Friday, May 15, 2009

The Catholic Left and Catholic Right Need To Come Together On Judges

I wanted to expand my thoughts on my post The Obama Supreme Court Pick Shows the Incredible Double Standard- Catholic and Otherwise

The Catholic left and Catholic Right need to come together on the issues of Judges to the Federal Bench on all levels. One might ask why this has not been done.

I propose a meeting in Kansas City. Friendly ground for both parties. It is a great Conservative Archdiocese and yet it has the ultra liberal National Catholic Reporter. Heck we could agree to meet in their board room.

Present would be the leading voices and media outlets from the more progressive Catholic Left to the very Catholic Right. It would cover the gambit from the Catholic worker movement on the left to lets say the First Things Crowd on the right. From Catholic charities to George Weigel lets say. Heck Doug Kmiec could chair it for all I care.

We would come to an agreement. That despite our differences we would work to get Judges on the District, Appeals and Supreme Court that have indication that they are "pro-life" on the issues we share common concerns.

This is a win win especially for Catholic progressives. Catholic Conservatives and Republicans for the most part believe that elections matter and think a President should have a lot of deference to who they want on the Court. The political left does not give this deference of course.

Let us say in this Universes we wake up tomorrow and Obama shocks the world by nominating the the more progressive voice at VOX NOVA that goes under the nameMorning Minion. A Progressive Catholic liberal voice to be sure but whose pro-life credentials are not in dispute.

Now no doubt the political left would go batty over a person like Minion. Though he does share perhaps many of their views there would be knashing of teeth over his views on abortion and other life issues. We on the more Catholic Right would go into action and mobilize our folks to counteract that.

It would work in reverse. The Catholic left (recognizing that a President has latitude on he picks) would work their folks to counteract the opposition we see as to a Roberts or Scalia like pick. We would could come to an agreement that absent some absolute WACKO pick we would be in mutal agreement and action

It is hard to see any drawbacks to this.

Of course such action could not just be symbolic. It would entail some use of resources to get our respective memberships activated and called up the Senators to make our voice known.

But why not? In a age where we are constantly told that partisan politics is threatening the Catholic environment this is an important area where we can work together.

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