Intro to Series Three

Catholicism and the, uh, the fuckin supreme court, I don’t know maybe you heard of it??

“If you really like Donald Trump, that's great, but if you don't, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges. Have no choice, sorry, sorry, sorry. You have no choice.”
- Donald Trump, July 28 2016

VIRGIL TEXAS: I’m actually surprised that these anti-abortion psychos are fine with all these Catholics on the court, because half of them think that all Catholics are like some kind of lizard people.
MATT CHRISTMAN: They’re the only Republicans who read. No, I’m not kidding! The Protestant lumpen reactionary is an unlettered buffoon.
WILL MENAKER: Yeah, the Catholics, they may be papists, but they are the people who do homework.
CHRISTMAN: They’re people of the book. You can’t get one of these farm-fresh dipshits from Patrick Henry University on the Supreme Court, that wouldn’t pass muster. You gotta get somebody who went through the rigid thing, and the only real conservatives that do that are the fucking hair-shirt psycho Catholics.
- Chapo Trap House, September 24 2018

Catholics have been active participants in governing America since the days of the Maryland colony, and today we find plenty of examples in all three branches of the federal government. Catholics make up the largest percentage of members of Congress of any faith tradition, spanning both major parties and comprising 30% of the total membership of both chambers. We’ve only had one Catholic president so far, but more have served as party nominees, and many serve in the executive branch today, including current Attorney General William Barr and communications hack Kellyanne Conway. But no branch is so thoroughly dominated by the Catholic church as the federal judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court, where all five justices in the conservative majority, as well as Sonia Sotomayor, are members of the church. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh even went to the same Jesuit high school.

Of course, the federal judiciary is awful, has always been a heavily political and reactionary part of our government, and has only gotten worse since Donald Trump became president. Of course, packing the Article III courts is a top priority for the Republican party; one in four federal judges currently serving (252 as of May) has been nominated to their seat by Trump, all of them will serve for life, and Mitch McConnell considers this conservative judiciary to be his single most important accomplishment as Senate majority leader. So why are so many of them Catholic, especially from a party often dominated by evangelical Protestants? And how do Catholic justices find a way to sleep at night while gutting ballot access and union power, or upholding a Muslim travel ban, or arresting the expansion of Medicaid? What can we learn from the faith lives of these people, and what do their understandings of their faith mean for the future of our government and country?

Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh continue to hand down horrifying decisions to enshrine minority and corporate rule in America for at least a generation; we’ll look at appellate court judge Amy Coney Barrett, who aspires to join them someday and has written extensively on Catholic doctrine and federal jurisprudence, all while being a member of a charismatic Catholic renewal group that is probably not a cult, maybe. If she is named to the Supreme Court, it will be due to the actions of Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society and possibly the single most powerful Catholic in American politics, whose personal theology is clearly shared by the majority justices. And if Barrett ends up on the court someday, she’ll probably get to hang out with the other justices and their families, including Clarence Thomas’ wife Ginni, who makes her husband - remember, an uncompromising reactionary credibly accused of repeated instances of workplace sexual harassment - look very normal and downright delightful by comparison. None of the three direct subjects are sitting justices on today’s Court, but don’t worry, all of those guys will make appearances throughout the series.

This series was a great deal of fun to write, but significantly more challenging than the past two; instead of watching janky alt-right YouTube videos, I had to comb through actual judicial opinions and law review articles, which, as it turns out, takes some work. These subjects are all better-educated than I am, they make more money, they are more successful in their respective fields, and they’ve published more work. But they all wield significantly more political power than most of us ever will, which means we should take a close look at them and how they view their faith in relation to their respective jobs. And while they may have more going for them in the legal world than I do, I can promise you that I am much funnier than they are.