, a blogger, writes: “Ramesh Ponnuru and Feddie accuse Hitchens of ‘anti-Catholic bigotry.’ But this is nonsense. It’s true that Hitchens is an anti-theist and thus anti-Catholic. It is nonetheless true that the Roman Catholic hierarchy has firm positions on some of the most contentious issues before the Court. Papal bulls should have no more place in a judge’s deliberations than international law or his own policy preferences.”

1) I didn’t accuse Hitchens of “anti-Catholic bigotry.” I noted that Hitchens’s pre-emptive defense against the charge of anti-Catholic bigotry is that anti-Catholicism is justified by the sinister nature of the church.

2) Hitchens’s anti-Catholicism goes rather further than an objection to it on anti-theistic grounds. He has specific objections that he has outlined in detail. He seems to think the conduct of Cardinal Law is somehow relevant to John Roberts’s fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. Whatever else may be said of that view, it is not a simple implication of–it does not simply follow from–anti-theism.

3) Hitchens’s argument cannot be reduced to the view that papal bulls should have no place in a judge’s decisions–and we have no reason for thinking that Roberts disagrees with that view anyway. Jonathan Turley’s third-hand and vague description of a conversation that the principals deny having had does not constitute a reason.