Lawyers tend to discuss a lot of topics, and many vigorously.
"Lonesome Charley" Reynolds. Son of a physician, Reynolds was such a loner that he ended up with a solitary name in an occupation that involved solitude, that of U.S. Army scout. His days ended at Little Big Horn. Prior to being a scout, he'd occupied a variety of occupations, including that of buffalo hunter. His visage has appeared here before.
These include some of the topics you aren't supposed to discuss, notably religion and politics, although I don't know that you really aren't supposed to discuss them.
When they are discussed, however, they need to be discussed in some intelligent context. I'm not afraid of discussing them, and as over the three decades of legal practice I know have I've worked with one individual who made it a minor and occasional sport to attack Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, I've found myself having to defend my beliefs simply for walking into the break room. On that, I'd note, that I don't like having to engage in such debates not because they're serious topics, but rather because somebody is in an ornery mood and just wants to argue, or who views arguing on such matters as sport.
I note, on that, in recent years this has happened less and less as I've been able to pretty much defeat the opposing view to the point of concession. It's at least to the credit of the arguer that they don't go away mad, but concede.
Anyhow, this isn't about that.
People who like to comment on public speaking often note that "you should know your room". I think extroverts, or at least highly extroverted people, don't tend to be able to "read the room".
Twice in a week I've been in the office doing what I do in the office, which isn't theology, and had a coworker who is a coreligious simply blurt out of the blue, and I do mean blurt out, his concerns over Pope Francis.
From an introverted way of thinking, it's one thing if a person is idled, i.e., there's reason to believe that I'm in a posture in which I'm not engaged in some other intellectual endeavor of a work fashion, and the setting is appropriate to bring up a religious topic. I.e., if I'm sitting in the break room alone, or if I'm in my office on an off hour looking at pictures of naked elk, or sporting goods equipment that I don't need but what like to have. For one thing, if approached in such a fashion, on a topic that's sort of inside baseball, that's a different deal.
Indeed, the same coworker likes to go to the fellow who has an office near me and blurt out stuff about the Minnesota Vikings and Greenbay Packers, which is fine as they both have an interest in football and football is a monstrous triviality. The fact that I'm a conscripted third participant in some boring discussion about a boring sport is irrelevant, as my opinion on the terminal dullness of football is not going to be impacted on this, let alone am I go to form an opinion about either team.
And that gets back to part of being an introvert. We have next to no "casual conversations".
It's not that we do not enjoy conversing, we do, but everything we're saying is some sort of analysis. That isn't true for extroverts. Extroverts often talk just for entertainment, the same way that some people pick up Cheez-Its from a bowl. "Hmm. . . I'm bored. . . Oh! Cheez-Its!"
"Hmm. . .I'm bored, I don't want another Jesuit Pope again, ever!"
And here's the problem.
To an introvert, it's not only the statement made that now needs to be rapidly analyzed and responded to, but the audience does.
It's one thing if there's no audience. Then, bare minimum, you'd be entitled to say "oh, why do you feel that way?" and go from there.
But if there is, and in an office there is, you know have somebody blurting out a personal opinion on a deeply religious matter that's going to be taken in analyzed, and filed away in some fashion by the listeners, the same way I would if somebody blurted out, "Russell Nelson is the worst Mormon Prophet of all time!" (which I've never heard anyone say, by the say, it's just an example). Whatever the merits and demerits of the person might be, to outsiders with no context it's going to be filed away in some fashion, and probably not in a really helpful way.
Put another way, I don't think the Protestant background listeners were probably too concerned about Papal Cardinal appointments and whether they are too liberal, or if Jesuits make for poor Popes. All of those topics are current ones in the Catholic and Apostolic Christian world, but they require intelligent discussion and a receptive or at least interested audience to be properly developed.
Or, as Jimmy Akin has noted, don't turn people off by arguing badly, and as the podcasters on Catholic Stuff You Should Know have noted, "don't be weird".
By the same token, I really don't think that minorities find it amusing to have somebody try to be amusing with their ethnicity.
I note this as I also find myself occasionally interacting with somebody who has a very, very nice Mexican woman working for them. By Mexican, I mean Mexican. She's from Mexico. This individual finds it funny to refer to himself as Alejandro and affect a fake Mexican accent.
I don't like to be on the receiving end of such efforts at humor, and maybe I take it more poorly than she does, but that's just wrong. I ran into this again the other day, and while I'm generally slow to react to these things, as I don't expect it, it made me mad, and I'm still mad. I guess I'm now primed, as I'm an introvert and I don't have any idle conversations, but I'm at the point that when it happens again I'm going to say something.
Words have consequences, and quite often, they have consequences for somebody who is simply listening.
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