I mentioned Leonard Leo in a previous post but didn’t go into much detail about him. I’m well aware of who he is and wrongly assumed that every reader would as well. Fortunately, Confirm Them (cross-posted at Southern Appeal) has stepped up to the plate to provide a little more information on Leo. He’s Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society as well as the chairman of Catholic Outreach for the Republican Party.
The conservative Catholic Site BeliefNet has some very interesting things to say about Roberts and his family:
If Catholics in America tend to fall into two broad categories—those who dissent from controversial Church teaching and those who subscribe to it—Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts, Jr., would appear to fall into the latter category. He attends Church of the Little Flower, a Maryland parish that heterodox Catholics would regard as an outpost of traditional Catholicism.
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On the Church of the Little Flower’s website, which links to the Vatican and promotes traditional piety and devotions such as “Forty Hours of Eucharistic Adoration,” Monsignor Vaghi has posted a meditation on chastity.
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In another meditation, Monsignor Vaghi staunchly defended the Church’s teaching on abortion. “After all, since Roe v. Wade in l973, the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion, there have been over 44 million abortions, young children dying before they had the opportunity to enjoy life outside the womb as we enjoy life,” he wrote. “Our church is always, and will always, be on the side of life, life from conception until natural death. And it is precisely because Jesus took on life, took on flesh and ennobled it by becoming man and like us in everything but sin that we value human life so much, that we were born in His image and reborn in Christ Jesus.”
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Several press accounts have noted that John Roberts and his wife Jane Sullivan Roberts followed Monsignor Vaghi from St. Patrick’s, his old parish in Washington, D.C., to Little Flower, and that Vaghi presided at their wedding. This has given conservative Catholic leaders who respect Vaghi confidence that Roberts is not cut from the same liberal cloth as Catholic Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
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Jane Roberts has been a diligent and open pro-life advocate, providing legal assistance to Feminists for Life. She is also active in the John Carroll Society, an organization that encourages Catholic lawyers (she is a partner in a Washington, D.C. law firm) to practice their profession according to high moral standards. Monsignor Vaghi is chaplain to the group.
As I wrote earlier, the more I know about John Roberts, the more I like him and the more comfortable I feel that he will interpret the constitution as it is written, not as the leftists wish that it were written.
