“What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ 29He said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went. 30The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go. 31* Which of the two did his father’s will?” They answered, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.”
The First Son
Last night the governor of Alabama signed into law the most restrictive abortion legislation in the nation, all but outlawing the procedure, and certain to set up a Supreme Court showdown. Aggressive pro-life legislation has been on the march this year, as well as aggressive and horrific pro-death legislation, expanding abortion into infanticide. The common denominator in all of this is President Trump. He has shifted the composition of the Supreme Court with two appointments, and filled hundreds of seats on the Federal Bench with conservative judges. His U.S. Attorneys and Attorneys General are no enemies of life. And then there are his executive orders, his reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy, his defense of conscience protections for people of faith that were savaged under Obama, his full-throated embrace of the pro-life movement.
All of this from a billionaire with a bad-boy past, a reformed playboy who could have spent the waning years of his life steeped in luxury and the pursuit of libertine ways.
Instead, Donald Trump lives with his wife of fifteen years in the world’s largest fishbowl, along with his youngest son. Thrice married, he does not cut the squeaky-clean family man image of a Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, or the Bushes. One would have expected sterling pro-life efforts from such men so devoted to their first and only wives, and their children. Instead, the efforts ranged from tepid to outright hostility. The reformed playboy has been quite the surprise for many.
The Second Son
Supreme Court Justice, Bret Kavanaugh, is Irish Catholic, a graduate of one of the nation’s most prestigious Catholic high schools, Georgetown Prep, the perfect church-going, soup kitchen-volunteering family man. He is new to the Supreme Court, and the justice everyone is keenly watching; perhaps because he is the hand-picked successor of another Irish Catholic justice, Anthony Kennedy, whose rulings in many areas haven’t squared with the moral world view of his faith.
What is of concern to pro-life advocates is Justice Kavanaugh’s rock-solid regard for Stare Decisis, the legal principle that regards previous decisions as strong precedent for judging future cases with similar issues. There have been a string of decisions in the wake of Roe v. Wade that have all buttressed Roe. From that perspective, a challenge to the Alabama law may find sound footing in a court where Kavanaugh has assumed the swing-vote seat of his old mentor. But there is hope.
When asked during his confirmation hearing what he thought the greatest Supreme Court decision was, he enthusiastically offered up Brown v Board of Education. What is so remarkable in his answer is that Brown is a rare case of the Supreme Court reversing one of its prior rulings, specifically, Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious case that upheld the institution of racial segregation. How to square the full-embrace of Stare Decisis with such a response?
The only answer is the obvious answer. There are some institutions that are so intrinsically evil that no law, no legal principle can be used to shield them without making a mockery of justice, of the law, of its practitioners. Such evil institutions strip the innocent of their human dignity and freedoms, and in the case of abortion, their very lives.
Our second son, like the first, has been sent by his father into the vineyard to work. Our second son has had advantages over the first. He has had the fullness of truth revealed to him through his Catholic upbringing that the first has not enjoyed in his churches that embrace contraception and abortion. Our second son has also signaled that he has the capacity to break with bedrock jurisprudence to defeat malignant evil when malignant evil would use bedrock jurisprudence as both sword and shield.
So, in the not-so-distant future, how will our second son acquit himself? Will he, as with so many sterling family men before him, shrink from the will of the father? Will he go down in history as having performed less than a reformed playboy billionaire?
None of us is perfect, and President Trump is no exception. However, his late, “Yes!” to the will of the father is the stuff of the good thief on the cross and the first son in Jesus’ parable, a son with plenty of warts doing the will of his father. A work in progress.
It is the second son who remains untested. It is he who is in need of more prayerful support than the reformed playboy billionaire. The pressures on him will be greater than anyone can imagine. His presence on the court is the result of the first son’s ongoing obedience to the father’s will.
May he see that, and act accordingly.
