Will Barrett’s confirmation affect Catholic vote?
WASHINGTON — Over four days of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Democrats presented themselves as the defenders of health care and Republicans painted themselves as the protectors of faith — specifically the nominee’s strong Catholic beliefs.
But on the subject of religion, the GOP senators appeared to have been girding themselves for Democratic attacks that never came, perhaps due to the larger political battle for Catholics and other religious voters in next month's general election.
Catholics have long been a pivotal swing vote in U.S. presidential contests, with a majority backing the winner, Republican or Democrat, almost every election. In a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday, 51 percent of white Catholics supported former Vice President Joe Biden, compared to 45 percent backing President Donald Trump.
The poll found only two Democrats performed as well with white Catholics in the last 44 years, and both were winners: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1996.
While Republicans have often taken stances supporting policies such as prayer in schools and the party is aligned with the anti-abortion movement, Biden has been outspoken about his own Catholic faith on the campaign trail. That might help him reach more moderate voters than other Democratic candidates, but he favors abortion rights.
His running mate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, DCalif., is a Baptist.
Biden said Monday of Barrett, “I don’t think there should be any questions about her faith.”
While Trump supports religious causes and reaps evangelical support, the president is far less public than Biden in his religious habits. He is Presbyterian, but associates with a range of religious groups. Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, is deeply religious.
And in a sense, the third member of the Trump ticket in the final countdown to Election Day is Barrett, a devout, practicing Catholic, an alumna of the University of Notre Dame and a law professor there.
If confirmed, Barrett will be one of six Catholics serving on the nine-member Supreme Court — a remakable majority considering there has been only one Catholic U.S. president, John F. Kennedy.
“There were moments in time in American history where there never would have even been considered — to have a Catholic candidate for president, to have a Catholic [Supreme Court] nominee,” said Jennifer
McLaughlin, instructor of history at Connecticut's Sacred Heart University. “That’s significant about the way the status of American Catholics have changed over time.”
Barrett’s faith has drawn particular attention after recent reporting on her ties to a charismatic Christian group called People of Praise in South Bend, Ind. The group espouses deeply conservative stances on the role of women in society and gave some of its female leaders, including Barrett, the title of “handmaid.” The group ditched that term due to the popularity of the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid's Tale,” set in a totalitarian state where women are enslaved as breeders for the ruling class.
“There were many groups that sprang up in the 1970s that were sort of intense groups — practicing faith, engaging lay people,” said Nancy Dallavalle, associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University. “Some of that terminology is outdated, as that group itself has recognized, so I don’t think we should do a lot of lurid speculation about a specific membership that she has.”
In the Senate Judiciary hearings, Republicans claimed Democrats viewed Barrett’s faith as a liability that would cloud her legal judgment. They reminded viewers of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's observation that the “dogma lives loudly within you” during Barrett’s 2017 confirmation
to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Republicans also brought up questions asked of another judicial nominee by Sens. Kamala Harris, DCalif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, about his involvement in the Knights of Columbus, and some of that Catholic group’s stances.
“This pattern and practice of religious bigotry — because that’s what it is, when you tell somebody they are too Catholic to be on the bench, when you say they will be a Catholic judge, not an American judge — that is bigotry,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. “The practice of bigotry from members of this committee must stop and I would expect that it be renounced.”
Under questioning from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Barrett stated that her religious views and personal convictions have not prevented her from completing her duties as a judge. “We knew that our faith would be caricatured,” she said, when she was nominated for the position. She repeated during the hearing that she affirms the right to life from conception to natural death, a position traditionally embraced by the Catholic Church.
Democrats did ask her about her anti-abortion views and how they intersected with her legal work, and attempted — largely without success — to get her to answer questions about Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that struck down state laws outlawing abortion.
But, walking a fine line, Democrats steered away from direct comments or questions about Barrett’s religious practices, instead focusing on the possibility that her confirmation could lead to the court’s conservative majority striking down the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions. That’s far more likely to place Barrett and her Republican supporters on the defensive.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who pressed Barrett on her past pro-life statements, clarified he was purely interested in her legal views and said, before diving in, “I detest and oppose any religious test.”