{"id":1939,"date":"2007-04-25T11:09:22","date_gmt":"2007-04-25T11:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/the-times-weighs-in.html"},"modified":"2007-04-25T11:09:22","modified_gmt":"2007-04-25T11:09:22","slug":"the-times-weighs-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/the-times-weighs-in.html","title":{"rendered":"The Times weighs in"},"content":{"rendered":"

…on the majority’s religious identity:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Now, with an actual opinion on abortion from the new court in hand, the debate has moved from the theoretical to the concrete. Some legal scholars say the Catholicism of the five justices, in and of itself, means less than their conservatism. Yes, the Church hierarchy denounces legalized abortion, but many Catholics in public life, over the years, have drawn a bright line between their private beliefs and their public duties (memorably, John F. Kennedy<\/span><\/a> in 1960, and Mario Cuomo in 1984).<\/p>\n

Scholars also note that Justice William Brennan, who was carefully appointed to the \u201cCatholic seat\u201d by President Dwight Eisenhower<\/span><\/a>, turned out to be one of the key supporters of the constitutional right to abortion. \u201cThere can be no greater proponent of a pro-choice vision of the 14th amendment than William Brennan,\u201d said David Yalof, an associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut<\/span><\/a> and a scholar of the judicial selection process.<\/p>\n

John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life<\/span><\/a>, said that the existence of a Catholic majority on the court should not be minimized as a historical marker of \u201cjust how much the nation has changed over the last century.\u201d But, he added, \u201cWhen it comes to predicting what they will do, it\u2019s important to note that this is a Republican<\/span><\/a> Catholic majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, American Catholics are very much a two-party religion. The Catholic vote has typically split in recent presidential elections, and Catholic elected officials fill the top ranks of both parties. Speaker Nancy Pelosi<\/span><\/a>, Senator Edward M. Kennedy<\/span><\/a>, Senator Patrick Leahy<\/span><\/a> and the 2004 presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry<\/span><\/a>, are all Catholics – and Democrats who support abortion rights.<\/p>\n

Ralph Neas, the president of People for the American Way, has been a fierce opponent of many of the Bush Administration\u2019s judicial nominees – and is also a Catholic. \u201cMy problem with the right wing bloc on the court is their view of the Constitution, not their religion,\u201d Mr. Neas said in an interview. \u201cI am absolutely certain their views do not represent all American Catholics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, any discussion of the new Catholic majority on the Supreme Court only underscores the complicated, subtle role of religion in the public square – nearly 47 years after Kennedy tried to reassure an anxious country that it was safe to elect a Catholic. \u201cI do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me,\u201d Kennedy declared in September 1960, when American Catholics were on the brink of their political ascendancy, and the questions they faced were more raw, but also more simple.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…on the majority’s religious identity: Now, with an actual opinion on abortion from the new court in hand, the debate has moved from the theoretical to the concrete. Some legal scholars say the Catholicism of the five justices, in and of itself, means less than their conservatism. Yes, the Church hierarchy denounces legalized abortion, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Times weighs in - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/the-times-weighs-in.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Times weighs in - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…on the majority’s religious identity: Now, with an actual opinion on abortion from the new court in hand, the debate has moved from the theoretical to the concrete. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}