EITHER/OR (via Tom Corcoran):

The JFK Question: Sens. Specter and Feinstein impose an unconstitutional religious test. (MANUEL MIRANDA, September 15, 2005, Opinion Journal)

Article VI of the Constitution prohibits a religious test from being imposed on nominees to public office. The clause was motivated by the experience of Catholics in the Maryland colony and Baptists in Virginia who had been the targets of Great Britain's two Test Acts. These infamous laws of intolerance sought to prevent anyone who did not belong to the Church of England from holding public office. The Test Acts did not say that Catholics could not hold office; the bigotry was more subtle. Officials questioned would-be public servants to determine whether they believed in particular tenets of the Catholic faith.

While questioning John Roberts on Tuesday, Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter asked: "Would you say that your views are the same as those expressed by John Kennedy when he was a candidate, and he spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960: 'I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.' "

Hours later, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California made it worse: "In 1960, there was much debate about President John F. Kennedy's faith and what role Catholicism would play in his administration. At that time, he pledged to address the issues of conscience out of a focus on the national interests, not out of adherence to the dictates of one's religion. . . . My question is: Do you?"

How insulting. How offensive. How invidiously ignorant to question someone like Judge Roberts with such apparent presumption and disdain for the religion he practices.

To the contrary, this isn't offensive but a necessary question for the Left to ask. What it demonstrates is that you can't be faithful to the tenets of the Catholic religion and at the same time conform to the social policies of their party. Folks have to choose between being faithful to their religion or being members in good standing of the Democratic Party.

MORE:
Reading the Mind of John Roberts (Patrick O'Hannigan, 9/14/2005, American Spectator)

Catholicism makes room for "prudential judgment," as Vischer notes, and good thing, too. That kind of discernment applies to areas where the church has said nothing. You can't settle arguments over the designated hitter rule or the likelihood of Darwinian "descent with modification" by pulling out a copy of the catechism.

Prudential judgment may also be invoked at those times when theologically informed partisans argue about whether it's a sin to build a nuclear weapon, or when economists of the Sowellian bent can drive figurative trucks through the ignorance of pastoral letters on subjects like the "living wage."

But Alice herself can't skip blithely down that rabbit hole when bishops are on their home turf, championing what John Paul II famously called "the culture of life," not least because prudential judgment requires a "well-formed conscience" which in turn must be cognizant of unbroken teaching rooted in 2,000-year-old mission statements like "I came that you may have life, and have it more abundantly" as recorded in John 10:10.

Per the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its "Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life": "...those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a 'grave and clear obligation to oppose' any law that attacks human life."

This obligation weighs more heavily on legislators than on judges, but it is not something that any practicing Catholic in public life can shirk.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 15, 2005 4:00 PM