Professor Massimo Faggiolo in Politico explains why it would not be religious bigotry to drag Judge Amy Coney Barrett over the coals as to her faith in her confirmation hearings:
I’m a Catholic scholar, I’ve written two books on the type of religious community that Barrett is a member of, and I don’t think it’s anti-Catholic to ask questions about Barrett’s religious beliefs. On the contrary, as the president nears a decision on her potential nomination later this week, I’m convinced they need to be front and center.
Such a request to examine the covenant may seem unseemly to some. After all, the Constitution says that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.” Catholics and scholars of Catholicism know how important this foundation of freedom is in the history of American Catholics; anti-Catholic bigotry is an old and ugly story in the United States.
But this is not a matter of anti-Catholicism or even liberal bias against conservative Catholics. Barrett’s nomination would raise an important new problem: Is there a tension between forthrightly serving as one of the final interpreters of the Constitution and swearing an oath to an organization that lacks transparency and visible structures of authority that are accountable to their members, to the Roman Catholic Church and to the wider public?
This is not a problem unique to the People of Praise. It is actually a typical feature of several new charismatic groups that arose in the late 1960s (after the Second Vatican Council), as a blend of Catholic traditions and Protestant Pentecostalism. Anthropologists, sociologists and theologians have documented not only the spiritual vitality and witness of such communities, but also their closed and secretive nature.
Even more troubling are the numerous first-person accounts of the ways in which some leaders and fellow members eroded and even destroyed their members’ spiritual and intellectual freedom. Former members of covenant communities have described top-down spiritual direction and control of members’ life decisions, including career choices and whom to marry. These reports are hard to confirm; the groups’ lack of transparency means it’s nearly impossible to know the rules that govern them—either because the foundational documents are not available to the public (in some cases, not even to Church authorities), or because the most important rules are unwritten and passed down orally from generation to generation, or a combination of these two cases.
Go here to read the rest. Note the verbal sleight of hand. This wouldn’t be questioning her religion but seeing whether she has divided loyalty. This is nauseating. This is the same charge that bigots have long used against Catholics, Jews and members other faiths. It is a fig leaf for attacking the religion of the nominee. The Founding Fathers put no religious test in the Constitution based upon their antipathy to established churches like the Anglican Church. No one was to suffer civil disenfranchisement in the Federal system due to their religious opinions. Leftism is an intolerant faith, and it is little surprise that Leftists like the Professor are ever eager to play Grand Inquisitor. Go here to read a good post by Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutters on this smear.
Beans also slanders. I’ve been around Pentecostals & Charismatics all my life. They are the opposite of secretive and top-down authoritarian.
They would not do this to a Muslim.
Not only don’t Catholics fly jumbo jets into tall buildings [and 19 years later get into Congress and try to do same covertly], many of them, including bishops and their liberal bureaucrats, subordinate/subvert Church Teachings to their liberal/statist mythologies.
Catholics need not apply.
I don’t know which is more striking: the dishonesty or the stupidity. Their insane lies and attacks on Kavanaugh didn’t work. Some say it helped Trump keep a majority in the Senate.
Fine. Lagoa it is then. And a career Vaticanista has no business lecturing anyone about transparency..
Speaking of transparency, authority and accountability.
Where’s the ÷!%@#! McCarrick Report!
Where?
Where!?
Say it!
Tell Me!
/prof turgeson rant mode
Is he confusing People of Praise with the Legion of Christ? I dare him to make the same demands about secret documents to a nominee who’s a Freemason.
If you bother to go to Politico, and scroll all the way down, you’ll find:
So as usual “Beans” is full of himself.
No one thinks Beans is as accomplished a “scholar” as he himself does. His idea of Church history begins in 1963.
” Sensing the dogma inside Massimo screams loudly of progressive liberalism .. and that concerns me.” He seems to want: Liberals first, Christians second.
Update: it’s so secret that Mr. I’m-An-Expert-In-Such-Weirdos somehow managed to miss that that the covenant has been on their webpage since January 2018.
https://peopleofpraise.org/news/?p=6232&fbclid=IwAR0ay9455MQZ6G58g5TUcXN7RFcmNvvvKawga-rBfF2XyUX440w4EhmliPI
I’ll show you my covenants if you show me yours. (And why is it that, whenever the Vatican lectures Americans, it tends to show that the lecturer knows rather less about this country than Jack Chick knew about Catholicism? )
“And why is it that, whenever the Vatican lectures Americans, it tends to show that the lecturer knows rather less about this country than Jack Chick knew about Catholicism?”
Great question, Southcoast. My first guess would be, that’s what happens when one gets their information about this country from the usual Leftcath sources—NCR, NPR, Amerika Magazine, HuffandpuffPost, etc. That’s if they bother to look at anything actually originating in this country at all.
I just read the covenant of the People of Praise to which Dale Price posted a link. There is nothing anti-Christian in it. In fact, Beans himself should want to be a member of such a community and take an oath of compliance with such a covenant. And it’s manifestly neither liberal nor conservative. It’s just Catholic. Heck, if these people were a bunch of sex-addled hippies making a covenant to live in a commune, smoke dope and have all kinds of sex with anything that moves, then Beans would be all over it in adoration and praise like stink on poop.
Rumor has it Barrett get’s the nod.
I know despair is a sin, but I do despair sometimes.
I despair when I see “Catholics” deploying the same bigotry against us as anti-Catholics use. I know “pro-choice Catholics” who are sooooo worried that Barrett will rule against Roe v. Wade.
I take it that the Left will attack the adoption of 2 kids from Haiti. Oh, yes, better if they had been destroyed in the womb!