If RGB is gone and Coney-Barrett is confirmed, there will be 6 Catholics on the court.
Many are connected to Jesuit institutions. Is their Catholicism a moral or political fact?
Are they loyal to the Papacy or to the US Constitution, and real Christian faith??????
If you think this question about loyalty to the Papacy is absurd, or not a real issue, you don't know what Jesuits are.
Furthermore you have not learned about the origins of Washington D.C. which used to be the town of Rome. The Potomac River was called the Tiber. When Washington D.C. was founded, it was called "Rome on the Potomac" and there was a massive international Catholic influence...
You must read judge Dale's, The Great American Adventure.
Do the research.
Current Catholics
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John Roberts
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** Sonia Sotomayor** ( is publically a Catholic but many consider her a "crypto-jew". Given what we know, is there a difference?)
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Neil Gorsuch (was raised a Catholic, studied with a famous Catholic scholar of law, John Finnis, although now his family goes to an Episcopal Church in Colorado. Remember Episcopals accept all the doctrines and rituals of Catholacism but is supposedly removed from the Papacy because it is the American version of the Church of England. Today England is unified with the Vatican and we are a long way from Henry VIII)
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Clarence Thomas
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Brett Kavanaugh
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Amy Coney-Barrett
I am not prejudiced against any decent practicing person of religion or traditional Catholicism as such. But unlike Protestantism, Catholicism is a political and moral institution.
Where are all the Protestants? Why are their no Protestants. Its all Catholics and Jews as many have pointed out? In an age in which we are obsessing with proportionate representation, this over-representation is totally disproportionate.
Any thoughts on Why? and What this means about their allegiances?
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[–] time3times ago
One answer to your basic question - why Cathlicks and no Proddies? - is partly because high-end legalfag Catholics meet the expectations of conservative presidents more reliably or more frequently than high-end legalfag Protestants. (Note that all of the Jewish justices were picked by Democrats presidents). Your average hard working, upstanding, conventional, legal type, if protestant, is more likely to support abortion & gayness, oppose death penalty, etc. Not to say that there aren't atypicals on all sides (such as Sotomayor) but just that there are proportionately more Catholics in line with standard (old school) conservatism, and if chosen without specific interrogation are more predictable in views on unspoken issues. This claim I make here does not explain the extreme numbers that make up the SC but I would guess explains about half of that make up.
Those social issues have played a large part of the conservative/progressive divide and do so even today in scotus politics. If other areas of law were so emphasized, I think we would have a different scotus roster. Recall that it was Catholics who were most vocal about Roe v Wade in the 70's. (Despite the likes of Ted Kennedy, etc.) It was Catholics who started the annual March for Life. Most Protestant denominations did not have a clear position on the topic, whereas Catholic doctrine on abortion had been established back in Roman times and remained unchanged (until the present pope who thinks he's some progressive hero).
Seems wrong to paint alumni from Jesuit colleges with the evil that colors many Jesuits. Feel free to disagree.
To clarify your argument you have clarify how you define Catholic and Protestant. I had no idea that Gorsuch had any Catholicity in his past. I think by most definitions he is Protestant. Your definitions and mileage may vary. You could be pleased to learn that Gorsuch walked away from things Catholic, which makes him more of a personal protestant than others who were just born into the denominations. Same with Pence - he left the old church behind as a personal choice and yet he gets flack.
[–] Publius1778 [S] ago
All these points were in my mind when I wrote and I think they are all reasonable, but still fail to explain why so many.
First how conservative are catholics or their schools these day? Since Vatican II the church has been moving toward liberalism/socialism...
My thought is that they jesuit schools apart from excellent schools are feeders to high positions like the SCOTUS, in the same way all the elite schools are and the point is that these people get more than merely a good education and I am curious what else.
If you've read the Jesuit oath, I can't see why they would ever abandon or when they did, their original purposes as a kind of papal army. Otherwise its just an august name.
[–] time3times ago
My attempted explanation only covers part of the territory. I estimate about half of the situation is adequately explained. Your question is reasonable (while bits of your data seem not to be). I have wondered the same thing. I can only offer a hint of further explanation. I can't readily defend this idea but suggest it in the spirit of Occam's Razor. There are so many Catholic SCOTUS justices because God has some plan that we should trust. It seems that one could look at the unexpected situation (which didn't exist before Roe v Wade) and conclude that it is strangely bad or strangely good. I'm rooting for the good version. My guess is that we won't find a satisfactory answer to your question for a while.
Commentary below is secondary and a bit off topic:
Keep in mind that most Catholics on the SC started their lives before Vat II. And the false spirit of Vat II is not yet fully rolled out. First infiltrators avoided the old teachings whereever they could in select places and then years later replaced them with modernism and the like. The current catholic landscape is such that there is a minority of folks (ordained and lay) still out there holding their ground. Some have managed to wade through the mainstream nonsense and keep their principles. I have no doubt that Kavanagh and Coney Barrett were aware of the modcon issues at their higher ed. institutions, even when they were students. This is the standard struggle for conservative catholics in our generation. Same with conservative anglicans in England these days. Same with conservatives at state colleges - bite your tounge, get the degree, move on till you have some influence.
You needn't accept my advice, but here goes: Don't think of all Jesuits as the same anti-christs. Some are not at all. And beware that much of the same disease shows up in varying frequency in other catholic orders (as well as in other Christian denominations). It does happen that in general Jesuits deserve most of the reputation that they have, but this reputation is way older than Vat II. The hilarious british writer G.K. Chesterton coined the perjorative term Jesuistry over a hundred years ago.
Jesuits have long played the education angle in their mission work, thusly so many Jesuit colleges in the US. However students at these schools are not jesuits and they take no oath to the order (any more than Notre Dame students take an oath to the Order of the Holy Cross). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most Fed-level judges that are catholic went to a jesuit school at some point in their past. However only a tiny minority would have made any specifically jesuit vow. The Jesuit oath or vow is irrelevant within topic of federal judges. Even among Jesuits in our time the vows of obedience, etc. are only adhered to in a pick-and-choose relativist way. As the 2 previous popes were generally conservative and fairly traditionalist, many jesuits simply ignored their vows of obedience and went their own way, often criticizing those popes. The current pope, possibly the most corrupt Jesuit ever, had to contravene his vows by accepting the papacy.