It has come to my attention that, if Justice Stevens does retire from the Supreme Court this year and is replaced by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, we will, for the first time in American history, be faced with a Supreme Court without a single Protestant on it. We’ll have six Catholics (Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor) and three Jews (Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan).
Time was, there was talk of the “Jewish seat” on the Supreme Court. The Court’s first Jewish Justice was Louis Brandeis, who joined in 1916. There were briefly two Jews on the Court when Benjamin Cardozo joined in 1932, replacing Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Cardozo died in 1938 and was replaced by another Jew, Felix Frankfurter; however, Brandeis retired in 1939 and was replaced by William O. Douglas, reducing the population of Jewish Justices back to one. Frankfurter’s seat went to another Jew, Arthur Goldberg, in 1962 (apparently, that was when talk of the “Jewish seat” became widespread), and to yet another, Abe Fortas, in 1965. After Fortas resigned, though, President Nixon did not continue the “Jewish seat” tradition. (Surprise!) It was nearly 30 years before another Jewish Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would arrive on the Court in 1993.
Since then, of course, Stephen Breyer has joined the Court, taking Harry Blackmun’s seat (which was the “Jewish seat” previously held by Fortas, Goldberg, and Frankfurter) and bringing the population of Jewish Justices back up to its historical high-point of two. But if Kagan (or another Jew, or a Catholic, for that matter) replaces Justice Stevens (who replaced William O. Douglas, the holder of Justice Brandeis’s original “Jewish seat”), the Court will be entirely bereft of Protestants.
Whatever would the Founders think? đŸ˜‰
Not directly related, but just wondering: if Cardozo was also the first Hispanic justice, then does that suggest he filled two seats at the same time? Volokh:
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One link among many.
Could be Muslim, or could be one of any number of Asian religions.
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p>All else being equal, I think it would be fascinating to have a Hawai’ian who practices the Hawai’ian Religion or Buddhism.
Both decorate the Supreme Court building. The former as a large statue, the latter on an interior frieze.
I wonder how long it will be before a nominee can stand up and publicly profess themselves to be a (gasp) non-believer. Nothing. Atheist. Humanist.
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p>I am nervous about a Supreme Court with a 2/3 majority of professed Catholics during a time when:
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While I know BrooklineTom personally, I actually don’t know his religion.
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p>This does sound remarkably like the arguments made against electing JFK president though — and as lame as they were then, they’re even lamer now I am Catholic, and I grew up in a Catholic family in a Catholic town in a Catholic state. I can only think of four people I’ve known who keep an ear tuned to what the Pope proclaims: my priest growing up, my priest in high school, the priest who lived next door, and my Great Aunt Christine, who just so happens to be a nun.
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p>The rest of us Catholics — we do what we gotta do. For most of us, that means birth control. For many of us, that means abortion. For too many of us, that means not giving adequately to charities for the poor. Keeping the Sabbath holy best not interfere with leisure or lawn mowing for many Catholics. And so on.
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p>Perhaps more to the point, why is it presumed that Catholic SJCs can’t separate their dogma from their law but Jews or Protestants can?
Here’s his Wikipedia entry.
Yes he was a priest, and therefore different from a Catholic layperson. My point is that the Pope sometimes does bring all his weight to bear, and that sometimes that has political effect. It deprived us of a stellar Representative in 1980.
I enthusiastically share stomv’s view that Catholic SCJs are as able to separate their dogma from their law as any Jew, Protestant, or other faith. I enthusiastically supported the Sotomayer nomination.
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p>My point is that no other religion, that I am aware of, has a publicly-visible individual vested with the power and authority of the Pope. Pope Benedict (or Cardinal Ratzinger, as many Europeans prefer to refer to him) was aggressively assertive of extremely anti-feminist, homophobic, and divisive dogma during his long and notorious reign as head of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (formerly known as the “Holy Office of the Inquisition” — no joke!).
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p>I am merely observing that (1) given the authority and power uniquely claimed by both the institution and the Pope, it is perfectly legitimate to therefore ask questions about a potential SCJ regarding their ability to separate their dogma from their law, and — most importantly — (2) I would like a non-believer or atheist to be able to state his or her beliefs as openly as a Catholic, Jew, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. I see precious little evidence that religious faith or practice in any institutional tradition results in better governance.
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p>The Catholic church, beginning with Pope John Paul’s 1980 decision to silence representatives like Father Drinan, has chosen to interject itself in American legal and political affairs in an explicit way that is a profound change from the JFK era. There were no calls to deny communion to politicians who voted the “wrong” way, that I can recall, until very recently.
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p>In my view, a religious institution can’t have it both ways. If the institution chooses to pursue an activist and interventionist route in political affairs, then that institution must be correspondingly ready to accept questions and inquiries about its followers who pursue public office.
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p>For the record, I was raised in the conservative Southern Baptist tradition in suburban Washington DC. I spent most of my adult years as a devout and practicing Episcopalian. My rather intense study of Episcopal theology (I pursued the path towards ordination for a time) led me to spend several years as a member of a local (conservative) Jewish congregation (Jesus was, after all, a devout Jew). I have, in the last decade, found stronger and more satisfying community ties in non-religious settings.
to compare situations like Father Drinan to the laity. After all, Father Drinan was, by definition, a leader within the church before he was a Congressman. Therefore, it really did muddy the waters, and I do understand the decision made in Rome. Would it have been made if Father Drinan was liberal on issues surrounding the poor but conservative on abortion? I don’t know and I won’t speculate.
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p>Still, I do think it’s not a reasonable comparison. Justice Scalia is no more or less a priest than I am, or any other member of the laity.
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p>Given that the RCC has over 1.1 billion members (the single largest of any specific religion** and over half of all Christians, and has for historical reasons accumulated enormous wealth in the Middle(ish) Ages, of course the Pope has more authority/power. He’s the human leader of the largest, most wealthy religion. But that’s irrelevant in the following sense: for a person of a given religion, the relative size or power of his religion’s human leader is irrelevant — his religion’s leader is the most important religious leader. Furthermore, in the recent American tradition, Catholicism tends to be very loose — consider how much attention Catholic laity give to the instrucitons of their church when compared to evangelicals or Mormons.
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p>It just seems silly to focus on RCC as opposed to other religions, particularly since the adherence of Catholics does seem (in my experience) to be far less strict than adherence from within other religious sects within America.
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p>I don’t disagree, but somehow folks never get around to questioning other religions with quite the same intensity in public, polite forums. Maybe because the RCC is so much bigger than most others it doesn’t quite feel ugly focus, whereas questioning the relationship between religious beliefs and public decisions of Jews, Protestants, Mormons, etc. does.*** I don’t know exactly, it just seems like an unequally-applied standard without reasonable rationale.
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p> * Formally. I certainly won’t speak for individual members of the laity or the clergy.
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p> ** There are more than 1.1 billion Muslims, but that subdivides similarly to the way Christianity subdivides.
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p> *** I’m focusing on the politicians who don’t wear their religion on their sleeve — Jimmy Carter-esque. If you as a candidate or elected official invoke your religiosity in public, you’re fair game for much more public questioning because you personally bring out an implication that your religion is driving your public decisions.
I focused on the Catholic tradition here because we were discussing the prospects of six Catholics on the Court (and three Jews).
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p>I cited the treatment of Father Drinan as the beginning of a period of activism on the part of the institutional Catholic church in public affairs. I’m far more concerned about the recent (past two election cycles) attempts to coerce Catholic politicians around both the abortion and the anti-gay agenda than about the treatment of Father Drinan 30 years ago. I’m not aware of any Protestant churches making analogous threats against their members.
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p>Stomv wrote: “but somehow folks never get around to questioning other religions with quite the same intensity in public, polite forums.”
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p>I’m under the impression that the worldwide Muslim and Catholic populations are comparable. Within the US, Protestants far outnumber Catholics (51.4% to 23.9%, about two to one) according to this recent Pew Forum report. I note, with interest, that the “Atheist” and “Agnostic” groups (at 1.6 and 2.4%) together outnumber the Jewish group (at 1.7%). If we include the “Secular unaffiliated” (at 6.3%), we get a total of 10.3% non-religious people — more than five times the Jewish population — who are absolutely not represented in our government at all, never mind the Supreme Court.
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p>It seems to me that we question Muslim leaders even more intensely than Catholic. I am, personally, just as concerned about activist right-wing Protestant leaders — the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson being prime examples.
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p>I feel that President Obama was, for example, aggressively questioned in the mainstream media (and the right wing, of course) about his continuing membership in Jeremiah Wright’s congregation. Having listened to the entire sermons in question, Mr. Wright’s views were no more inflammatory or “anti-American” than any of thousands of sermons and homilies offered in thousands of liberal-leaning Protestant or Catholic parishes throughout the land.
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p>The public essentially demanded that Barrack Obama repudiate Jeremiah Wright’s sermon and sever the relationship. Yet, I find the specific attempts at manipulation practiced by the current leaders of the current Catholic church to be far more specific and intrusive than anything pronounced by Mr. Wright.
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p>Finally, treading even farther out on the thin ice I know I’m already on, I’ll suggest that any sane and rational person choosing a presidential candidate should look very carefully at Mormon teachings and dogma before electing a professed Mormon (like Mitt Romney) to the presidency. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask whether a man or woman who professes to embrace such beliefs has the requisite intellectual discipline to make wise decisions about the conduct of the presidency. For example, I want to ask a would-be president whether he or she believes in the literal truth of Mormon teachings about the angelic visitation to Joseph Smith.
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p>I’m not trying to be offensive here, I don’t much care what folks believe in the privacy of their own lives. When they seek the public office, especially high public office, I think a different and more rigorous standard is perfectly fair. I’ll leave it to wiser wags than I to compare the assertions of Mormon beliefs to those of Catholic, Muslim, or Jewish traditions. Pascal Boyer and Richard Dawkins do such a comparison rather eloquently in their respective writings.
Catholics are hardly monolithic (see Kennedy, Ted).
Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? – John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821
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p>During Sotomayor’s hearings I innocently brought up the fact that the Court would have a Catholic majority, and asked whether that means anything. Does it? It seems we have things ass backwards in the way we approach these court seats. Great meaning is ascribed to race and ethnicity, which at base is a meaningless thing. And when it comes to the religious identity of the Court we look at it as a meaningless curiosity, even though a person’s religion is anything but meaningless. With the Catholic religion in particular there are issues in my mind that remain unresolved (even though people will point to JFK’s election as some definitive resolution). The Pope can if he wants exert a great deal of influence on the judicial branch, can’t he?
Alito brought the tally to five.
Can the Pope really influence the Catholics on the court? I’m rather skeptical. Methinks (mebets?) that the Catholic SCJs have their understanding, and if the Pope zigged instead of zagged that those who liked the zig would embrace, those who didn’t would ignore.
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p>Maybe I’m just projecting my own views on Papal influence?
if, now that there is a liberalish Catholic (Sotomayor) on the Court, whether there is a move among the conservative elements in the hierarchy to deny her communion or whatever, as they sometimes do with politicians, should she issue, say, a pro-choice decision.
Scalia gets around an Catholic issues by zig zagging as you say. He believes the Pope has never spoken ex cathedra on the issue and so he feels comfortable conforming his beliefs to the traditional belief of the Church that the death penalty is acceptable. If the Pope were to personally phone Scalia and begin the conversation by stating, “Antonin, what I am about to say is all ex cathedra” wouldn’t that put him in a bind? Moreover, if the Pope were to bluntly put the matter as “vote this way or you will be excommunicated tomorrow” wouldn’t that pressure Scalia a tad?
This Protestant certainly doesn’t care, though I wouldn’t mind seeing a progressive mainline Protestant whose faith nudges him toward liberal decisions the way the faith of others leans conservative.
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p>If you really want a knock-down drag out, let’s create a Muslim seat. In these times I think that would mean something both symbolically and judicially.
That way they could just interpret the laws for the people of this nation and in this world in that context, without getting all tied up with worrying about how some guy with a funny hat or who may have lived 500 years ago says his decisions jibe with what some invisible being wants and how it’s going to impact his chances of getting through the velvet rope in the afterlife?
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p>Yeah, that’s just crazy talk, right?
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p>Ramen!
I don’t mind and athiest on the Court, but I do object to your protrayal of religious faith.
Do you have any idea of the sort of abuse heaped upon non-believers and atheists?
Two wrongs certainly don’t make a right! For the most part I only hear abuse for athiests from the same ones who would abuse me for my brand of Christianiity. I’m not a big fan of persecution complexes or playing the victim from ANY side of these debates.
The only atheists who ever claim to be abused for their atheism are also the only ones who say mean-spirited things about religious people.
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p>Good golly! Could it be causality?!
I’m not certain that’s what he meant, but good try! đŸ™‚
… agree with Sam Harris on this. Religion, as a subject matter, is given a special place in our culture with regard to debate. There is a cultural taboo on ‘showing disrespect’ such that even debating religion on the level of debating almost any other idea, is interpreted as ‘being mean-spirited’.
of gratitude to Sam Harris. He made it okay for me to say out loud that I didn’t believe, that I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of that fact, and that my education (when I was getting my undergrad in Geology) helped me overcome my childish desire to cling to traditional religious notions. I can’t even begin to count how many people looked at me with tremendous relief and blurted out how they, too, felt as I did and were relieved to find a fellow traveler. His first book, The End of Faith, was like a jolt of oxygen. While I found some of his assertions provocative, I came to realize that reflexive reactions about difficult ethical matters are just as counterproductive as slavish adherence to dogma. I know he’s not for everybody, but I’m a huge fan of his and his latest gig, The Reason Project.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been “abused” for not believing in whatever religious people believe in. But whenever it comes up–usually when someone assumes everyone else believes in some sort of god–and I mention I think it’s all a bunch of hocus pocus hooey, I get at least a touch of condescension.
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p>Honestly, I think the fundamental beliefs in a deity are kind of silly. And belief not only in the deity, but in the rules and stories that go along with them are silly and bad for the world.
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p>I’d like to take a hands off approach and just “respect” everyone’s religious beliefs, but there’s the matter of all the wars that are fought over them. You know, people dying because folks think one religion is better than another. If not directly, often indirectly.
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p>I’d like to just live and let live, but there’s that religious lobby that wants to set rules I have to live by based on what someone hundreds of years ago said the deity wanted.
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p>There’s an institution from which sprung dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of people who sexually abused children, ruining their lives. No, the church didn’t tell them to do it, but they did far too little to stop them from doing it. And the unquestionable authority they’ve built for themselves in minds of many of their followers made it impossible for kids to speak up. Or for parents to effectively advocate for their own children.
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p>I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Lynne, below, that religion has been given an undue level of deference in our world. And though I respect people who believe, I’m not doing to leave alone beliefs that, to me, come across as 1+2=192.
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p>If you’ll excuse me, I have to go look up Sam Harris.
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From a non-believer’s perspective, many elements of religious doctrine for virtually any religion are, well, eccentric. Pascal Boyer points out, rather gently, that third-world religious beliefs that involve invisible organs that depart from certain people and bring harm upon others are not that different from mainstream western beliefs that involve human parthenogenesis, people rising from the dead, and three gods that are one god.
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p>I simply must remind us that our national government essentially halted research in the most promising areas of biology because of religious beliefs regarding embryonic stem cells. Most American high school biology texts do not mention evolution because of religious beliefs. An enormously large portion of opposition to global climate change research originates in those who cite religious motivations. A surprisingly large number of Americans support US policy towards Israel — and specifically towards a nuclear-armed Israel — because they believe they will hasten the “second coming”, “rapture”, and “end times” that they believe will happen there.
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p>I’m not saying this to disparage any particular religious belief. I’m observing that I’d like our culture to be able to accept and respect open non-belief and open atheism as readily as we claim to accept and respect our many religious traditions.
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p>No more and no less.
I simply feel that due respect should be shown for people’s religious faith. I share the opinion of Jefferson when he said, “I care not whether my neighbor worships no god or twenty gods; it neither picks my pocket not breaks my leg.” It’s fine if the previous commenter is an athiest. I just think he can express it without being anti-thiest in the process. I don’t agree with what you discuss in your second paragraph above any more than you do and when it comes to that we need to be especially vigilent. When I hear the other side whining about being persecuted for their Christianity I think two things: First, when you get arrested for walking into a church then you can start complaining about persecution; otherwise you insult the memory of those who really did have to risk everything for their faith. Second, to the extent you are being attacked, it’s not for being Christian; it’s for being a zealot.
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p>I wish people would make a few distinctions and allow for nuance in religious faith. I’m a very rational person if I do say so myself. I sometimes call my beliefs “Christian humanism” and besides what I quoted above I tend to match Jefferson’s attitude toward all this and do believe the two parts are reconcilable. I don’t believe the literal truth of our myths, but every religious tradition has myths which play an important role, so why shouldn’t Christianity? The United Church of Christ has done a great job in demonstrating that liberal Christian not only need not be an oxymoron, but comes very close to the teachings of Jesus handed down to us in the Gospels.
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p>Too often, by athiests I feel like I’m painted into the same corner as the Religious Right, which in turn get compared (by you for example) to the Taliban. Next thing I know I’m no better than the Taliban, but yet you’ve also criticized me for being too harsh on the Taliban. The religious right and secular left both need to acknowledge the broad spectrum of Christianity and the religious left needs to keep pushing to be heard. May I be so bold as to ask what your current religious faith is? I thought you indicated Episcopalian at one point, but your posts seem mostly anti-religious, as demonstrated by cutting the clergy from marriage and trying to lay Dr. Tiller’s murder at the feet of the Vatican.
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p>I completely agree with your final paragraph, but both sides need to work on this.
Christopher asks: “May I be so bold as to ask what your current religious faith is?:
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p>I answered a similar (implied) query from stomv earlier in this thread as follows:
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p>I find more reliable answers to objective philosophical and scientific questions from secular (as compared religious) sources. I find stronger community ties in non-religious settings.
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p>I still practice daily meditation/contemplation (in the Buddhist and Celtic traditions), I find the pre-Christian Celtic spiritual traditions more compelling for me than the later Christian versions, and in general I find that religious belief tends to obscure rather then illuminate the fundamental interpersonal relationships that I most value.
I would rather talk about the all Jewish lineup.
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p>I’ll start, pitching: Sandy Kofax
I have an awesome cover of Look magazine from 1946, with a big photo of him, framed in my study.
I would argue the Founding Fathers wouldn’t care seeing as they intentionally founded a secular state that would avoid the pitfalls of sectarian violence that was the norm in their Europe.
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p>Secondly to Patrick’s either ignorant or insulting comments about the Catholic church (certainly not living up to his namesake) that
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p>a) politicans will not do what the Pope tells them to
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p>One would have hoped the nomination of Al Smith and the presidency of JFK would have finally laid that myth born out of bigotry to rest and
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p>b) ex cathedra
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p>The Pope can’t just casually say something is ex cathedra say in a phone call. The whole point of ex cathedra is that it is a declaration made from the Papal throne where he is no longer speaking as an individual person, but rather speaking as the voice of the Church. Those resolutions, while doctrinally infallible and made unilaterally by the pope, typically confirm centuries of church teaching and are made with the tacit consent of the bishops and other leaders of the church and simply not on the whim of the pope.
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p>Those rulings are as follows:
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p>The Pope can make infallible rulings ex cathedra
Mary was immaculately conceived and ascended into heaven
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p>That is it.
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p>So while opposing the death penalty has been a consistent opinion of the past several Popes and Bishops it is not an infallible ruling of the church.
Heh. Really? This took about thirty seconds of Googling to find, and I’m sure there’s tons more out there. At the time of the founding,
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I would note that many of those sorts of state laws existing at the time of the Constitutional Convention are precisely the reason why many Framers insisted on a clause in the Constitution prohibiting religious tests for federal offices. I’m sure some (certainly not all, of course) would have liked this to apply to the states as well.
To the point that each city and town had to levy taxes to support a protestant church. Article III of our Constitution:
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Didn’t see that one coming. But seriously, take David’s example of withholding communion. That has nothing to do with the Pope and in all likelihood will occur. A Catholic would take something like that seriously, yes? It is an attempt to influence another’s actions, yes? Explain for us why a Catholic politician or judge who is concerned about the state of their soul would not change their opinion.
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p>On your B, nice example of the zig zag that was previously mentioned. I was being facetious with the personal phone call. There isn’t an actual reason that prevents the Pope from ever making an infallible statement that the death penalty is not kosher. Traditional Catholics just really really hope that he doesn’t.
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p>Hopefully, because we appointed them to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
I wrote a somewhat short (9 pages) paper about the concept of Papal Primacy (which is by no means as clear-cut as it seems today).
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p>I’m going to just go ahead and cut and paste a paragraph out of it (which is why there will be no blue hyperlink) because I think this is what you’re looking for:
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p> ex Cathedra isn’t appropriate for the death penalty and abortion because it isn’t explicitly defined in the Bible. While there is certainly much evidence in the Good Book to support what was said from the chair about Mary, the other issues are more like “this is morally reprehensible” rather than “this is condemned by the Scripture.”
A dedicated searcher, with a modicum of metaphorical skill and a zest for rationalizing whatever he or she chooses, can find scriptural support for ANYTHING, particularly if allowed to include the Hebrew Scriptures in the mix. After all, the redactors of the Pentateuch intentionally preserved multiple viewpoints of the same episodes. How much Catholic (or Christian, for that matter) dogma (I use the word in its technical sense) includes careful and respectful study of the Talmud as well as the Torah?
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p>Growing up Southern Baptist in Maryland, I had ample opportunity to watch (and, sadly, even participate in) “scriptural duels” — “proof texting” is the clinical term, I think. The Good Book can be quoted for and against slavery, miscegenation, virtually any sexual practice, the geocentric universe, the heliocentric universe, etc.
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p>American culture and the Catholic church are radically different now than they were during the days when Al Smith and JFK were elected — so much so that I don’t think the comparison offers much insight. The threats to ex-communicate politicians who vote the wrong way on Catholic church’s issue du jour are, in my opinion, very real attempts to control US policy and should be taken very seriously.
The South is merely the heir to the dogmatic battles that went on during the English Reformation. The protestants argue that the Bible is the infallible source if God’s word and that misinterpretation is a moot point because it’s infallible. Catholics established ways to combat this throughout history, with Lateran Councils and the great conventions of religious thinkers to address the same questions that a protestant is free to read from the book and say is the word of God.