Daniel’s and Dave’s comments on the “Hillary’s Tears” post below have made me realize that I’ve been mixing up two distinct points about politics and possibly creating some confusion as to what I think. So let me try to clear that up.

The more important point is the one I intended to make with that quotation from St. Catherine of Siena the other day. That post had a very specific context in my mind which was not necessarily apparent to the reader. I think I gave the impression that I was using the spiritual realization described in the post as a justification for holding myself above politics, or saying that politics don’t matter, or insinuating that those who are interested are insufficiently spiritual. That wasn’t my intention at all. In my mind that post was in the context of a series over the past few months in which I’ve reflected on the barriers to evangelization created by the way our political battle lines have been drawn on religious lines. In one sentence, this is what I meant: I want to invite the non-Christian to enter the divine sea of which Catherine spoke, and I don’t want disagreement about secondary matters like politics to prevent the invitation from being heard.

The other point is much more mundane: I get pretty impatient and/or bored with the tenor of the debate as we mostly encounter it these days. It tends to be imprecise, emotional, and unproductive, and I don’t want to spend much time doing it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in what’s going on politically, or that I don’t think it’s important, or that I have taken a vow never to discuss it.

In passing: one of the funniest things I’ve read lately was in Ross Douthat’s review of one of the recent anti-war movies (National Review, Dec. 3 2007 issue): a scene involving the pro-war villain and the anti-war heroine was “like watching Sean Hannity debate Jane Fonda after they spent the whole day together sniffing glue.”