The Catholic Connection, Rosie and the Supreme Court

Much has been made recently of the fact that the five justices who supported the ban on partial-birth abortions in Gonzales v. Carhart last week are also the five Roman Catholic justices on the Court. Namely, Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone made the “painfully awkward observation” here, and Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News wrote a blog post here questioning those who make the connection. Would it be any more relevant, she asked, to observe that all the justices in the majority are baseball fans and therefore appreciate rules? Greenburg also reports that Rosie O’Donnell (pictured) made the Catholic connection on ABC's The View after the decision, then asking, “How about separation of church and state in America?”

As a background fact, there seems to be nothing wrong about taking note of some aspect of a justice’s personal life, if it is relevant or interesting; reporters (including myself) have noted in stories about tobacco cases that both Thomas and Scalia are or have been smokers. The relevance and interest exists here, but just barely; Catholicism is not a one-issue religion, and not all Catholics obey its teachings on abortion or anything else.

Here is one way to test where the line should be; the Court on Wednesday handed down three 5-4 decisions setting aside three death sentences in Texas. The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty in almost all cases. All four of the dissenters in Wednesday’s cases were Catholics. The fifth Catholic, Justice Kennedy, provided liberal non-Catholics the swing vote needed to strike down the death sentences. Would anyone make the Catholic connection in explaining Kennedy’s vote — or in questioning the dissents of the other four?

Comments

[monkey see]

A well thought out analysis, but I don't think comparing the church's stance in the political realm on the death penalty and abortion is an apples to apples comparison. In the United States, at least, the Church hierarchy--at least under the past two popes-- has been much more outspoken and active on the abortion issue than on the death penalty issue.

Of course, not all Catholics subscribe to every teaching of the church (witness the church's anti-condom efforts in parts of Africa hit by the AIDS epidemic)--but when all five Catholics vote in a way that supports the church's views on a controversial issue, and all four non-Catholics vote in a way that oppose those views, commentators are clearly within bounds to point out the connection.