THE WANDERER, MARCH 24, 2005

JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH

Slick Jurisprudence 

     Yup, another judge has ruled that legal bans on 
same-sex "marriage," or what I like to call 
sodomatrimony, are unconstitutional. The idea is sweeping 
like wildfire through the judiciary. In this case, the 
judge was one Richard A. Kramer of San Francisco.

     No big deal. The ruling didn't even make the front 
page of the pro-homosexual NEW YORK TIMES, which is wont 
to hail such judicial atrocities as "historic." Even 
liberals recognize that they have become routine.

     Kramer had no new or interesting arguments. He had 
only a lame analogy to the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings 
on "separate but equal" racial accommodations. Ho-hum!

     Let's remind ourselves of something so obvious we 
tend to forget it. Kramer was talking about the 
California state constitution, but the point applies to 
others, including the U.S. Constitution.

     Judges now declare freely that constitutions "mean" 
things that nobody ever imagined they could mean. The men 
who wrote, ratified, and for generations interpreted 
these documents simply never dreamed that they could 
possibly "mean" what wacky liberal judges now insist they 
must mean.

     Put otherwise, the authors of these documents hadn't 
the faintest intention or notion of mandating future 
liberal agendas. Yet that's what the judiciary is now 
saying they did. So when they adopted the Ninth and 
Fourteenth Amendments, for example, they were banning 
state laws against abortion -- whether they knew it or 
not!

     And we are to think it took the powerful brain of 
Harry Blackmun to figure this out? That's an unwarranted 
compliment to Blackmun's intelligence, and an insult to 
everyone else's.

     We are witnessing something the American Founders 
warned us against again and again and again: the 
usurpation of power. Some, like Jefferson, saw that this 
could be done by the judicial branch. But nobody foresaw 
the extent to which it could be taken. The modern 
judiciary has exceeded the worst fears of the Founders. 
Our judges have surpassed even Bill Clinton in making 
common words meaningless, and with far worse practical 
consequences.

     It will keep happening until the American public 
learns anew what "usurpation" means and does something 
about it. Until then, we have no active remedy for one of 
our worst political evils, the judicial abuse of power.

     Judges like Kramer will go on doing what they do 
with complete impunity. They know their jobs are safe.

     Millions of Americans are alarmed and enraged by 
judicial assaults on the right to life and the nature of 
marriage. Yet we don't hear them using the words "usurp" 
and "impeach." For some reason, they still accept the 
virtually sacred status of the judiciary, even as it 
works to destroy what's left of our traditional way of 
life.

     Alexander Hamilton, an early advocate of judicial 
review, assured Americans that of the three branches of 
the new federal government, the judiciary would be "the 
least dangerous." But though this might have been true, 
and may even still be true, this is a long way from 
saying it is not dangerous at all, especially if the 
other two branches allow it to run riot. 

     And it may be in their interest to do just that. 
When Franklin Roosevelt met opposition from the U.S. 
Supreme Court, his solution was not to curb its powers, 
but to stuff it with appointees who would do his will, 
promoting centralization at the expense of the states and 
the Constitution.

     The result was a judiciary that was far more 
powerful, and power-hungry, than it had been before. We 
are still living with it. 


The Mother of God 

     With Easter just around the corner, TIME has 
produced an unexpected cover story -- on the Blessed 
Virgin! More specifically, on her (partial) rediscovery 
by Protestants.

     Since the Reformation, of course, Protestantism has 
looked on Marian devotion with suspicion, disapproval, 
and even hostility. Today, in some quarters, that is 
changing. Growing numbers are realizing that they owe 
some sort of devotion to the Mother of God. 

     To Catholics, this seems obvious. The very fact that 
she is our Lord's Mother, who joyfully accepted her role 
and followed Him all the way to Calvary, certifies her 
holiness.

     But because Scripture says so little about her, 
there has been a gulf between Catholics, who recognize 
how much is implicit in Tradition, and Protestants, for 
whom the Bible must contain everything Christians 
believe. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends what you 
mean by "mother." Catholics mean quite a lot by it.

     And yet that old Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach set 
the Magnificat to his profound music. Even in the 18th 
century Protestants could still feel reverence for the 
Mother of God. In his first chapter, St. Luke records her 
astonishingly eloquent praise of the Lord; how can anyone 
who reads her words belittle her role in the plan of 
salvation?

     Protestants have traditionally argued that 
Catholicism detracts from the honor due to Christ by 
honoring Mary. But John Henry Newman, whose devout 
Protestantism eventually led him back to Catholicism, 
pointed out that the reverse was arguable: Once 
Protestants demoted her, the way was open to doubts about 
even Christ's divinity. Once the holiness of the mother 
is forgotten, he said, there is less reason to believe in 
the holiness of the Son.

     Protestantism has always had a powerful tendency 
toward the anti-dogmatic "liberalism" that Newman said he 
had spent his whole life opposing. Where do you stop 
subtracting once you've started? A whittled-down 
Christianity may be comfortable; unfortunately, it just 
isn't Christianity. 

     Today we find that liberalism even within the 
Catholic Church. In a recent interview, Notre Dame's 
Fr. Richard McBrien says he is open to the idea that 
Jesus married Mary Magdalen, as asserted in the pop novel 
THE DA VINCI CODE!

     Does anyone want to bet that the current head of 
Notre Dame's theology department believes in the Virgin 
Birth?


Deep in History

     I hope our Protestant friends, who take Scripture so 
seriously, will also rediscover the sixth chapter of St. 
John's Gospel, in which Christ makes the doctrine of the 
Eucharist so shockingly explicit that many -- perhaps 
nearly all -- of His disciples fall away, and He even 
asks the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave me?" (I 
discuss this at more length in my newsletter.) 

     For many years Newman thought the Anglican Church 
had found a happy middle way, the via media, between 
Catholicism and Protestantism. But he was finally forced 
to admit that this was a delusion; it was all or nothing, 
and only Catholicism offered "all." There could be no 
splitting of differences, no compromise.

     To be deep in history, Newman said, is to cease to 
be Protestant. Nothing like Protestantism can be found in 
early Christianity, when the New Testament hadn't even 
been assembled yet. Scripture itself leads us to the 
Mother of God, the Eucharist, the Church. 

     Happy Easter! 

                 +          +          +                  

     SOBRAN'S thinks the Roman persecution may tell us 
something vital about the early Church, contrary to THE 
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                                        --- Joseph Sobran

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