Disgusting, Creepy, Outrageous, Ominous

The Catholic church is aligning with US Republicans in the fight over judicial nominees.

Evangelical Protestants have led the way in portraying Democrats as enemies of God, but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has chimed in on the issue of judicial nominees in a mass mailing to parishioners timed to yield constituent letters just as the matter comes to a vote. If the Republicans succeed, they will not just have crushed Democratic opposition in the Senate but will be en route to a dramatic weakening of the independent judiciary. Tom DeLay, the ultraconservative Republican leader of the House of Representatives, recently said, defiantly, to a group of reporters: "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse." In an audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Protestant leaders at a private meeting, the most influential among them, James C. Dobson, provided chilling detail: "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."

No successful putsch ever announces itself as such. The putsch likely to be attempted soon will be presented as a simple change in the Senate rules, and it will succeed unless at least six GOP senators dare to break with the radicalism of the Bush administration and join with all the Democratic senators (and one independent) to defeat it: Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, John McCain? The roster of the brave is ominously short.

Last January, Fritz Stern — a German emigre historian who witnessed the rise of Nazism — was asked whether the United States could ever become an authoritarian state. Stern, who has steadfastly resisted facile comparisons, replied: "My hope is that the real conservatives of this country may catch fire, the ones who regard civil rights and the Constitution as fundamental, and that on those grounds they may rise up against the foreign and domestic excesses of this administration and say, finally, 'No! You are not going to get away with this!' Three or four senators could be enough to turn the tide." But will there be even that many?

And the German pope? In what mood does he witness the rising threat to democracy within the U.S.? During the presidential election, each candidate had an issue that he could exploit to claim Pope John Paul II as an ally. Kerry had Iraq, which the pope opposed; Bush had abortion. But Ratzinger would have nothing of such evenhandedness. "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia," the future pope wrote to the U.S. bishops. "There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not, however, with regard to abortion and euthanasia."

What his letter seemed to suggest was that if Bush gave Rome what it wanted on the abortion issue and the (now strategically inflamed) euthanasia issue, Rome would do its best to give Bush what he wanted regarding the death penalty and, above all, war. The question that now arises is whether Rome is offering a similar deal with the U.S. Constitution at stake: If Bush backs Rome on abortion and euthanasia, Rome will do what it can to turn U.S. Catholics against the filibuster.