Media Devotes Little Attention To Sotomayor's Catholicism Compared With Conservative Nominees, WSJ Columnist Writes

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice;  Abortion
Article Date: 16 Jul 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor would be the sixth Roman Catholic currently on the court if she is confirmed, but there have been no more than "a few scattered references to this fact," Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn writes. He continues that "for the most part the judge's religion has been greeted, as a USA Today headline put it, with a 'yawn.'" McGurn adds, "How different from just a few years ago," when Catholics Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts were nominated by former President George W. Bush.

According to McGurn, when Alito was a Supreme Court nominee, "talk was about the 'fifth Catholic' on the bench." He adds that Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal "complained that 'with Alito, the majority of the court would be Roman Catholics.'" McGurn writes that prior to the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts, the Los Angeles Times "ran a piece headlined, 'Wife of Nominee Holds Strong Antiabortion Views.'" According to the Times, Roberts' wife worked for Feminists for Life, and the paper "characterized [her] as an 'extremely, extremely devout Catholic,'" McGurn writes.

"It's possible, of course, that Democrats and their allies in the media and activist community no longer regard Catholics with the suspicion they did back when ... Bush's nominees were up for consideration," according to McGurn. "More likely, the relatively soft reaction to Ms. Sotomayor's Catholicism is because of a calculation that when it comes to hot-button issues such as abortion or gay marriage, she doesn't really believe what her church teaches," he writes.

McGurn continues that if the "indifference" to "Sotomayor's Catholicism were truly a sign of a new respect for the 'no religious test' provisions of the Constitution, that would be something to celebrate." He concludes, "But in the unlikely case that this 'wise Latina' ever comes to see the legal wisdom of overturning [Roe v. Wade] and returning abortion to the democratic process, we'll be reading a very different story" (McGurn, Wall Street Journal, 7/14).

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