The Court's Ultimate Importance

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 9/15/05)

Two conflicting concerns have been raised in recent weeks—by conflicting groups, obviously—on the subject of Judge John Roberts's religion. One is that as a member of the Supreme Court, Roberts would be too influenced by his Catholic faith. The other is that he wouldn't be influenced enough.

More likely than not, neither thing is true. But combined with the tawdry quality of the public debate, the mere existence of such fears regarding President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee—now apparently on his way to becoming Chief Justice—suggests that certain fundamental truths about religion and the civic order are murkier now than they've been in a long, long time.

History may help here. Start with what may come as a shock. The main charge against Christians in ancient Rome was that they were atheists. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict XVI—calls attention to that fact in "The Truth of Christianity," an essay that makes up part of a collection published under the title Truth and Tolerance (Ignatius, 2004).

The problem with the Christians of the pre-Constantine Roman Empire was that in declaring belief in one God and only one (though also a Trinity of Persons), they were signaling disbelief in the gaggle of gods and goddesses who were so notable a part of the Roman world. That made them atheistic.

More to the point, it also made them dangerous to the state. The Romans did not compartmentalize religion and civic life in the modern manner. Paganism belonged to the warp and woof of Rome, helping knit society together under the headship of a quasi-divine ruler, the Emperor. Thus Christian "atheism" threatened the established order.

In a modern liberal democracy it is hard to imagine Christianity as a threat. Yet, as Cardinal Ratzinger points out, according to St. Augustine—arguably the greatest Christian theorist of church-state relations of all time—the validity of Christianity does not come from being useful to the state but from its "rational analysis of reality." That is to say, Christian faith is "not based on poetry and politics…it is based on knowledge."

Today, by contrast, in the view of secularism—at least, the version of it that is not aggressively hostile to faith and eager for its eradication—the churches' value as public institutions lies in playing the docile role of "civil" religion: part of the glue holding society together and propping up the state, as paganism did in ancient Rome.

If Christianity knows what's good for it, of course, it will shun the role of civil religion like death. The sorry condition of established churches—the Church of England is a horrible example—makes the argument for that particular shunning more powerfully than words.

But if propping up society and the state is not religion's proper function, what exactly is its role in relation to the civic order and public affairs? The answer is two-fold, I think: To sit in judgment on the here and now, while also pointing beyond the transitoriness of human affairs to the transcendence of eternal life. (Yes, meeting human needs and working for peace and justice also are important, but in a secondary, derivative way.)

All this tells nothing about how Roberts should conduct himself on the Supreme Court. As a practicing Catholic, he should be able to answer that for himself, without helpful advice from Senators Kennedy and Leahy—or even me. I merely suggest he not take the Supreme Court, important though it is, as a matter of ultimate importance. It isn't.

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