The Schumer Test
America's founders declared in the Constitution that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." It's the most emphatic sentence in the constitution — no, ever, any. Now comes Senator Schumer, in a June 11 hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the nomination of Alabama's attorney general to a federal appeals court, saying this of William Pryor: "His beliefs are so well known, so deeply held, that it's very hard to believe…that they're not going to deeply influence the way he comes about saying, 'I will follow the law.'"
Mr. Pryor, you see, is Catholic. As such, he believes that abortion is murder. He also believes that homosexuality is a sin, in accordance with church doctrine. He also believes other things that Mr. Schumer — and in a number of instances, we ourselves — don't much like. Mr. Schumer's comment has touched a nerve in the public debate. The Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus, has written a letter and passed a resolution condemning the New York senator. And the Catholic Ave Maria List has taken out ads in some papers with the headline "Catholics need not apply."
For our part, we don't believe that Mr. Schumer is an anti-Catholic bigot. But he is hewing a line that is too close to a religious test for our taste. It is not whether prospective judges have strongly held beliefs of some kind — what whole person doesn't? — but that they are capable of setting these beliefs aside when necessary to interpreting the law faithfully. Let the burden lie on the senators. No less a Catholic than Justice Scalia declared last year that Catholic judges not prepared to execute the nation's laws with regard to capital punishment ought to resign. Mr. Schumer apparently thinks that deeply held beliefs are acceptable in a legislator. He said himself at the same hearing that "I personally am a deeply religious man."At the rate he is going, however, he's going to establish a test that few religious persons will be able to pass.
