California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s remarks in interrogating judicial nominee Amy Barret, reproduced below:
Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that — you know, dogma and law are two different things. And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.
are clearly improper given the provision of Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution—”…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”. A proper question might have been “Would your religious beliefs prevent you from providing fair, honest, and just opinions in accordance withe the laws of the United States?”
The “no religious Test” prohibition is only enforceable against the executive branch. Congressional immunity protects the members of Congress from prosecution.
I think Sen. Feinstein’s remarks are just the latest example of open bigotry being expressed in the increasingly Marcusist strain of thought that’s become fashionable lately. But it’s nothing new. I’ve been exposed to anti-Catholic bigotry incidentally since I was a child. But it does look as though either bigotry were increasing in this country or it may just be more openly expressed.
In our church in the Midwest, evangelical, we were taught that Catholicism is a cult.
In this particular case, at least part of this stems from religious groups behaving like political entities. They want to organize their members and engage in politics, but yet they still want to claim religious freedoms. Many religious groups, with justifications, are seen more as political affiliations rather than religions.
Steve
Every religion is a cult except fundamentalist Baptists, and I have the literature to prove it!
Hmm. We need a neutral term for a framework of thought which is a counterpart to the “theory” of the sciences, and it used to be “dogma” but that’s become something that’s acquired an undertone of ignorance and viciousness in common language. So we ought to use the term carefully and sparingly.
Diane Feinstein didn’t and Diane Feinstein is old enough and probably sophisticated enough that she knew what she was saying. Perhaps it will win — or retain — some Democratic voters in California. I doubt it will provoke much interest among the 95% of the population that tries to ignore politics, and I’m quite certain it won’t shift any votes in the Senate. Maybe it nicely conveys the message “I don’t like you, lady” to the nominee. I’ve no idea what the payoff is for that.
Same time … It’d be nice, in this Age Of Donald Trump, politicians would be more plainly spoken. A convention has arose that legislators and unconfirmed judges should never discuss issues that might appear before such judges, and we can understand why the prohibition might have arisen without being terribly fond of it.
Clearly Feinstein would like to know Barrett’s views on abortion and how she might respond as a judge to various relayed issues (state legislators cutting off Planned Parenthood funding, for example) and very likely she fears Catholic Church opposition of abortion is going to affect the judge’s rulings. And very likely from her choice of words, the nuances she heard in Amy Barrett’s responses didn’t please Diane Feinstein. This isn’t quite the same as jumping up and down and screaming “I hate all you papists!”
Other hand, just how likely is it that the people who selected Amy Barrett as a potential judge intended to pick someone who agreed with Diane Feinstein’s views on abortion? Was their choice totally ignorant of such considerations? In this Age of Donald Trump?
Having read a bit more about this, I’ll note that Feinstein was questioning Barrett about a speculative article she had written as a grad student in 1998, asking what the ethical response of a judge might be to a statute that violated his religious beliefs. Barrett had suggested a judge could recuse himself.
This strikes me as a partial answer at best (what’s a judge’s moral response when the statute is a Nazi era law enacted with the deliberate intent of killing the innocent? ). What Feinstein’s objection was, I don’t know. But the issue of ultimate morality in opposition to conventional “duty” is not new in Western civilization, nor is it particularly Catholic. It goes back to Roman and to Periclean Athens and no doubt earlier. I don’t actually think this has an easy answer, or even a difficult answer. I think it’s something to be addressed anew whenever such issues arise — existentially, perhaps.
Which perhaps links my thinking to Feinstein’s slap at “dogma.” Other hand, I’m not going to demand that a woman in her late 40s explain and justify every thought expressed in a 20 year old article.
This does kind of suggest to me Feinstein was trying to spark a fight.