John Roberts testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Sept. 13, 2005. / Rob Crandall/Shutterstock.
Washington D.C., Jun 25, 2022 / 17:04 pm (CNA).
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — a case that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 — in a decision Friday that fell largely along justices’ ideological lines. One justice, Chief Justice John Roberts, strayed from the pack, as he frequently does.
A majority of the nine Supreme Court justices overruled Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe in 1992, while deciding June 24 the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The court voted 6-3 to uphold a Mississippi law restricting most abortions after 15 weeks. At the same time, justices voted by a narrower margin, 5-4, to overturn Roe.
That’s because of Roberts.
Roberts stands out because justices appointed by Republican presidents — Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — are generally considered more conservative-leaning. Likewise, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, who were nominated by Democratic presidents, tend to lean liberal.
With the Dobbs case, Alito wrote the opinion of the court — or the opinion that a majority of the justices agreed to or joined. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented from the majority.
Roberts took a unique position: He filed an opinion concurring in the judgement, meaning he agreed with the majority’s ruling, but not necessarily their rationale or reasoning.
Roberts’ reasoning
In his 12-page opinion in the Dobbs case, Roberts said that he agreed with upholding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, but he disagreed that Roe and Casey needed to be overturned in the process.
“The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system—regardless of how you view those cases,” he wrote. “A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case.”
As a case, Dobbs centered on the question, “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”
Roberts took the position that this question could be answered without overturning Roe. In Roe, the court ruled that states could not ban abortion before viability, which the court determined to be 24 to 28 weeks into pregnancy. Then, with Casey, the court said that states could not enforce an “undue burden,” defined by the court as “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”
Roberts said that he agreed with discarding parts of Roe and Casey, particularly the “viability line,” in favor of a new standard.
“That line never made any sense,” Roberts said. Instead, he said, a woman’s “right” to abortion should “extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose.”
In other words, instead of determining abortion based on when an unborn baby can survive outside the womb, Roberts argued that it should be based on whether a woman has enough time to obtain an abortion after realizing that she is pregnant.
“The law at issue allows abortions up through fifteen weeks, providing an adequate opportunity to exercise the right Roe protects,” Roberts wrote, adding at another point that “there is nothing inherent in the right to choose that requires it to extend to viability or any other point, so long as a real choice is provided.”
While doing away with the viability standard, the court could have still recognized a woman’s “right” to abortion with Roe, he claimed.
“My point is that Roe adopted two distinct rules of constitutional law: one, that a woman has the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy; two, that such right may be overridden by the State’s legitimate interests when the fetus is viable outside the womb,” he said.
Roberts described what he called the “clear path” to deciding Dobbs “correctly” without overturning Roe: “recognize that the viability line must be discarded, as the majority rightly does, and leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all.”
Alito’s majority opinion responded to Roberts’ concurrence, saying it “would do exactly what it criticizes Roe for doing: pulling ‘out of thin air’ a test that ‘[n]o party or amicus asked the Court to adopt’.”
“The concurrence’s most fundamental defect is its failure to offer any principled basis for its approach,” the majority opinion continued. “The concurrence makes no attempt to show that this rule represents a correct interpretation of the Constitution. The concurrence does not claim that the right to a reasonable opportunity to obtain an abortion is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’
“Nor does it propound any other theory that could show that the Constitution supports its new rule. And if the Constitution protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, the opinion does not explain why that right should end after the point at which all ‘reasonable’ women will have decided whether to seek an abortion.”
“The concurrence’s quest for a middle way would only put off the day when we would be forced to confront the question we now decide,” the majority opinion responded. “The turmoil wrought by Roe and Casey would be prolonged. It is far better—for this Court and the country—to face up to the real issue without further delay.”
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Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK) attends a roundtable at the White House in Washington, DC June 18, 2020. / Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead (public domain)
Washington D.C., Apr 27, 2023 / 09:30 am (CNA).
Legislation that would expand… […]
Little Rock, Ark., Aug 30, 2019 / 03:30 am (CNA).- In December 2017, 19 year-old Arkansas college student Christine McGee was rushed to the hospital by her mother.
Christine had fallen ill with what turned out to be an aneurysm, and it looked like she… […]
Pope Benedict XVI announced his intention to resign the papacy during a meeting of cardinals Feb. 11, 2013. The surprise announcement, which he made in Latin, took place in the Hall of the Consistory in the Vatican’s apostolic palace. / Vatican Media
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 2, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
On Feb. 11, 2013, before a gathering of cardinals who had come to the Vatican expecting to hear the announcement of upcoming canonizations, Pope Benedict XVI dropped a bombshell.
After a few announcements about Church business at the conclusion of the meeting, the pope took out two sheets of paper and read a prepared statement in Latin.
“I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” the then 85-year-old pontiff told the gathering of the Catholic Church’s highest-ranking clergymen.
Because he spoke in Latin, the language used for official Vatican proclamations, reporters present did not at first realize that the pope had just stepped down.
‘Total surprise, total shock’
The assembled cardinals, on the other hand, who knew their Latin, reacted with stunned silence.
American Cardinal James Stafford later told CNA that the pope’s statement was received with “total surprise, total shock.”
“A cardinal who was sitting next to me said, ‘Did he resign?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s what he did. He resigned.’ And we just all stood at our places.”
Cardinals react to Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement of his intention to resign the papacy Feb. 11, 2013. The surprise announcement, which Benedict made in Latin, took place in the Hall of the Consistory in the Vatican’s apostolic palace. Vatican Media
Nigeria’s Cardinal Francis Arinze, who was present that morning, said the announcement was a “surprise, like thunder that gives no notice that it’s coming,” reported The Catholic Telegraph.
In renouncing the papacy, Benedict became only the second pope in almost 600 years to voluntarily step down. In 1294, Pietro da Morrone, an elderly hermit, was crowned Pope Celestine V, but finding the demands of the job too much for him, he resigned after only five months.
In 1415, Pope Gregory XII also resigned, but under very different circumstances — he stepped down in order to end a crisis within the Church known as the Great Western Schism.
Title, white clothes, and papal coat of arms
What happened next with Benedict XVI was no less surprising to those who expected him to live as a retired cardinal.
In his last official statement as pope, before a general audience on Feb. 27, 2013, Pope Benedict assured the tens of thousands of people gathered to hear him speak as pope for the last time that even though he was stepping back from official duties, he would remain, in essence, pope.
“The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ — there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this,” Benedict said.
“I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences, and so on. I am not abandoning the cross, but remaining in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord,” he told the crowd.
A day earlier, on Feb. 26, 2013, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, had silenced speculation over what Benedict would be called and what he would wear. He would, Lombardi said, retain the trappings of the papacy — most significantly, his title and dress.
“He will still be called His Holiness Benedict XVI,” Lombardi said. “But he will also be called Pope Emeritus or Roman Pontiff Emeritus.”
Lombardi said Benedict would continue to wear a white cassock but without the mozzetta, the short cape that covers the shoulders. The pope’s fisherman’s ring would be replaced by a ring from his time as cardinal. The red shoes would go as well, Lombardi said, and be replaced by a pair of brown ones.
“The city of León is known for beautiful shoes, and very comfortable shoes. And when the pope was asked what he wanted to wear he said, ‘I want the shoes from León in Mexico,’” Lombardi said at the press conference.
On May 2, the cardinal who designed Benedict’s coat of arms in 2005 told CNA that he had written the pope emeritus suggesting that his coat of arms would need to be redesigned to reflect his new status. Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo proposed making the keys of St. Peter smaller and less prominent.
“That shows that he had a historic possession but not a current jurisdiction,” said the cardinal at the time.
Benedict, however, it seems, politely declined a new coat of arms. La Stampa reported the following year that the Vatican Publishing House’s manual of ecclesiastical heraldry in the Catholic Church contained the following note:
“Expressing deep appreciation and heartfelt gratitude to the author for the interesting study sent to him, [Benedict] made it known that he prefers not to adopt an expressive heraldic emblem of the new situation created with his renouncing of the Petrine Ministry.”
By his decision to continue to dress in white like the pope, retain the title of pope, and keep the coat of arms of his papacy, Benedict revealed that in giving up the “active exercise of the ministry,” he was not forsaking the role of pope altogether.
Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI pray together at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo March 23, 2013, their first meeting after Francis’ election. Vatican Media
An expanded Petrine ministry
In his 2013 announcement, Benedict clearly expressed his intention to step aside, even determining the date and time of his official departure. Nonetheless, his decision to keep the title of pope and maintain the ceremonial protocol that goes along with the papacy led some to speculate whether there were not actually “two popes.”
Benedict’s personal secretary and closest confidante, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, sought to clear up any confusion in 2016.
In a speech at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome on May 20, 2016, Gänswein said that Pope Francis and Benedict are not two popes “in competition” with one another but represent one “expanded” Petrine office with “an active member” and a “contemplative.”
Parsing Benedict’s speech, Gänswein explained that in stepping down, Benedict was not giving up his ministry.
“The key word in that statement is ‘munus petrinum,’ translated — as happens most of the time — with ‘Petrine ministry.’ And yet, ‘munus,’ in Latin, has a multiplicity of meanings: It can mean service, duty, guide, or gift, even prodigy. Before and after his resignation, Benedict understood and understands his task as participation in such a ‘Petrine ministry [munus],’” Gänswein said.
“He left the papal throne and yet, with the step he took on Feb. 11, 2013, he has not abandoned this ministry,” Gänswein explained, saying the latter scenario was something “quite impossible after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005.”
Benedict himself later made clear in an interview with his biographer Peter Seewald that he saw himself as continuing in his ministry. He said that a pope who steps down is like a father whose role changes, but always remains a father.
“Of course a father does not stop being father, but he is relieved of concrete responsibility. He remains a father in a deep, inward sense, in a particular relationship which has responsibility, but not with day-to-day tasks as such. It was also this way for bishops,” Benedict said.
“I think it is also clear that the pope is no superman and his mere existence is not sufficient to conduct his role, rather he likewise exercises a function.
“If he steps down, he remains in an inner sense within the responsibility he took on, but not in the function. In this respect one comes to understand that the office of the pope has lost none of its greatness, even if the humanity of the office is perhaps becoming more clearly evident,” Benedict said.
Benedict’s decision “not to abandon his ministry” inspired a cottage industry of conspiracy theories, with some questioning whether the pope emeritus truly stepped down because of his age and frailty.
George Weigel, author of the definitive biography of St. John Paul II, “Witness to Hope,” dismissed such speculation in an interview with CNA.
“I have no reason to think that there was anything more to Pope Benedict’s resignation than what he said was its cause: his conviction that he no longer had the strength, physical and intellectual, to give the Church what it needed from a pope,” he said.
“Everything else written about this is sheer speculation. Let’s take Benedict at his word,” Weigel said.
A life of prayer
In retiring to live in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens, Benedict did not completely withdraw from the world. He attended public events in his new capacity as pope emeritus, received visitors, and pursued a life of fruitful study, writing, and prayer.
Pope Francis visits Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in Vatican City to exchange Christmas greetings Dec. 23, 2013. Vatican Media
Matthew Bunson, Catholic historian, author, and executive editor of EWTN News, told CNA that Benedict was determined not to exercise authority in his new role.
“He really embraced what it means to be pope emeritus, and refrained from making public comments, to instead live a life of prayer and reflection,” Bunson said.
“Benedict really was on retreat, and in prayer,” he said, “and that means we have his prayer for us as a Church.”
While becoming increasingly frail, Benedict continued to celebrate Mass daily with the other residents of the monastery and was known to enjoy spending time in the Vatican Gardens praying his daily rosary.
In the fall of 2021, more than eight years after Benedict stepped down, his private secretary, Gänswein, told Domradio in Cologne, Germany, that Benedict was “stable in his frailty.”
He described the pope emeritus as very weak physically but still clear in mind. Gänswein said he had not lost his “typical Bavarian humor.”
The meaning of Benedict’s renunciation for future popes
In 2013, after Benedict announced that he would step down as pope, Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a Jesuit theologian and canonist chosen by Pope Francis to be a cardinal, wrote an essay on what should happen when a pope steps down.
In the article, published in Civiltà Cattolica, Ghirlanda suggested the retiring Benedict take the title bishop emeritus of Rome.
“It is evident that the pope who has resigned is no longer pope; therefore he no longer has any power in the Church and cannot interfere in any government affair. One may wonder what title Benedict XVI will retain. We think that he should be given the title of bishop emeritus of Rome, like any other diocesan bishop who ceases,” he said.
In December 2021, at a congress on papal resignations, Ghirlanda took up the theme again.
“Having two people with the title of ‘pope,’ even if one added ’emeritus,’ it cannot be said that this might not generate confusion in public opinion,” he said.
To make clear that the pope who resigns is no longer pope, he said, he should perhaps be called “former Roman pontiff” or “former supreme pontiff.”
Pope Francis in July 2022 told reporters that if he were to retire from the papacy he would do things differently from his predecessor.
“The first experience went very well,” Pope Francis said, because Benedict XVI “is a holy and discreet man.”
In the future, however, “it would be better to define things or explain them better,” the pontiff added.
“I am the bishop of Rome. In that case I would be the bishop emeritus of Rome,” he said, and then suggested he would live in St. John Lateran Palace rather than at the Vatican.
“That line never made any sense. Instead, a woman’s ‘right’ to abortion should
extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose” (CJ Roberts).
Faithful Catholics all know the real moral issue is the right to life of the innocent. Although to present a viable legal argument in a Nation that has marked differences on human life, when it begins the better path was Alito’s argument on the absence of Constitutionality on an abortion ‘right’ [notice Roberts punctuates ‘right’ with quotation marks alluding to questioning or disagreement].
Laurence Tribe legal scholar praised Roberts when he voted with the minority liberals for passage of Obama Care [on the question of Govt funding mandate], that it revealed an unbiased legal mind. Others hold Roberts perceives himself as a juridical equanimity vote in a conservative majority Supreme Court. He seems more interested in the Court’s [and his own legacy] reputation as a justice forum rather than an ideological platform.
Roberts, if that is his rationale for some past decisions, and for declining to join the majority to strike down Roe appears more concerned with the perception of legal scholars and universities rather than justice [my opinion]. The hard nosed counsel of God to Moses on absolute impartiality in judgments is the better standard.
Justice Alito might have responded, further, to Chief Justice Roberts with the wording that instead of the Dobbs ruling being “a serious jolt to the legal system,” the Roberts’ balancing act would prolong “the legal system as a serious jolt to reality”–the binary (!) fact that it is not possible to be only half-pregnant (or, with Roberts, 15/40ths pregnant).
Roberts loves to play the great mediator. He works for a “win -win” resolution in all of these Supreme Court cases. That way, Roberts comes out the hero.
However, he hasn’t comprehended the full level of effort and complex strategy required to arrive at the perfect compromise between Heaven and hell.
To his quandary, however, the true Catholics on the Supreme Court do.
Chief Justice Roberts: “recognize that the viability line must be discarded, as the majority rightly does, and leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all.” That “other day,” after already some 49 years and counting?
In esoteric legal journals, will legal scholars now parse the dialogue by which Roberts first tried to get some kind of nuanced hesitation built into the majority ruling? Failing that, in his tagged-on opinion, he then appended his view, as remotely possible obiter dictum (?), to still be picked up by a later court with a flipped 5-4 composition.
A chess game which Justice Alito fully discredits by then adding to the majority ruling that Roberts’ verbiage lacks any demonstrated basis in reason. In addition to discrediting the minority’s dissenting opinion, for future scholars Alito also destroys Roberts’ middle way, adding:“[t]he turmoil wrought by Roe and Casey would be prolonged. It is far better—for this Court and the country—to face up to the real issue without further delay.”
The foot-dragging Justice Roberts (alongside the Dobbs ruling) and middling Justice Daley (the Dred Scott ruling) have points in common (and, both Catholic).
Perhaps on Roberts’ “another day,” the “third option” mentality behind gay “marriage” and mandatory LGBTQ signaling and indoctrination in schools will separately and also be overturned, that is, turned upright. (I distinctly recall in the press, but cannot document from filtered files on the internet—prior to the Obergefelle v. Hodges case—the middling controversy that a bi-sexual justice need not recuse himself/herself unless heterosexual justices likewise recuse themselves; Case decided 5-4 with Kennedy writing the majority opinion.)
Thank you for this explanation of Roberts’ concurrence. So please tell me was Roe v. Wade turned down 6-3 or 5-4?
“That line never made any sense. Instead, a woman’s ‘right’ to abortion should
extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose” (CJ Roberts).
Faithful Catholics all know the real moral issue is the right to life of the innocent. Although to present a viable legal argument in a Nation that has marked differences on human life, when it begins the better path was Alito’s argument on the absence of Constitutionality on an abortion ‘right’ [notice Roberts punctuates ‘right’ with quotation marks alluding to questioning or disagreement].
Laurence Tribe legal scholar praised Roberts when he voted with the minority liberals for passage of Obama Care [on the question of Govt funding mandate], that it revealed an unbiased legal mind. Others hold Roberts perceives himself as a juridical equanimity vote in a conservative majority Supreme Court. He seems more interested in the Court’s [and his own legacy] reputation as a justice forum rather than an ideological platform.
Roberts, if that is his rationale for some past decisions, and for declining to join the majority to strike down Roe appears more concerned with the perception of legal scholars and universities rather than justice [my opinion]. The hard nosed counsel of God to Moses on absolute impartiality in judgments is the better standard.
Justice Alito might have responded, further, to Chief Justice Roberts with the wording that instead of the Dobbs ruling being “a serious jolt to the legal system,” the Roberts’ balancing act would prolong “the legal system as a serious jolt to reality”–the binary (!) fact that it is not possible to be only half-pregnant (or, with Roberts, 15/40ths pregnant).
What good did George II actually do?
John Roberts aka the human invertebrate.
Roberts loves to play the great mediator. He works for a “win -win” resolution in all of these Supreme Court cases. That way, Roberts comes out the hero.
However, he hasn’t comprehended the full level of effort and complex strategy required to arrive at the perfect compromise between Heaven and hell.
To his quandary, however, the true Catholics on the Supreme Court do.
Chief Justice Roberts: “recognize that the viability line must be discarded, as the majority rightly does, and leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all.” That “other day,” after already some 49 years and counting?
In esoteric legal journals, will legal scholars now parse the dialogue by which Roberts first tried to get some kind of nuanced hesitation built into the majority ruling? Failing that, in his tagged-on opinion, he then appended his view, as remotely possible obiter dictum (?), to still be picked up by a later court with a flipped 5-4 composition.
A chess game which Justice Alito fully discredits by then adding to the majority ruling that Roberts’ verbiage lacks any demonstrated basis in reason. In addition to discrediting the minority’s dissenting opinion, for future scholars Alito also destroys Roberts’ middle way, adding:“[t]he turmoil wrought by Roe and Casey would be prolonged. It is far better—for this Court and the country—to face up to the real issue without further delay.”
The foot-dragging Justice Roberts (alongside the Dobbs ruling) and middling Justice Daley (the Dred Scott ruling) have points in common (and, both Catholic).
Perhaps on Roberts’ “another day,” the “third option” mentality behind gay “marriage” and mandatory LGBTQ signaling and indoctrination in schools will separately and also be overturned, that is, turned upright. (I distinctly recall in the press, but cannot document from filtered files on the internet—prior to the Obergefelle v. Hodges case—the middling controversy that a bi-sexual justice need not recuse himself/herself unless heterosexual justices likewise recuse themselves; Case decided 5-4 with Kennedy writing the majority opinion.)