so.
Anyway, after that long introduction, I’d like to talk positively about how we should handle this challenge of freedom and living with conviction in a diverse society. The first important thing that I think we need to do, which I have done in my own life, is make a distinction between my own private life and public life.
I think we need to make a distinction between our private life and our public life. Our private life is, as it were, a sphere around us where we’re in control of things. It’s our private property. In that space we’re allowed to do things the way that we want them done. That may be a one-bedroom apartment in a city, or it may be a large private property. I live on a 15-acre farm in North Carolina. You can hear around me the tranquility and quietness, the isolation of my life here. This entire farm I consider to be my private life, my private property. On this property, things are done the way that I want them to be done, and I have to bear all the costs of this property. I purchase it, I pay taxes on it, I pay for its maintenance and so on. It’s my private property, and on this property, I do what I please. My convictions rule and govern. That’s what household management is all about.
However, the minute I step off of this property, I step into public space, space that I share with my neighbors. And when I do so, I consciously recognize the rights of my neighbors to be respected in that space, the same as mine. That it’s neither of our private property. And this is one of the false ideas of freedom that I think we often run into. We see, especially when we find people protesting and things like that, there’s this attitude that this is a free country, therefore I can do whatever I want anywhere I want to. This is a free country, so I can do anything I want in public space. And that’s false.
You can do what you want in private space, in your private space, but you can’t do whatever you want in public space. That’s to not respect the public space. That’s not to believe in freedom. That’s to be a kind of tyrant who claims that every public space is his own. And we ought to respect the freedom of our neighbors when we enter into public space. So the fact that our government allows for public protests, political protests and so on, doesn’t excuse us from the responsibility of respecting our neighbor’s freedom. And there’s a proper way to go about that, a way that if we simultaneously promoted the message that we feel compelled to promote while respecting our neighbor’s freedoms, would make that message much more respectable. When protests are just obnoxious, destructive, selfish and so on, it actually undermines the purpose of those protesting.
But I think the first thing that I’ve learned is to distinguish between public and private space. A good example of this in the news this week: a professional basketball player published on social media his convictions, that he believes that homosexuality is sinful, that he believes that gay marriage should never be allowed, and so on. He used his private space, his own social media account, to publish his convictions. He’s free to do that. However, the organization that he works for, the Chicago Bulls, they fired him because they said that his conduct on social media was distracting, divisive and detrimental to the team. And so he was released, fired from his professional basketball contract.
And after that, all kinds of outcry started that this was a violation of the freedom of speech, that he was right for saying what he said, that the sports organization was wrong for doing what they did. And this reveals this conflict in American life. And my interpretation of that situation would be he was perfectly free to publish his own convictions and thoughts on his own private social media account. That’s all fine. The owners of the Chicago Bulls were also perfectly right to make the decision that they made with respect to their private organization, their business, and they said, “We don’t want that public messaging coming from any of our players.” So he made free use of his private property, his private space, and the Bulls owners made free use of their private space, and that’s really all that happened.
And we see there a lesson about the consequences of decisions that we make. The question we can ask is whether the publishing of those opinions was prudent and necessary, especially if you work in a field where, let’s be honest, it’s not as much about sports as it is about entertainment, and the organization is trying to attract as many fans as possible. And the reason why you get paid millions of dollars is because there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of fans buying tickets and apparel and so on. You’re being paid by a diverse fan base that you then speak against in a social media post. It’s a logical consequence that you’re going to lose that position because you divide and possibly offend, disrespect, we could say, the fan base.
So I don’t think that there’s anything wrong that happened if the player wants to or feels a need to express his convictions publicly. He may do so, but if he wants to be a professional basketball player being paid millions of dollars by a diverse fan base, he’s going to have to choose one or the other. This is not a question of choosing a religion or convictions. It’s not a question of choosing how to live his own private life in his own private space, but how to communicate about that private life when he enters public space. And I would argue that that’s an example of an imprudent use of social media if his intention was to retain his position as a pro basketball player.
However, I don’t know that that was his concern, and he may be struggling with this conflict and say, “You know what, I don’t care about my professional basketball career. I feel compelled to make my convictions clear and I accept whatever consequences come.” If that’s his intention, then again, he may be happy with the consequences and the reaction from people outside of his own private sphere are irrelevant.
I think we’ve all experienced moments, either in relationships or in our careers, where we had to make a similar decision. When I converted to Catholicism, it cost me a job that I enjoyed very much, but I didn’t think twice about that decision. I wasn’t imprudent for making my Catholic conversion known to my employers. It was something necessary that I had to do because I respected their school and knew that my change of heart, change of mind, would have an impact on the institution that they were running, and I wanted them to make a decision that was in the best interest of their institution. So I did that, but we live with this conflict every day, and there are times where we do need to make our convictions known, and there are times when we should not make our convictions known in a certain way, at an appropriate time or at a certain time and so on.
So there are difficult decisions that relate to the virtue of prudence, and I think that we need to make those decisions individually and accept the consequences. But it’s important to note that there was no violation of the freedom of religion or freedom of speech, because that relates to public space, and it’s really a restriction placed on the government, not on private organizations. The Bill of Rights restricts the powers of the federal government and indirectly of local governments, but the Bill of Rights, which grants us the freedom of expression and speech and religion and so on, that doesn’t restrict the powers of private organizations. And we’ve got to make that distinction.
So again, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between our private circle and public life. So that’s the first thing. I think when we make that distinction, it provides a great deal of help when thinking through these issues. My private life, I do things my way. In public, I respect the freedoms of my relatives, neighbors, coworkers and so on. We’re not being unfaithful to our convictions when we respect a diversity of convictions among our peers in public. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing that I think about is the fact that my convictions, my opinions, as strong as they may be, may be wrong. I may be wrong. And therefore, any time I consider saying something, writing something, doing something that could have negative consequences, I pump the brakes and remind myself that I could be wrong.
Now this is difficult when we are thinking about religious teachings. It’s difficult when we’ve tied our moral positions on controversial topics to religious beliefs. For example, if we take the abortion debate in modern American society and we make an argument, something like, “God says murder is sinful. Abortion is murder, therefore abortion is sinful.” If we make that argument, and we believe that that argument is true, we tie this question of abortion in American political circles to God’s commandments, and we’re then really bound in a difficult place.
But it’s important to note that that’s a question of interpretation, and it’s also important to ask whether that is really what’s in question in the political controversy, or even whether God’s commandments should be applied to decisions in secular government. These become very controversial topics, but if we link a moral or political position to religion, we often feel that we are bound to fight for it, at any cost that may come. And I pump the brakes on that kind of thinking, because when we talk about religious convictions or God’s will, or what God says, or what the Bible says, there is always a possibility that our interpretation, our application, may be incorrect, may be imprudent, and so on. We can be wrong.
Now, Christians will often quote the Bible, and they’ll quote things that a prophet said. They’ll quote things that an apostle said, or that Jesus said, where they make some declaration of how they must obey God rather than men. They make this great heroic claim that like the prophets, like the apostles, like the saints, like Christ Himself, they must stand with God’s word. And that can be very compelling. But there is a problem with that. There is a problem, and we can’t ignore the reality of this problem.
When God spoke to Moses, when God revealed his will to Moses, along with the ability to interpret and apply that will as a lawgiver and a judge, God manifested his presence with Moses. God gave to Moses miraculous powers. And you can’t dismiss this as if it’s irrelevant. The fact that God gave to Moses both his word and miraculous powers is significant. When God sent the apostles into the world to preach the gospel, to persuade men, to call men to the Christian faith, to speak before kings and magistrates, to go and issue these great calls to repentance and faith and obedience, God also gave to those apostles miraculous powers that confirmed the truth of their words. We can’t just ignore that. We can’t just ignore that and pretend that that’s just some sort of accidental detail of the history of Christian teaching or of divine revelation. We can’t pretend that the divine confirmation of the teacher, of the preacher, by granting to that preacher miraculous powers that demonstrated that God was with him—we can’t pretend that that is insignificant.
And so we often hear throughout our society appeals to God as the justification for positions on controversial issues or decisions in controversial situations. Well, here people say things like, “The Lord said to me,” “The Bible says,” “The Church says,” “The Lord laid this on my heart,” “God convicted me that I needed to.” We hear all of these appeals to God, appeals to religion, appeals to authority. But there is a problem with that line of argument. That line of argument is really beyond the reach of human reason. There’s nothing that anyone can say when someone makes an appeal to divine authority like that.
And so we’re left with two options when a person makes an appeal to divine authority like that: either we have to submit to them because God said so, or we have to refuse them to make such a claim unless they can prove it. And I would argue that this was the whole purpose of miraculous powers or signs being given to people in history to whom God actually did reveal certain things. And this is not just the messages of the prophets in ancient Israel or the apostles in the early church. Even in church history, where controversies were settled by means of a revelation, signs were given to confirm the message. And I’ll give you an example.
Throughout church history, there was debate and disagreement over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The church’s greatest doctors argued back and forth on the topic. Thomas Aquinas, for example, didn’t see it as necessary for the Catholic faith. So this question of the Immaculate Conception went on unsolved with disagreement between doctors of the church. In accordance with church tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to a French peasant girl named Bernadette and spoke to her and revealed herself as the Immaculate Conception. She said to Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” So she revealed herself to this French girl, and this French girl went and reported this to her family. From her family, she was brought to her priest, and this became quite a controversial issue.
The priest understood the significance of what she had said. She said that she saw a woman who appeared to be the Virgin Mary, and that this woman greeted her and identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. The priest knew that something was very strange, because Bernadette was very well known to be a dull girl. She was not intelligent, not good at school, was physically weak and was known to be not very intelligent. She had no idea what these words meant. She had no idea what the Immaculate Conception meant, or that it was some profound theological controversy. She reported what the woman said to her. The priest recognized the significance of what she said. The priest knew that she had no idea what she was even talking about, but that she said that this woman spoke to her and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
And then a number of miraculous signs were added in the life of Bernadette to confirm that this was indeed a supernatural experience. Now notice I did not say this was a message from God, because St. Paul warns in his letter to the Galatians that even if an angel appears from heaven and presents a message that is contrary to the message of the apostles, he’s to be rejected. So just because there is some superhuman experience does not mean that that’s divine revelation. But the church investigated this situation and concluded that it was, in fact, a message from heaven resolving a conflict or controversy that really seemed to be impossible for the church to resolve. So there was not only a message, not only a conviction, but also signs to support the claim for that message.((Correction: A friend wrote: “In this article, you use the example of the visions of St Bernadette to argue for it becoming a resolution of the question of the Immaculate Conception. Her visions were in 1858. However, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception had already been officially defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854.”))
So if someone makes an appeal to divine authority, history seems to show us that if God, if a divine being, was to actually reveal something, he leaves a token of his involvement. He leaves a sign. And I believe that we should insist that if someone makes an appeal to divine authority, that he provide a token that God did, in fact, reveal this to him, visit him, whatever he may claim. And so associating our moral positions, political positions, practical opinions and so on, associating them with some kind of divine authority should always be resisted, unless there is some kind of token that confirms that claim.
I believe that in most cases, that is a form of sophistry. A person is making an argument appealing to human reason, and yet, when it’s time to provide evidence, he then leaps beyond the realm of reason and says, “God told me so.” I think we have the right as human beings to reject that line of argument. If this issue has not been clearly revealed by God, by divine revelation, then I don’t believe that we should ever expect that it will be casually revealed to some random person with no evidence that the message is, in fact, supernatural or from heaven.
So I would argue that when we find ourselves holding to a position very strongly that we cannot articulate or present persuasively, we should never make an appeal to divine authority. That’s really not a tool put in our bag when we think about divine authority. And again, there’s going to be disagreement on this, because Protestants, for example, believe that the Bible is God’s message, and therefore, if we see something in the Bible, we can present it with the full authority of divine revelation, even when the question relates to the interpretation of that passage. So we’ll often get, “Well, the Bible says, blah, blah, blah,” and the question of interpretation is ignored, which is to oversimplify the situation.
Really, when we appeal to Scripture, we’re appealing not only to the words—and remember, we’re reading translations, so even the words we’re reading are human interpretations. When we appeal to Scripture, we’re appealing to an interpretation of Sacred Scripture. We’re not appealing to a divine message directly. We’re appealing to a human interpretation of a divine message. And so it’s still a human argument, and it doesn’t settle the issue, because the interpretation would also be subject to proof.
Now, as Catholics, we believe in the doctrine of the magisterium, the authoritative role of the Pope and bishops as the official, authorized interpreters of both Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition. But remember, that’s a Catholic conviction. That’s a Catholic belief. And so this reveals the problem with religious appeals in public discussions.
And St. Thomas teaches us how to think about this. It’s in the first question of the Summa Theologiae. He asks one of the article questions: whether sacred doctrine, whether theology, is a matter of argument. It might be article seven or eight. I forget exactly. But he asks whether theology is a matter of argument, whether we can go out into the world and persuade people of Catholic theological truths. And his answer is very important, because it shows us how we should think about public discussion of religious conclusions.
He says that, you know, in the case of Catholic discussions, where we agree on all of the articles of faith, we concede as acceptable premises all published Catholic doctrine. We can argue from Catholic doctrine as from established premises. So, for example, if Catholics believe in the magisterium of the church, that the church has the authority to interpret Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition, then the fact that the magisterium, the Pope and bishops, do, in fact, interpret a certain doctrine, a certain passage of Scripture, in a certain way—that should be the end of the argument. We would begin with the first premise being the doctrine that the Pope and bishops have exclusive authority to interpret Sacred Scripture. We then need to show that a certain interpretation has been given by the magisterium, and then the conclusion is that this interpretation is therefore authoritative, and a person who claims to be a Catholic would be bound to accept that conclusion or deny the Catholic faith.
So when talking to Catholics, we can appeal to Catholic dogma, Catholic doctrine that’s accepted by faith and conceded, or granted in a discussion between Catholics. If a Catholic, on the other hand, is talking to, let’s say, a Protestant, and we know that a Protestant may concede or grant a number of the articles of faith, but maybe not all of them—for example, in the Apostles’ Creed, we say, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.” Now, through history, Protestants have put their own interpretation on what that line means. But in the Catholic Church, it’s evident what it’s understood to mean. It means that we believe in the reality of the Catholic Church, in the magisterium and all that’s included in the apostolic, visible, authoritative Catholic Church centered in Rome and represented by the Pope. That’s what we mean by “we believe in the Holy Catholic Church.”
Protestants may profess that same line of the Creed, but with a different meaning. And so as far as our ability to argue together, to reason together, we have to count that as an article of the faith, an article of our faith that they deny. And St. Thomas teaches that when we reason or argue with someone who doesn’t grant all of the articles of faith, we need to attempt to reason from those articles that they do, in fact, grant us. So we would not make an argument. We would not present as evidence for an argument that the Pope says so, or that the Council of such and such said so, because the Protestant does not hold that belief, does not grant that premise, and therefore that argument can’t be constructed.
So any group that we argue with, whether it’s a Protestant, whether it’s Jewish, whether it’s Muslim, if we know that they don’t hold all of the articles of faith, though they may hold some, we can argue from those shared convictions and use them as a starting point or as a principle from which to draw conclusions. So that’s again reasonable discourse. But in public, we often find that not even that can be expected. But we may find ourselves in a discussion with someone who rejects all of our articles of faith, that grants nothing that we hold as true or self-evident. And if that’s the case, then we cannot reason from theological starting points. We cannot reason from articles of faith. We can’t quote the Bible. We can’t quote the church. We can’t appeal to the teaching of a doctor of the church or some dogmatic statement of the church.
We respect the present condition, the present convictions of the person that we’re speaking with. And we reason with respect to that person’s convictions. We don’t just bulldoze the person. We don’t speak to him as if his unwillingness to grant us premises is unreasonable or stupid. The reality is that arguing from premises that are not granted is what’s actually stupid. And we respect the Catholic dogma of free will, or we respect the constitutional protection of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and so on.
And so we always seek to learn what there is that we hold in common with a person that we’re speaking with, and then commit to reasoning from those common places, those shared points of agreement. We reason from them as our principles or as our starting premises. And that’s what respectable, responsible, reasonable communication consists of. And we’re able to do that in any circumstances. We’re able to do that whether we’re speaking to people who are members of our own parish, or whether we’re speaking with strangers who are as opposite to us in every way as we can imagine. We can still discuss things reasonably, persuasively and respectfully.
And St. Thomas teaches this. But I just said that there’s a chance that we can speak to someone who shares none of our principles. And the question is, what can we do when someone shares none of our principles? And St. Thomas says, “Well, if someone shares none of our principles, then we can’t positively argue anything. We can’t positively prove our positions, because we have no starting points. We have nothing to start from. We’re just so distant in principles, so we can’t make positive or demonstrative arguments. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a discussion.”
What St. Thomas says is in that situation, what we should do is listen to their objections. Listen to what they say against our position, listen to what they say against our conclusions, and then work to prove that their objection can be resolved. So we can refute their objections. We can prove that their position is impossible. And this is what Socrates did in the Platonic dialogues, or I should, more properly, say this is what Plato did in his dialogues.
Plato does not establish truth. He doesn’t reason demonstratively and establish truth by means of reasoning. All that Plato does is ask a question, a dialectical question, take the opponent’s answer, which we assume is contrary to what the truth would be. That’s the whole point of dialectical reasoning. And then simply allow that position, allow that answer to run its course and see where it leads. Because if it’s false, it will lead to problems down the road. It will lead to contradictions. It will lead to absurdities. It will lead to impossible conclusions, which even the person presenting the answers will be embarrassed by.
And so what St. Thomas teaches us is that if we share no common principles, then we can hear their positions. We can listen to their views and seek to show that they’re impossible. So there is, even then, a means of conducting a reasonable and respectful discussion that can be very persuasive.
Now the goal of that kind of discussion is not to positively persuade them that our view is true. Refuting objections or proving a contrary view to be impossible doesn’t prove that our conclusions are necessarily true. But what it does that’s helpful is that it introduces doubt and then opens the discussion further.
Now, as we think about this, we see that what is needed in a reasonable discussion in diverse circumstances is patience and humility. Honest, reasonable, respectful public discussion and debate requires patience and humility. Patience is needed because we have to realize that a reasonable discussion is not going to lead to any kind of immediate transformation or conversion. That’s not reasonable.
Now, again, people reading the Bible will read passages like in Acts chapter two, where Peter preaches the gospel, and thousands of Jews immediately convert to the Christian faith, and they will go into their private conversations with people thinking that that may happen. That, however, is unreasonable. Remember that those Jewish people had experienced the ministry of Jesus. In many cases they observed a miraculous event, which was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, the apostles speaking in various languages and so on. There was a miraculous event followed by the apostles preaching. And that was the condition under which thousands of Jews repented. That’s not going on in our day-to-day conversations.
Our day-to-day conversations are reasonable conversations. They’re appeals to human reason. They’re rational creatures reasoning together. And so all of the rules of reason, all of the principles of the art of reasoning, should be assumed to be controlling the outcomes. All of the rules and principles of the art of rhetoric should be assumed to be determining what comes of these discussions. We should expect very slow, if any, changes in opinion among those with whom we discuss things. We should be content to listen carefully to what they have to say, articulate our own positions accurately, avoid any kind of sophistical appeal to false arguments, misleading arguments, appeals to divine authority and so on.
We should seek to restrict our arguments to what is reasonable in the context, and we should be content with little or no reaction from those with whom we speak. We should be content to engage in those discussions for the sake of the discussion, for the sake of truth, for the sake of learning. And that in both directions, we have the opportunity to better understand their convictions, and we provide them with the opportunity to better understand our convictions. And that relationship goes on in sincere, respectable and friendly terms. That should be the disposition that we bring with us into public discourse.
And notice that I am not saying we should avoid these discussions. I’m not saying that we should never discuss religion or politics. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is if we understand the nature of these issues, and if we understand the principles of reasoning and rhetoric, if we respect the free will of those with whom we speak, if we respect the constitutional rights of those with whom we speak and the places in which we speak, then we can both maintain our convictions very strongly, privately, and participate in the public circle very peaceably. So there’s none of this conflict that I mentioned at the beginning of this talk. We can get rid of this feeling of conflict now.
There’s also this persecution question, or this concern about persecution, and we need to understand what persecution is. Persecution is when someone, usually in power, decides that they want to eradicate our beliefs, and they go on a violent crusade against anyone who holds these beliefs, whether in public or in private. Persecution seeks out peaceable people and punishes them in order to try to terrorize them and make them abandon their convictions completely.
99.9% of what’s called persecution is not persecution. If you annoy another person or say things that are upsetting, hurtful, embarrassing and so on, and that person takes a chair and smashes you over the head, you’re not being persecuted as a Christian. That’s not persecution. If you publish offensive statements that you know divide your audience, like this professional basketball player did, and you get fired for doing so, that’s not persecution. And so we’ve got to learn to stop calling every bit of resistance that we face or any reasonable reaction to obnoxious behavior—we’ve got to stop pretending that that’s persecution, because it’s very rarely, if ever, truly persecution.
The apostles taught us that we should seek to live peaceably with all men. That should be the disposition of Christians. We shouldn’t be obnoxious troublemakers. We shouldn’t be out on street corners holding signs that say offensive things that we know will make people upset. That’s not Christian evangelization. That is not rational public discourse. That is obnoxious behavior that earns for those who practice it what they should expect: makes people angry, makes people violent, makes people want to tear up their signs, knock them down on the ground and so on. That’s not persecution.
So we’re not sent into the world to provoke people to anger, to provoke people to violence, and then tell ourselves that that violence and anger that we receive is a sign that we’re doing God’s will. That’s not true. If you look to the example of Christ, you see the example of a man who lived peacefully with those around him, who taught publicly, who respected the laws and was arrested in the middle of the night, falsely accused, unjustly condemned and executed contrary to all reason. Your situation is not like Christ’s situation. And so we need to stop calling any negative reaction that we get persecution and making it some kind of spiritual accomplishment. We could, in fact, be doing the opposite of what Christians are supposed to be doing in society.
And again, that behavior is justified by appeals to what the Bible says, which again ignores the fact that Bible passages require interpretation. So they’re really appeals to the person’s own interpretation of what those Bible passages mean, which is just a human argument and is a kind of sophistry.
So anyway, we should not be making divine appeals in arguments. We should not be claiming that God says this, or God told me this, or God wills this, or the Bible says this, or anything like that. We should avoid that, because if arguments are being made by appeals to divine authority, then we’re confessing that we have no actual arguments or evidence to offer. And even if we look to the scriptures, we see that when God did, in fact, reveal things to men, he did so with tokens that bore witness to his role in that revelation. If we have no such tokens, which we don’t, then we should not make appeals to divine authority. And Scripture is full of warnings to those who have made claims of divine authority in speaking to others, and God condemns all of that.
If we practice these things, if we learn to distinguish our private sphere from the public sphere, and if we learn how to engage in reasonable discussions with diverse groups of people in a reasonable way, following the principles that Thomas Aquinas taught us, we can get rid of this conflict in our life that causes us to struggle with private convictions and public responsibilities. We can get rid of that conflict, and we can live peaceably with all men while at the same time engaging in these discussions, talking about controversial topics, and seeking to be as persuasive as we can be. The persuasion, however, has to be honest and reasonable persuasion, not sophistical or disrespectful.
So I hope that that helps. That’s what I would say ancient philosophy teaches us, that’s what scholastic theology teaches us, and that’s what we need to practice in order to live lives of conviction, but at the same time, be honest and rational and peaceful members of public society who are good examples of the virtue of the Christian life.
I hope that helps. God bless you.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
