Word: moralizes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...take a look at what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, himself a Roman Catholic, wrote in 2002 in an essay in First Things. "[Abortion involves] ... private individuals whom the state has decided not to restrain. One may argue (as many do) that the society has a moral obligation to restrain. That moral obligation may weigh heavily upon the voter, and upon the legislator who enacts the laws; but a judge, I think, bears no moral guilt for the laws society has failed to enact," he wrote. "Thus, my difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral...
...implicit understanding that the Church's admonition to its faithful to change the law permitting the choice of abortion had to be understood and applied in light of the scope of office. Catholic legislators make policy and could be so instructed, but judges, as Scalia wrote, had "no moral responsibility for the laws [their] nation has failed to enact...
...course, quite possible that the Holy Father was not intending to impose a new moral duty on Catholic jurists at all, and that in the rush of the event, someone in the Vatican press office mistakenly included the judicial terminology. But taken at its word, the Pope's new admonition to "jurists" to undertake an activist, law-changing role suggests that the concept of Originalism (adhering to the textual meaning of laws at the time of adoption) subscribed to by Scalia and often by three of the four other Catholics on the Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John...
Might there be a different, less intrusive course for the Church? Yes: clarify the Pelosi statement by continuing to observe the difference between a jurist and a legislator. That may be awkward from the standpoint of the unyielding lines of moral rather than political principle, but it has the merit of following the instruction of St. Thomas Aquinas, who argued that "all should have some part in the government; for in this way peace is preserved among the people, and all are pleased with such a disposition of things and maintain...
...pleased with the abortion jurisprudence as it is. But imposing moral duties on Catholic jurists that are incompatible with their envisioned judicial role in a democracy is hardly likely to make it better...