I keep forgetting. People can't read my mind.

So yesterday I created a little flurry over at Rod Dreher's blog that spilled into my comboxes. I criticized Rod for picking at the Catholic bishops when he is no longer Catholic.

Rod, not surprisingly, responded by noting that I remarked on Anglicans. He also (oddly) takes me to task for *complimenting* Evangelicals on their discovery of the truths behind Humanae Vitae. Folk in my combox joined in, forbidding me to ever say anything about non-Catholic communions every again. Even Terry Mattingly got involved, to my surprise, hearing remarkably more than I was saying:

* Shea: The Catholic bishops are major news makers. Period. So it is anti-Catholic to defend Courage's attempts to defend Catholicism? Please explain that to me.

I'm not sure where "anti-catholicism" entered the equation. To be sure, some of Rod's more determined opponents scream about anti-catholicism everytime the guy undergoes cellular mitosis. But I wasn't really talking about anti-catholicism. I was talking about a general approach to other communions which I try to observe but which I realized I have never talked about and so was rather unfair to expect Rod to just grok.

It's like this: I think that, as a general rule, commenting on the internal affairs of another communion is... what? Unneighborly? Bad form? None of my damn business? That's why, for instance, reams and reams of material can be written by the inimitable Chris Johnson about the various alarums and discursions in the Anglican communion and I seldom comment on it (funny as Johnson is as a writer and tempting as it is to quote him almost every day). Why? Because much of what is discussed is internal to the Anglicans and has no bearing on the Catholic communion, nor on the common good.

If it's actually related to the Catholic communion or to the common good, I regard news from another communion as fair game. For instance, the elevation of a practicing homosexual to the episcopacy and the elevation of an apostate to the head of the Episcopal communion both have implications for Catholic relations with the Anglican communion. If it's just the ordinary internal bureaucratic kerfuffle that characterizes how any organization works out its approach to the world, I tend to leave it alone. That's the logic behind what I post about other communions.

So if the Orthodox, say, were trying to figure out their relationship with a group like Courage (is there such a thing in Orthodoxy? I don't know...) I would not comment on it while it is being bandied about in some committee, most likely, unless some Orthodox bishop said, "We need to affirm gays in their gayness and approve of homosexual practice". Then it's fair game for comment because it constitutes a break with Catholic teaching.

My reason for criticizing Rod was that, as of yesterday, the Catholic bishops were still trying to figure out what to do about homosexuality in the Church. They haven't openly dissented from Catholic teaching, from what I can see. They're just their usual confused selves and unsure of how to proceed pastorally. If they had plumped for something actively hostile to the Tradition and attacked the teaching of the Church, that would have mattered and been grist for a non-Catholic comment, I think, because it affects the common good. But as of yesterday, all we are seeing is the typical working of committee men trying to figure out what to do next. That's internal affairs.

Ironically, today, Rod has a piece up from a member of Courage which expresses general approval of what the bishops finally wound up doing. Unfortunately, with a somewhat characteristic tendency to assume the absolute worst, Rod follows this up by saying that even though the bishops failed to fulfill his prophecy of doom about the committee proceedings, they will most assuredly fulfill his next prophecy of doom anyway, so it doesn't matter and is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Rod's entitled to his opinion, of course. I simply note that the theological virtue of Hope would be a more useful thing here than assurances of failure predicated on nothing more than the fact that ones previous prophecy turned out to be mistaken. If the bishops do, in fact, fail to act to secure the common good, that will be news. Until then, it's just prophecy of a painfully uncharitable and hopeless sort that, quite literally, does nobody--least of all Rod--any good at all.