By Quin Hillyer at The Washington Examiner;
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein again is coming awfully close to expressing anti-Catholic bigotry and close to imposing an unconstitutional “religious test” upon federal judges. Outrageously, several fellow Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are following her lead.
In a committee hearing Wednesday on the nomination of Notre Dame Law School Professor Amy Coney Barrett for a spot on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Feinstein and her Democratic colleagues pelted Barrett with questions about her Catholic faith and its relation to duties as a federal judge.
“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” said Feinstein of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country.”
The dogma lives loudly within you. Really? Is that some sort of all-too-clever reverse-Star Wars-allusion?
To be clear here, the charge is that Barrett is an observant, perhaps even traditionalist, Catholic. So what? And why, pray tell, should that be “of concern” with regard to a federal judgeship? All our judges who happen to be Catholic should be good and faithful Catholics and our Jewish judges faithful Jews and Hindu judges faithful Hindus. The more they adhere to the terms of their faith, the more we can trust that their character is strong and solid – and that therefore they will abide just as assiduously to their oaths of civil office.
Feinstein doesn’t seem to think so. She thinks that a faithful person, especially a faithful Catholic, is automatically suspect. This isn’t the first time….
[The rest of this column, including the record of how Feinstein and her allies used anti-Catholic smears against Alabama’s own Bill Pryor, is at this link.]
