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Posted on 08/02/2005 11:46:13 PM PDT by zarf
Everybody seems to have agreed to tiptoe around the report that Judge John G. Roberts said he would recuse himself in a case where the law required a ruling that the Catholic Church might consider immoral. According to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, the judge gave this answer in a private meeting with Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who is the Senate minority whip. Durbin told Turley that when asked the question, Roberts looked taken aback and paused for a long time before giving his reply.
Attempts have been made to challenge Turley's version, and Sen. Durbin (who was himself unfairly misquoted recently as having made a direct comparison between Guantanamo, Hitler, and Stalin when he had only mentioned them in the same breath) probably doesn't need any more grief. But how probable is it that the story is wrong? A clever conservative friend writes to me that obviously Roberts, who is famed for his unflappability, cannot have committed such a bêtise. For one thing, he was being faced with a question that he must have known he would be asked. Yes, but that's exactly what gives the report its ring of truth. If Roberts had simply said that the law and the Constitution would control in all cases (the only possible answer), then there would have been no smoke. If he had said that the Vatican would decide, there would have been a great deal of smoke. But who could have invented the long pause and the evasive answer? I think there is a gleam of fire here. At the very least, Roberts should be asked the same question again, under oath, at his confirmation.
It is already being insinuated, by those who want this thorny question de-thorned, that there is an element of discrimination involved. Why should this question be asked only of Catholics? Well, that's easy. The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children. (Not that child abuse is condemned in the Ten Commandments, any more than slavery or genocide or rape.) More recently still, the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI (who will always be Ratzinger to me) has ruled that Catholic politicians who endorse the right to abortion should be denied the sacraments: no light matter for believers of the sincerity that Judge Roberts and his wife are said to exhibit. And just last month, one of Ratzinger's closest allies, Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, wrote an essay in which he announced that evolution was "ideology, not science."
Thus, quite apart from the scandalous obstruction of American justice in which the church took part in the matter of Cardinal Law, we have increasingly firm papal dogmas on two issues that are bound to come before the court: abortion and the teaching of Darwin in schools. So, please do not accuse me of suggesting a "dual loyalty" among American Catholics. It is their own church, and its conduct and its teachings, that raise this question.
If Roberts is confirmed there will be quite a bloc of Catholics on the court. Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas are strong in the faith. Is it kosher to mention these things? The Constitution rightly forbids any religious test for public office, but what happens when a religious affiliation conflicts with a judge's oath to uphold the Constitution? Some religious organizations are also explicitly political and vice versa—the Ku Klux Klan was founded partly to defend Protestantism—and if it is true that Scalia is a member of Opus Dei then even many Catholics would consider him to have made a political rather than a theological choice. The Church of Scientology is now a member of the American Council of Churches, and good luck to both of them say I, but are we ready for a Scientologist on the court rather than having him or her subjected to the equivalent of a religious test? I merely ask.
Another smart conservative friend invites me to take comfort from Justice Scalia's statement that a believer who finds his conscience in conflict with the law should forthwith resign from the bench. I wish I found this more comforting than it actually is. In the first place, Scalia's remarks had to do with a possible reluctance, on the part of a Catholic, to impose the death penalty. The church's teaching on this is not absolute and is not enforced by the threat of excommunication, though it's nice to know that Scalia regards weakness about executions as a "litmus." In the second place, it is not at all clear that Scalia admits the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution in the first place. In oral argument in March this year, on cases dealing with religious displays on public property (Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky), he described the display of the Ten Commandments as "a symbol of the fact that government comes—derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds." At another point, he opined that "the moral order is ordained by God. … And to say that that's the basis for the Declaration of Independence and our institutions is entirely realistic." Display of the Ten Commandments, he went on to write, affirms that "the principle of laws being ordained by God is the foundation of the laws of this state and the foundation of our legal system."
To the extent that this gibberish can be decoded at all, it is in flat contradiction to the Declaration of Independence, which is unique precisely because it locates the just powers of government in the consent of the governed, and with the Constitution, which deliberately does not mention God at any point. The Constitution was carefully drafted and designed to guard against majoritarianism, another consideration ignored by Scalia when he opines that "the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's ability to express its belief that government comes from God." (Sandra Day O'Connor, in her last written opinion, phrased it much better when she said, "We do not count heads when deciding to uphold the First Amendment.") Speaking to the Knights of Columbus in Baton Rouge, La., in January, Scalia implored them to "have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world." Whether for "Christ" or not, Scalia is certainly a fool. He should have fewer allies and emulators on the court, not more. And perhaps secular America could one day have just one representative on that august body. Or would that be heresy?
I love ya, Chris, but--puh-leeeze. Everyone knows what Durbin was doing when he put those words together.
I like Chris too much to even read further than that.
Isn't it about time DurbinLaden was told to stick his head up a dead bear's bum?
Ah, couldn't resist, had to scan the rest. I'll only comment on this, though.
As an agnostic, I have no problem with no agnostics or atheists being on the court. I don't care HOW a judge arrives at a particular position--religion, philosophy, whatever. It just so happens that those on the court who see things my way are Christians. So what? The atheists I know don't vote anything like I do, so why would I want THEM on the court--to "balance" the religious backgrounds of those in a non-religious environment? Isn't that called bigotry?
That's exactly the punishment I had in mind for him. Only my bear wasn't dead.
He will be soon. Nothing could survive that!
" The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children."
Oh gee. I don't have enough time in my entire year to take this apart word by word. Suffice it to say that these two statements are the crown jewels made of paste and rhinestones that represent the bulk of the left's argument.
Absolute bull hockey.
That part is true.
Nothing like twisting truth though in an argument.
I don't know who this idiot (journalist) is or what it is he is pretending to be but he is a fool…a fool in the biblical sense.
Mr. Hitchens (like most fools) seems to think that if he says that Durbin was misquoted and puts it into an article well, that’s that. I heard Durbin’s statement. I read the transcript. Durbin said and meant what rational (non-fools) people heard…the US is just like Hitler and Stalin.
Mr. Hitchens, in this article, goes on to hit every single liberal talking point except pollution. He even included the nuanced “is it kosher to mention these things” so that it is implied that he even questions Jewish morality.
Mr. Hitchens is a fool with an agenda and a platform from which to broadcast his agenda.
God help us…God help him.
Don't get out much, huh?
The church vatican is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington>>>>
Excellent point.
1. Needs barf alert.
2. Questioning about or taking religion into consideration in any way for the confirmation process is SEPCIFICALLY PROHIBITED BY THE CONSTITUTION.
Great more blatant anti-Catholic rhetoric from the left! Keep it up!
Of course, his hatred for Roman Catholicism is deep. Not only does it come out all the time, it comes out is way that would be deeply embarrassing to normal human beings, such as his drunken tirade against Mother Teresa during ABC's televised coverage of her funeral and the two vicious columns he wrote attacking John Paul II--on the occasion of his death.
His support for the so-called War on Terror is of a piece. As a Trotskyite, Hitchens has always supported "world revolution," and that's what he sees in our current neocon foreign policy, as interviews he has given to leftist reporters make clear. He hates the Islamists not because they are terrorists--Commies have always been terrorists--but because they believe in God, after a fashion. He'd just as soon be lobbing cruise missiles into St. Peter's as bombing the Taliban. (He probably also harbors some resentment of the Islamists for the role they played in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan, just as he clearly resented the role John Paul II played in bringing down the Soviet Empire).
Hitchens' entire world view is based on his hatred of religion and tradtion. An absolutely disgusting human being.
Last I heard, Durbin himself said what Turley described flat did not happen.
And of course, Durbin compared troops at Gitmo to Hitler, Stalin, etc. He said if one did not know what he described happened at Gitmo, one would surely think it happened at the hands of Nazis, etc.
And just what does this mean? Are we supposed to care that this "author" doesn't approve of the new Pope? This guy is a self-important Idiotarian.
On the abortion matter, as it relates to Roberts' Catholic faith, the church teaches that Roberts and his wife MAY NOT have an abortion. If they did, they would be guilty of a serious mortal sin and would face excommunication. The legal controversy over abortion with Roe vs. Wade does not have to do with whether it is a mortal sin in Catholic teaching. It has to do with whether it is an issue the courts should decide or whether it falls to the jurisdiction of the states to determine what if any legal penalties should be brought against abortionists and those who have abortions. The legal controversy is quite different from the moral/theological one in Catholic teaching.
Once again Christopher Hitchens has another anti-Catholic psychotic in public.
As someone who was involved in Trotskyite Communist agitation, Hitchens should be deported. There are plenty perverts and cover-ups of their antics in Britain to keep Hitchens occupied for the rest of his silly life.
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