Huffington Post: Too many Catholics on the Supreme Court

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You scratch a progressive and you find an fascist. That has been the lesson learned from the Hobby Lobby decision. One of the most notable bits of fascist commentary appeared in the Huffington Post by an anti-religious bigot named Ronald A. Lindsay, The Uncomfortable Question: Should We Have Six Catholic Justices on the Supreme Court?

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Unfortunately, a majority of the Supreme Court may now be resurrecting concerns about the compatibility between being a Catholic and being a good citizen, or at least between being a good Catholic and an impartial judge. In accepting the Catholic Church’s extremely expansive understanding of what constitutes a burden on someone’s religious beliefs, while simultaneously being dismissive of concerns that would be raised by minority religions, the Court majority is effectively undermining confidence in Catholic judges and forcing us to ask the uncomfortable question: Is it appropriate to have six Catholic justices on the Supreme Court?

One has to assume that Lindsay, who has been repudiated by the Supreme Court in the past, is simply trolling for traffic on behalf of Huffington Post. The easy answer to this moronic question is found in an obscure document that Lindsay seems to never have read:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

So the question asked in the article should be uncomfortable, not because you are asking a big-brained question but because you show yourself to be an imbecile. But we would also have the right to ask is it fair that a third of the Court is Jewish when they are only 2% of the population? How about two “unmarried” women (IYKWIMAITYD) on the court? Do “unmarried” women (IYKWIMAITYD) rate their own justice? What about “unmarried” men… now that Souter is retired?  How about one sorta dense Latina? I know the mediocre need representation but do the last couple of sigmas on the intelligence curve also need their own justice?

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Beyond the rank, uneducated bigotry espoused by Lindsay’s article you find this:

In Justice Alito’s majority opinion, he relies squarely on Catholic teaching about “complicity” to explain the supposed burden. In doing so, he reiterates the argument that the Catholic Church has made in the dozens of lawsuits it has brought challenging the contraceptive mandate. According to the Church, it violates the moral obligations of a Catholic to do anything — anything — that would “facilitate” the provision of contraception to an individual. So even if one is not using contraception oneself, if one facilitates access to contraception by others, a grave moral wrong has been committed.

What Lindsay is doing in this article is what the Obama administration has been doing in public policy since 2009. Lindsay is making the case that religion is a private matter which has no place in the public square. Obama has been consciously attacking  religious freedom, as in the Hosanna-Tabor case, and referring to Franklin Roosevelt’s Freedom of Worship rather than Freedom of Religion. These are not the same thing:

For the tradition of Hobbes, “rights,” including religion, were under the control of the state to give whatever content it chose. It is this understanding of “rights” that currently forms the core of a new civil religion that is being imposed on society against any real freedom of philosophy and religion. Religious freedom becomes “freedom to worship,” in order that religion may have no effect external to what goes on in houses of worship or in the inner souls of mankind.

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This hostility towards religion as anything more than a curious artifact of a superstitious era. In fact, to the observant Christian (or Jew, or Muslim, or Buddhist, etc.) your faith exists to inform your judgment. It does you no great credit if you read the parable of the Good Samaritan on Sunday and on Monday you find a man lying battered by the roadside begging for aid and in best Democrat tradition you bludgeon him unconscious and rifle his pockets. Indeed, if you are a Christian you are required to exhibit your faith in your daily life:

14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.15 Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. 16 Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

The fact that only five justices agreed with a decision that did nothing more than uphold the First Amendment’s right to freedom of religious practice over a mere administrative diktat issued by an administration flunky should be cause for alarm. That morality and virtue might be considered when applying the law should be a cause for celebration.

 

 

 

 

 

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