All Suitable Means

 In order that both he who is giving the Spiritual Exercises, and he who is receiving them, may more help and benefit themselves, let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save his neighbor's proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly, let him correct him with charity. If that is not enough, let him seek all the suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and save himself.  St Ignatius, Presupposition

I've quoted St Ignatius's presupposition often, because it's the most elegant formulation of dealing with disagreement that I've seen.   Obviously he's talking in the context of a retreat director and his/her retreatant.   So some starting trust is involved.    If it was a prospective martyr talking to his torturer, the dialogue would be a bit different.   But not altogether different.  

It struck me recently that St Ignatius's procedure is not altogether unlike St Thomas Aquinas's use of the quaestio, though obviously taking place in a different context.    It's also not altogether dissimilar to the procedure in Matthew 18, though again the context is different.

Basically, it adds up to a responsibility to:

1.  Make sure the other person is actually in error, not just saying things in a different or perhaps inadequate and confused way.    In other words, you refrain from immediate and harsh judgment.

2.   If the other is indeed in error, to what extent?   A process of inquiry is called for.

3.   Genuine error is to be corrected with charity.   Notice there is no relativism here, but it is in the context of willing the good of the other; it is for their sake.  

4.   If correction does not suffice, you don't let it rest.    Again, error is not thought of as trivial.   The good Christian is to use "all suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and save himself."  

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I'm quoting St Ignatius because this will be the basic standard when I'm talking about tricky and conflicted issues on this blog.    I've seen a lot of different approaches and to some extent the differences can be prudential -- that is, considerations of truth and charity can lead different people with different responsibilities in legitimately different directions.   

Obviously when evaluating written arguments, one is not in active dialogue with the other person, so inquiring how he means it will take a different form than it would in a conversation.   Perhaps the quaestio format helps here for Aquinas tried to marshall the contra arguments in their best form and generally did not impute bad motives to those he disagreed with.   

As for the reason WHY ordinary Catholic people might write or talk about potentially conflicted issues, there is what Pius XII and others have said on the laity:

Public opinion is, in fact, the prerogative of any normal society composed of men who, conscious of their personal and social conduct, are intimately involved in the community of which they are members. It is everywhere, ultimately, the natural echo, the common, more or less spontaneous resonance of events and the current situation in their minds and in their judgments. -- Pius XII

Most recently, Pope Francis has frequently called out for this kind of openness, which he calls parrhesia.    Since he mentions Acts of the Apostles and other examples from the early church, I would take it to be in line with the kind of charitable truthfulness that I am trying to refer to by means of St Ignatius, St Thomas and Pope Pius XII.