Yet this Catholic feels intense apprehension that Catholic doctrine could shape (or disfigure) the freedom and future of millions of women and men. The court is surrounded by a corona of religious zeal, an ecclesiastical ethos that threatens to rock our entire country.
I come from a family that adheres to Catholic dictates about abortion, and I respect the opinions of my relatives. But it’s hard for me to see the church trying to control women’s sexuality after a shocking number of its own priests have sexually abused children and teenagers for decades and recycled them to other parishes, while the church covers up the entire scandal. stopped. It is also hard to see the church taking its anti-abortion stance in the context of caring for women if it continues to keep women in submissive roles in the church.
Religiosity is a topic that some Catholics at court have been more open about in recent years.
Last year, at Thomas Aquinas College in California, Judge Samuel Alito expressed concerns about growing cultural hostility toward Christianity and Catholicism. “There is a real movement to suppress the expression of everything that is against secular orthodoxy,” he said. What belief or practice of his religion does he feel denied?
President Biden is a Catholic who, despite his support for Roe, is uncomfortable with the issue of abortion. But when Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame, a group she belonged to unanimously denounced the university’s decision to honor Biden, even though he did not support the church’s stance on abortion.
We have no one in the public arena like Mario Cuomo, who respected the multiplicity of values in an open society and had the audacity to wade into Notre Dame’s lions’ den in 1984.
“The Catholic who holds political office in a pluralistic democracy — elected to serve Jews and Muslims, atheists and Protestants, as well as Catholics — bears a special responsibility,” Cuomo said. “He or she undertakes to help create the conditions under which everyone can live with a maximum of dignity and with a reasonable degree of freedom; where anyone who chooses can hold beliefs other than specifically Catholic – which sometimes contradict them; where the laws protect people’s right to divorce, to use contraception and even to choose abortion.”
The explosive nature of Alito’s draft opinion on Roe has shown how radical the majority in the court are, willing to make women fit their zealous worldview — a view most Americans reject. It has also shown how radical Republicans are; although they have been pushing for this result for decades, because it was a good political weapon, now they pretend it doesn’t matter. We will all have to live with the catastrophic consequences of their fanaticism.
