The Supreme Court’s Most Interesting Catholic

(Hat tip: Dave Hartline at Catholic Report)

From Catholic Exchange:

Who's the most attention-riveting member of the Supreme Court? Antonin Scalia has his fans, but for many people it's no contest: the answer is Clarence Thomas.

Thomas's ability to command popular attention has little to do with his judicial philosophy — most Americans don't know what it is — and everything to do with his arresting demeanor and personal history. Triumphing over adversity has rarely taken such dramatic twists and turns.

Now Justice Thomas is the subject of a new biography, Supreme Discomfort (Doubleday). Written by two African-American journalists at The Washington Post, Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher, it's no hatchet job — Merida and Fletcher are serious writers — but neither is the book as even-handed and unbiased as its authors might like to think.

In their telling, this is the story of a conflicted, sensitive man with, in the words of their subtitle, a "divided soul." The division presumably is between Thomas's race and his conservative philosophy. That an intelligent African-American might come naturally by a conservative view of the world seems not to occur to them. (Thomas's religion — he's a practicing Roman Catholic — is discussed extensively, but at a superficial level.)

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My Comments:
I'll repeat what I initially wrote here:

I'm proud to say that I have met the man. I've met a number of "great" men thus far in my life, including Justice Scalia, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Bishop Leonard Blair among others, and Justice Thomas just may be the greatest of the bunch.

Pray for this man because of the hatred he endures simply because he believes the color of his skin shouldn't dictate the content of his character or the manner of his jurisprudence.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Defending Justice Thomas

Reading the Constitution Right: The Jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas