Castigat ridendo mores

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“The devil … that proud spirit … cannot endure to be mocked” (St. Thomas More).

Proverbs 26:4

4 Do not answer fools according to their folly,
lest you too become like them.

5 Answer fools according to their folly,
lest they become wise in their own eyes.

Stanford Nutting Videos

From Theater of the Word, Inc.

Belloc

Hilaire Belloc, "Catholicism: Its Case."
If you are defining Catholic truth against some simple, half-educated man, stuffed with the popular "science" of the day, your task is of one kind. If you are defining it against a highly-cultured, skeptical man whose own very brain work has fatigued and confused him with doubt, your task is of another. In the first case, you have only to instruct — as a superior does an inferior. In the second case, you have to awaken. If you are defining the Catholic truth against a highly-cultured, skeptical man, not fatigued but alive with hatred for the Faith, then you have quite another business to your hand. You must fight. You must meet him as an equal, with wit and with irony. You must batter down his battering.
If you are defining the Catholic Faith against the old-fashioned Protestant (in England we have hardly any left, but in America you have; and it is, to their honor, a great number) you must use arguments almost entirely historical, though mixed with a certain amount of philosophy; asking them especially whether anything can be itself if it be not one; and whether there can be any fundamental authority that is not superior to individuals.
In the same way, if you are not defining, but spreading, Catholic truth, your effort will differ in manner according to your medium. There is one way of approaching the simple man; there is another way of approaching the sophisticated. There is one way of making a man see whether or not his blindness is due to cataract, and another way of making him see whether or not his blindness is due to a malformation of the lens of the eye. Spectacles and operations are distinct remedies.
Further, I think that our time is a sincere time; one seeking instruction, and anxious. I think it will honestly appreciate and regard what is put before it. Catholic truth will have to be put gently, because our time is not used to the effort of thought, and it will have to be put very simply and clearly, for the same reason.