In the consternation surrounding the fact that the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens might result in the first ever United States Supreme Court with no Protestants on it (the replacement of David Souter with Sonia Sotomayor makes the present one the first to have no Episcopalian), those who complain that there are already six Catholic, plus two Jews, need to ask themselves what difference the Catholic majority, of which only Sotomayor is a liberal Catholic, has made.
Has Roe v. Wade been overturned? Has marriage been defined as only ever the union of one man and woman? As importantly - I'll say that again: as importantly - what of torture, and aggressive war, and poverty at home and abroad, all of which, and many more besides, are pro-life and pro-family causes equal to any but second to none, as the Pope teaches?
There are Catholics and Catholics, but some are simply right and others are simply wrong, as measured against the Magisterium. With no Magisterium, there really are Protestants and Protestants. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination, not only in America, but in the world. But it has produced exactly as many Supreme Court Justices as the Quakers or the Huguenots, namely one each.
As much to do with the "Southern" as to do with the "Baptist"? Undoubtedly. But in the clamour for a Protestant, and with a President who has both a record for unpredictability and a second coalition to build, this feels like white Evangelicalism's year. A constituency, after all, which will be among the first to grow very used indeed to healthcare once it is in place, which provides plenty of the young men harvested in neoconservatism's Original Sin-denying wars, and which still very largely retains the spirit of William Jennings Bryan.
Like Catholics, they changed parties over abortion and have seen nothing done about it, not even with five conservative Catholics on the Supreme Court. The Catholics largely gave up waiting in 2008, and went home anyway. The right appointment this year could cause the white Evangelicals to follow suit in 2012.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I used to be more interested in Supreme Court vacancies. It is hard to tell how justices will decide once they are on the bench. I don't really have much hope for Roe v. Wade being overturned anytime soon, even if there are six Catholics on the Court now. But you have an interesting point about the possibility of an Evangelical, perhaps an Evangelical African-American?
ReplyDelete