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Showing posts from December 21, 2008

When a Catholic Feels he or she is being ATTACKED for their Faith

By Father Trigilio When I was in high school seminary, we had a professor who introduced us to forensic debating but in a fun way. We had mock courts with judges, juries, defense and prosecuting attorneys. Like the scholastic disputation method done in the time of Saint Thomas Aquinas, we held trials (debates) on such things as the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, etc. A priest was always the judge but all he did was to rule on our arguments and never injected his opinion. We had another teacher as our coach (senior partner in the firm, so to speak) What I found was that when compelled to formulate a coherent argument or defense, it makes you appreciate more what you believe. Appeal to sympathy and other logical fallacies were immediately dismissed. One had to use LOGIC and some persuasive argumentation. It also helped knowing what the other side would try to reason in their defense. Issues like slavery, segregation, prohibition, etc., were also looked at. Bottom line is to