Thursday, June 21, 2007

Do Roman Catholic Bishops Expect Catholic Supreme Court Justices to Reverse Roe v. Wade?

According to this article, the nation's Roman Catholic Bishops are considering how much involvement they should have in the 2008 Presidential campaign. The article points out how certain Bishops were involved in the 2004 campaign, with one Bishop announcing that he wouldn't allow John Kerry to receive communion in his diocese. What was remarkable about that statement was that there was no indictation that Kerry intended to take communion in his diocese, so his announcement served no other purpose than to indictate to his parishioners his opposition to Kerry.

What is even more remarkable about this article, however, is that the American Catholic Bishops are ignoring the one governmental body that has control over Roe v. Wade and has a majority of Roman Catholics. That body is, of course, the United States Supreme Court. Out of the nine United States Supreme Court Justices, five are Roman Catholic. They are Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy.

So here is the question: why aren't these Bishops who were opposed to John Kerry putting pressure on the Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices to reverse Roe v. Wade?

What is even more interesting about the Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices is that all of them were appointed by Republican Presidents and are presumably Republicans. So it would seem that they would be the most receptive to the argument that abortion is a "fundamental" issue for Roman Catholics.

Of course, Americans are very touchy about attempts to interfere with the judiciary and might react very negatively to such an attempt. Which is, of course, why even those Bishops who were opposed to John Kerry's election might heistate to pressure Supreme Court Justices. In the final analysis, however, it seems hypocritical to criticize Roman Catholic Democratic politicians on abortion and ignore the fact that five Republican Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices could reverse Roe v. Wade anytime they chose to do so.

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