Michael – That all sounds fine to me, except for one objection which I think is more than a quibble. You’ve picked a really bad example to explicate your entirely legitimate views on the exhortation to ‘judge not lest ye be judged.” I did not see the exchange in question (and I am obviously loathe to agree with Sullivan on this) but it certainly sounds — as you concede — that Hannity wasn’t invoking the phrase as a matter of serious moral or spiritual introspection. Rather he was using it as a debater’s trick to change the subject, much like his reference to the Church’s manifest sexual scandals.

Again, I hadn’t heard about any of this until you brought it up, so I am very much open to correction about the facts of the matter but unless you really think Hannity was making the deep point about Pharisitical hubris that you are, I’m not sure this is the best example for a teaching moment you could find. If I’m being unfair to Hannity and he was in fact acting on his rightly-formed conscience in this matter, I offer my apologies in advance. But it sure sounds like typical shout-show fare.

On the other hand, it does sound like Kathryn’s got the right interpretation of the whole thing.