November 3, 2005
More on Catholics and the High Court
Slate's Will Saletan has a piece in Slate exploring the angle and talks it up in this NPR segment.
From the Slate piece:
Not to worry. Two years ago, Republicans found a new way to play victim. They were trying to get Bill Pryor, the attorney general of Alabama, confirmed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor had called Roe v. Wade an "abomination" that had led to "slaughter." Such rhetoric, according to Democrats, suggested that Pryor was incapable of subordinating his moral convictions to constitutional law. A well-connected conservative lobby, the Committee for Justice, fired back with ads depicting a warning on a courthouse door: "Catholics need not apply." The ads accused senators of attacking Pryor's " 'deeply held' Catholic beliefs."
Saletan conveniently omits the fact that the Democrats did admit that they opposed Pryor for his "deeply held beliefs." It probably speaks more to liberal relativist ignorance of the idea of a judge ruling according to law over personal belief than to anti-Catholicism, but the use of those words opened the Democrats up to those accusations.
Later:
If Alito is confirmed, Catholics will hold five of the court's seats, and the Protestant contingent will have dwindled from eight to two. The notion that bigotry is keeping Catholics off the court is becoming numerically preposterous.
No it's not. Not if some Democrats actually carry a bias against believing Catholics. Democrats need to argue about the Constitution and not about beliefs, or they deserve any "religious test" criticism they receive. The problem is that they lose any constitutional debate, especially where Roe v. Wade is concerned.
Posted by Papa-Lu at November 3, 2005 9:16 AM
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