ROBERTS CRITICS' AGENDA OF HATE
By GEORGE J. MARLIN
NEW YORK Post Opinion
August 2, 2005
FOR most of our nation's history, anti-Catholicism has been an acceptable prejudice. Groups such as the Anti-Masonic Party, the Know-Nothing Party, the American Protective Association, the Ku Klux Klan and POAC (Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) all agreed that Catholics were a suspect class that should be prevented from participating in public life. The reaction to President Bush's nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court suggests that not so much has changed.
Anti-Catholic public display was at its worst during the 1928 presidential race. On his first rail tour into America's Western heartland, New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith was greeted by fiery crosses and vicious pamphlets. John F. Kennedy faced similar outbursts of bigotry when he ran for president in 1960: The Fair Campaign Practices Committee estimated that over 25 million anti-Catholic brochures and pamphlets were distributed.
In both campaigns, the Catholic candidates' declarations that they would never violate their oath of office — and that they recognized (as Smith put it) "no power in . . . [their] Church to interfere with the operatives of the Constitution of the United States for the enforcement of the law of the land" — fell on deaf ears.
Many political analysts have concluded that this intolerance began to subside after JFK's election. Catholics, they argue, have been assimilated into American society and are now accepted into middle- and upper-class enclaves, corporate board rooms and the public square. Yet, while many Catholics have advanced economically since 1960, a deep-rooted animus remains against Catholics in public life who practice their faith.
In 2003, for instance, Sen. Charles Schumer ignored the Constitution's Article 6 ("no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States") in questioning the suitability of a Bush appeals-court nominee, Alabama Attorney General William Pryor. Because Pryor adheres to the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, Schumer complained that "his beliefs are so well known, so deeply held, that it's very hard — very hard to believe — they're not going to deeply influence the way he comes about saying, 'I will follow the law.' "
Schumer's judicial litmus test held up the Pryor nomination for two years. Are similar tactics of senatorial intolerance being used to railroad Roberts? His nomination was scarcely a week old before the sulfurous odor of religious prejudice began to waft through the air.
John Roberts is a Catholic and, by all accounts, a pretty serious one. That doesn't go down too well with certain liberal interest groups and their political allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee — who are insinuating that Roberts' Catholicism renders him unfit for the Supreme Court.
They won't come right out and say it, of course. Instead, they say nominees with "strongly held personal values" can't reach objective judgments in cases that may arise before them. Yet phrases like "strongly held personal values" are simply prejudicial code words.
Liberals may protest that characterization, but when was the last time they questioned the strongly held beliefs of mainline Protestants, Jews, or, for that matter, anyone left of center? How come only religious conservatives ever get challenged about the strength of their beliefs? Why is the left's favorite "anti-Catholic" Catholic senator, Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), praised for pressing Roberts as to "what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral"?
Prior to her high-court nomination, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a forceful advocate for women's rights as a professor at Columbia and as a federal circuit judge in the District of Columbia. She had expressed in speech and in writing any number of "strongly held personal values" over many years — yet her Supreme Court confirmation hearing was a cake-walk. No senator even hinted that the strength of her personal philosophical or religious opinions might affect her duties as a judge.
But somehow it's OK to raise such questions about a conservative Catholic?
It's time for Durbin, Schumer and other Senate liberals (and the grenade-throwing interest-group hacks) to back off this sort of ugliness. They're not fooling anybody with their not-so-subtle appeals to prejudice.
George J. Marlin is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact."
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