[In the above photo, standing justices from left-to-right are Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and sitting from left-to-right are Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts Jr., Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. These are still the present justices.]
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOUS) issued its long-awaited ruling about the U.S. presidency. The decision was 6 to 3 in saying the president, while in office, has “absolute immunity” for all “official acts,” no matter if they would be deemed criminal if done by any other American. This ruling affects a federal prosecution of former President Donald F. Trump which is being conducted under the auspices of the Department of Justice by outside special counsel Jack Smith. He has charged the ex-president with inciting an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol and its members of Congress on January 6, 2021 while they were attempting to make a peaceful transfer of power. This ruling favors Trump. It now appears this case will not go to trial before the election this November, and it may never do so. Yet, most Americans believe Trump committed crimes that day, mostly inciting insurrection, and they wanted its outcome before the election.
This Supreme Court Ruling Extends Further
This ruling by SCOTUS goes further than Smith’s indictment of Donald Trump. It may set aside the Manhattan jury’s determination that he committed 34 felonies in his 2016 election interference to become president in the first place. Weeks before that election, Trump paid off a porn star to keep her quiet about an alleged one-night stand they had, and he hid the payment which was a violation of election campaign laws.
But this SCOTUS ruling has far greater implications than just making it easier for Donald Trump to regain the White House soon and use his renewed powers to exercise vengeance on his political enemies. For, that is what he has been stating publicly this year that he intends to do if he becomes president again. How so?
Sotomayer’s Dissenting Opinion Is Right
This ruling is being explained by all sorts of legal experts, including the SCOTUS leading dissenter and liberal Catholic Justice Sotomayer. In her dissenting, written opinion, in which she was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson (all three of them women I’d like to point out), it says, “The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding” of our nation. She continued, as she read her opinion out loud, “Ironic isn’t it? The man in charge of enforcing laws can now just break them.” She concluded that this ruling makes the U.S. president “a king above the law.” That is exactly what the colonists fought against in the American Revolution which resulted in the formation of the United States of America. Justice Jackson called this ruling, which favors authoritarianism against democracy, “a five alarm fire.”
Justice Sotomayer concluded in her dissenting opinion, “This majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the presidency and for our democracy. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” Congrats to this liberal Catholic justice who I believe sees correctly into the future of the United States of America regarding this issue.
It’s Due to the Authoritarianism of the Papacy
Why has our Supreme Court gone so astray from its very foundation—the concept of government of the people, for the people, and by the people—by making our president like a king who is above the law? The U.S. has always been a nation of laws in which every citizen is deemed equal before the law, including the president. It has been a democratic republic that eschews such a king who is not subject to the laws to which everyone else is subjected. However, this viewpoint began to change in our nation in the latter part of the last century. For one thing, the Office of Legal Counsel in 1974, in the aftermath of President Nixon’s resignation, stated that the president cannot commit a crime. But this opinion was never challenged, especially in our courts.
I submit that a major reason why the U.S. Supreme Court so ruled yesterday, regarding presidential immunity, is that five of those majority justices, in this 6 to 3 decision, are conservative Roman Catholics who likely have been influenced by the authoritarianism of their Church’s papacy! As for the religious affiliation of these nine justices, the five Catholics in the majority are Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. The three who dissented are Catholic Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan a Jew, and Justice Ketanji Brown a Protestant. All of the six Catholic justices were raised Catholic.
Roman Catholicism exhibits the height of authoritarianism in Christianity by having a pope, whereas just about all other church denominations reject its office of the papacy. The Roman Catholic Church in its history has pretty much asserted what it calls papal infallibility even though this was not made an official doctrine of the Church until 1870. It basically means the pope can do no wrong, just like SCOTUS has now ruled that the U.S. president cannot commit a crime.
Religious Composition of U.S. Supreme Court
[The following, additional, religious data under this subhead is taken from the article, “The Religion of the Supreme Court,” Gallup News, April 8, 2022.]
This religious composition of SCOTUS is surprisingly non-representative of the U.S. adult population. A Gallup poll was published in early 2021 which consisted of over 15,000 adult interviewees. It revealed that about 22% of U.S. adults are Catholic compared to 67% (6 justices) of SCOTUS being Catholic. Yet about 45% of adult Americans identify as being “non-Catholic Christian,” thus twice as many Catholics. And about 21% of the U.S. adult population says it’s non-religious.
And the Catholic justices of the Supreme Court are far from being representative politically of the U.S. Catholic population. For instance, five of the six Catholic justices on this SCOTUS were appointed by a Republican president, which suggests that they themselves favor the Republican Party. In contrast, the 2021 Gallup poll found that 50% of U.S. adult Catholics favor the Democratic Party, whereas 43% of them favor the Republican Party.
Of the total of nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, six are Catholic, two are Protestant, and one is Jewish. It is by far the most Catholic justices to ever serve on this court in the history of the U.S. Five of the six justices who ruled in favor of presidential immunity for official acts are Catholic. They are Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The other justice, who identifies as “a liberal Catholic,” is Sonia Sotomayor who wrote the dissenting opinion.
A more thorough identification of this court’s religious proclivities is as follows: Roberts, Thomas, and Alito attend Mass regularly; Thomas in his youth attended Catholic seminary; Kavanaugh admits to being an “active Catholic;” Barrett says she is “a faithful Catholic;” Neil Gorsuch was raised Catholic and is now an Episcopalian; Jackson says she is a “non-denominational Protestant;” Kagan is ethnically Jewish, but she appears to not be a religious Jew; and, again, Sotomayor says she is “a liberal Catholic.”
Jesus’ Teaching on Being First & the Greatest
In my opinion, Roman Catholics have the misguided notion that the apostle Peter was the first pope, the vicar, the head of the Church, and that this authority, which they call “apostolic succession,” must be passed down always thereafter as an office—the papacy.
Not so! Jesus taught the exact opposite. He once said to his apostles, “‘What were you arguing about on the road?’ But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all'” (Mark 9:33-35 NIV).
Later, the mother of James and John asked Jesus to “grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom” (Matthew 20:21). “When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant'” (vv. 24-26).
Being Catholic and Republican Is Worse
The fact that these justices of the SCOTUS are Republicans makes this new matter even worse. For, who in our day needs to heed this lesson of Jesus—about being last in order to be first—than former Republican President Donald Trump. He expounds constantly the exact opposite of this teaching of Jesus by always making himself out to be the greatest, to be first rather than last, to “Make America First,” to “Make America Great Again.” I think what Jesus taught he intended to be for both individuals and nations. As I constantly posted on my blog while Donald Trump was president, and I later made those posts into a book entitled Bible Predicts Trump Fall, the Bible’s book of Proverbs conveys divine wisdom in saying, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).
It seems to be the same with abortion. Being Catholic apparently is partly why SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, since the RCC has always opposed abortion.
I’m Not Against the Roman Catholic Church
Now, I’m not against the Roman Catholic Church itself. It has been instrumental in spreading the Christian gospel, which is that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. And it has helped preserve the Christian scriptures. Plus, there are many, devout Catholic people who follow the teachings of Jesus, thus making him Lord of their lives. And the Church has many astute, biblical scholars and theologians. But I am against some of the Church’s teachings, perhaps foremost its papacy, even though I think some of the popes have been genuine Christians.
American Colonists Were Against Catholics
So many of the early American colonists who settled this country had escaped religious persecution in Europe which had been foisted upon them mostly by the Roman Catholic Church, due to the church-state governments in Europe. Many of these colonists were Christian Protestants so that their anti-Catholicism linked back to the Protestant Reformation.
For a long time, one of the main places where the early colonists settled and began developing this country, Massachusetts, would not allow Catholics to live there. And some of the original thirteen colonies forbade Catholics from holding elected office in the government. It was because they were so opposed to Roman Catholic authoritarianism. Roman Catholicism was first introduced in the Thirteen Colonies in Maryland. But even it eventually outlawed Catholic schools and Jesuits. And for a long time in the colonies, freedom of religion only existed in Rhode Island.
It now appears from this new SCOTUS decision, foisted upon America yesterday by the court’s majority opinion, that we Americans may suffer under a more authoritarian president. And this opinion has been engineered by Catholic justices influenced since their upbringing by the authoritarianism of the papacy of their Roman Catholic Church.
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