Lux Lucet

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known as the “notorious RBG” or just “RBG” to her legion of liberal admirers, was something of a celebrity Supreme Court justice.  A noted feminist, unsurprisingly Ginsburg supported liberal causes such as abortion rights and gay marriage.  In the opinion of this author, it is a good thing that she is no longer on the Court.    

But as much as Ginsburg has been a darling of the progressives, this has not prevented charges of selfishness from being leveled at her, and that from liberal supporters, who were concerned that her history of ill-health could result in her dying on the bench and being replaced by a Republican president.  After praising Ginsburg for her judicial rulings, back in 2016 writer Joel Mathis went on to lament, “But you made one big mistake.  And that mistake could be very, very costly to the future of American liberalism.  Simply put:  You hung on too long.”

As it stands, Mathis’ fears have been realized and very likely Ginsburg will be replaced by Amy Coney Barrett as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Should Women Serve as Judges? 

With the retirement of Justice Ginsburg and the pending nomination of Judge Barrett, a question worth asking is, should women serve as judges?

Given the feminist philosophical dominance of our time, many would think this is an absurd question to ask.  In fact, by raising the question, one is likely to draw criticism to himself for being so impertinent as to so much as bring up the matter.     

And yet, having just written a three part series titled “America’s Monstrous Regiment” (see here, here and here) that dealt with the Bible’s prohibition on women serving as public officials in civil government, it would be unseemly for this author to dodge the question of female Supreme Court justices. 

The short answer is that the same Biblical prohibitions on women serving as heads of state also apply to their serving as judges, Supreme Court or otherwise.  That this was understood generally from the inception of this nation can be seen by fact that it was not until 1981 that the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, was appointed to the Court under Ronald Reagan. Ruth Ginsburg was the second, appointed under Bill Clinton in 1993. 

The logic of this prohibition is simple if, as does this author, one accepts John Knox’s argument in his essay “The Monstrous Regiment of Women.”  Wrote Knox,

The Apostle takes power from all women to speak in the assembly [church]. Ergo, he permits no woman to rule above man. The former part is evident, whereupon does the conclusion of necessity follow. For he that takes from woman the least part of authority, dominion, or rule will not permit unto her that which is greatest. But greater it is to reign above realm sand nations, to publish and make laws, and to command men of all estates, and finally to appoint judges and ministers, than to speak in the congregation….

Now one could raise the question, does Knox’s argument that the Bible prohibits women heads of states extend to judges?  To answer this question, let’s ask:  Do judges bear authority, dominion or rule in the ordinary sense of these words?  The answer is, yes, they do.  Therefore Knox’s argument also applies to judges. 

Knox’s argument is devastating to feminist theory and practice, and this author encourages all Christians to read what Knox wrote and to believe it.  Simply put, Christians should not support the nomination of women Supreme Court justices, even those who may have a judicial philosophy more in line with Scripture than Ginsburg’s. 

SCOTUS and the Roman Catholic Church-State

One notable facet of Amy Coney Barrett, Ginsburg’s likely replacement, is her Catholicism.  From all accounts, Barrett is not merely Catholic in a nominal sense, but is intensely so.  As a law student, she attended Notre Dame, America’s most famous Catholic University and later taught there as a law professor. 

Her Catholicism brings up a longstanding debate in America about he extent to which Catholic public officials are beholden to the the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church-State.  Some are quick to chalk up any concern about Vatican influence on Roman Catholic-American public officials as mere bigotry and Catholic bashing.  But this author begs to differ.  These are not idle concerns and go to the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church-State’s own claims.

In his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins noted,

They [statements on politics and economics by the Magisterium of the Roman Church-State] are not disjointed statements, but the logical conclusions of premises accepted in roman theology.  They are offered to the world by the Roman Magisterium as part of a package deal, and we are not at liberty, as some American Catholics would prefer to do, to accept the Church-State’s theology and reject its economic and political philosophy.  That flies in the face, not only of the claims of the Church-State itself, but of reason as well (page 24).

What is the Magisterium of the Roman Church-State?  In short, it’s the teaching authority of the Church.  Under the heading Moral Life and the Magisterium of the Church found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read, To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles, including those pertaining to the social order, and to make judgments on any human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls…The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility.  This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation [divine revelation in the RCCS being Scripture plus tradition]…The authority of the Magisterium extends also to the specific precepts of the natural law, because their observance, demanded by the Creator, is necessary for salvation…They [Roman Catholics] have  the duty of observing the constitutions and decrees conveyed by the legitimate authority of the Church.”

Does any of this, the requirement that Roman Catholics obey the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, sound optional to you?  Some Catholics attempt to muddy the waters, but the clear teaching is that Roman Catholics, including Roman Catholic judges, are bound to obey the popes of Rome and their cardinals and bishops.  As John Robbins noted in Ecclesiastical Megalomania, “To the extent that they [Roman Catholic laymen] obey the pope, rather than think for themselves or be guided by Scripture, they constitute a fifth column in every nation on Earth.  They are the means by which the papacy has advanced its political agenda in the United States for 200 years (185-186).

Robbins went on to note, In Pacem in Terris, his 1963 encyclical, John XXIII wrote that Catholics active in social, economic, and political affairs must always make decisions, “…in accordance with the principles of the natural law, with the social doctrine of the [Roman] Church, and with the directives of ecclesiastical authorities.  For it must not be forgotten that that the [Roman] Church has the right and the duty not only to safeguard the principles of ethics and religion, but also to intervene authoritatively with Her children in the temporal sphere, when there is a question of judging the application of those principles to concrete cases (186, emphasis mine).

Does any of that sound optional to you?  Does the idea of the pope intervening “authoritatively” in the judgment of a Supreme Court justice trouble you?  If not, it should. 

If Amy Barrett is confirmed as Associate Justice, she will be the sixth Roman Catholic currently on the Court.  The other Catholic justices are: John Roberts (Chief Justice), Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh.  The lone Protestant justice, Neil Gorsuch, was raised Catholic and went to Jesuit high school. 

Should this concern Protestants?  Yes, by all means.

John Zmirak, a Roman Catholic himself, has raised concerns about statements Barrett has made in which she has argued that Roman Catholic judges should recuse themselves when faced with a case that would cause them to choose between Church teaching and American law. 

Writing in Human Events, Zmirak cited a scholarly article Barrett wrote with Professor John H. Garvey while a she was a law student at Notre Dame.  Considering the matter of capital punishment, Garvey and Barrett wrote, “We believe that Catholic judges (if they are faithful to the teaching of their church) are morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty: This means that they can neither themselves sentence criminals to death nor enforce jury recommendations of death.”  

If a judge must recuse himself in cases involving capital punishment, what about other cases involving immigration [the RCCS is an active proponent of mass, taxpayer funded immigration, migration and refugee resettlement, all for the purpose of breaking and Romanizing independent nations and ultimately subsuming them in a Roman Catholic-led New World Order] or environmental issues?

Zmirak, himself a political conservative, is particularly concerned about papal influence on Barrett because of the hard-core socialism of the Pope Francis.  In another article titled “Rejoinder: Is Amy Coney Barrett the Best Choice for SCOTUS,” Zmirak defended his original thesis that Barrett was a dangerous pick for the Supreme Court due both to the deference to the Magisterium she expressed in her law school article and later statements she made that could be interpreted as equivocal whether she would follow Roman Catholic Social Teaching or the Constitution when making judgments on the bench.  Zmirak’s concern as a politically conservative Roman Catholic is legitimate, but inadequate. 

The real problem is not Pope Francis’ progressive agenda, but the pretensions and arrogance of the office of the papacy, the Antichrist of Scripture.  This includes all popes, past, present and future.  And in truth, Pope Francis is really not different in any of his social teachings from his predecessors.  Perhaps he pushes the socialist and globalist agenda of Rome more publicly than some of his predecessors, but socialism and globalism have been part of the warp and woof of Rome’s political and economic thought for centuries.  Francis is not an aberration.  He is typical.    

Worth noting is that John Zmirak has now changed his tune on Barrett.  It would appear that someone got hold of him and helped him get his thinking straight, for he now writes, “I withdraw my previous questions about her fitness.”

This Protestant, for one, does not.

Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters.”  He did not say a man ought not serve two masters; he said a man could not serve two masters.  For a Roman Catholic, there is always the issue of choosing between the Pope and the Constitution.  To be loyal to one means treason to the other.  There are, one supposes, Roman Catholic officials who take seriously their oath the Constitution.  But, as John Robbins noted in one of his lectures, do we Protestants really want to put ourselves in the position of depending on a Roman Catholic layman to thumb his nose at the Pope?  The obvious answer is no.

Closing Thoughts  

In today’s post, we’ve looked at some of the political uproar that has accompanied the nomination of Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court.  We have looked also at the woman she likely will replace as well as reviewed what the Bible has to say about women in positions of political authority and discussed concerns about Roman Catholic magistrates and their potential fealty to the pope rather than to the Constitution.   

As usual, my optimism at the start of this post got the best of me.  It was my hope to say everything on this topic in one post, but that’s not going to happen. 

As a result, Lord willing, I will continue with this subject next week with plans to discuss the erroneous thinking that has helped make contemporary Supreme Court appointments so contentious and the collapse of Protestantism in America, a collapse that has led a nation founded by Protestants to a point where distinctly Protestant thought is almost nonexistent when it comes to shaping public policy.        

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