Today I have to draw your attention to a relatively small body of research. Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, a couple of (R) Senators, and columnist Robert Novak (remember the Plame leak? Novak leaked and never did jail time while others who did not publish Plame's name
did) are connected to Chief Justice Nominee John Roberts in a rather unusual way; through an Opus Dei priest, Fr. C. John McCloskey III.
"official" backgrounder, and
Boston Globe backgrounder.
Since Opus Dei membership (whether supernumerary, numerary, associate or cooperator - the priestly members are listed openly) is secret, there is no direct proof (such as a membership card!) that Roberts is an Opus Dei member. However, because the threats of excommunication expressed as a result of the June 2004 letter from then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (who is now Pope Benedict XVI) to U.S. Catholic bishops specifying that "strong and open supporters of abortion be denied the Catholic sacrament for being guilty of a grave sin," are a clear attempt to influence an American presidential election, and because our own Colorado Catholic Bishop Michael Sheridan denied communion to any Catholic who voted or intended to vote for Kerry, the influence and requirements of Opus Dei membership become a very important topic, indeed. Especially when there have been rumors for many years that at least one direct OD member is on the Supreme Court already (Scalia: just Google it yourselves and decide; OD itself says it would "like to dispel once and for all the rumors..." Note the wording on that: a lawyer could easily argue that they do not actually deny the rumors, they simply say that they would like to dispel them. To be charitable, perhaps that's just an unintended loophole).
Here's the overview article, although there is plenty more out there: http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2005/07/is-judge-roberts-opus-dei.html
Miller is right to be worried, from a Constitutional perspective. A dedicated OD member on the Supreme Court would be ethically bound to recuse himself on decisions which have clear-cut implications for his faith, but "morally" bound not to. So, you ask, which is the higher authority - the Constitution and the law, or God? An OD member has already answered these questions quite definitively (see the Hanssen paragraph, below). This also explains why Bork is so interested in defending Roberts' nomination that he's increased his TV appearances drastically over the last few weeks on this topic. Scalia, Thomas -- and Roberts, too?
From Newsweek, March 9, 2001:
[Justice Antonin] Scalia is regarded as the embodiment of the Catholic conservatives. While he is not a member of Opus Dei, his wife Maureen has attended Opus Dei's spiritual functions [and the Harvard Crimson (2003) suggests that she is an OD member (although, being married and living with her husband, she would not be a numerary) -- DShe], [while their son], Father Paul Scalia, helped convert Clarence Thomas to Catholicism four years ago. Last month, Thomas gave a fiery speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, to an audience full of Bush Administration officials. In the speech Thomas praised Pope John Paul II for taking unpopular stands.
When former FBI/sov double agent Robert Hanssen was exposed in 2001, Opus Dei briefly became a hot discussion topic in the press - Hanssen had confessed his spying to his OD priest (Robert P. Bucciarelli, Harvard '56) many years before, but the information was never revealed by Bucciarelli to the government, despite its incredible security implications, because of the concept of religious privilege between a priest and his parishioner. This demonstrates OD priorities unambiguously. However, what is admirable in a priest is inimical to our Constitution in a Justice. I suppose it's worth mentioning that the Scalias attend the same ultra-traditional Catholic church Hanssen did, St. Catherine of Siena, in Great Falls, VA (a tony tree-filled suburb just west of the capital). So does former FBI director Louis Freeh -- and Freeh's brother John was the director of an Opus Dei center in Philadelphia, although he's now in a small Catholic community in Bethlehem, PA while coordinating the local chapter of a school-voucher advocacy organization ("Citizens for Educational Freedom").
