Justice Brennan, Judge Souter and Supreme Court

As a Christian minister (now retired) and as an American, I was appalled, upon reading Patrick Buchanan’s hysterical diatribe against Brennan (Commentary, July 24) by his charge that “nominally Catholic Brennan was a militant humanist who led the Warren Court’s relentless campaign to de-Christianize America.”

In a time when religious pluralism has come to be respected by most Americans, such arrogant parochialism is not only ludicrous, but worthy of contempt. More than that, its implications for national policy are dangerous. (As though any religious majority has the right, by force of law, to “Christianize” or “Judaize” or “Muslimize” or any other “ize” the nation!)

Buchanan goes on to decry the former justice’s “militant humanism.” Well, if advocacy for the poor, the marginalized, the often-powerless minorities, the unfairly maligned and unjustly accused is “humanistic,” then we can do with more of it.

For more than three decades Brennan labored to make the American Constitution not just a static document, but a beacon of hope in a new day and a new time.

MELVIN E. SCHROER

Claremont