AAA Forum: Rules & Tips

[Forum Admin]

OVERVIEW

The "Ask an Apologist" (AAA) forum is for asking our staff apologists specific questions about the Catholic faith.

The AAA forum is 100% moderated. That means that all new questions (i.e., threads) submitted to this forum by registered members are first reviewed by the CA staff apologists BEFORE they are made public. In other words, when you submit a new thread (question), it will not appear immediately in the AAA forum. It goes into a private, back-office queue along with all the other (unanswered) questions that have been submitted. As our apologists select questions and answer them, they will then be made public within the forum.

Once a question is answered, the thread is locked by the apologist. If you wish to discuss an issue further, you can either submit a new question to the AAA forum or start a new discussion thread in one of the other forums on this site.

RULES

1. Staff apologists have limited time and are not able to address all questions. You may indeed have an interesting and pressing question, but if the AAA forum is extremely busy, it may not get answered.

2. Some types of questions are never answered. In particular, apologists will not read, analyze, and comment on articles or web sites. Nor will we respond to requests for subjective opinions. And questions of a highly-personal or sexual nature are best handled by other means. (see post #2 below)

3. All questions that are submitted to the Ask an Apologist forum are subject to being published in the Ask an Apologist forum. This means that private questions (i.e., questions that you do not want to be made public on the Ask an Apologist forum) should not be submitted to that forum. For assistance with private questions, please contact Catholic Answers directly.

4. Questions that are selected to be answered may be edited for various reasons, including brevity, clarity, or the need to remove private information.

5. If you wish to know how to respond to some claim, please pose the issue in the form of a specific question (e.g., “How can a Catholic answer this particular argument?”) rather than a general one (e.g., “Could you read this article and tell me what you think of it?”).

6. If you need an immediate answer, consider submitting your question to one of the other forums here. Our forum members may be able to answer it. Alternatively, you can contact our staff apologists by phone by calling Catholic Answers at 619-387-7200 (Mon-Fri, 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. Pacific).

7. Use font enhancements sparingly and only in cases of true need (e.g., to emphasize a point, you may use italics). Excess font enhancement commands make your post difficult to read and difficult to edit.

8. Submit only one question per post.

9. Self-edit your posts for length. You should be able to ask your question in 250 words or less (preferably less). Be concise.

10. Please retain a copy of your question before submitting it. If it is not answered within 5 days, then it was deleted (please see Rule 1 above). Please redirect the question to one of Catholic Answers' public forums so that other participants can help you with the question.

11. Please do not submit your question multiple times. If a question is multiply submitted, all submissions will be deleted. Also, please do not continue a question in successive posts; it will be deleted. Confine your question to one post.

For tips and other help on getting your question submitted and answered quickly, please see the next post below.

ver 1.1j