So Mr. Obama is going to take the oath of office while holding the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used when he took the oath. Our Sunday Visitor mentions that there is a "Catholic connection" to that historical event: that Lincoln took the oath before Chief Justice Roger Taney, the first Catholic to hold that office.
Alas, Taney is not a figure in whom we could take pride. He was a firm supporter of slavery, and wrote in the Dred Scott decision that
blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."
Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . . ."
Which is more or less the way some contemporary public officials consider preborn children: that they can be created or destroyed at will, treated as objects to be placed in cold storage, flushed down a sewer when unwanted, destroyed in laboratory experiments for utilitarian purposes, and not treated as members of the human community or subjects of rights.
With so many bad Catholic politicians collaborating in this injustice, it is only appropriate to associate Taney with the inauguration of the most pro-abortion administration yet in the US.
