{"id":1881,"date":"2012-12-20T11:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/catholic-convert-and-supreme-court-nominee-robert-bork-remembered\/"},"modified":"2012-12-20T11:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T11:01:00","slug":"catholic-convert-and-supreme-court-nominee-robert-bork-remembered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicnews\/2012\/12\/catholic-convert-and-supreme-court-nominee-robert-bork-remembered\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic convert and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork remembered"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Arlington, Va., Dec 20, 2012 \/ 04:01 am (CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- Judge Robert H. Bork, a Catholic convert whose defeated Supreme Court nomination helped ensure the continued dominance of legal abortion in the U.S., died Wednesday morning at the age of 85.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cWe will remember him with great fondness,\u201d Ave Maria School of Law President and Dean Eugene R. Milhizer told CNA Dec. 19. \u201cJudge Bork was a national figure, a very important jurist, writer and academic. It was a real privilege to be a colleague of his at the law school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tFamily Research Council President Tony Perkins praised Bork as \u201ca fellow champion of the sanctity of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe cited the judge\u2019s \u201cgreat respect for the text and history of the constitution\u201d and his philosophy of judicial restraint.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cHis brilliant legal mind also saw the truth of Christianity, and in his later years Judge Bork grew closer in his relationship with Jesus. His deep faith and trust in God is an example for all of us,\u201d Perkins said.<\/p>\n

\tBork died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va. from complications of heart ailments, the Associated Press reports.<\/p>\n

\tPresident Ronald Reagan\u2019s nomination of Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 met with unprecedented political opposition. The vote to confirm him failed by a margin of 58-42.<\/p>\n

\tBork\u2019s supporters cited his judicial scholarship as a Yale law professor and his experience as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. Many supporters sympathized with his \u201coriginal intent\u201d judicial philosophy and charged that opponents used character assassination to defeat his nomination.<\/p>\n

\tBork\u2019s opponents cited his criticisms of federal court decisions that declared contraceptives, abortion and pornography to be constitutional rights. His criticism of federal civil rights legislation, women\u2019s rights, and his service in the Nixon administration also drew strong opposition.<\/p>\n

\tAfter the defeat of Bork\u2019s nomination, President Reagan successfully nominated Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy voted to uphold legal abortion in the 1993 Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which was decided by a 6-3 vote.<\/p>\n

\tKennedy also helped advance homosexual causes, declaring in a 1996 ruling that sexual orientation is a legally protected class and in 2003 ruling that consensual gay sex is constitutionally protected. Both decisions helped set precedents for the advance of \u201cgay marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tMilhizer said Bork\u2019s stress on the \u201cfaithful interpretation of the Constitution\u201d would have led him to oppose many questionable judicial decisions.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt\u2019s when you get away from the plain meaning of the Constitution and when judges begin to legislate and become more inventive that you find things like the right to abortion and the recent Obamacare decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\tFollowing the controversy over his nomination, Bork resigned from the bench and joined conservative think tanks including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute. He wrote three bestselling books including the 1996 work \u201cSlouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBork was married twice. He was married to his first wife, the former Claire Davidson, for almost 30 years before her death in 1980. In 1982 he married Mary Ellen Pohl, a former Catholic nun.<\/p>\n

\tBork, a former atheist who had been raised Presbyterian, converted to Catholicism in 2003 at the age of 76. Monsignor William Awalt baptized him at a Mass in the chapel of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cThere is an advantage in waiting until you\u2019re 76 to be baptized, because you\u2019re forgiven all of your prior sins. Plus, at that age you\u2019re not likely to commit any really interesting or serious sins,\u201d he told the National Catholic Register\u2019s Tim Drake in 2003.<\/p>\n

\tHe said that he found evidence of the existence of God \u201chighly persuasive,\u201d such as the arguments appealing to the design of the universe and the biological cell.<\/p>\n

\tHe found the number of witnesses to Jesus Christ\u2019s Resurrection be \u201ccompelling\u201d and considered the Resurrection to be \u201ca solid historical fact.\u201d He said the Catholic Church is \u201cthe Church that Christ established\u201d and though it is \u201calways in trouble\u201d it has \u201cstayed more orthodox than almost any church I know of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBork also credited his wife Mary Ellen for helping encourage his conversion.<\/p>\n

\tThe judge was the first law professor named to Ave Maria School of Law and taught there for more than four years.<\/p>\n

\tMilhizer said Bork was \u201csomeone who deeply believed in ideas\u201d and who \u201cfit very comfortably and very well at an orthodox Catholic law school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe announcement of Bork as an Ave Maria School of Law faculty member helped attract \u201cmany outstanding students\u201d and gave the school \u201cinstant credibility\u201d among the Catholic legal education community and within the broader legal culture, Milhizer recalled.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arlington, Va., Dec 20, 2012 \/ 04:01 am (CNA\/EWTN News).- Judge Robert H. Bork, a Catholic convert whose defeated Supreme Court nomination helped ensure the continued dominance of legal abortion in the U.S., died Wednesday morning at the age of 85.<\/p>\n

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