« It's All About Community | Main | Do We Really Need Religion? »

April 18, 2007

Catholics on the Court

I'm not really clear on why so-called "partial birth abortion" is ever a necessary procedure and find it utterly repulsive and inhumane, but I can recognize when religion is intruding on a decision, and that is obviously the case in today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a ban on the procedure. When all five Catholics – and only the five Catholics – on the Court vote in the same way on an issue like abortion, what else can you assume is going on? And when one of those, Justice Clarence Thomas, authors a concurring opinion in which he is joined by another Catholic, Justice Antonin Scalia, saying that Roe v. Wade "has no basis in the Constitution," you know something fishy is afoot, and it isn't about partial birth abortion as a specific procedure.

The Catholic influence on this decision is flat out unmistakable and I find myself inadvertently humming the tune, "Every Sperm is Sacred" from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life." The Catholic reproduction skit is particularly relevant here:

I've got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments. [The children protest with heart-rending pleas.] No no, that's the way it is my loves... Blame the Catholic church for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things... Oh they've done some wonderful things in their time, they preserved the might and majesty, even the mystery of the Church of Rome, the sanctity of the sacrament and the indivisible oneness of the Trinity, but if they'd let me wear one of the little rubber things on the end of my cock we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.

Interestingly, the Protestants and the Jew on the Court, who worship the same God, were not compelled to impose their theocratic views on the rest of us. With the religious right continually pressing for political domination in this country, we're very fortunate that that is the case.

Mr Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics. Filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed.

Mrs Blackitt: What are we dear?

Mr Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it...

Mrs Blackitt: Why do they have so many children...?

Mr Blackitt: Because every time they have sexual intercourse they have to have a baby.

Mrs Blackitt: But it's the same with us, Harry.

Mr Blackitt: What d'you mean...?

Mrs Blackitt: Well I mean we've got two children and we've had sexual intercourse twice.

Mr Blackitt: That's not the point... We *could* have it any time we wanted.

Mrs Blackitt: Really?

Mr Blackitt: Oh yes. And, what's more, because we don't believe in all that Papist claptrap we can take precautions.

Mrs Blackitt: What, you mean lock the door...?

Mr Blackitt: No no, I mean, because we are members of the Protestant Reformed Church which successfully challenged the autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century, we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue.

Mrs Blackitt: What do you mean?

Mr Blackitt: I could, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with you...

Mrs Blackitt: Oh, yes... Harry...

Mr Blackitt: And by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller I could ensure that when I came off... you would not be impregnated.

Mrs Blackitt: Ooh!

Mr Blackitt: That's what being a Protestant's all about. That's why it's the church for me. That's why it's the church for anyone who respects the individual and the individual's right to decide for him or herself. … But they... [He points at the stream of children still pouring past the house.]... they cannot. Because their church never made the great leap out of the Middle Ages, and the domination of alien episcopal supremacy!

I have nothing against Catholics. It's just that I resent their efforts to drag us back into the Middle Ages with them.

Posted by Becky at April 18, 2007 11:39 AM