How We Answer Objections

Why This Section Exists

Every Catholic eventually meets the hard questions: from a friend, a colleague, a teenager at the dinner table, or their own mind. Isn’t Communion just a symbol? Why confess to a priest? Did Jesus even exist? These questions deserve real answers, given honestly and without contempt for the person asking.

St Peter told the first Christians to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them, and to do it “with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15). That is what this section tries to do.

The Method

The articles here follow the method of St Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), the Jesuit cardinal and Doctor of the Church. In his great work, the Controversies of the Christian Faith (published 1586–1593), he answered the objections of the Reformation one by one, and he was known for setting out his opponents’ arguments fully and fairly before replying to them.

Each article follows the same steps:

State the question fairly, as the people who raise it would put it.
Give the short answer, for readers who want only that.
Clear away misunderstandings: what the Church does not claim, as well as what she does. Many objections dissolve at this step.
Make the case from Scripture, the early Christians, the Church’s teaching and reason.
Answer each objection in turn, including the strongest ones.

Some articles are shorter and use only the essential steps. A few, on painful subjects, keep their own shape.

Our Standards

Every quotation is checked against a real text, and listed under Sources with a link, so you can read it in context for yourself.
Scripture is quoted from the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Press), as published in the Ignatius Bible.
The Church’s teaching is quoted from the current Catechism of the Catholic Church. Where teaching has developed, we say so plainly.
We concede what is true before answering what is not.
We do not put words in the saints’ mouths. We quote what Bellarmine and others actually wrote, and never what they “would say” today.

Found a Mistake?

If you find an error in a quotation, a reference or a fact, please let us know. We would rather be corrected than wrong.