The Wonders of the Times…
never ceases to amaze me. “The papists are coming! The Papists are coming!”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/us/politics/26web-toner.ht ml?ex=1178164800&en=cb972999b15b9e41&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Some bits:
All are men. All were nominated by conservative Republican presidents. And, it was widely noted, all are Roman Catholics.
Did their religion matter? Should it even be discussed? In the wake of the 5-4 ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart, these questions have been raised and debated in venues from the blog of the American Constitution Society (where Geoffrey R. Stone, a constitutional law professor, said the justices’ religious identity was “too obvious, and too telling, to ignore,”) to ABC’s “The View,” (where Rosie O’Donnell declared, “How about separation of church and state in America?” according to ABC News.) Gee, how about Free Exercise? How about we believe them when they tell us in confirmation hearings that their religion does not infringe on their jurisprudence? How about they can just believe that it was bad law?
The pushback from conservative Catholics was immediate - even pre-emptive. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, declared, “We need more, not fewer, Catholics on the Supreme Court.” On his Web site, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, an influential conservative, wrote last week, “I expect it is on the minds of many, but so far there has been only marginal public comment on the fact that all five in the Carhart majority are Catholics.” He added, “What can one say? Know-Nothings of the world unite?”
This discussion was probably inevitable: Catholics, for the first time, hold a majority of seats on the Supreme Court, after decades when there were, typically, only one or maybe two “Catholic seats” on the bench. :”Catholic Seats?” What the heck does that mean? Two of the Catholic justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, were confirmed only in the past two years, in an ideologically charged environment in which all sides were eager for clues on how they might rule on abortion rights and other hot-button issues.
With so much unknown about their legal leanings, their religion became a proxy for both sides — a source of reassurances for conservatives, and of anxiety for liberals. But the nominees’ supporters discouraged any questions about the role of their faith in the confirmation hearings, essentially arguing that it would amount to an unacceptable “religious test” for public office. Exactly.
Now, with an actual opinion on abortion from the new court in hand, the debate has moved from the theoretical to the concrete. Some legal scholars say the Catholicism of the five justices, in and of itself, means less than their conservatism. Yes, the Church hierarchy denounces legalized abortion, but many Catholics in public life, over the years, have drawn a bright line between their private beliefs and their public duties (memorably, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Mario Cuomo in 1984). Also known as “CINO”s. Well, JFK I can’t really speak for. But a lot of them (John Kerry? Nancy Pelosi? Teddy Kennedy?) are not really Catholic. I’m sorry.
Scholars also note that Justice William Brennan, who was carefully appointed to the “Catholic seat” by President Dwight Eisenhower, turned out to be one of the key supporters of the constitutional right to abortion. “There can be no greater proponent of a pro-choice vision of the 14th amendment than William Brennan,” said David Yalof, an associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and a scholar of the judicial selection process.
John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said that the existence of a Catholic majority on the court should not be minimized as a historical marker of “just how much the nation has changed over the last century.” But, he added, “When it comes to predicting what they will do, it’s important to note that this is a Republican Catholic majority.”
In fact, American Catholics are very much a two-party religion. The Catholic vote has typically split in recent presidential elections, and Catholic elected officials fill the top ranks of both parties. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Senator Patrick Leahy and the 2004 presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, are all Catholics - and Democrats who support abortion rights. Um, see above. Please.
Ralph Neas, the president of People for the American Way, has been a fierce opponent of many of the Bush Administration’s judicial nominees - and is also a Catholic. “My problem with the right wing bloc on the court is their view of the Constitution, not their religion,” Mr. Neas said in an interview. “I am absolutely certain their views do not represent all American Catholics.” No, they don’t. And that is the sad thing, because it should. If we can’t all get together on banning sucking out a baby’s skull, then what’s left here?
In short, any discussion of the new Catholic majority on the Supreme Court only underscores the complicated, subtle role of religion in the public square - nearly 47 years after Kennedy tried to reassure an anxious country that it was safe to elect a Catholic. “I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me,” Kennedy declared in September 1960, when American Catholics were on the brink of their political ascendancy, and the questions they faced were more raw, but also more simple.
