Blaming The Corruption On The Court On Catholicism Is Worse Than Wrong It Is Counterproductive

THOUGH I HAVEN'T SEEN much written about it yet, not even by the Francis haters, I'm sure his statement that young people trying to hook up using Tinder is "natural" is bound to get him slammed by trad-Catho-fascists and others.  His statement made on the same occasion that Catholic theology around sex is still "in diapers" is certainly true.  But what else can be expected of the thinking of almost exclusively unmarried, probably for the most part allegedly officially caste men?  I do believe most Catholic priests have kept their vow to refrain from having sex with other people, though they know and we all know, a lot of them haven't.  

I am not especially in favor of using social media to hook up with other people, especially for the purposes of finding romance, or, really, sex. It's more likely to lead to a social disease than a romance.  But I think Francis's approach will probably be a more effective as a pastoral practice than that of the right-wing clergy and hierarchy and laity of mere condemnation. Francis's idea could hardly be worse than that.  It's not been effective.  

I don't think there's much of any of that in the Gospels or even in Paul or James.  Though, as I've found as I read Paul more carefully, sometimes when you think he's going in that direction it takes quite a number of sentences and paragraphs to find out he was setting up an argument that goes in another direction than the typically careless reading of him has had it most of the time for two thousand years.

The typical reading of Paul cuts up the argument and focuses on exactly the part of it he was ultimately refuting and some of the worst of Christian theology is based on exactly what he wasn't getting at. I think most of the worst of Western Christianity would never have happened if Augustine and some others had been able to read Greek better, if Jerome had translated it better.

I started writing an answer to someone who slammed the Catholic Church for the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, but it got so long I've shortened it.  

One of the most notable things about the Catholics on the Supreme Court is that none of them consistently follows Catholic teaching as set by the Vatican and bishops.  The retreaded, stale anti-Catholic argument that Catholics in high office take orders from the Vatican, inherited from the crudest bigotry of WASP anti-Catholics. is certainly disproved by the behavior of Catholics in high office.  Jack Kennedy, no more than Bobby or Ted ever seemed to much follow its teachings on faithfulness to marriage vows or otherwise in regard to heterosexual sex. They had something in common with Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh in that regard.  Others have been and are in violation of far more serious moral instruction from the Church and Scripture but, then, so have been a lot of bishops and cardinals. If they're so influenced by the Vatican, there's little to show it in their personal lives.  The public acts of those on the Courts is even more evidence of that lapse.

The majority of Catholics in high office, especially those most adored by the small, astro-turf, billionaire-millionaire financed cult of "traditional Catholicism" violate the teachings of the Catholic Church in every other area except, perhaps, on abortion.  If you took it issue by issue, the Supreme Court "justice" most in line with Catholic teaching on the Court is probably Sonia Sotomayor.  The ones, beyond any doubt, most out of line, Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Gorsuch and catching up with them, Kavanaugh and Barrett.  It is the Republican-fascists on the Court who follow the teachings of the Catholic hierarchy far fewer times than even the non-Catholics on the Court.

One of the most obvious aspects of Catholic and, for the most part, traditional Christian sexual teaching and so including reproductive health, is that it is elevated out of all proportion to distract everyone from the substance of the teachings of Jesus.  He hardly had a word to say about sex and pregnancy except in regard to remarriage after a divorce.  He refused to judge the woman taken in adultery (I still wonder if the guy got off as a matter of course).  Jesus never mentioned abortion or LGBTQ+ sex.  The only examples used by Augustinian Christians, including Lutherans and Calvinists of the traditional kind, to argue for an eternal hell have nothing to do with sex, they are all about economic justice to the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, those in prison, none of whom are the concern of conservative politics, in fact conservatives would seem to all be in danger of going to hell like the rich man in the parable, like the goats in Matthew 25, according to that reading of the Gospel. The current Republican-fascists seem to all be in a contest to see who can violate those and screw the poor the most.  

There is no conservative member of Congress, the Senate or on the Court, and few legislators or governors who wouldn't fall into the category of the rich man who let Lazarus die at his doorstep while he lived in luxury or those who do nothing for the hungry, the ill clothed and housed, the sick and those in prison. Wealth, in the Gospels and in Paul and James, is the most certain human vice that leads to hell.  

Jesus constantly talked about alleviating the evil of poverty, of neglect, of discrimination, of injustice.  The only people who he said were in danger of going to hell were the rich, the affluent, those who did nothing for the least among us. He certainly was understood by the earliest Christians to teach that they were to have nothing to do with killing.  Every death sentence the Supreme Court Catholics approve, and I believe all but Sotomayor has, they are in serious violation of the teachings of Jesus and the official teaching of the Catholic Church.  As someone pointed out, Clarence Thomas said a possibly innocent man could be put to death because his incompetent lawyer didn't file some papers on time, even as he insists on "amending" his filings from decades ago to get his corrupt ass off the hook for his grift. They constantly violate Catholic teachings on economic justice and on a myriad of other official teachings of the church - "trad-catholics" don't have any use for any kind of official Catholic teaching except in regard to what OTHER PEOPLE do with their own bodies and the goddamned Latin liturgy.

And, as it always is with with such creatures, when it comes to what they do in regard to sex is always an exception to their "eternal truths."  It has been a topic of speculation how many abortions the anti-choice politicians were responsible for, I think it's worth wondering if any of the anti-choice members of that court have been.  I would bet that if Kavanaugh had knocked up a girl in his youth, he'd have wanted her to have an abortion. And I'll bet the same is true for others of them.  They'd certainly want any Girl or Woman  they didn't want to breed with to be using contraception when they had sex with them.

It should always be asked why, if Christianity or even Catholicism is the problem in regard to the separation of church and state, why the strongest and most repeated teachings of the Gospel,the Epistles are the ones that such "Christians" and "Catholics" never seem to take at all seriously or follow.  Jesus said you'd go to hell if you neglected the homeless and hungry, the sick AND THOSE IN PRISON, he never said you'd go to hell for having an abortion or choosing to live in a gender role you were more comfortable as.

I think it's a real measure of genuine religious faith, how much do you follow it when it is something you don't like FOR YOURSELF.  I've never encountered a religious conservative who could measure up in that, especially if they had money and or status and, so, power. If there is one thing that Christianity as a social and political and, so often, an intellectual manifestation deserves to be slammed for it is that it far too seldom is Christian.  The "trad-catholic" cult isn't even particularly Catholic.  

American "tradtional Catholicism" is a fascist cult, especially that aware enough of itself to use the word "integralism" for it.  It's not alone in that as the late Benedict XVI was forced to face when he stupidly accepted some of the irregularly consecrated, heretical Piux X cult bishops only to find that at least one of them was a flagrant Holocaust denier. For the first German Pope in centuries to have overlooked that was astounding or, worse, telling.  But that is typical of the cult of integralism.   At least some of the Republican-fascist members of the court are part of it, Thomas and Alito are. Barrett probably qualifies as well, she belonged to a particularly nutty cult out there in Indiana. You can contrast her with the former mayor, Pete Buttigieg on that count. He strikes me as far more Catholic than she is, he's certainly far more Christian.  Though some of them are merely fascists who happen to be Catholics.

In some of its most elite propagandists, up to and including Ivy level law-school faculty, integralism is an overtly fascist cult.  Neo-integralism is certainly something that should be suppressed by the Vatican, though it certianly has some support among JPII and Benedict XVI era bishops and priests.  There was a time when a much much less influential cult of fanatics, such as that around the putrid Fr. Feeney had in the middle of the last century could get you excommunicated.  It was even, eventually, possible for the Vatican and American bishops to suppress the really dangerous Fr. Coughlin so much in American commentary this week.  The current catho-fascist cult has power at the top of the American government that even Coughlin never had no matter what Rachel Maddow implied by focusing on him the other night merely in the context of media figures.  Though as an actual cult among American Catholics, it's relatively tiny it's got big bucks behind it and fanatical followers who will fill up comment threads with it. A better comparison for Coughlin would be the putrid EWTN founded by that "Nazi nun" as I used to call her.  Which was, perhaps, a bit unfair but alliterative.  Her media empire has certainly been influential in the rise of current catho-fascism.

But to think that Catholicism is the root of the problem with the Supreme Court is a counter-productive expression of ignorance and bigotry.

The real problem for us is Alito and Thomas, Barrett and others on the Supreme Court being capable of exercising dictatorial power over us all.  THEY HAVEN'T REJECTED THE RULING OF THAT TEXAS JUDGE REVOKING FDA APPROVAL OF THAT DRUG AND THEY WELL MIGHT NOT.  My guess it they are biding their time for after the next election when they hope to not ruin another election for their party, the Republican-fascists as they must suspect the Dobbs decision did the last one.  

The bigger foundational problem is that any Supreme Court could exercise such power and the Executive and Legislative branches will just go along with it, which makes any such cult on the court far more dangerous than it should ever have been allowed to be.   It could as easily be a secular cult though the most dangerous to us all is that the members of the court are, overwhelmingly, servants to and partakers of affluence.  The United States Supreme Court, far more years than not, has been dominated by those, the cult worship of Mammon. Those on the court now, those who are identified as Catholics, are, in truth, except Justice Sotomayor, the slavish servants of Mammon no matter what that nutter Barrett made an oath to be a slave to.  She did swear to tell the truth at her confirmation  hearing, as she, as well as all the others in the court majority lied their asses off.

That they have dictatorial power is the fault of the lame-brained idea of giving them life tenure on the court and the power grab of John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, along with the acquiescence of Jefferson and Madison and others as the early republic quickly rotted into the corruption of the antebellum period reaching its full malignancy in the expansion of that illegitimate power under Taney in Dred Scott decision and enduring up to and including today.  Taney was only one Catholic thug on the Supreme Court at the time, he was joined by seven others who were definitely not Catholics.  The Supreme Court has been the most potent force for producing depravity in our history, the few rulings held up as a banner proclaiming that the system works are a smokescreen covering the actual history of it. They have done it through the installation of fictions such as "corporate person-hood" and under guises of "judicial philosophy."   For anyone worried about a rogue Congress and/or executive acting with no check from the Court, what part of the line of rulings from Dred Scott to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act to Dobbs don't they get as the Supreme Court being such a rogue element which will never have to face the voters on continual display?

AND IT'S CENTRAL TO THE CORRUPTION THAT WE CAN'T GET RID OF THE CORRUPT "justices" BY VOTING THEM OUT OF OFFICE. Impeachment of Supreme Court members as a means of getting rid of even criminals, the most corrupt such as Thomas and Barrett and Alito and Kavanaugh, is as much as a myth as impeaching the worst criminals in the presidency, Trump, Bush II, Bush I (remember those pardons Barr signed off on), Reagan, Nixon.  

No, the problem might include right-wing catho-fascism, but the worst part of it has nothing to do with that, it has to do with the usurped powers of the Supreme Court and the rigged and gamed Constitution and the corruptions that the slave-holders and money men who wrote the thing put in it from the start.  Blaming Catholicism as if it was even a major part of the problem is worse than foolish, it is the opposite of an effective way to fix what's wrong.  

That such corrupt people and, especially, those trained in the law would find and exploit every defect in the Constitution is no great surprise, it's what can be expected.  The legal and judicial professions are allowed to game and rig the imperfections of human made law. That we can't fix it is due to the absurdity of making it next to impossible to amend the Constitution to get rid of those venues of corruption.  The alleged dangers of unwise amendment of the thing is more than matched by the consciously inserted corruption in it and the unconsciously gamed words that have allowed the Court to corrupt the best of intentions by blatant and impune dishonesty.  

The usurped powers of the Supreme Court, objectively on average the most corrupt part of the United States government since FDR, make those far worse.  And it has been corrupt ever since John Marshall's time when he and his colleagues repeatedly ruled in favor of their own slave holding and others in ways that enriched them.*  Clarence Thomas is just a more flagrantly confident rotter of the same kind and who knows what the others never reported on, it's not as if we have any reason to be confident of their integrity.  He knows he's untouchable unless, by some miracle, Democrats get the house and a super-majority in the Senate.  I wouldn't wait up nights.  Americans are delusional about the Constitution and, especially, the badly written Bill of Rights. They're taught to be by Hollywood and pulp fiction and Broadway productions and popular kulcha.  It's all lies.

* If you haven't yet, you should listen to that interview with Paul Finkelman, noticing how the Court and his legal education led even the formerly ardent anti-slavery "justice" Joseph Story to issue what Finkelman notes would be the most infamous pro-slavery ruling if Dred Scott hadn't been issued. I have written posts about it in which Louis Boudin attributed it to Story's adoration of citing medieval English law as precedent, something Alito did so recently and so infamously to write his Dobbs decision as Senator Whitehouse pointed out the other day.  I would wonder if a rigorous study of Supreme Court "justices" might not show that time on that court had an average effect of making them more corrupt and out of touch, often on the basis of legal theory and "judicial philosophy."  Senator Whitehouse is right about that bullshit, "judicial philosophy."  It's a method of covering their asses when they issue a corrupt decision. It's like Nazi doctors excusing their evil by calling it "science."  Judges and lawyers excuse their murderous immorality and depravity on the job in the same way, believing it removes responsibility for what they do from their own soft, immaculately clean hands. I think they should all be required to visit the next mass shooting in the DC area before the bodies are removed.  They should have to see with their own eyes what they have enabled.