Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor Would Be Sixth Catholic On Bench

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Abortion
Article Date: 03 Jun 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, she would be the sixth Roman Catholic currently on the court, the New York Times reports. According to the Times, although Sotomayor was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic high school, she appears to be in line with the majority of U.S. Catholics who identify themselves with the faith but do not regularly go to Mass or become heavily involved in religious life. Several studies have shown that Catholics who rarely or never attend mass are more liberal on political and cultural issues than those who attend more regularly, the Times reports. For example, a Gallup poll released in March found that 52% of Catholics who do not attend church regularly say abortion is morally acceptable, compared with 24% of Catholics that are regular churchgoers. A White House spokesperson said that Sotomayor "currently does not belongs to a particular parish or church, but she attends church with family and friends for important occasions" (Goodstein, New York Times, 5/31).

According to the Boston Globe, the number of Catholics on the court has increased sharply over the past two decades, a shift from earlier years when there generally was one "Catholic seat" on the bench. Although Supreme Court experts say that the increase in the number of Catholic justices reflects a fall in anti-Catholicism over the past half-century, they also note that Catholic justices' views have not always aligned with the Church's teachings and that a judge's faith is not necessarily an indicator of how he or she will rule on issues like abortion rights or gay marriage. Current Catholic Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts all are in favor of either overturning Roe v. Wade or returning the issue of abortion to the states, the Globe reports. However, there have been previous Catholic justices, such as Justice William Brennan, who were avid supporters of abortion rights (Paulson, Boston Globe, 5/30).

Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at the University of Notre Dame, said, "I don't think there is any one Catholic stance on the law," adding, "You'll have judges who are pro-life personally who are going to rule that [Roe] is the law of the land."

Sotomayor 'Formidable Counterweight' to Catholic Men on Court, Opinion Piece Says

"If anyone should be worrying" about Sotomayor as the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court, "it's the five who are already there," former Catholics for Free Choice President Frances Kissling writes in a Salon opinion piece. Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas "all seem cut from the same traditional Catholic (and Federalist Society conservative) mold," Kissling writes, noting that all five voted in Gonzales v. Carhart to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. If confirmed, Sotomayor's experience with the other justices "is likely to change [her] as well -- and make her an even more formidable counterweight to the male Catholic bloc," according to Kissling. "There is nothing more likely to radicalize a 'moderate' Catholic woman of even marginal religiosity than daily exposure to Catholic men who think women need to be protected from making money or making bad and sad abortion choices," Kissling contends (Kissling, Salon, 5/31).

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