Judge Robert Bork, former circuit judge, U.S. solicitor general and 1987 Supreme Court judicial nominee, has passed on to eternal life. May God welcome him and grant him peace and rest. I was blessed to interview Judge Bork in July 2003, just after his conversion to the Catholic faith on July 21 at the age of 76.
Here's what he told me at the time of his conversion.
Was faith important to your family growing up? In which denomination did you grow up?
Up until age 17, I was in Pittsburgh. I have no siblings. My mother was a schoolteacher up until she got married because at that time you couldn’t be married and teach. My father was in charge of purchasing for one area of a large steel company.
Until age 12, I was going to United Presbyterian Church. My mother and father belonged to two different Presbyterian denominations. Our faith wasn’t terribly important growing up. My mother was interested in spiritual matters, but she was somewhat eclectic about it.
What led you to pursue law?
It was either that or journalism. I would have been a journalist by first choice, but I had the wrong idea that you had to get a graduate degree to pursue journalism. I didn’t know any journalists or lawyers.
When I was about to graduate from the University of Chicago I wrote to the Columbia School of Journalism. However, because of the debate between John Dewey and University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins over the nature of education, Columbia wouldn’t accept a degree from the University of Chicago. They told me that if I would first go elsewhere for two years, then they would accept me. In a fit of pique I decided to go to law school and graduated from Chicago School of Law in 1953.
When were you married?
I was married in 1952. My wife died on Dec. 8, 1980. I remarried on Oct. 30, 1982.
I was introduced to the Catholic faith through my second wife, Mary Ellen. She had been a nun for 15 years. I didn’t know any priests or nuns. Although I had many Catholic friends, we never discussed religion. I had been to a Catholic Mass a couple of times with friends when I was in my teens and early 20s, but I hadn’t been to any church for years and years until I began going to Sunday Mass with my Mary Ellen.
What sparked your interest in the Catholic Church?
After I wrote Slouching Toward Gomorrah the priest at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., Msgr. William Awalt, told me that my views on matters seemed to be very close to those of the Catholic views, which was true. Not being religious, the fact that our views corresponded wasn’t enough to bring me into the Church, so it took me a while before I was ready to enter.
I had a number of conversations with Father C.J. McCloskey. He gave me some readings and he would drop by on his way home and we would talk for an hour to an hour and a half in my office. The one I liked best was Ronald Knox’s The Beliefs of Catholics. I’ve taught classes, but I didn’t feel like being taught a class. I wasn’t eager to be a student. Our time together was informative and highly informal.
Were there any misconceptions that you had to overcome?
When I was between 15 and 16, I was taught that the Catholic Church was highly authoritarian and that the priests had strict control over your thoughts and ideas. By the time it came to convert I had been around the world a while, so I no longer had those ideas. I knew too many Catholics to believe that.
Does it seem to make a difference converting at age 76 rather than when you were younger?
I don’t know that it has any effect. My mother is going to be 105 this fall. I don’t feel old compared to her. I haven’t spoken to her about it yet, but I assume she’ll take it well.
There is an advantage in waiting until you’re 76 to be baptized, because you’re forgiven all of your prior sins. Plus, at that age you’re not likely to commit any really interesting or serious sins.
Was there anything in particular that pulled you toward the Church?
I found the evidence of the existence of God highly persuasive, as well as the arguments from design both at the macro level of the universe and the micro level of the cell.
I found the evidence of design overwhelming, and also the number of witnesses to the Resurrection compelling. The Resurrection is established as a solid historical fact.
Plus, there was the fact that the Church is the Church that Christ established, and while it’s always in trouble, despite its modern troubles it has stayed more orthodox than almost any church I know of. The mainline Protestant churches are having much more difficulty.
Did your wife play a significant role in your decision?
Yes, although she never proselytized outright. She discussed things with me, but it was more her example than anything else. I don’t know whether it’s her faith or something else, but she is an extraordinarily fine woman. We received a note from Father Richard John Neuhaus saying that now all of the saints could get some rest from Mary Ellen’s importuning.
Where was the ceremony held?
Since I decided I wanted only a small group of people present, the ceremony was held at the Catholic Information Center chapel in Washington. There were three priests at the baptism. Msgr. Awalt did the baptism. Father McCloskey gave the homily and Msgr. Peter Vaghi, pastor of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, also participated. I didn’t talk about it to anyone beforehand.
My three children were as surprised about it as anyone. I told the sponsors, Kate O’Beirne and John O’Sullivan, only a couple of weeks before. I don’t know how surprised they were. I never discussed it with them, but they probably expected that I wasn’t far off.
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I offer my prayers for the soul of this good man. I am old enough to remember the savage attacks against him by many politicians who lacked decency, morals and compassion. It was ugly and savage. Many of these politicians identified themselves as Catholics. But today I heard that Judge Bork did get some revenge. If he had been allowed to bless us with his wisdom on the Supreme Court, his death would have allowed the present anti-Catholic and anti-life administration to appoint his successor. The tragedy is that Catholic democrats helped elect this administration which threatens our Church institutions under the guise of health care. The Catholic democrats’ candidate also voted for the legal killing of girls and boys outside of their mom’s womb even after they survived the attempt to kill them in the womb. These children are only five years younger than the girls and boys killed in Newtown. I pray for God to give good health and longevity to the Supreme Court justices who are not anti-Catholic and anti-life so that the Catholic democrats’ candidate will not be able to make more appointments of anti-Catholic and anti-life justices.
As great a justice as Scalia is, Bork’s qualifications were even greater. Tragic that he never had the opportunity to serve on the Court. I didn’t know he had become Catholic; that news is just wonderful to me.
If a person really wants to know the Church, don’t look to those who were born it it, look to those who chose to enter into it.
He was a brilliant thinker. If he had been nominated instead of Scalia, he would have sailed through. It wasn’t until the court got to a Roe vs Wade tipping point that the progressives and their media enablers unleashed the hateful, slanderous treatment of judges who believed in the original meaning of the constitution.
May his soul rest in peace. Mike, great points.
Mr. Robertson,
The “Catholic Democrats’ candidate”? I’m Catholic and I’m a Democrat and I had no idea Barack Obama was our candidate. Please enlighten me.
God Bless the Dead… R.I.P. Judge Robert Bork.
For 30 years I have labored in obscurity as a Black conservative intellectual. 24 years ago (1988) I attended Harvard for a year with Barack Obama (I have no distinct memory of him). During these emergent years while Obama took the easy road actively reaching out to and being celebrated by a number of affluent liberals, progressives, Marxists, communists, Post-structuralists, anarchists, socialists and radicals, I took the Judge Bork/Justice Clarence Thomas road reaching out to Jewish, Christian, neo-conservatives and conservative politicians, academics, professors, and intellectuals like President Reagan, President Bush (41 & 43), Thomas Sowell, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Scalia, Judge Richard A. Posner, Dean Guido Calabresi, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Randall Kennedy, Lawrence Tribe, Charles Ogeltree, Alan Dershowitz, Elie Wiesel, Walter Williams, Bill Bennett, William F. Buckley, President Derek Bok, Judge Bork, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, and many, many others to get wisdom, knowledge, and to obtain help in furthering my academic and speaking career.
After numerous letters, law review articles and books I sent to these celebrated individuals including Bork, I received an email from him in the late 1990s-early 2000s when he was a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. I was shocked when Judge Bork rebuffed me and basically said that by referring to him as a Natural Law jurist that I had mischaracterized his jurisprudence worldview. I thought to myself—Did Judge Bork read his own bestselling books? They are filled with references to originalist jurisprudence, the original intent of the constitutional Framers, and to the moral and religious ideas they used to forge America’s Republic integrating legality and morality (i.e., Judeo-Christianity, Natural Law, Common Law, original intent, etc.).
In conclusion, we see how far a Marxist demagogue got with the help from just a few key, powerful liberals, progressives, socialists and radical allies during critical points of his life. America, just think how far I could have gotten if I had just a few MLK Democrats, Reagan Republicans, a few Rabbis and pastors, Christian businessmen, conservative academics, or neo-conservative intellectuals answer my thousands of letters and emails begging them to notice my intellectual achievements. I’ve sent passionate inquiries out to these people over the past 30 years since becoming a conservative and since publishing my first essays on aesthetics, culture, and politics in my senior year at DePauw University (Dec. 1982-Feb. 1983)... Just perhaps America we would never have heard of that name… Barack Hussein Obama?
See my biographical essay and spread Enlightenment @ http://www.elliswashingtonreport.com/blog/2012/11/24/nice-guys-do-finish-last/.
To Judge Robert Bork, I loved you like a Father and for 30 years I modeled my legal scholarly career after my understanding of your originalist ideas and legal philosophy. God Bless the Dead… R.I.P.
I’m glad Bork came into the Church and I’m glad the Senate successfully kept him off the Court. He was good on abortion law, but he was a complete right-wing, conservative disaster on everything else. As hard as it is to stomach, we’re better off with Kennedy.
i can tell you where this bigot and hater has gone, to hell. And Satan is waiting for him.
and how interesting that he married an ex nun who violated her vow to jesus, a bitter old man consumed by hate of anyone different.
to those who praise his political philosophy of originalism, pulled out of thin air, jefferson was clear when he said, “the earth belongs to the living”. bork’s corruption of the constitution for his own vile political ends is why he was rejected, later condemned and now, except for a handful of extremists, irrelevant.
Greg, take a breath. I’m hopeful that Bork is praying for all of us, making his way up that seven storey mountain.
greg you’re the one consumed with hate. Three bile filled posts in six minutes? Get a grip on yourself and your hatred.
The man is dead. It is indecent to trample his grave. But hatred knows no decency, neither does a liberal.
Thought you would like this.
Since Judge Bork converted to Catholicism, that believes in the communion of saints, do not be so presumptuous as to assume his future irrelevance…He may have the last laugh…!!!
What an amazing story of conversion. the grace and peace in his responses as well. I envy Judge Bork’s late life baptism but will start reclaiming the power of my own from long ago….Judge Bork, pray for us!
Interesting that “Catholic” Ted Kennedy (Chairman) of the Senate Judiciary Committee was the one to demonize Robert Bork and block his nomination to the Supreme Court because Teddy supported abortion rights and Bork did not believe the Constitution guaranteed such a “right.”
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