There are broadly three reasons for arguing - to support those on your side; to persuade the waverers, undecideds, don't knows and don't cares; and to dent the confidence of the opponent (or 'get one over').
Obviously, there's also verbal sparring, mind games etc, but that's a different branch of arguing.
There are good and bad ways of arguing, and the current Papal Visit to Britain has provided a reminder of this, in much the same way as the illegal invasion of Iraq did.
Pope Benedict XVI personally and as head of the RC Church is the target of much criticism. The charge sheet is long. For as long as I can remember, people have campaigned tirelessly on many of those issues. I can't claim to have 'campaigned', tirelessly or otherwise, but frequently on this blog and far more frequently elsewhere I have made my position abundantly clear.
The only way to argue is to do so rationally. To present logical arguments - if you allow/forbid x, then y happens, or to present evidence, or, at least, credible/verifiable illustrations.
Then we have the Papal Visit. In certain parts of the internet, he is alternatively, or simultaneously, a cunt and a Nazi. I find it astounding that people, often professional wordsmiths, choose to use the word 'cunt' when there are so many other accurate descriptions. I find it astounding that people who claim to understand the meaning and impact of language choose the word 'cunt' as a scattergun insult.
I think there is an element of exhibitionism "Look.at.me! I am so edgy, I use the word cunt, against all social taboos". A bit like a four-year-old boy using 'bottom' or 'willy' to shock. People living in middle-class enclaves, confident in their edginess as they mix only with other semi-educated pseudo-intellectuals, unaware of the usage of 'cunt' as a scattergun insult by the most violent of misogynists.
So it makes it doubly ironic to describe the Pope or his side-kicks as 'cunts'. It's an old-fashioned misogyny linked absolutely to theirs. It's the same mentality that forbids menstruating women from the sanctuary. Exactly the same line of thought that has concluded that it is wrong for Catholic priests to possess or enter female genitalia. Because female genitalia are the worst possible object in existence and nothing can be worse that having female genitalia. Except, being the personification of female genitalia. Sounds familiar, chaps?
And the Nazi slur? Two wrongs don't make a right. Joseph Ratzinger is more guilty than the lazy journalists that call him a 'Nazi' to look clever.
As a child, he was a member of the Hitler Youth. By all accounts, he had no choice in the matter. Pretty much like how I was forced to be a member of his church when I was young. Only, I was forced only by my parents and the schools they chose, rather than the unimaginable brutality of Nazi Germany. He later deserted from the Wehrmacht, and no one has ever been able to find any evidence that he was a Nazi. So why call him that?
His labelling atheists as Nazis is even more loathsome. He, of all people, ought to know better. But that really isn't a justification for unintelligent tit-for-tat name calling.
The purpose of opposing Joseph Ratzinger should begin with the essential misogyny, his and his Church's unequivocal hatred of women. In brief, this forbids the use of contraception in the developing world, contributing and exacerbating poverty.
For centuries in 'Christendom' women have been relegated to non-people: chattels, the property of fathers and husbands; victims of forced marriages and consequent rape; or imprisonment for the crime of sexual intercourse while fertile (often by being raped); denied legal rights, voices, education and autonomy.
Even today, in a more pluralist and post-Reformation age, the essential misogyny of the Catholic Church and its local offshoot dominate far too much of our constitution and our statutes as well as how we behave as a society.
Out of this misogyny comes the other hateful behaviour, the homophobia that destroys lives; forbidding the use of condoms for prevention of HIV/AIDS - especially in parts of Africa where women and girls raped within marriage or by strangers are condemned to death at the hands of Benedict XVI and his predecessor; the desire to regulate the personal emotional and sexual lives of people who do not subscribe to their views.
Some of the people who complain about the pope do so specifically on the grounds on the cover-up of the child abuse by his employees. They are right to do so, and I have done so.
Intelligent people recognise that the nub of the matter is the 'cover up', because, sadly, the acts occur in so many settings.
I can be cynical and say, also - and I blame the media for this - paedophilia is characterised as the sexual assault of under-age boys. It might be that in the case of the Catholic Church, most of the well-publicised cases have been on boys, because of structural and institutional issues.
But in wider society, certainly, in the West, most cases of adult-child sexual assault are on girls. Subconsciously, this is deemed less newsworthy. Perhaps because girls obviously reach physical maturity before the standard ages of consent, but just because they are seen, again, at a subconscious level, as being 'fair game', 'normal' objects of sexual predatory, the property of men - fathers, husbands, strangers, there to serve men.
These are extremely serious charges that have been dismissed by Joseph Ratzinger and his predecessor and their colleagues as trivial. They are far more serious than being a young conscript to Nazism, and they are totally morally wrong in a way that female genitalia are never wrong.
I don't suppose this blogpost will convert one Papist apologist. I hope it persuades some waverers or 'don't-knows'. I want to offer my support to the tireless campaigners against institutionalised misogyny and its evil impact. But for those jumping on the latest bandwaggon to sling out ill-judged insults, in order to look cool among their peers, meh.
