It depends entirely on what you mean by “argue.” If you mean quarreling — scoring points, winning at someone’s expense, treating the person across from you as a target — then yes, it is wrong, and Scripture says so without hedging: “the servant of the Lord must not wrangle, but be mild toward all men” (2 Timothy 2:24). The spirit that loves the fight more than the truth is a vice, not a virtue.

But if “argue” means giving honest reasons for what you believe, then it is not only allowed — it is commanded. St. Jude tells the faithful to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).2 Our Lord reasoned with His critics; St. Paul reasoned in the synagogues and the public square. The faith is not a private feeling that good manners keep off the table — it makes public claims about reality: that God exists and can be known by reason,1 that Christ founded a visible Church. Claims about reality can be examined. To refuse every argument is not humility; it treats the faith as something that could not survive the daylight.

So the real question is never whether to give reasons, but how. The same passage that forbids wrangling names the manner: “apt to teach, patient, with modesty admonishing them that resist the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24–25). Argue the way a physician treats a patient, not the way a prosecutor treats a defendant. Done in charity, contending for the truth is an act of love — and the pillar and ground of the truth has been doing it for two thousand years.