When faced with individuals promoting false ideas about Christ and the Church, it can be tempting to villainize those people and have no mercy towards them.
St. Hilary of Poitiers lived during a time when there were many heretical ideas floating around in the Church and he did what he could with his writing to defend the truth.
Truth and mercy
Pope Benedict XVI praised St. Hilary's heroic writings in a general audience he gave in 2007:
Banished to Phrygia in present-day Turkey, Hilary found himself in contact with a religious context totally dominated by Arianism. Here too, his concern as a Pastor impelled him to work strenuously to re-establish the unity of the Church on the basis of right faith as formulated by the Council of Nicea. To this end he began to draft his own best-known and most important dogmatic work: De Trinitate (On the Trinity).
In particular, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted St. Hilary's merciful attitude towards those who believed in these heresies:
Ever adamant in opposing the radical Arians, St Hilary showed a conciliatory spirit to those who agreed to confess that the Son was essentially similar to the Father, seeking of course to lead them to the true faith, according to which there is not only a likeness but a true equality of the Father and of the Son in divinity. This too seems to me to be characteristic: the spirit of reconciliation that seeks to understand those who have not yet arrived and helps them with great theological intelligence to reach full faith in the true divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Instead of condemning his opponents to Hell, St. Hilary tried to work with them and show them the truth.
His main goal was not in defeating them, but in bringing them into the fullness of the Catholic Church.
