I’ve been very indulgent today in asking general questions that only tangentially relate to the thread topic, so this will be the last one. Sorry for flooding the field here chaps.
Tony, I would like to ask you for clarity on a matter I have noticed. Why are catholics so disproportionately passionate about the constitution and jurisprudence in general? I am in a position where for the sake of research i necessarily have to read a lot of conservative publications from think tanks and other such groups.
Whenever it comes to writing about the constitution it’s almost always a catholic! When it comes to the conservative movement at large this makes perfect sense. But I never understood the gravitation towards the legal aspect with you guys. The issue particularly is how catholics became so passionate about a document that is essentially Anglo Protestant in origin and spirit.
Ya know, that's a good question and I don't really have a good answer despite being a Catholic and an Originalist. Or at least one that won't turn into a rant but thinking this out is fun. Besides, the Constitution is on topic for this thread.
At the end of the day my gut feeling is that it has to do with St. Thomas More or rather his depiction in A Man For All Seasons. Like I think the Catholic legal scholar, if he is being honest with himself, eventually arrives at the same kind of mindset that St. Thomas More had in the play. That play really influenced Scalia at least. I'm sure you know the story of St. Thomas More. He keeps his mouth shut about Henry VIII breaking with Rome, everyone knows he disagrees with Henry but can't prove it, and eventually he is convicted on false evidence and executed. In the play he talks about how the laws are like a forest where people can hide in. Sure, bad people can hide in there as well as good people. But what happens when you cut down all the trees? Well now not only can bad people not hide from justice but good people can't hide from the devil. I'd look up the exact passage but you get the point.
The Constitution is not perfect and it never was. It had slavery, created a secular state, and was far too libertarian. But look at its fruit, especially when compared to its contemporaries. Look at how much worse it could have been. Look at France. See how when we separate Church from state it doesn't mean societal atheism? Look at Britain. See how we are able to keep more to our Common Law roots? Need I mention freedom of speech? We also managed to keep our right to bear arms which is unique in the Western world, at least to the extent we do it. It's like that fat bastard who I hate to love and love to hate once said, it's the worst form of government besides all the others.
I'd also reject the notion that it is an Anglo Protestant document in spirit. It's something else entirely. Call it deist, call it libertarian, liberal, whatever. I'm not buying that it's an Anglo Protestant document in spirit. What I think happened is that they wrote a Constitution for what they thought would always be an Anglo Protestant nation, but their Constitution worked remarkably well even when that ceased to be the case. If anything I'd say the Constitution is a catholic document. Notice the lowercase, catholic in this sense means universal. But my point is that just about anyone can become an American in some sense. To bring this back to St. Thomas More, America somewhat reminds me of what he described in
Utopia. I can't put my finger exactly on why but I know it's true.
Now there is an emerging school of thought from Harvard Professor Adrian Vermuelle (might've butchered the name but whatever) called "Common Good Constitutionalism" which has seen an uptick in Catholic circles. However it is an abomination of an ideology that essentially supports the notion of a "living constitution" but in the service of Catholic Social Teaching. It's bullshit. It will damn us all.
