Article VI Blog

Any number of people were pointed out that the Sotomayor nomination makes the Supreme Court “overloaded” with…Catholics.  Why do we care anymore than we care about the religion of a presidential candidate?  Oh wait…We do care about the religion of a presidential candidate, sadly.

My personal opinion is that doing anything other than token resistance to the nomination, unless she turns out to have genuine qualification problems is to invite more of the monkey business that has plagued federal court nominations for the last decade or so.   We will hold the White House again, and if we follow the low road paved by Senate Democrats during the Bush administration we, not they, will be responsible for finally and totally politicizing the courts.

Which makes this Dan Gilgoff post somewhat disconcerting.

But Sotomayor’s Catholicism matters for two political reasons:

1. It breaks the Republican Party’s recent monopoly on Catholic nominees.

[...]

2. Even if Sotomayor isn’t being sold as a Catholic nominee, her Catholicism, especially her Catholic school experience, gives her political advantages in the nomination process.

That is truly bothersome because it not only points to politicization of the courts, but also religious label politicization of the courts.  Neither of these are good trends.  It was Dems that came dangerously, dangerously close to proclaiming Catholicism as a litmus test for the court in either the Alito or Roberts hearings (forgive me for not having the time to refresh my memory here) .  Somehow I doubt that will be an issue here, because, well, this is their guy.

Which brings me to EFM’s comments on a Politico report of a “great divide” inside the Republican camp on how to respond to the nomination.  They trot out Pat Robertson and Randall Terry (Operation Rescue) as important forces inside the Repubican party.  I’m with Charles on this:

I mean no disrespect by this, but is it really proof of a “great divide” that Pat Robertson and Randall Terry are saying one thing and a coalition of sixty groups is saying another? It seems to me that the first two, the media’s desire to cover them notwithstanding, are not considered great generals of the conservative movement (though Rev. Robertson was in his heyday), whereas Ms. Long’s group is an acknowledged leader on this issue. Relatedly, is it really news that Messrs. Robertson and Terry are saying something relatively radical? Haven’t we seen this movie before? How come it is always considered newsworthy?

I think one could fairly argue that Politico has its blinders on here.

What seems apparent is the willingness of the Democrats and their allies in the MSM to use religion as a pure political lever.  It matters when it helps them (Gilgoff’s observations) but it should not matter, or is a sign of bigotry, when it is in opposition to them (Politico’s report).  That lessens religion tremendously.  My faith, and I am fairly certain the faith of our primarily Mormon readership here, means more to them than a political level, much more – to reduce it to such is to completely misunderstand the nature of faith and religion in a person’s life.

Which brings me to this post by a young man we have linked to before in this space – Matt Anderson.  Matt recently used the Maggie Gallagher Corner post that was extensively discussed on Friday to grind an axe of his own.

Gallagher’s analysis is interesting and insightful.  But for whatever shortcomings social conservatives have politically, Gallagher’s point masques the true problem with the social conservative alliance with the Republican Party.  Fundamentally, it is an uneasy union, for the principles driving the major wings of the Republican party–the libertarians and economic conservatives–are undercutting the social conservative case in the public square.

The social conservative position on controversial issues like abortion, stem cell research, and homosexual marriage has largely been driven by Catholic natural law theorists like Robert George, Francis Beckwith, and others.  Whatever persuasiveness one thinks these have–and I find them very persuasive–it’s impossible to deny that their effect is muted in a legislative system with a metaphysic that assumes the individual, and not the family, is the basic unit of governance.

[...]

What’s more, Republican power brokers need to realize that such a party would be welcome by most young pro-lifers.  While it may be easy to accuse young people of deep inconsistencies–I have done so myself–the ascent of the pro-life position and leftist economic policies among America’s young people reveals, I think, an ideological core that is more unified than most Republicans would be willing to admit.  Institutional Republicans shun those like Huckabee (or Douthat) who are comfortable with a neo-compassionate conservatism to their own detriment.

I like to read Matt because he is my personal bellwether of what people in an age group I long ago left behind are thinking.  The later paragraph quoted above strikes me as typical of persons in that age bracket.  I knew it was when I was that age, hence my personal hesitancy to vote for Ronald Reagan the first time around. (Second biggest regret of my voting life!)  But his comments about a “muted” effect of natural law philosophy are true only if one views religion as the motivator of natural law thinking – which is a mistake – and why I prefer, deeply, C.S. Lewis’ argument for natural law.  Lewis’s argument states that without natural law, we enslave ourselves – a purely secular argument, and one based on preserving the individual.

These comments also limit, though to a far lesser extent than the SCOTUS discussion above, the nature of religion in a personal life.  Religion is supposed to make good people who them build a good country and govern it well.  When we lessen religion to purely a set of ideas or beliefs, and entirely intellectual exercise, we miss the point to some extent.  Hence, natural law is not a “Christian” philosophy, but rather a philosophy developed by Christians.

We here see two examples of politics diminishing religion, from opposite sides of the political spectrum.  Such is what we need to be ever vigilant against.  Such is the real danger of mixing religion and politics – not that it somehow pollutes the political process, but that it pollutes religion.  We just have to be careful.  That does not mean religious people need to stay away from politics.  To the contrary, the must engage.  IT mean simply we need to be on guard and do them well.

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