"Scalito"

Welcome to the Vatican.

With the President's expected nomination this morning of the Honorable Samuel Alito (a/k/a "Scalito," a nickname comparing his opinions to those of the ultraconservative Mr. Justice Scalia) to the Supreme Court, the President is setting the stage for a record-breaking "first" with the Court if Judge Alito is confirmed: a Roman Catholic majority.

Already, the new Chief Justice plus Associate Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas are Roman Catholics. For those of you wondering, Justices Breyer and Ginsberg are Jewish, Mr. Justice Souter is Episcopalian, and Mr. Justice Stevens is "Protestant," though a very liberal one.

Now, many people may not have paid a whole lot of attention to Catholics, who make up about one-quarter of the nation's population, other than to note they exist; they have major presence in New York, Boston, and Chicago; they've had a little bit of problem with allegedly celibate clergy not being so celibate; and that a lot of the more conservative Fundamentalist protestant denominations think Catholics aren't Christians and that they are idolators who worship Mary. What many people do not realize, however, is that Catholics are a surprisingly devout and unified group; what's more, unlike the Evangelical churches which are essentially autonomous fiefdoms of star televangelists, local Catholic churches are disciplined and organized parts of a whole where local ministers and priests are bound by vows of obedience to state and diocesan level bishops who in turn have vows of obedience to His Holiness the Pope at the Vatican in Rome. Rome does not tolerate dissent or disobedience.

The Catholic Church, in its millennia of controlling information, money, and people, has evolved a position on women which has not evolved as quickly as modern American movements for the equality of women. In the Catholic Church, women may not become priests or even deacons, the two basic levels of ordained ministry which lead local churches (and we need not even consider their ability to become bishops or even pope). A Mother Superior of a group of nuns may have years of leadership experience guiding her nuns, her abbey, and their sometimes million-dollar business operations, but she is subordinate even to the newest, youngest, greenest male priest.

It has always interested me that an all-male, clerical hierarchy under vows of celibacy and who presumably went into seminary and their vows as sexual virgins could make so many pronouncements and dogmatic rules about women, married life, families, and sex. It's really nothing new, though, since the apostle Paul (the person who never met Jesus in His lifetime, yet wrote most of the New Testament epistles) was a big-time sexual repressive who advocated celibacy for all and allowed for sex if people were too "weak" to be celibate, but only if they were married to one another and only if it was unpleasurable procreation; this is the 21st century, though, not the 1st, and I wonder if Rome realizes that.

This is a church that opposes birth control: no condoms, no diaphrams, no progesterone pills, rods, or shots. This is a church that was one of the earliest leaders in opposing abortions in all cases, all scenarios, all events—no exceptions, period. This is a church that taught girls that it was their duty to marry, to submit to their husband, and to lay there and endure his sexual advances because it was his right and the woman's Christian duty. This is a church that supported spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep a brain-dead pregnant woman alive long enough for her fetus to develop sufficiently to have a chance to survive after birth. This is a church that would rather have a battered spouse stay in an abusive relationship instead of getting a divorce. This is a church that opposed letting the husband of a woman in a persistent vegetative state have her feeding tubes removed when her parents objected. This is a church that currently is "auditing" seminaries to purge them of open and suspected homosexuals so that these "intrinsically disordered" men do not get ordained to the priesthood (even though I think about 40-45% of American priests are celibate homosexuals). This is the church that had the Inquisition for 600 years until 1834, where "heresy" was a capital offense.

Please don't think that I'm anti-Catholic. I was in the pews at Mass yesterday morning, I probably go to a Catholic Mass at least three times a month, and I helped lead Masses as a cantor at one church every Sunday for about two years. It's just that I'm a historical and political scholar and rather a bit of a realist when it comes to organized religion; I consider myself to be religious, I just don't always agree with denominational politics and man-made rules. And, in this case, I can see the potential for some serious legal conflicts of interest.

Decades ago when John F. Kennedy was running for president, there was serious concern and discussion about whether he could lead the country independently of the Vatican and whether or not the pope would exert control over him and over his leadership decisions. Then-Senator Kennedy naturally claimed independence and the Vatican was tactfully and discreetly silent, thus paving the way for the Senator's election as the first Roman Catholic president in 1960.

The Vatican is no longer being silent, though, about the control of religion over civic affairs. In the last 2004 presidential election, the cardinal archbishop of St. Louis ignited a furor when he said that he would deny Democratic Senator John Kerry the right to receive communion in his diocese because Senator Kerry supported abortion rights, contrary to the teachings of the Church. For non-Catholics, this is a very serious thing: Catholics believe that during Mass the priest magically turns bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ himself, and then the attendees reverently troop up to the altar in single file to "receive communion," or to be able to eat Jesus; being denied communion is a serious discipline second only to excommunication from the Church. Keep in mind also that a cardinal is a very high official in the Catholic Church—a "prince" of the Church—and as such is not going to go off and make radical public statements on issues without clearing it with a top official at the Vatican or even the pope himself. While the current official position of the Church on giving communion to politicians is that it is a matter left to the discretion of the local bishop, the Archbishop of St. Louis isn't the only American prelate to express such views, and Catholic politicians remain uneasy. And, with a potential Roman Catholic majority on the United States Supreme Court, the country should be uneasy, as well.

If the Court were to decide a case in favor of birth control, homosexual civil rights, or abortion rights, will the justices be denied communion or even excommunicated? What about religious freedom? Separation of church and state? Prayer in the schools? In the face of such serious punishment, can a Catholic justice fairly and impartially decide the issues?

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of Scalito's confirmation.