Here goes.
I want to start politico-blogging, but I’m going to be all schoolmarmish and lay down some requests about commenting.
Why the requests?
(‘Cause you really want to say “rules” but that would be too much. Admit it. Okay, admitted.)
Because I’ve being faithfully reading a lot of the Catholic-based political commentary that’s out there on blogs and such and find it problematic in some ways, and I’d like to avoid those problems and pitfalls here.
Because those problems result in endless rounds of commentary that are boring, repetitive and predictable.
In fact, it’s gotten tot he point that most comment threads can write themselves, most of them devolving into a tedious stream of tu quoque and (most irritating to me) generalities and assumptions tossed around like magisterial truth, often by anonymous commenters and bloggers.
So…how I’d like this place to be different than that for the next few weeks.

• Can we try to avoid generalities? Most specifically (heh), I’m talking about generalities related to that creature called “Catholic Social Teaching”, referred to by the cool kids as “CST,” not to be confused with “Central Standard Time.”  If we’re going to refer to “Catholic Social Teaching,” let’s be specific about statements, sourcing and authority of whatever document or text we are citing.
• Let’s avoid the Strawmen and all the Straw Nation as much as possible. I blogged at length about one a couple of weeks ago, but there are more. To say, for example, that “Anti-abortionists need to understand that abortions won’t end even if Roe were overturned” gets a resounding “Well, duh” from me and every other pro-lifer out there. For example.
• Be ourselves,  I am pretty unimpressed by anonymous blogging, period, unless the blog involved has a confessional quality or  is written by someone in a truly dangerous situation. But other than that, I find the spectacle of anonymous bloggers and commenters castigating others for being less than perfect Catholics for their political views and votes and declaring that we need to be all prophetic and stuff in the same breath…ironic.

Okay. Let’s go.
(One more words on comments. They are moderated, which means a time lag – since I approve almost all comments (the exceptions being, these days, mostly exhortations for us all to read the insights of some heated pseudo-mystic or other), if yours doesn’t appear quickly, it simply means I’m not always sitting at the computer. Which, I think you’ll agree, is a good thing. Which leads me to another advantage of moderating comments, just for the time-delay factor. Here’s where I really get schoolmarmish. I just don’t think it’s good for anyone – you, me, or anyone else – to be hanging around computers all day, intensely arguing back and forth on a comments thread. Because, of course by now, everyone’s seen this:

(Source)
Yup.)