{"id":885,"date":"2009-05-27T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html"},"modified":"2009-05-27T10:00:21","modified_gmt":"2009-05-27T10:00:21","slug":"do-catholic-judges-and-catholi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html","title":{"rendered":"Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the message board posters, Rev. Martin Fox, took me to task for suggesting that the Bishops might criticize Sonia Sotomayor for being a pro-choice (maybe) Catholic.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Mr. Waldman&#8217;s post misunderstands, or fails to appreciate, the distinctions the Catholic Church carefully makes between the moral responsibilities of a legislator (note, not just Catholic legislators) regarding defense of all human life, and the moral responsibilities of a judge, who must evaluate and interpret laws enacted by legislators.<br \/>\nA Catholic judge is in no way obliged by the Church to uphold or strike down laws based on desired outcomes, but is expected to uphold ones oath and act in accordance with the law.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed, it&#8217;s a point Antonin Scalia made in First Things when he wrote, &#8220;a judge, I think, bears no moral guilt for the laws society has failed to enact.&#8221;<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a fair criticism; I should have pointed out that distinction.<br \/>\nHowever, it&#8217;s also worth noting that some scholars believe that Pope Benedict has amended that distinction to place more of an obligation on Catholic judges to follow church teachings on abortion.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/nation\/article\/0,8599,1880977-1,00.html\">Doug Kmiec in Time<\/a> took note of this statement from the Vatican in February:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the church&#8217;s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, <em>jurists<\/em> and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.&#8221; [my emphasis]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kmiec suggested that the inclusion of the word &#8220;jurist&#8221; may have reflected a radical change, wiping out any distinction between the moral obligations of a Catholic lawmaker and a Catholic judge.   It reflected, Kmeic suggested, &#8220;a new admonition to &#8216;jurists&#8217; to undertake an activist, law-changing role.&#8221;<br \/>\nUPDATE:  Father Fox continues to chide me for ignorance about Catholic law.  To be clear, the reason this post was a question, not a statement, is that I do not know, and have not ventured an opinion about, whether judges and lawmakers get treated the same under Catholic teaching.  I had a far more modest point: that <em>politically<\/em>, her being a pro-choice Catholic will likely become an issue.<br \/>\nToday, the equally-ignorant <a href=\"http:\/\/swampland.blogs.time.com\/2009\/05\/26\/sotomayor-and-the-culture-wars\/\">Amy Sullivan of Time magazine writes <\/a>that Sotomayor &#8220;could also find herself on a collision course with the Vatican&#8221; as the &#8220;latest target of those who believe that Catholic politicians and judges must oppose abortion rights.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the message board posters, Rev. Martin Fox, took me to task for suggesting that the Bishops might criticize Sonia Sotomayor for being a pro-choice (maybe) Catholic. &#8220;Mr. Waldman&#8217;s post misunderstands, or fails to appreciate, the distinctions the Catholic Church carefully makes between the moral responsibilities of a legislator (note, not just Catholic legislators)&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations? - Steven Waldman<\/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\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the message board posters, Rev. Martin Fox, took me to task for suggesting that the Bishops might criticize Sonia Sotomayor for being a pro-choice (maybe) Catholic. &#8220;Mr. Waldman&#8217;s post misunderstands, or fails to appreciate, the distinctions the Catholic Church carefully makes between the moral responsibilities of a legislator (note, not just Catholic legislators)&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-27T10:00:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations? - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"One of the message board posters, Rev. Martin Fox, took me to task for suggesting that the Bishops might criticize Sonia Sotomayor for being a pro-choice (maybe) Catholic. &#8220;Mr. Waldman&#8217;s post misunderstands, or fails to appreciate, the distinctions the Catholic Church carefully makes between the moral responsibilities of a legislator (note, not just Catholic legislators)&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-05-27T10:00:21+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html","name":"Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-05-27T10:00:21+00:00","dateModified":"2009-05-27T10:00:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/do-catholic-judges-and-catholi.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Do Catholic Judges and Catholic Lawmakers Have the Same Moral Obligations?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}