If anyone wants talking points about at least one of Trump's shortlist picks, Amy Coney Barrett, she calls herself Catholic but the subset/sect/denomination she belongs to, People of Praise, has been picked apart pretty thoroughly by one of its own founding (now-former) members, A.J. Reimer, who is her fellow faculty member at Notre Dame. The document is called Not Reliable Guides and some salient talking points, IMHO, are:
- The faith apparently involves the extensive use of lay counselors ("heads") who are not bound by the seal of the confessional/clerical privilege and to whom members are required to disclose a LOT of information--- so questions for Comey Barrett from Dem Senators could thus include whether she has ever had a conflict between the religious requirement to share everything with her "head" and the legal boundaries of privilege, i.e. whether she had ever disclosed or felt pressured to disclose sensitive/privileged material in order to follow the teachings of her faith
- The fact that, no, Senators who are querying her about her faith aren't just "picking on Catholics"; her particular breed of it, as the article I linked discusses, has some practices that are not only outside Church doctrine (possibly to the point of being heretical!) but, see point 1, may conflict with her professional responsibilities. In other words, please don't hide behind the Pope's skirts on this one. (On this note, I actually kind of applaud something else that she's apparently said, that Catholic jurists should recuse themselves from sentencing in some death penalty cases because of the Church's overall "right to life" stance, though apparently she's walked that one back since then, but I like the idea of jurists whose religious views contradict some aspect of Constitutional law being self-aware enough to remove themselves from those cases.) (Wish more of 'em would apply that to LGBTQ and reproductive rights!)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-07-04 01:41 am (UTC)- The faith apparently involves the extensive use of lay counselors ("heads") who are not bound by the seal of the confessional/clerical privilege and to whom members are required to disclose a LOT of information--- so questions for Comey Barrett from Dem Senators could thus include whether she has ever had a conflict between the religious requirement to share everything with her "head" and the legal boundaries of privilege, i.e. whether she had ever disclosed or felt pressured to disclose sensitive/privileged material in order to follow the teachings of her faith
- The fact that, no, Senators who are querying her about her faith aren't just "picking on Catholics"; her particular breed of it, as the article I linked discusses, has some practices that are not only outside Church doctrine (possibly to the point of being heretical!) but, see point 1, may conflict with her professional responsibilities. In other words, please don't hide behind the Pope's skirts on this one. (On this note, I actually kind of applaud something else that she's apparently said, that Catholic jurists should recuse themselves from sentencing in some death penalty cases because of the Church's overall "right to life" stance, though apparently she's walked that one back since then, but I like the idea of jurists whose religious views contradict some aspect of Constitutional law being self-aware enough to remove themselves from those cases.) (Wish more of 'em would apply that to LGBTQ and reproductive rights!)