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Amy Coney Barrett’s “Cult”
When Notre Dame law professor and possible Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was nominated for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, her affiliation with a religious group called People of Praise raised red flags. It was some sort of cult, they implied. Sen. Dianne Feinstein famously reproved the nominee by intoning that “the dogma lives loudly within you and that’s of concern.”
It was an echo of the kind of anti-Catholic bigotry that characterized American life for centuries. When the Democrats nominated the first Roman Catholic for president, Al Smith in 1928, opponents warned that all Protestant marriages would be annulled and all Protestant children declared bastards if the Catholic were elected. Republicans circulated pictures of Smith posing before the almost-completed Holland Tunnel with a caption declaring that instead of emptying into New Jersey, it really led 3,500 miles under the Atlantic Ocean to the basement of the Vatican. After his loss to Herbert Hoover, Smith was reputed to have quipped that he had sent a one-word telegram to the Pope: “Unpack.”
But Feinstein’s comment and others’ insinuations that her religion is somehow creepy or suspicious reveals a broader anti-religious bias.
Barrett and her family are reportedly members of a religious group called People of Praise. The New York Times implied that the group, most, but not all of whose members are Catholic, departed from mainstream Catholic ideas and doctrines. My EPPC colleague Ed Whelan disposed of those suggestions.
Curious, I looked at their website. I suppose it’s possible that the benign image they attempt to convey to the world is mere window dressing. But then again, Pope Francis appointed one of their members as an auxiliary bishop in Portland, Oregon. It seems doubtful, bordering on impossible, that he would have conferred that honor on a cult member.
Founded in 1971 as part of the lay Catholic ministries movement, People of Praise provides spiritual community, support for those in need, prayer and counseling, and guidance for successful marriages, among other things. More than 1000 couples have completed their Marriage in Christ program that instills habits of prayer and – this is shocking – conversation to improve relationships.
The first thing you see on the People of Praise website is a Louisiana picnic attended by a notably inter-racial group. One might have thought that such membership groups are far too rare – especially in the current climate. As Dorothy Anderson, an older African American woman put it, “In almost all of his speeches, Martin Luther King spoke about blacks and whites living together in unity. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see it, but I saw it last Thursday night at the barbecue.”
People of Praise is ecumenical, with Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, and other Christian members in addition to the Catholics. It contains both Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor. Like churches, they send missions to needy communities in the United States. More than 100 members have helped to build and renovate homes, run summer camps for thousands of kids, and found schools.
As for Barrett herself, it seems that she lives her faith. She and her husband have seven children including one with special needs and two adopted from Haiti. Her former colleagues on the Notre Dame law school faculty, many of whom have disagreements with Barrett, unanimously endorsed her nomination to the Circuit Court, describing her as “brilliant” and also “generous” and “warm.” They wrote: “She possesses in abundance all of the other qualities that shape extraordinary jurists: discipline, intellect, wisdom, impeccable temperament, and above all, fundamental decency and humanity.”
If Barrett is a glazed-eyed cultist, she’s done an incredible job of hiding it. She fooled her fellow clerks on the Supreme Court when she worked for Justice Antonin Scalia. Dozens of clerks, including some who worked for Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, endorsed her previous nomination, calling her a “woman of remarkable intellect and character.” She fooled her students, hundreds of whom signed an endorsement reading in part “Our religious, cultural, and political views span a wide spectrum. Despite the many and genuine differences among us, we are united in our conviction that Professor Barrett would make an exceptional federal judge.” And she fooled all of the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee along with three Democrats, who voted to approve her nomination.
The words “people of praise” raise hackles among secularists. Considering their charitable work and trans-racial, trans-class appeal, they deserve at least the benefit of the doubt. And that Barrett is reportedly a member is the best testimonial of all.
Published in Law, Politics
George, has anybody ever told you that you’re cute when you’re angry?
So who do you like, @freesmith? Name me some names. I am not saying Amy Barrett is the only choice…maybe not even the best. She seems to be very good. We could do much worse.
You are the first! Please don’t let it happen again?!!
You have to be joking. Any Democrat likely to run in the foreseeable future (cue Yogi Berra) will appoint Leftists at every level of the judiciary. Hillary would have done so. When you look at the currently serving Democrat appointees (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan,) Breyer is the “moderate.” Reagan was only 2 for 4 in appointing Constitutionalists. Do we want another Souter or Kennedy to keep the mean Democrats from being mad at us? And guess what? It won’t.
Whatever Trump’s appointees do or don’t do will not make that better or worse. @freesmith is correct that a preemptive grovel will be counterproductive.
Adam Smith famously said “there is a lot of ruin in a nation;” and the Left is going to keep giving it the old college try. Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and thousands upon thousands of lesser vermin and rent seekers have found it quite lucrative to try to ruin the U.S.A. There is a rising new generation on the Left that wants a piece of the action.
Sure, corruption of any ultimately degrades what’s left of the Republic. But that’s ordinary decent crime. The Left’s leadership wants what you and I call ruin – so long as they can make out like bandits. They think of it as doing well by doing good.
Remember Bill Buckley’s quip? “The problem with capitalism is capitalists. The problem with socialism is socialism.”
The wellspring of ideas on the Left is always even farther to the left. Don’t mistake tactics (screaming about Trump’s appointees whoever they might be) with the strategic goal: Permanent Leftist rule. Open borders, income redistribution are stations along the way. So is the Supreme Court if they get their hands on it again.
Really enjoyed this piece. Barrett seems very solid. A side note. As someone who in her youth toyed with a collectivist lifestyle, I can attest that groups with goals very different from those of the culture at large are usually wildly misrepresented by newspaper and other media accounts.
Whose groveling? This is one of the most nonsensical arguments I ever participated in on Ricochet. As much I as dislike Trump, he has done pretty well in several things. And Gorsuch is possibly his finest contribution. What you and Freesmith propose is anarchy. We need Law. Thank God you are nowhere near power. We’d have another Civil War. And for what?
Ann Coulter, apparently. Named by Freesmith earlier in the thread.
I hate to break it to you but to the Left, Scalia was, Thomas is, and Gorsuch promises to be (wait 15 or 20 years to be sure) rabid judicial activists and Sotomayor and Ginsburg are moderate.
Whether Trump does things your way or @freesmith‘s way is irrelevant if, heaven forfend, the Democrats win again. My gut says that at that point it will be game over. I’m elated at what Trump has done to curb the regulatory state. I fear that it is already too late, that the cancer is too metastatic, and the rent seekers who feast on the necrosis are too numerous for the Republic’s metabolism.
What may prevent what is likely to be a Balkanesque civil war is civic nationalism and a growing economy. The latter is beginning to peel off formerly reliable blocs from the Democrat coalition, so a growing economy is a threat to them. I believe the calculation has been made on the Left that better the mob than another Republican coming to the White House after Trump. That is true whoever Trump puts on the Court. I’m thinking of Trump’s choices as like Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus.
I commend this video analysis of the Russians in Ukraine to your attention.
It’s not all applicable to our situation, but the early stages are. The Dems don’t need the spotters that the Russians infiltrated into Ukraine, but they have them. They don’t need them because… Facebook, Google, etc. could do it by themselves, and these companies are SJW converged to the point of being enemies.
He was just kidding, wasn’t he…wasn’t he?
I’m afraid not. Pathetic, isn’t it?
I’m through with this lunacy. Neither of you understand the true greatness of this Republic. And nothing I can say will penetrate. ‘Tis a pity (sigh)!
On rereading this post, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Feinstein has an anti-religious bias. The syllogism is simple:
• Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s: That comes from religion.
• Everything in the State
• Nothing outside the State (except for the rewards due to the favored kine such as Pelosi and Feinstein and their families that tread out the State’s grain)
• Nothing against the State
So long as religion knows its place, Feinstein is all for religion.