No ‘dogma’: Democrats walk tightrope on Barrett’s faith at hearings this week

WASHINGTON — “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

It’s that utterance from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s on the minds of Democrats and Republicans preparing for this coming week’s hearings with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein’s 2017 remarks as she questioned Barrett — then a nominee for an appeals court — about the influence of Barrett’s Catholic faith on her judicial views sparked bipartisan backlash, contributing to the former law professor’s quick rise as a conservative judicial star.

Three years later, Barrett is back before senators as President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The nomination poses a politically risky test for lawmakers as they try to probe Barrett’s views on issues of abortion, health care access and gay marriage without running afoul of the Constitution’s prohibition against a religious test for public officials.

“Her religion is immaterial,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, but it’s not out of bounds to question “the views themselves that she has articulated.”

At hearings that begin Monday, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he will focus on Barrett’s “public statements, on her judicial philosophy, on the ways in which her judicial views as publicly expressed leave me gravely concerned about how she might rule as a justice.”

Republicans are hoping that Democrats will overreach and alienate key voters just weeks before the Nov. 3 election. Democrats are determined to avoid the trap, recognizing the political danger as their presidential nominee, Joe Biden, himself a lifelong Catholic, courts voters of faith.

“God forbid a Democratic senator did go after this candidate on the grounds of her religious belief,” said Stephen Schneck, a national co-chairman of Catholics for Biden. “I think it would create a huge backlash that would certainly hurt the Biden campaign.”