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A Gadfly in Combat: The Rhetoric of Austen Ivereigh

Austen Ivereigh has done it again: driven his opponents (many of whom he helpfully names) into a defensive frenzy, which almost seems to prove the point he is making – namely, that these individuals get worked up too easily.

Our Lord surrounded by converts. (Photo by Joseph Shaw)

I want to say something about Ivereigh’s modus operandi before saying something about the substantive issue, which has to do with the fact that Ivereigh has noted that a number of people who worry about aspects of Pope Francis’s papacy are converts, not cradle Catholics.

I must be frank: I think Ivereigh is a kind of genius. Watching him debate Matthew Schmitz of First Things on Al Jazeera is like watching a gadfly in combat with a sumo wrestler. He has done the same thing in this recent post on Crux about converts. I am interested in the form as well as the content of arguments, and I recognize a master at work. How does he do it?

There is, in fact, a formula.

1. Whenever your opponent raises an objection to something you have said, don’t let yourself be pinned down. Just change the subject.

You have some detailed and nuanced concerns about the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia? Let’s talk about converts and cradle Catholics!

This is effective in extended public debate, private conversation, and televised discussion alike. Some years ago, I fell into conversation with a distinguished Church historian – a pretty liberal Catholic – on a crowded train from London to Oxford. He was in a pugnacious mood, and we argued pleasantly the whole way. But he never replied to my objections to anything he said except in such a way that I was provoked into addressing a substantially new claim he was making. By the end of the journey, I felt as if I’d spent an hour wrestling with a ghost. Since then, I’ve seen this strategy in action from Mgr. Basil Loftus as well as Austen Ivereigh.

This works by appealing, in one’s defense, to principles or facts with which one’s opponent strongly disagrees, and that brings us to the next part of the formula.

2. Tempt your opponent into arguing on the issues you want him to by asserting airily what you know he will disagree with.

There are issues, and sub-issues, and specific examples, about which one side of any debate looks stronger or weaker. Why waste your time arguing over the ones where you look relatively weak when you can force your opponent to spend all his time focused on the ones on which you look relatively strong? How can you do this? By provoking him to follow you into these sub-issues and throwing in your favored examples, even if they are irrelevant to the matter in hand. It works best with an opponent who keeps thinking: “I can’t let that claim go unchallenged, particularly on TV! People might think I agree with it.”

Now, if you actually want to persuade your interlocutor of a specific point, you need to avoid appealing to things you know he rejects, so it might appear that this strategy is self-defeating. But that would be to assume that the purpose of debate is to persuade the opponent or anyone in the audience who was inclined to agree with him, and that would be a mistake. Rather, the final part of the formula is this:

3. Provoke outrage in your opponent by outrageous and insulting assertions.

The purpose of the debate, for people like Loftus and Ivereigh, is not to persuade, but to lessen their opponents’ effectiveness. One way of doing this is by moving the debate to places where the opponent looks less good, as noted above. Another is by inducing some degree of spluttering rage. The hoped for result is to infuriate and humiliate him and in this way to silence him and his supporters. This works particularly well where the audience is not well informed on the subject at issue, and best of all when the audience is liberal or secular. Anyone, indeed, who is not following the argument in some detail – and Ivereigh is careful to make the path of argumentation dizzyingly serpentine by constantly changing the subject – is reduced to scoring the debate on the basis of which of the debaters is looking calm and self-satisfied and which is looking defensive and hot under the collar. The result is that Ivereigh comes out looking like the victor even if his opponent has given a series of his claims crushing ripostes. Ivereigh gives no sign of being crushed, and everyone watching is too confused to know what’s going on.

In a standalone article or blog post, the above formula is adapted: the trick here is to make so many outrageous or insulting claims that opponents start spluttering from the start, and onlookers think: Here is the masterful Ivereigh, cool and collected, and there are a bunch of people shouting and getting red in the face.

I realized, in addressing the appalling weekly columns of Mgr. Loftus, that it would take a small book to go into all the asinine claims of just one week’s output. Admittedly, after a while, you notice that he is repeating himself a good deal. But all the same, a thorough response would be a full-time job. And that’s two birds with one stone, isn’t it? A pile of theological nonsense purveyed to the public and a potentially effective opponent tied up in knots looking to most people like a nitpicking member of the Spanish Inquisition.

Ivereigh is an incomparably more sophisticated media operator than Loftus, but what is particularly striking about his latest column is how appallingly rude it is. He doesn’t just casually refer to his opponents as neurotics; he goes to some lengths to suggest he is using the word in a technical, medical sense. He is really, truly saying that half a dozen named Catholic journalists and commentators are mentally ill, for the simple reason that they disagree with him. Outrage is absolutely appropriate, but I fancy that it will get us all nowhere.

It is important to notice that if a conservative Catholic tried this shtick, it wouldn’t work. One important reason is that a conservative who baited his opponents with outrageous claims and insults would not be tolerated by his fellow conservatives. (This happens from time to time.) Liberals, on the other hand, are happy to let each other get away with this sort of thing, not because they all agree with all the detailed claims – far from it – but because they are happy to see them being used in the great war against orthodoxy which they all support. Does John Allen, for example, agree with Ivereigh’s absurd claim that the Pope is “chosen by the Holy Spirit”? I doubt it. But for the duration of Pope Francis’s papacy, Allen is happy to publish Ivereigh’s liberal ultramontanist ravings because they are tactically effective. (I’ve written more about this here.)

I suppose it’s worth stating the obvious: that the approach I’ve described deepens divisions and embitters opponents, and that it is contrary to charity and intellectually dishonest. But hey, all’s fair in love and war, isn’t it?

So, what of Ivereigh’s substantive point about converts? Well, it is very simple. Converts in general view the Church in terms of theology and ideas, because they have come into the Church, usually, because of theology and ideas. Cradle Catholics can fall prey to the temptation to see their Catholic identity as a tribal thing. If the Church were somehow to change her teachings, tribal Catholics would, obviously, be less troubled than intellectual converts. There are in fact plenty of cradle Catholics who understand that the Church is not some quasi-ethnic or cultural group, or a cozy club, but actually a community defined by adhesion to the message of the Gospel and the Church’s authority and sacraments. We are blessed, however, with a particularly high proportion of converts who recognize this reality without any prompting.

So, God bless you, Matthew Schmitz, Rusty Reno, Edward Pentin, Carl Orlson, John-Henry Westen, and Daniel Hitchens! All personally demonized by Austen Ivereigh, but gifts indeed from the Holy Spirit to the Church – the Holy Spirit, which, in every age, refreshes the Church with converts. Heaven knows, we cradle Catholics have done little indeed to deserve your assistance.

Originally published at LMSChairman.orgReprinted with permission under a new title.

59 thoughts on “A Gadfly in Combat: The Rhetoric of Austen Ivereigh”

  1. Good analysis. Really good.
    Time has allowed me to come to appreciate Mr. Ivereigh. He has repeatedly revealed himself to be a shallow thinker, addicted to his own myopia. A noxious bag of gas, perfectly reflecting the character of the team for which he serves as shill.
    I want to see and hear more of Mr. Ivereigh. A lot more.
    While the rest of them hide behind the authority their office alone provides, masked by a feigned piety, Mr. Ivereigh is their dog, presenting, all bark, no bite.
    The emperor is naked as a jay and Mr. Ivereigh can’t even provide a gauze pad for conceal.

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  2. Ivereigh states that people disagree with Francis because they look at it with american eyes, but this is untrue. All so called conservative Catholics, or rather those who follow the Church teaching on matters of faith and morals, have a dislike of many of the things he says and does around the world. It is hardly an American phenomenon, one need only look up articles on various non-English blogs and speak with the church going crowd.

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    • Those so-called “conservative Catholics” are actually “orthodox Catholics” (at least, the ones who aren’t sedevacantist – but, then again, the latter aren’t within the bosom of Holy Mother Church at the present time, either). “Conservative” and “liberal” are political terms which have no place in debates about the Catholic Church, no matter what Ross Douthat may think. “Orthodox,” “heterodox,” “heretical”? Yes. “Conservative” and “liberal”? No.

      Don’t give in to the nomenclature and the definition of terms of the heterodox. In so doing, you are only dignifying their falsehoods.

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  3. Well done, sir. The “chosen by the Holy Spirit in a conclave free from outside interference” claim is what really jumped off the page at me as an example of what you so smartly analyse above. It would take pages to properly refute the claim, and doing so could actually prove counterproductive, as it would all too easily bring about the next wild claim, i.e. you’re a schismatic. Add to that the fact that he himself was the one who initially revealed the possibility of interference in the conclave, and the trolling hits master level.

    It’s time we start thinking a few steps ahead. As the Walford Affair of a few months ago made clear – where Ivereigh used 1P5 to popularize Walford’s “irrefutable” article – the other side has been doing this for quite some time. And they’re good at it.

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  4. Well written analysis of the utter futility of engaging in a ‘debate’ or ‘discussion’ with such as these.

    I think we all ought weigh Our Lord’s Words before dignifying the nonsense, diabolic or otherwise, of such people with our intellectual and/or evangelical attentions:

    “Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you.” Matthew 7:6

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    • In a public debate, one argues not so much to convince their opponent as much as to convince the audience why they are correct and the opponent is in error. When I debate such people, I really don’t care about convincing them; they probably won’t be convinced anyway. it is for the audience, many of whom will never be seen. They are worthy of our attention.

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      • True; however, while there often is a limited proximate audience, who may or may not be convinced by one side or the other, the ‘real’ audience, remote, is that much larger group who will read edited accounts or hear selected ‘sound bites’ of the debate from a variety of biased sources ever-desirous of serving up fodder.

        I am not suggesting that debate is not a useful exercise; rather, that it is latterly not such a benign forum for championing one’s own position or Christ’s. Shake the dust off one’s feet and move on.

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  5. I did not realize that Reno, Pentin and Westin are converts! Glad to have y’all aboard the Barque of Peter, helping us try to bail it out.

    Converts being more Catholic than the Pope used to be a joke. Now it’s just a sad statement of reality…

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      • Let me see whether I have this straight: Austen Ivereigh has written a criticism of several prominent converts, for what he perceives as their misplaced zeal. At least one of these, John Henry Westen, is actually not a convert but has returned to the practice of the Faith after a period of lapsation. And this is the same Ivereigh who, when lapsed as a young man, impregnated a young woman, declined to marry her, and then did it again with a divorcee, before regaining sufficient faith to persuade at least one English bishop, subsequently cardinal archbishop, to employ him, later still founding an organisation ostensibly for the purposes of Catholic apologetics, alongside an Opus Dei numerary. That Austen Ivereigh? The same one who coined the phrase “Team Bergoglio” but feels able subsequently to claim that the pope is “chosen by the Holy Spirit in a conclave free from outside interference”?

        There’s so much wrong with that, I hardly know where to begin.

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  6. Of course Iver eight is a great media operator. He had ample practice here in England as spin doctor to Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster.

    In his earlier position as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Murphy-O’Connor had transferred a paedophile priest to the chaplaincy at Gatwick Airport. To the surprise of no one except his Bishop the paedophile molested a disabled 15 year old boy. Ivereigh performed a minor miracle by turning the Cardinal’s reputation around.

    Sadly the spin doctor could not spin his way out of trouble once it was revealed that his girlfriend had had an abortion and the Cardinal had to find a new spinner.

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    • Careful now. I had some comments deleted on another blog for bringing that matter up. But it certainly is a matter of public record that The Daily Mail was sued by Ivereigh for alleging that he had paid his girlfriend to abort their child. Whoever would believe that the Daily Mail had a better grasp of Catholicism than some “catholics” do?

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      • And what was Ivereigh’s rebuttal to that accusation? “She paid for the abortion herself”?

        It boggles the mind…..

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    • “Sadly the spin doctor could not spin his way out of trouble once it was revealed that his girlfriend had had an abortion and the Cardinal had to find a new spinner.”

      Why is this sad? He still does my work. And I’m not talking about the spin-doctoring, either.

      Don’t be a sad-faced Christian. Get on the Train of Joy before it leaves the station.

      All aboard!

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8ff7beb2d1f4119119df6c2b3893c1962cf4948a4c97a9b151d41d8a0e6e103.jpg

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  7. As for his one substantive point, I offer the following musings.

    It seems reasonable to expect that the population of converts and the population of cradle Catholics have statistical, population-level differences.

    And it seems reasonable that these population differences will sometimes pertain to orthodoxy, holiness, engagement in works of mercy, etc — to the lifeblood of the Church, in other words.

    So it seems reasonable to ask which group performs better in terms of mass attendance, confession, belief in the Real Presence, unequivocal rejection of contraception, usury, and abortion, firm commitment to the indissolubility of marriage, direct boots-on-the-ground personal care for the poor, etc — various marks of orthodoxy and commitment to the Gospel. Statistically speaking, of course.

    As a cradle Catholic myself – which of course grants me rhetorical immunity under the rules of engagement established by Ivereigh – I guess I’d be surprised if converts as a group didn’t perform substantially better on any set of reasonable measures of orthodoxy and commitment to the Gospel.

    That may not be the case for those who were raised Catholic in prior generations (I’m in my fifties); but the big controversy in preparing for my Confirmation mass was (I wish I was kidding) whether we were going to sing _Stairway to Heaven_ by Led Zeppelin or _Bridge Over Troubled Water_ by Simon and Garfunkle. I’d tell you what part of the Mass we were supposed to sing it in but we had no idea about parts of the Mass.

    (For those who are interested in the outcome, the pantsuit-wearing counselors/teachers overrode our vote for Zep and we sang _Bridge Over Troubled Water_, because _Stairway_ was a “drug song”. Implying that _Bridge_ isn’t, haha, what did those prudes know?. Sail on, Silver Girl!)

    So, to get to the point: if Pope Francis has a convert problem, that sounds like a roundabout – or maybe not so roundabout for those of us who are cradle Catholics – admission that he has an orthodoxy and orthopraxy problem.

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    • You know, something I’ve wondered for a long time, after growing up in a quasi-Protestant, rural Pennsylvania parish where any overtures toward orthodoxy (like that time the one elderly priest introduced Latin to the canon and asked us to genuflect before receiving Communion) were met with indignant fury.

      How many converts from Protestantism to Catholicism in the post-conciliar age actually converted to Catholicism?

      In other words, would these same folks have crossed the Tiber in 1945, or would all the smells, bells, and doctrine have been an insurmountable impediment? Because what many Catholics experience in their rural and suburban parishes in this post-apocalyptic…I mean, post-conciliar world, is what essentially amounts to a Protestant/Catholic hybrid where you get Mary, the saints, and the sacraments and replace sola scriptura with papal positivism.

      My wife is a convert who saw the beauty in the TLM before I did, so I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush here, but I do think the numbers would change depending on what the practice of the faith entailed, then vs. now.

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      • There are some interesting studies and statistics on the point you raise. I can only quote them for England & Wales in that before “the Council” converts were running at a rate of 12,500 per annum in our country i.e. converts to all those smells, bells, doctrine and Latin.

        After “the Council” when “Catholicism was much easier to understand because everything was in English” the numbers of converts dropped to around 4,500. Don’t know what the latest figures are, but I can make a fairly educated guess that they haven’t gone up! I would also bet my biretta that the last 4 years have seen numbers dropping in line with vocations due to the Francis effect.

        Whether the converts we see today would have converted back then we will never know. But we do know that more people converted back then and that would indicate that something about the Church was more attractive back then – even though it was more demanding.

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      • Yes, this is the question to ask with regard to evangelization and converts – what is one actually converting to.

        My sister was home a while back with a free day, nothing to do. I was joking around saying she should go around street or door-to-door evangelizing…and (aside from any other misgivings she would have about door-to-door evangelizing…haha) she said, well, even assuming people would listen to me, I would have to take them to Mass at our home parish…

        (Our home parish has a priest who went to seminary in the early 70s, that should say enough. Though to be fair, he is not a flaming liberal or anything, not even really unorthodox or anything, just says a very…well, not traditional, let’s say…Novus Ordo). And she hit the nail on the head – currently, she and I could, at best, very ineffectively evangelize true, authentic Catholicism in our town given what the one parish in town is like. In a word, there would be disconnect between what we teach and the Liturgy which they would experience. Unless, of course, we convinced them to come to the nearest Latin Mass (1.5 hours away)… 😉

        I mean, the True Presence can work wonders, so as long as there is that, God can work in whatever way He sees fit through the Novus Ordo… But just in general, when speaking of evangelizing, orthodoxy as well as authentically Catholic liturgy have to go right with it, at least if the evangelizing is going to be the most effective and lasting.

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        • This is sadly true. I pray and pray for my children’s conversion – but to what? However, God will send good priests, the real Mass, good books, faithful Catholic examples along with the conversion if it is what He wants.

          Many years ago I taught RCIA in a former parish. That night was the pastors ‘night out’ with some priest friends…needless to say everyone in the weekly class gave me major push back on simple things like whether they needed to go to Mass every Sunday! There was no way I could convince them that this was Catholicism. Most were converts who wanted to marry Catholics and there was some pressure on them to convert. Were they sincere? I guess. But from what we see in the numbers most of them don’t stick.

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      • As I recall conversion was not uncommon at all before the Council. Unable to site the source, but I recall reading in the not so distant past that there was concern in the 1950’s that the United States would come to be characterized as a Catholic country in no small part (though not primarily) because of conversion statistics. Just a surface observation, but there were a fair number of individuals of celebrity status that entered the Church in those years — Clare Booth Luce to Gary Cooper. And there was a healthy group of Catholics in the media — Hollywood no less. Imagine, Hollywood becoming Holywood…

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        • Am I right in thinking one of the most prominent atheists of those days – Bertrand Russel – died tormented by worry the United States would become a Catholic country? If so could you help me with sources?

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          • I can’t confirm — but the idea is a consolation in these dark days. Even more consoling is the idea that Mr. Russel’s torment might have led him to “wake up” on his “way out.”
            “For God, nothing is impossible.” Matthew 19:26

    • I’ll see you that Confirmation Mass controversy and raise it a bit. For my (Catholic) grade-school class’s graduation Mass, a number of students wanted to sing “Joy to the World” (Three Dog Night) as one of the songs. The teachers said, “No” – and, instead, we sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water” at the beginning of Mass, and the execrable, treacly “Prayer of St. Francis” (Sebastian Temple) at the Offertory.

      In retrospect, perhaps we should have sung “Those Were The Days” (Mary Hopkin – the one based on a Jewish folk song) instead……

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  8. They call August the Silly Season for news articles so it’s good to see Austen Ivereigh maintaining at least that tradition (with a small ‘t’).

    Apologists of his ilk for the antics of the current pontiff couldn’t care less whether a significant proportion of their more prominent ‘opponents’ only joined the Church in recent years or if in fact they were present at the election of Pius XI. The ‘misplaced zeal of the convert’ argument is just a convenient motif to use in order to make the more superficial reader think, “Hey, these guys have barely been Catholics for a wet week. How can *they* know better than the pope?” No. The real target is much more simply defined. It is any Catholic who views all aspects of their Precious Faith through the bimillennial prism of Antiquity, Ubiquity and Unanimity and as a result, can spot a Modernist from a mile away.

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  9. Of course Austen’s a genius. With a formula. A formula that he described and published himself in 2012!

    How to Spoil the Faith Without Raising Your Voice (Civil Responses to Win Your Arguments)

    P. S.: Isn’t the whole Francis experiment about becoming more appealing to potential converts? Oh silly me, I always forget. Intra ecclesiam nulla audientia. Converts are not relevant anymore once they convert.

    P.P.S.: Go give the good Eccles some hits: http://ecclesandbosco.blogspot.sk/2017/08/catholic-converts-are-they-all-nutters.html

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  10. Ivereigh is auditioning for Greg Burke’s job at the Holy See Press Office which he craves. He’s showing the nomenklatura of the new “merciful” FrancisChurch that he can be an attack dog and go after the “rigid” “rosary counters” who oppose the “merciful” Francis.

    Attaboy, Austen…….sic ’em!!

    His fame clock is at 14 minutes and 57 seconds. Ignore this nasty blowhard.

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  11. Ozzie Ivereigh a genius? He is just a hoot. Why does anyone take him seriously after his article saying that Pope Francis was following in the steps of Peron and similar comic pieces?

    I recommend Eccles pastiche of Ivereigh’s article at:

    http://ecclesandbosco.blogspot.co.uk/

    for a good laugh although I am not sure that the original did not make me laugh louder.

    As to his time at Westminster he was not there when the Fr Hill scandal arose. It is said that Tony Blair was instrumental in calling off the Police from Cardinal Cormac’s back in return for appointing Nolan to draw up over-strict rules for dealing with paedophile priests and also having secondments from the Cabinet Office to advise him which is how he got Sir Stephen Wall who turned out to be openly ‘gay’ and had to resign. Ivereigh followed as public affairs advisor to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor. Cardinal O’Connor assisted by Ivereigh did his best to ensure that the Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth did not follow Catholic teaching on contraception, abortion, FGMs etc rubbishing the efforts of the Grand Priory of the Knights of Malta and others to keep it on the straight and narrow.

    This was a precursor of what has more recently happened in Rome with the Grand Master being sacked for following orthodox teaching. I wonder whether that was in part punishment for having opposed Cardinal Cormac when he led the Grand Priory in England. Cardinal Cormac, as a member of the St Gallen group, was one of the keenest supporters of Pope Francis’s election as Ivereigh rather unwisely told us.

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    • That was an eye opening link. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The guy has a brutal, piercingly accurate sense of humor.

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    • I was trying to imagine how anyone could be as big a genius as is posited in this essay, and had a hard time of it. While I am perfectly happy to credit Dr. Shaw with a fine theory here, I have my doubts as to its practical application. I don’t know Mr. Ivereigh at all, so I can’t estimate whether he is really that devious and crafty. In any case, is it not possible, even likely, that his rhetorical practices are simply an example of the standard leftist penchant for vicious personal attacks on anyone having the temerity to disagree with them? Rather than trying to respond objectively to such trash, perhaps we ought merely to answer with laughter and mockery, as you and Bruvver Eccles demonstrate.

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  12. I’ve basically given up debating with such people as Ivereigh for the reasons Dr Shaw notes. Now I go straight for the jugular, “How many abortions did you pay for?” is a favourite question. Try it. Works like a charm. They shut up.

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  13. I agree with this article, except on one point, which occurs again and again in the terminology used on this website, which is the divide between so called ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ Catholics. From a traditionalist point of view I would say it is clear that liberals are not Catholic at all and shouldn’t be treated by us as if they were. Even conservatives who are infected with modernist ideas are not Catholics. Catholicism implies the rejection of all Modernism. There are no liberals and conservatives in the Church, there are only Catholics. There are two requirements to be Catholic: (1) Being validly baptized and (2) Professing the Catholic faith: Liberals simply don’t belong to the Church at all because they don’t profess the Catholic faith.

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  14. Divide and conquer – a tactic as old as Adam and Eve. God bless Mr. Ivereigh; may he use his gifts someday for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls!

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  15. Excellent article. You underline precisely the tactics of this polemist.
    Unfortunately it is not limited to our particular arena of Catholic’s subjects and challenges. As it permeates the contemporary political debate, in many insidious ways

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  16. To piggyback on the comment by louiseyvette, below, regarding going straight for the jugular: I agree. When you’re fighting Ali, you need to get in incredibly good shape, put your head down and just throw hay makers. You could not defeat Ali using bob and weave techniques.

    I think the same applies here: glove off, no niceties. Now this doesn’t mean being rude or inpatient, it just means a dogged determination to attack on certain points. People need to keep driving until questions are answered.

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  17. This is news? It’s standard lefty practice to employ redirection and personal attack in debate. Allow me to introduce everyone to phrases such as “To get back to the issue we were discussing…”, “Nice try. As I was saying…” “So in other words, I was correct.” And etc.

    Stay calm and stay on topic. Remember that you are really speaking to other people following the conversation. The lefty freak will never see the light.

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  18. Brilliant observations. Ivereigh is a true sophist who deploys rhetoric in order to win an encounter, not a thinker who seeks to establish truth. Countering his techniques with honest debate is a futile exercise. One needs to turn the same method against him to leave him exposed as someone shallow, self-promoting, and dishonest. Discrediting is more powerful than disproving in such bad-faith encounters.

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  19. Defending the indefensible while asking for donations. The irony must go right over the heads of the people at 1p5. There is no genius in a man that alienates converts – and defends the heresy in AL. In fact, if you want donations to pick up – I suggest you stop giving Austin a platform.

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  20. I have experienced this method from multiple liberal friends of mine when debating secular issues.
    I wonder where they learn and hone this technique. It drives you crazy.
    Let me guess, Ivereigh will also often put words into the mouth of his opponents, forcing them off topic to defend themselves from something they never said and never would in a million years.

    These friends of mine have never heard of Ivereigh or anyone mentioned in this article except for Pope Francis.
    Why have I wasted so many hours trying to have a conversation/relationship with them?

    Reply

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