{"id":535,"date":"2009-06-10T11:34:36","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T11:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/a-catholic-judges-response-1.html"},"modified":"2009-06-10T11:34:36","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T11:34:36","slug":"a-catholic-judges-response-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/a-catholic-judges-response-1.html","title":{"rendered":"A Catholic judge’s response"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re the post below on the “problem” with Catholic justices on the Supreme Court…Cathleen Kaveny at dotCommonweal<\/strong><\/a> points to a response that Judge John T. Noonan (who gave the Laetare “address” at Notre Dame<\/strong><\/a>) provided when he was petitioned to recuse himself from a 1995 case on abortion because of his Catholic faith. As Professor Kaveny points out, Noonan “is a well-known Catholic with a well-known record against abortion.” <\/p>\n

Here is his classic response<\/strong><\/a> in Feminist Women’s Health Center v. Codispoti<\/u>:<\/p>\n

\n

1<\/strong> <\/span>The Constitution of the United States, Article VI, provides: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The plaintiffs in this petition for rehearing renew their motion that I recuse myself because my “fervently-held religious beliefs would compromise [my] ability to apply the law.” This contention stands in conflict with the principle embedded in Article VI.<\/p>\n

2<\/strong> <\/span>It is a matter of public knowledge that the Catholic Church, of which I am a member, holds that the deliberate termination of a normal pregnancy is a sin, that is, an offense against God and against neighbor. Orthodox Judaism also holds that in most instances abortion is a grave offense against God. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints proscribes abortion as normally sinful. These are only three of many religious bodies whose teaching on the usual incompatibility of abortion with the requirements of religious morality would imply that the plaintiffs’ business is disfavored by their adherents. See Theresa V. Gorski, Kendrick and Beyond: Re-establishing Establishment Clause Limits on Government Aid to Religious Social Welfare Organizations, 23 Colum.J.L. & Soc.Probs. 171 (1990). If religious beliefs are the criterion of judicial capacity in abortion-related cases, many persons with religious convictions must be disqualified from hearing them. In particular, I should have disqualified myself from hearing or writing Johnston v. Koppes, 850 F.2d 594<\/font><\/a> (9th Cir.1988), upholding the constitutional rights of an advocate of abortion.<\/p>\n

3<\/strong> <\/span>True, the plaintiffs qualify my beliefs as “fervently-held” as if to distinguish my beliefs from those that might be lukewarmly maintained. A moment’s consideration shows that the distinction is not workable. The question is whether incapacitating prejudice flows from religious belief. The question is to be judged objectively as a reasonable person with knowledge of all the facts would judge. Moideen v. Gillespie, 55 F.3d 1478<\/font><\/a>, 1482 (9th Cir.1995). As long as a person holds the creed of one of the religious bodies condemning abortion as sinful he must be accounted unfit to judge a case involving abortion; the application of an objective, reasonable-person standard leads inexorably to this conclusion if the plaintiffs’ contention is supportable. No thermometer exists for measuring the heatedness of a religious belief objectively. Either religious belief disqualifies or it does not. Under Article VI it does not.<\/p>\n

4<\/strong> <\/span>The plaintiffs may object that the disqualification applies only to cases involving abortion; they are not disqualifying Catholics, Jews, Mormons and others from all judicial office. This distinction, too, is unworkable. The plaintiffs are contending that judges of these denominations cannot function in a broad class of cases that have arisen frequently in the last quarter of a century. The plaintiffs seek to qualify the office of federal judge with a proviso: no judge with religious beliefs condemning abortion may function in abortion cases. The sphere of action of these judges is limited and reduced. The proviso effectively imposes a religious test on the federal judiciary.<\/p>\n

5<\/strong> <\/span>The plaintiffs’ motion of recusal is denied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re the post below on the “problem” with Catholic justices on the Supreme Court…Cathleen Kaveny at dotCommonweal points to a response that Judge John T. Noonan (who gave the Laetare “address” at Notre Dame) provided when he was petitioned to recuse himself from a 1995 case on abortion because of his Catholic faith. As Professor Kaveny…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nA Catholic judge's response - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/a-catholic-judges-response-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Catholic judge's response - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Re the post below on the “problem” with Catholic justices on the Supreme Court…Cathleen Kaveny at dotCommonweal points to a response that Judge John T. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}