So far, the American news media's debate and commentary on the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has produced more red herrings than a fish market fire.
None of these smells worse than the attempts at both ends of the ideological spectrum to make an issue of the nominee's Roman Catholicism. On the right are various evangelical activists and cultural conservatives who insist that any objection to Roberts' confirmation or mention of his Roman Catholicism amounts to religious bigotry and the imposition of a constitutionally prohibited "religious test" for office. On the other side are various left-wing special-interest groups who seem to be arguing that his faith precludes any independent thought on his part.
Both views have been given free access to the chat shows and op-ed pages, and both are pernicious nonsense. The evangelical activists and their GOP fellow travelers have presided over the virtual sacralization of our politics and are without standing to raise an objection to anyone discussing religion at this point. Moreover, four of the Democratic senators most likely to question Roberts closely when he appears before the Judiciary Committee -- Edward M. Kennedy, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Patrick J. Leahy and Richard J. Durbin -- are Roman Catholics.
As far as the left-wing critics go, is it really their position that the three Catholics already on the court -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy -- always vote in unison? Obviously not, so what is this really about? In fact, what precisely is it that Catholicism is supposed to predict in judicial behavior?
William J. Brennan Jr., the lion of the Warren Court, was a Roman Catholic, but so was Roger B. Taney, who as chief justice wrote the most abominable decision ever handed down by the court in the Dred Scott case.
Does that mean the upcoming Senate hearings and the discussion surrounding them can't take an anti-Catholic and irrelevant turn?
Of course, they could -- if they degenerate into a constitutionally impermissible inquisition into Roberts' private religious views or a vulgar series of litmus test questions to which flat yes or no answers are demanded or grant a deterministic finality to every single thing he ever said or wrote at whatever stage of his life.
