By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Amy Coney Barrett reignited a new skirmish in a long, simmering conflict within American culture and religion. It was a Protestant American in the Kennedy era who described it best, that peculiar animus that “lives loudly within” his own people and which was brought to the fore once again in Judge Barrett’s recent nomination.
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. memorably wrote that “anti-Catholicism is the deepest bias of the American people and the last acceptable prejudice” in describing a widespread negative reaction to the political rise of baptized Catholic John F. Kennedy.
Those of us who have ventured out of the Catholic bubble long enough to go to college, join the military, or otherwise rub shoulders with the great unwashed will sooner or later hear the biased comments if our Catholic faith is detected by our colleagues.
I remember my surprise while in the Army when I learned that one of the soldiers in my battalion had been sent off into the service by his good Christian grandmother armed with the notoriously fictional and fantastical anti-Catholic tome Roman Catholicism by Loraine Boettner. She wasn’t afraid most that he’d get into drugs or rush into marriage prematurely. No, her greatest fear was that he might “lose the faith” by becoming, God forbid, a Catholic! I took it as a compliment.
It was while in the Army that my vocation grew stronger as I honed my skills in the art of apologetics, the linking of the Scriptures across two thousand years to who we are and what we do today as Catholics. So-called “Bible Christianity” is rife with contradictions and hypocrisies.
You can’t be around Protestants for very long and keep your faith if you can’t explain it to the ignorant. What doesn’t become stronger with use will not remain long a potent force in one’s life and thoughts.
The Know-Nothings of the nineteenth century who fomented violence, smashing stained-glass windows in our cities and rioting in U.S. streets, live on, but now they are elected to Congress from places like California and have names like Dianne Feinstein. It was her comment to Barrett during a previous nomination process that ricocheted across the country and gave birth to “a thousand memes and two thousand coffee mugs,” as Raymond Arroyo wryly described the reaction on a recent episode of The World Over via EWTN.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., recently put it all into context by writing in First Things of what he called Feinstein’s “Know Nothing vulgarity” shared by so many others in our society:
“After all, she’s hardly alone in her bigotry. Disdain for vigorous religious convictions, especially the Catholic kind, is a virus that’s going around. It seems to infect a number of Democratic senators, including Sen. Kamala Harris, Feinstein’s California colleague and vice-presidential nominee, who saw looming peril in that dangerous national conspiracy otherwise known as the Knights of Columbus.”
Thank God we have men like Chaput who wisely put into a larger context the realities each of us face in living out our faith today. He aptly puts his finger, as usual, on the kernel of the issue.
Harris recently also exhibited the same gross bias that passes for politics in her interactions with a judicial nominee who happened also to be a member of the Catholic fraternal organization that sells Tootsie rolls for handicapped kids and insurance to protect Catholic families, who historically would be financially devastated by the untimely death of the father.
The dogma that lives loudly within Feinstein, Harris, and decent Protestant grandmothers everywhere has nothing to do with the true, living God who doesn’t conquer territories so much as He desires something much more dangerous to their bias: He desires to reign over hearts and minds. Despite the contrary evidence of Catholic history, the Lord doesn’t want standing armies under the flag of Constantine but rather that all of humanity, made by Him in His image and likeness, will unite in adoring and peaceful love around His self-revelation as perfect God and perfect Man.
What our critics miss, perhaps because their own religions of choice are derivative and partial, is that our faith is compatible with reason and that grace builds on nature. The Know-Nothings feared that Catholics were the advance party of a Roman papal invasion because they couldn’t envision a religion that is in the world but not of the world. Islam in fact most closely fits their fear of a political system disguised within the robes of a religion. Feinstein-types share a misunderstanding afflicting many Catholics. The shaky foundations of legalized child murder, now rapidly crumbling under their shoddy construction, can’t be blamed on religion, Catholic or otherwise.
That Catholics are pro-life, and Amy Barrett by necessity as well if she indeed is a “practical Catholic,” in the K of C way of putting it, is first because of reason, not faith. Reason is capable completely on its own of demonstrating the equal value and dignity of every human life. If any life is less worthy of defending, then all lives are thereby at risk.
As the great Ronald Reagan put it. “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” Politicians are quick to learn, tragically, that preborn boys and girls cannot vote, but their moms and dads who want a legal blessing to murdering them can.
The Catholic faith, revealed by Jesus Christ Himself, is compatible with and builds upon the minds and hearts with which He has endowed the human person in His loving act of creation. The faith, while revealing truths above our nature such as the existence of the Holy Trinity, three Persons in one God, builds upon and raises up our gifts of intellect and will as we learn and submit to all the truth, both revealed and otherwise.
It is not the Catholic religion that God’s enemies oppose, but the reason with which our Creator endows every human person that threatens their idolatry of self-will and diabolic rebellion against Him. The Church suffers collateral damage in the war against God because we reverence reason, which dangerously makes the truth about the sacredness of every human life accessible to every human person.
For the sake of our salvation we will never abandon the earthly struggle on the battlefield of life, armed by the Lord with both faith and reason. Our eternal destiny depends upon it. The embrace of evil by the Feinsteins, Harrises, Clintons, and other bloodthirsty Margaret Sanger disciples makes such conflict necessary.
Amy Coney Barrett is every bit a good and worthy judge and will make a spectacular addition to the Supreme Court. But watch the knives come out in her upcoming nomination process hearings. Amy Barrett is dangerous to the irrational abortion mob, not because of her Catholic faith, but because it enshrines reason, the real threat which endangers Roe v. Wade.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Let’s continue the conversation on Parler, the new free speech social network, where you’ll find me @FatherKevinMCusick.
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