Over the past week, GetReligion has been pursuing this question: What is the mainstream press saying about where Judge Sonia Sotomayor falls in the spectrum of Catholic life and practice? Well, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein has been researching this for all of the curious minds who read that newspaper (not to mention GR readers), and here’s what she has found out:
Four of the Catholics on the court are reported to be committed attenders of Mass, and they make up the court’s solid conservative bloc — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. The fifth Catholic, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often votes with them.
There are indications that Judge Sotomayor is more like the majority of American Catholics: those who were raised in the faith and shaped by its values, but who do not attend Mass regularly and are not particularly active in religious life. Like many Americans, Judge Sotomayor may be what religion scholars call a “cultural Catholic” — a category that could say something about her political and social attitudes.
First of all, we’re pleased as punch that Goodstein has tackled this question. It’s long been clear that conservative Catholics vote along conservative lines — so the fact that the mass—attending Justices generally trend reliably conservative should not shock anyone. As Terry said in a previous post, the hinge issue is abortion. Is there any way of predicting by her church attendance (and Goodstein has done her homework here) how Sotomayor would vote on abortion-related, or “right to privacy” cases that come before the court?
Franklly, it’s unwise to predict how anyone would vote, even if you think you know. Purely my opinion, but confirmation processes have now become a charade, where aspiring Justices say as little as possible without totally compromising their integrity. Yet it seems clear that piety (if one can judge piety by church attendance, which is a whole other debate) is a factor, if not a totally understood factor, in where one falls on the spectrum of liberal-conservative opinion (as in this poll on the Notre-Dame controversy). Here’s some interesting stats on a few social issues culled by Goodstein.
In fact, 52 percent of Catholics who do not attend church regularly say abortion is morally acceptable, compared with 24 percent of churchgoing Catholics, according to a Gallup study released in March based on polling over the previous three years. Gallup found that 61 percent of non-churchgoing Catholics found same-sex relationships morally acceptable, compared with 44 percent of churchgoers.
But legal scholars say that while Judge Sotomayor’s Catholic identity will undoubtedly shape her perceptions, they will not determine how she would rule on the bench. After all, they point out, Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Frank Murphy, both Catholics, had records as liberals, while Justice Scalia has been a reliable conservative. Their positions have differed, even on issues covered in Catholic teaching, like abortion.
That’s a fascinating stat on same-sex relationships — anyone want to guess what it means? Actually, let’s start with the term “morally acceptable.”
Then there is the whole issue of whether Judge Sotomayor’s ‘Catholic identity’ was shaped by her Hispanic roots. She has talked about being proud of her Latina heritage — did she spend any time with the more than one-half (in this 2007 Pew poll) of Hispanic Catholics who identify themselves as charismatic? There’s no evidence here that she did. And there’s really no way of predicting yet how Sotomayor will vote — with the exception of the Ricci affirmative action case recently argued before the Supreme Court, she doesn’t have a huge paper trail on hot button issues. Generally picks for the Supreme Court don’t.
As much as I liked the Goodstein article, I had a few problems with it. Characterizing Anthony Kennedy (as Professor Powe does) as a “country club Republican” says nothing about his Catholic identity. Nor does telling us that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg are Jewish or that Stevens is a Protestant illuminate anything about how their faith and/or culture shapes their decisions. Aren’t you curious about them, too?
But here’s what I want to know — is it possible that “cultural Catholics” aren’t much different than the majority of Americans as a whole? If Sotomayor doesn’t go to church very often, then she’s like most of the rest of us. Does terming someone a “cultural Catholic” in an age of ethnic diversity and diversity of practice really mean a whole heck of a lot anymore? The vague definition here (a commitment to social justice and community service) could as well be applied to Quakers.
In the end, of course, it comes down to what one woman with a Catholic heritage believes — and as excellent a reporter as Goodstein is, she hasn’t been able to get inside Sotomayor’s head. Which won’t keep a lot of other people from trying.
Isn’t this a nice picture of Sotomayor with her mother (Wikimedia Commons)?
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Comments (22) |
May 31, 2009, at 7:25 pm
I’d love for a reporter to “get insider her head” about religion, and ask what part of her Catholic faith allows her to believe a Latina woman is a “better” judge than a white man.
I’d also wonder if she would rule in favor, say, (very hypothetically) a dissident group of Womenpriests, if they ever had cause to come before the Supreme Court, because she “empathized” with them. Her use of emotion (ANY emotion) as a guide to jurisprudence rips the blindfold from Justice and I’d love to know how her faith informs her on this rather novel aspect of the law, which can have a VERY detrimental effect on religion.
(On a slightly off-topic note, I’d like to know when it became impermissible for the media, or anyone else, to legitimately critique anyone’s views if they’re a minority. Watching CNN, apparently it’s now not allowed. That’s a very dangerous trend in the media and politics.)
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May 31, 2009, at 7:33 pm
Instead of running a religious inquisition to try to figure out how Judge Sotomayor might vote on future issues before the Supreme Court—she should be grilled, probed, and scrutinized on her judicial, constitutional philosophy and history which is usually far, far more predictive of future votes than one’s religion. In fact some of the current religious probing and speculating borders on creating a de facto very unconstitutional religious test for high office.
We need to know why she sided with throwing the discriminated against firefighters out the court door. We need to know how she would balance “original intent” with Obama’s “empathy” in making Supreme Court decisions. We need to know why or what lay behind her apparent “dissing” of white male judges even though she liked some of the decisions of the all-white male Supreme Courts of the past. We need to know what kind of political groups she has been associated with or supported in the past (Are any radically left or right??) And did these associations seem to have a deleterious affect on her judicial fairness.
And looking at Mass attendance for tea leave predictions strikes me as a form of prejudice because few, if any, in the media look at attendance in church by liberal, mainstream Protestants or look at synagogue attendance ( which can be orthodox, reform, or conservative) to “tea leave” or probe judicial nominees of non=Catholic religions.
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May 31, 2009, at 7:39 pm
It’s been pointed out by some commentators in the media that 1) Brown v Board of Education was decided by a group of white men, and 2) that being a “Catholic” politician is by no means a determinate factor in how they will vote.
So in that sense, Deacon John’s right, and all this searching for what “kind” of Catholic she is probably not very productive.
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May 31, 2009, at 8:28 pm
Stephen A, very conservative jurists now sitting on the Supreme Court said much the same thing about empathy. Of course, they were not attacked for it by conservatives because they were conservatives. Just think what the right would be yelling if she had said the following rather than Justice Alito.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june09/sb_05-29.html
Conservative commentator David Brooks also demolished that line of attack in a recent column http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
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May 31, 2009, at 8:58 pm
Brooks is right in saying “emotion can be a wise guide in some circumstances and a dangerous deceiver in others.” Which is it in HER case? Or I should say “cases.” Her combination of emotion with racialist comments (though perhaps not “racist”) is disturbing, and worth examining.
As Charles Krauthammer’s column this week notes, where was the compassion and emotion when she, in a curt dismissal, wrote off the American dream of the Hartford, CT firefighters in a plain case of discrimination against them, some of whom were sons of immigrants and have a “compelling story” too?
I also agree with Krauthammer that conservatives should make their points and then step aside and let her be confirmed.
It’s pointless since the Democrats clearly have the votes and also, to one cannot win arguments against the “First ____ ” to do anything in America without appearing like brutal racists standing in the schoolhouse door (though the Democrats did it with a previous Hispanic SC nominee.)
This is the “new normal” I guess.
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May 31, 2009, at 8:59 pm
Deacon John, thanks for your words about the way that Sotomayor’s faith has been probed by the media and whether makes an unfair test for office. I need to think about that. Have other recent Catholic nominees faced this kind of scrutiny?
Jerry, I love that last sentence from David Brooks. I hope that the media doesn’t get hung up on the notion that because Obama wanted a person with “empathy” that is what makes Sotomayor different from previous nominees — or that she displays “emotion.” Anyone who has read Justice Scalia’s opinions or those of Justice Stevens, or those of many other justices can’t say that they are without passion or written in a purely reasonable frame of mind, whatever that is (if it’s even desirable).
I think we’re on interesting territory here — is this going to be a Roberts or a Thomas nomination — or something completely different? Not to get the media too much credit or blame, but the public will probably be swayed by which way some in the media choose to play it.
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May 31, 2009, at 9:16 pm
Absolutely correct, and by that measure, she’ll sail through. And anyone who dares raise questions (even about legitimate mis-statements or her prior rulings) will be labeled a “racist.” It’s already happening. Great media we have.
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June 1, 2009, at 1:07 am
I would like to stress that I always assumed that the White House would know how she plans to vote. The left rarely makes mistakes, like the right, on these matters.
From the start, I was simply fascinated with the indecision about whether to call her a Catholic — thus changing the Catholic math on the court. As always, I was interested in the journalism issue. How would the word “Catholic” be used and defined?
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June 1, 2009, at 1:11 am
What Deacon Bresnahan wrote in his first sentence in 2. The rest is fun speculation but in a religiously fair/neutral, that is, secular government (politically I’m secular!) her religion shouldn’t matter!
That said, if, as she seems, she’s a run-of-the-mill liberal there are probably two options as the orthodox RCs tend to be shills for the Republicans these day because the GOP plays them on abortion just like the Protestant right.
My guess is ‘cultural Catholic’ is about right or as a friend recently articulated for me, a Bad Catholic, which is not as judgemental as it sounds. Read on.
Bad Catholics aren’t liberal/mainline Protestants or Modernist RCs like old 1960s priests and nuns, the ones who read the National Catholic Reporter and essentially want to be a proletarian version of mainline Protestants with women priests and maybe gay weddings, dumping private confession for encounter groups or something (groovy; they’re so with it) and having the occasional ethnic devotion like the Rosary to honour their plucky name-the-group immigrant ancestors whose faith they’ve really disowned to assimilate.
Bad Catholics personally may agree with mainstream secular culture and not with orthodoxy, and probably don’t have much use for church other than weddings and funerals and little else, but like the orthodox they know the church is unchangeable on those matters and unlike the Protestants and Modernists aren’t interested in trying to bend the church to fit whatever kinks they may have. Modernists are traitors; Bad Catholics aren’t but rather wayward and honest about it but still in the family. (IOW they think Fr Cutié and his woman are hot and wish them well - they’re natural folk heroes - but they’re not going to become Episcopalians with them or start writing angry letters to Rome demanding clerical marriage. They’ll keep living their lives, partly or entirely opting out of churchgoing.) There are lots of them.
The other possibility I think is she’s a Modernist but she seems too young for that. Again most of those people are Hans Küng’s and Dan Berrigan’s age, the youngest probably in their 50s.
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June 1, 2009, at 2:02 am
Elizabeth, David Brooks is my favorite conservative because he makes me think. Brooks writes thoughtfully and respects those he writes about as well as those with whom he disagrees. And he’s not afraid to agree with someone from the other side when he feels it’s warranted. His writings are thus a breath of fresh air compared to the bloviators (from both sides) who are only interested in trumpeting that they’re right and those who disagree are idiots who deserve verbal cudgels.
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June 1, 2009, at 11:19 am
The original desegregation decision required a sociological study to tell the all-white justices that separate is inherently unequal. Black members of the SCOTUS, had there been any, wouldn’t have needed the study. That’s the extent of Sotomayor’s remark about race and jurisprudence.
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June 1, 2009, at 2:22 pm
Dave, over a century and a half of all-white Supreme Court Justices relied on pure emotionalism and irrational rationalizations to bolster their racialist views and exclude blacks from full citizenship.
All-White courts in the early 20th century, and majority White courts in the latter half of it, were able to rely on reason and blind justice - equally given out to all, not on the basis of race - to expand rights for minorities and judge cases on their merits, not necessarily on how they “felt” about them.
Alito, mentioned by Jerry above, is an Originalist, and his legal reasoning is based on the Constitution, and through that document he finds an ally for his human empathy (from which no one is suggesting we be fully divorced, nor can we be.) However, he doesn’t seek out empathy first, or in place of the Constitution. That’s the difference in judicial philosophy. Some on the court have looked to their feelings and emotions, how the courts in Sweden are doing things or other subjective tests. That’s been brought up in the Conservative media, and actually to their credit, I’ve heard this discussed a bit (briefly) on CNN and other serious news sources.
Relying on emotion alone (and I’m actually not actually suggesting Sotomayer would do this) would be a very poor and dangerous path for the courts to follow, and I’m surprised its not being more vigorously “red flagged” by the media.
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June 1, 2009, at 3:07 pm
Stephen, the racist regime of slavery was completely rational, once you grant their premise that Africans are not human and that Euro-African mixes fully inherit that lack of humanity. Pure reason has produced some monsters, and emotionalism cannot be made to take the rap for them.
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June 1, 2009, at 6:24 pm
Dave, I beg to differ that reason had anything to do with the continuation of slavery - though perhaps “rationalizations” did. True, pure reason is a problem. Pure emotionalism is, too. Courts, like all other institutions, have always blended both (since they are composed of human beings) but the trend towards making feelings and emotion and empathy determinant factors in cases is troubling and extremely dangerous.
Empathy cannot be what our legal system is based upon, and even if it makes for an expedient political argument to help one political party “win” this time, it has long-term negative effects overall.
It’s difficult to see why stating that obvious truth is even controversial.
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June 1, 2009, at 7:09 pm
Stephen, you have backed off from the semantic overdrive of the “pure emotionalism and irrational rationalization” of your earlier text. Certainly we can agree that both reason and emotion underlie any political structure. It exists for reasons of survival and economy; its values may be elaborated by reason
My point, if you will recall, is that the all-white SCOTUS of 1954 needed a sociological study to understand what a black jurist would have known before taking to the bench. That is the sum and substance of Sotomayor’s “controversial” remark.
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June 1, 2009, at 7:39 pm
And to further complicate things… even if she found abortion to be morally acceptable, she may still find herself by her legal training forced to vote against it if that’s what the law dictates, and the same applies vice-versa…
God Bless,
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June 1, 2009, at 10:37 pm
But David, that’s the point of this discussion. Her reliance on feelings and empathy may trump “what the law dictates” Or it may not. Who knows, when empathy takes the place of precedent? That’s the main problem.
Then again, S.C. Justices have been notoriously hard to gauge. I don’t see her being a conservative, but then again, she may turn into a “moderate” on the court, rather than a hard-Left liberal, which some are painting her as now - with justification, I must add.
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June 3, 2009, at 1:28 am
This is really late for me to comment but I have to say I liked this article by Laurie Goodstein. It’s unique and full of information about which I was curious. I really just enjoyed the idea and execution.
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June 3, 2009, at 3:30 pm
Stephen, the racist regime of slavery was completely rational, once you grant their premise that Africans are not human and that Euro-African mixes fully inherit that lack of humanity
Slavery has existed since time immemorial, and was always practiced upon humans. No slave owner considered his slave not human (you don’t consider horses slaves, for example). Slavery presumes the humanity of the one enslaved. Which makes it that much worse. What slave owners did believe is that certain humans were not entitled to freedom, or were to be treated as property. Which, as I said, makes it even worse.
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June 3, 2009, at 4:36 pm
c matt, you are taking slavery in history as a general phenomenon and improperly particularizing to the slave regime in the United States. My characterization of the latter is accurate. Not long after the US achieved independence, a scientific racism arose justifying the status of the slave in the terms I described. These, alas, were the roots of anthropology, which finally cleaned up its act in the 20th Century.
Scientific racism arose at a time when the Biblical story of the curse making descendants of Ham servants of descendants of the other sons of Noah, no longer was convincing — part of a general shift to scientific explanations replacing Scriptural ones. I was not tossing off a mere bon mot when I said reason produces monsters.
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June 3, 2009, at 5:45 pm
The concept of reason being “evil” and emotion being “good” is kind of outdated (also Calvinist? fundamentalist? in philosophy) and again, is being misapplied in the racism discussion here. Racism is by its nature emotional, irrational and unthinking. The fact that previous generations rationalized racism doesn’t mean it was based on reason, even though they couched it in those terms.
Once again, White Supreme Court Justices used the LAW and the Constitution as bases for overturning institutional racism, not emotion, feelings and empathy, though obviously the judges possessed those God-given gifts as well.
Which is all irrelevant to the issue at hand if indeed Ms. Sotomayor is not racist, and if she in fact didn’t really mean it when she said her race alone makes her a better judge than a white man. That would be in fact a race-based criteria that is repugnant to reason and to our judicial system.
The reporting has been focused on the polar opposite interpretations: that she meant that line in her speech and is therefore a racist (this would be the FOX News approach) or that she has been quoted out of context and she clearly isn’t one (the Obama Administration/CNN line.)
Personally, I’m waiting for the hearings to quickly clear this up, and think, like most in the media are saying, this will be a quick and painless confirmation.
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June 3, 2009, at 7:41 pm
Stephen, we’ve begun to repeat ourselves, so it may be best to call it a day.
One point — I never said reason is categorically evil and emotion categorically good. My own prejudices actually tend the other way, so exceptions stand out for me. Scientific racism (which I urge you to learn more about) is one such.
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