As I write, the world is reeling from the despicable killing of Charlie Kirk, the US conservative activist and podcaster. Since I had never heard his name before, I looked him up on YouTube and found that he was known mostly for engaging in discussions with college students. Kirk would first participate in a panel discussion, and then students with viewpoints that diverged from his would come up to a microphone and challenge him on some point or another.
Incidentally, the style employed reminded me of another recent initiative taking place in my home country, Malta, called the Hot Seat. As in Kirk’s case, a number of Gen Z youths take turns to challenge the views of a person on a particular subject that they all disagree with. The first (and only episode so far) dealt with abortion. As often happens in such hot button debates, I found the whole discussion rather distasteful. Several inaccurate claims were made on both sides, sweeping statements were done throughout, and at several points throughout the debate, the attacks turned personal.
In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre insisted that debates on important political issues are doomed to fail because of the “incommensurability of rival arguments.”[1] By this he meant that different moral paradigms, insofar as they have different ends in sight, can never be seen to lead to any agreement. In the same vein, Michael Sandel famously described debates in contemporary political life as “shouting matches” and “ideological food fights.”[2] As a way forward, Sandel advocates for asking the deeper questions underlying issues that fall on one side or another of the culture wars, and a common commitment to seek “the good” instead.
A brief genealogy of debate
Debate always had an important place in the history of western civilisation, provided it was conducted well. It is worth mentioning here some notable examples.
Socrates is known to have engaged in dialogue with others in such a way that allowed him and his interlocutors to discover another aspect of the truth through a dialectical process. Neither he nor any of his interlocutors claimed to have grasped the truth fully a priori. They always departed from their own personal conviction. In the process of the dialogue between them, they would clarify their understanding of the truth. In order to do so, they had to humbly leave behind their preconceived ideas and answer in honesty each other’s questions, often arriving at a conclusion that was significantly different from their initial premises.
Although not in actual dialogue form, in his work Sic et Non, Peter Abelard presents 158 questions that he answers through contradictory authoritative states of different early Christian writers.[3] For example, see entry 150, “That adultery is the worst of all sins second only to heresy and the contrary.”[4] First, he quotes Clement’s First Letter to Jacob and Bede the Venerable, who answer in the affirmative. Then, he quotes Ambrose in his work On Virgins, who gives a contradictory response. These seemingly opposing claims provided students with the opportunity to see various issues from different perspectives, and in so doing, to appreciate the depth involved in reaching a resolution that is closer to the truth than to the original claims.
Two centuries later, in his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas elaborates on Abelard’s methodology by engaging contrasting voices to then reach a resolution. James F. Keenan helps us understand the contribution that Aquinas made to how debates were conducted:
Prior to giving an answer, Thomas presented a series of objections or considerations from other authorities who, generally speaking, often seemed at odds with the reply that eventually Thomas provided… Like those before him, Thomas wanted us to know that there already was a debate on the matter and he insisted that we know what the issues in that dialogue were, before reading his reply. In effect, he structured the articles to appreciate the debate. After he finally replied, he concluded each article with specific responses to each of the earlier considerations. Each article, then, invited the reader into deeper discussions and debates about the standing question.[5]
Regrettably, due to the way in which Neo-Scholasticism developed in the subsequent centuries, the search for truth through this style of debate was eventually lost. Instead, truth was believed to be crystallised in pithy axioms, valid always and everywhere, somewhat like Kant’s synthetic a priori claims. The further historical developments of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Modernism, and the discomfort that the Church felt with these movements is likely to have contributed to entrenching even more deeply convictions that were based less on wholesome debate and more on pro or contra rallying cries.
The current situation
More than a century and a half down the line, we are hardly in a better place. When debates are organised, panellists are often handpicked such that one is passionately in favour of an issue and the opponent is staunchly against the same issue. In itself, this is the first grave shortcoming, since one cannot expect any resolution or common ground.
When debates are held on an ideological level, one can never see eye to eye. If the aim of the debate is not that of honestly seeking the truth, the debate has already failed. It merely ends up in an exercise of trying to shoot down the opponent’s argument, and when that fails, to denigrate the opponent themself.
When following such debates, one can sometimes find that the various participants on either side of the debate extend their argument to such extreme positions that they too would not be comfortable with such conclusions. Since the debating forum often looks more like a gladiator’s arena, it would make interlocutors often feel humiliated if they were to admit the limitations to their argument or to concede that their opponent might be right on some aspect or another.
To the inattentive listener, who for some reason or other might not be able to critically analyse what is being said, statements made haphazardly in the heat of the moment might easily gain traction.
It must also be acknowledged that, because Gen Z has been brought up in such a fluid environment devoid of any fixed points of reference, they crave for anything that might serve as an anchor for them to develop a sense of identity. This is probably why a person who is more direct and vociferous in his or her arguments, and less sensitive to nuance, appeals more easily to the younger generation.
What I have described above creates the perfect breeding ground for fundamentalist religiosity and for populism, with all the problematic social effects that this brings with it.
Pointers for wholesome debates
Digging deeper. In the Gospels, we often see the Pharisees seeking to trap Jesus in controversy: “Is it lawful or not to…?” Jesus never gives in to their scheming. Instead, he invites them to ask themselves more fundamental questions. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul insists that we must “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage,” but he also adds how this is to be done: “with great patience and careful instruction” (4:2).
Synodality and bridge-building. Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis retrieved the importance of synodality, a key aspect of which includes humble listening to one another, letting go of one’s privileged position, and daring to enter into the reality of the other person. Pope Leo XIV has shown from the outset that he will be following his predecessor by building bridges and especially by healing the wounds of division and polarisation.[6]
If a debate is to be fruitful, it must benefit listeners who want to emerge a bit more enlightened on an issue. The grace of self-doubt, which Margaret Farley describes as “one of the least recognised Gifts of the Holy Spirit” is essential for interlocutors on any debating panel. Farley explains:
This is not a grace for calling into question every fundamental conviction we have achieved. It will not foster doubt, for example, about the dignity of human persons or the trustworthiness of God’s promises. It is a grace for recognizing the contingencies of moral knowledge when we stretch toward the particular and the concrete. It allows us to listen to the experience of others, take seriously reasons that are alternative to our own, rethink our own last word. It assumes a shared search for moral in-sight, and it promotes (though it does not guarantee) a shared conviction in the end. Absent such grace, it is not surprising that a church’s teaching will remain divisive and ineffective, unconvincing to many within the church and without.[7]
Participating in wholesome debate does not mean that one falls into relativism or that one does not challenge, speak truth to power, or affirm one’s convictions. These are all important. However, if debate is to be done well, that is, if truth is to be sought and communicated to others, it ought to be done not by attacking one another but by walking side by side with others, in a joint discovery of the truth.
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[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 9.
[2] Michael Sandel, “The Lost Art of Democratic Debate,” TedTalk, 2013. Available online at https://youtu.be/HkgHLK9_Zt8.
[3] James F. Keenan, A History of Catholic Theological Ethics (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2022), 137-138.
[4] Peter Abailard, Sic et Contra: A Critical Edition, Blanche Boyer and Richard McKeon (eds.), (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976) para 147 and 150. Available online at https://archive.org/details/sicetnoncritical0000abel.
[5] James F. Keenan, A History of Catholic Theological Ethics (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2022), 154.
[6] Leo XIV, “In interview with Crux correspondent, Pope talks Ukraine, synodality, polarization, World Cup,” CruxSeptember 14 2025. Available online at https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2025/09/in-interview-with-crux-correspondent-pope-talks-ukraine-synodality-polarization-world-cup.
[7] Margaret Farley, “Ethics, Ecclesiology, and the Grace of Self-Doubt,” in A Call to Fidelity: On the Moral Theology of Charles E. Curran, James J. Walter, Timothy E. O’Connell and Thomas A. Shannon (eds.), (Washington DC: Georgetown University PRess, 2002), 68-69.