By that I mean Andrew Anonymous. By which means I hope to break my evidently foolish expectation that Andrew Sullivan will recover his senses when it comes to Catholicism.

First off, I’ll let you know, that to my knowledge he never retracted and certainly never apologized for his mischaracterization of my NYTimes piece, vis-a-vis my previous blog entry on the Guide to Witch Hunt Rumors.

So, this morning, Andrew gets the news of the slightly more weighty rumors of the document, as we all did, and declares that "Benedict Retreats" and has "backed off his reported intent" to ban all gay seminarians, blah, blah, blah.

As I wrote him…wha? Such a characterization assumes that Benedict is solely responsible for the content of the document and has been since the beginning. It presumes that there has, indeed, been a change when for all we know, this has been the content of the document all along. It implies that the backtracking is a result of the outcry of the past two weeks. It implies… a lot. And it’s dishonest and disgraceful. Andrew is all about decrying spin in political discourse and exhorting the world to tell it like it is politically.

It’s just so…discouraging. As I posted in our previous kerfuffle, say what you will, take any position you like, but at least represent the opposition and the known reality accurately. Too much to ask? Apparently.