If Roberts is confirmed there will be quite a bloc of Catholics on the court. Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas are strong in the faith. Is it kosher to mention these things? The Constitution rightly forbids any religious test for public office, but what happens when a religious affiliation conflicts with a judge’s oath to uphold the Constitution? Some religious organizations are also explicitly political and vice versa—the Ku Klux Klan was founded partly to defend Protestantism—and if it is true that Scalia is a member of Opus Dei then even many Catholics would consider him to have made a political rather than a theological choice. The Church of Scientology is now a member of the American Council of Churches, and good luck to both of them say I, but are we ready for a Scientologist on the court rather than having him or her subjected to the equivalent of a religious test? I merely ask.
Hitchens’s piece is only seven paragraphs long, yet somehow feels padded. And padded with the most mindless dreck I’ve ever read from Hitchens, whose coverage of religious issues has been getting lazier by the month. The Ten Commandments, he informs us, do not condemn genocide. (I guess Hitchens is a very strict constructionist.) We’re supposed to worry about a pope-obeying Catholic bloc on the Court including Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and prospectively Roberts. "Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas are strong in the faith." Has anybody told Hitchens that Kennedy disagrees with Scalia and Thomas about the constitutional status of abortion? Hitchens dismisses Justice Scalia’s comment that "the principle of laws being ordained by God is . . . the foundation of our legal system" as "gibberish" that "is in flat contradiction to the Declaration of Independence." Has Hitchens ever read the Declaration?
Hitchens affects a smug superiority over Scalia, but the ground that Hitchens has chosen is unfavorable to him. All he has demonstrated is his own invincible ignorance about the law, Catholicism, and American politics.
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