Not Catholic Enough?

Liberals concerned with Judge John Roberts might act on the basis of deeply held Catholic values when deciding whether to overrule Roe v. Wade might consider the virtues of having Judge Roberts act on Catholic values in other areas of the law. The Catholic church, after all, opposes capital punishment, has little good to say about our adventures in Iraq, particularly the torture issue, and is committed to far greater economic redistribution than takes place in the United States. I'm not Catholic (or even Christian), and I gather that there may be a difference in the nature of Catholic opposition to abortion and Catholic opposition to capital punishment. Still, if Judge Roberts took his orders from the Pope, I suspect he might frequently vote differently than he actually does and will.

One interesting question is how both the left and the right would react to a judicial nominee who they believed would overrule Roe, Griswold v. Connection, Lawrence v. Texas, and every decision sustaining capital punishment, as well as provide far greater protection for welfare rights and far stricter judicial supervision of torture than is presently the case. The other point is that Catholocism seems as interpretable as the constitution. Both Roberts and John Kerry and probably sincere Catholics yet they bring very different values to the public sphere (in this light one might note that Frank Murphy and William Brennan, possibly the two most liberal justices of the 20th century were Catholics). Simply saying one is a person of faith, therefore, says no more about one's values that the claim that one will not legislative from the bench. Roberts is not conservative because he is Catholic. Rather, he interprets Catholocism and the constitution in a certain way because he is a conservative. It is those conservative values that need exploring, not his religious faith.