Protestant vs. Catholic

The Oklahoma law professor Michael Scaperlanda has a post over at Mirror of Justice that mentions analogical uses of Protestant and Catholic in naming various schools of interpretation of the Constitution.

I remember some similar discussion swirling around after the attacks of September 11, when some commentators argued that what Islam needed was an analogue to the Reformation—while others responded that the rise of Wahhabism was, in fact, a Protestant movement and what Islam needed was an analogue to the Counter-Reformation.

Such Spenglerian morphologies are always fun, though not, I think, to be taken too seriously in the field of history. In other fields, such as the interpretation of constitutional law, they may be more helpful.

Anyway, Scaperlanda—who has a strong Opinion piece on immigration in the forthcoming issue of First Things —made me think of what may be my favorite analogical use of Protestant and Catholic thought: “The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS.” That’s a column from Umberto Eco, back in 1994, in which he wrote: “I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant.” The distinction between the two platforms was never better expressed.