There are a couple of things I avoid writing about. I avoid, if I can, any discussions of work. I like having clear boundaries, and would just rather not get into work stuff. The other topic I stay away from is politics. This one is very much vocation-related.
During my application for aspirancy several years ago, I had a series of conversations/interviews with the director of vocations. One of the things he made clear was that, after ordination, my opinion as such didn’t really matter anymore. In fact, not only did it not matter, it probably ought not exist at all. After ordination, he explained, you will be a cleric of the church. When you talk, you will be speaking as a cleric, whether you’re dressed as one or not. Everything you say or write will be seen as coming from The Church. People will ask you for your opinion, and your opinion no longer matters. If you are the sort of person who likes to have an opinion and enjoys weighing in on the topics of the day, he continued, you may need to reconsider the diaconate.
As a deacon in this diocese, he went on, you will almost certainly have people in the pews who are undocumented, and they will be two pews away from other parishioners who are headed to a Build The Wall rally after Mass. You will be ordained to serve all of them, period.
We can talk about policies and programs, but not people or parties. _If my sister runs for dog-catcher, _ he said, I can’t put a sticker on my car in support of her. This is how it is.
He went on to suggest that, even as an aspirant, beginning the habit of this sort of partisan detachment might be a good exercise, and so I did. As it turns out, this wasn’t particularly difficult for me - I haven’t had a home anywhere in the current political spectrum for some time now, and this conversation gave me a vocabulary and grammar I had lacked to describe why. In the end, though, hewing completely to the Church’s teachings (social or otherwise) gives an interesting sort of new freedom. Unmoored from either party, I can make common cause on programs and policies that comport with the Church regardless of their source. I can likewise take either side to task for their shortcomings. It feels very mercenary and in a way, it is. This turns out to suit my personality pretty well, actually. Nice job on program X, I can support that. Programs Y and Z, however, are bad, and I can in no way defend them. Get your act together. It’s all very surgical.
Are there clerics who weigh in? Sure seems like there are. I can’t answer for them, how they were formed, or how they minister to people On The Other Side of whatever divide they’re on. I can only manage myself, and that’s job enough, thanks.
This doesn’t mean I don’t keep up - I do, probably a bit too much. I have several magazine subscriptions, follow a couple of hundred RSS feeds, and do my level best to gather and glean from across the opinion landscape. As I read, I’m always thinking What is this story about? Who is speaking or quoted? Who is silent? What am I meant to come away with? Some of this is j-school remnants, I think. I never went into the business, but studied journalism as an undergraduate at one of the best schools in the country, intending to go into radio or television news. Instead, I got married, took a full-time job as a sort of junior analyst fiddling with computers, and the rest is history.
In any case, if we’ve spoken in the past and I’ve come off a little hard to pin down politically, good, that’s the point. Because it really doesn’t matter what I think. What I’m trying to think is here and here.