Amy asks some reasonable questions

And I give a partial answer:

Is it not cricket, then, for Catholics or ex-Catholics, say, to critique the US bishops' response to clerical sexual abuse? If some huge cover-up is revealed tomorrow, is Rod prohibited from commenting on it? I don't see why. I really don't.

Nor I. Because that would affect the common good. But a committee debating about how to best approach the question of homosexuality should, I think, at least be allowed to finish their deliberations before folks outside the communion begin prophesying doom and failure. Once the committee is done with its work and the *Church* adopts a particular stance, then we are talking about what the Church is saying to the world--which affects the common good. But committee workings are largely internal debates.

But the general point, I don't quite see. I mean, almost every time some Protestant church body gets together and issues a statement on sexuality, you have something to say about it, Mark.

Right. Because it affects the common good. But I don't spend much time talking about this financial scandal with the Baptists, or that woman who is pastoring at the Lutheran Church. Why? None of my business. Doesn't affect the Catholic communion and doesn't affect the common good.

You critique evangelicals all the time, speaking frequently about the limitations of the evangelical mindset and paradigm, and how it's eventually going to fade out of existence.

Because it affects the common good in a country where Evangelicalism is *the* major political and theological force in the last superpower. But I spend very little time, for instance, advising Evangelicals on how to discipline Ted Haggard. That's their own business. I will remark on Haggard's impact on the culture (the common good again) but I don't think it's my place to tell Evangelicals how to keep their own house.

Do you see what I mean?

The basic rule of thumb by which I operate is twofold: If it's internal housekeeping of a non-Catholic communion, it's none of my business. I adopted that rule of thumb because I got sick of fundies sticking their noses into Catholic business that did not concern them and fussing about everything from Catholic vestments to whether or not *they* approved the rubrics of the Mass. I figured the Golden Rule applies here, so it's none of my damn business how Southern Baptists figure out the way they order their liturgy or finances.

The second rule of thumb, of course, is that what Christians do in the public square matters. So stuff that affects the common good matters and is fair game. How you parse that is open to debate. My own rough estimate (being somebody who needs to talk things through before I make up my mind about stuff) is to let communions talk things through and not pay much attention to committe workings till the communion clears its throat and say, "Okay. We have decided X about this issue of public policy" Then it affect the common good.

I'm not claiming perfection here. No doubt a search of my blog will turn up moments where something internal to another communion and not affecting the common good has been commented on. I'm not even saying I've made an iron-clad case that my rules of thumb are The Best Way. I'm simply saying that this was the thinking that prompted my response to Rod, and that I was dumb for not making that clear. It was bound to cause misunderstanding, for which I apologize.