By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Amy Coney Barrett — a practicing Catholic and a member of a charismatic group recognized by the Church called “People of Praise” — has ascended through the Seventh Circuit to consideration as a candidate to replace Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. This has brought out the latent anti-Catholicism in our society.
What once was disguised as anti-immigrant sentiment, expressed through signs that greeted newcomers to this land in stores and factories, “No Irish Need Apply,” is now openly brandished. Time has made clear that what in fact was distasteful more than their Irish blood was the “strange creed” they professed, demanding fidelity to a Bishop in Rome.
The Catholic Church now stands nearly alone, among the many Christian sects that have fallen away from the rock of Peter over the 2,000 years of Christian history, in uncompromisingly proclaiming the sacredness of every human life. It is for this reason that members of Congress are clearly shown to be anti-Catholic when they warn that they will fight to make sure that no pro-lifers will be confirmed to the highest court in the land.
Ideology has now made it possible for people to insist with a straight face that somebody can do a job as a Catholic only if they lack integrity in following through with courage upon their convictions: that the only good Catholic on the Supreme Court is a bad Catholic.
Susan Collins, who claims to be herself Catholic, says that only Catholics who lack integrity qualify for the Supreme Court, because that’s precisely what a so-called pro-abortion “Catholic” lacks.
What Sen. Collins fails to recognize is that she cannot be at the same time a Catholic as she claims and an anti-Catholic as she behaves. The principle of non-contradiction applies. She remains an anti-Catholic until she ceases to discriminate against Catholics who, unlike her, have the integrity to live the faith they claim to profess.
What is sacred for Susan Collins and other apostates? Abortion. A conviction gladly shared with pagans and nonbelievers like Dianne Feinstein.
If Catholics seeking to take part in governance or justice insist the unborn children cannot under any circumstances be sacrificed to Moloch, then those Catholics need not apply.
Feinstein, proudly serving the Peoples’ Republic of San Francisco in the U.S. Senate, infamously put Amy Barrett in the inquisitional “dock” during the questioning leading to her confirmation for the Seventh Circuit. She did so by accusing her with the phrase “the dogma lives loudly within you.” This backfired when Catholics generally took up the phrase on social media, repeating it as a badge of honor.
“DiFi” inadvertently crowned Barrett as queen of the activist Catholic vanguard, particularly the pro-life contingent. Well known here is that Feinstein’s attack was about protecting Democrat interests among the congressional and governmental abortion mafia, deeply in bed with that party. The unborn can’t vote. Illegal immigrants, however, under certain circumstances can, which is why these same shady characters are passionately concerned about separating children from parents at geographical borders, but not at the very beginning of life from life itself.
What must be declared undeniable, however, is that a dogma of a different kind evidently lives loudly within Feinstein, Collins, and the abortion lobby. These would use an imaginary right to unlimited use of murder against persons in the womb to deny access to the Supreme Court to all those born persons who uphold the fundamental principle of justice, and who defend the equality of personhood in the womb, as well as after departing the womb.
There is an aspect of rallying the troops once again with a familiar fear-mongering battle cry to all of this. The Wall Street Journal editorial board weighed in:
“The first thing to keep in mind is that this is what Democrats and their media allies always say. They said it in 1987 when Justice Kennedy was nominated. They said it in 1990 about David Souter, again about Clarence Thomas in 1991, John Roberts and Samuel Alito in 2005, and Neil Gorsuch in 2017. They even claimed the Chief Justice might overturn Roe because his wife is a Roman Catholic. Mrs. Roberts is still waiting to write her first opinion.”
Many would be surprised to learn that it is privacy issues at play in Roe v. Wade that have kept it on life support since all of those justices named have come to the court and after some of them have gone. The fight for preborn human life is played out now more at the state level as more and more governors in the years since 1973 have signed into law bills placing greater and greater restrictions upon abortion.
If a challenge to abortion on demand comes before the court again it will come not from a justice like Barrett or some other Scalia disciple, but from the states. Playing upon voter ignorance as to this reality serves to undermine the purpose of the court for serving justice. In its place we get instead partisan lobbying for predetermined outcomes as long as the abortion issue is used as a wedge.
It is alarming that integrity is not a first concern when someone who is Catholic must be willing to renounce the non-negotiable Catholic teaching that every human life is sacred from womb to tomb. The total eclipse of justice as a result of competing ideologies is what all of us should fear. The pro-life cause is sacred because God creates each person in His image and likeness. But it is also a fundamental principle of justice evident simply in the equality of every life from conception.
We remain confident in the truth that blind justice will one day recognize the humanity of the unborn child and pray that soon we will enshrine in law the right to life for every preborn human person. We put our confidence for this and all good in the hands of the Lord from whom all justice comes as a fruit of authentic love.
But we also fight for equal treatment of born persons and their right to be people of authentic faith, which by its nature can never be separated from life. There can be no “Liberty and Justice for All” if there is not at the same time liberty and justice by all. If “Catholics need not apply” then we are unfaithful to the American ideal itself.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
(Also: Join our group on pilgrimage, with Latin Mass daily, to “Italia Bella,” October 13-21, 2018: Rome, Castel Gandolfo, Assisi, Florence, Tuscany, Venice, and more. The price is $3,600.00 for nine days. Prices include airfare from your hometown and exclusively 4 or 5 star hotels everywhere. Visit www.procatholictours.com. To register for the trip, call Jennifer Wadsworth, manager, ProCatholic Tours, at 612-730-2890.)
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