Community: Questions for the New Supreme Court Nominee

We are talking about Community and the common good. With the nomination of a new supreme court judge, some are being accused of “anti-catholicism” for posing questions about her religious beliefs.*  I think some questions are important:

1) Since you are a practicing Catholic, have you studied Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment (“Laudato Si“)?  What are your positions on environmental justice?  On climate change?  Are you as passionate about them as you are about opposing abortion?  Are you aware that climate change is currently killing more people (who are fully people) than are abortions killing fetuses?  It has killed 210,000 people in the US alone through coronavirus and thousands more in wildfires and hurricanes and has maimed tens of thousands more and drought and migrations to come will displace and kill millions more.

2) Have you studied Pope Francis’ statements on the “idolatry of money” that dominates so much of our economic system?  Where do you stand on that subject and on unbridled Wall Street power?  And on tax breaks for the very rich?  (Revelations on President Trump’s non-taxes being very relevant to the question.) 

3) Where do you stand on the long-standing teaching of the right for unions to organize that are embedded in papal documents dating all the way back to Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century? 

4) As for abortion, surely you know the distinction in Catholic philosophy between what makes good law and what makes good morality.  They are not always the same.  Since women are going to have abortions (and not all American women are Catholic, by the way), isn’t it preferable to make abortion as safe as possible than to make abortion go underground?  Roe vs. Wade does not demand that women have an abortion, does it? 

As a woman, do you believe it is preferable to turn decision-making about your body over to zealous male law-makers?  Why would you think that?

Are you aware that saint and doctor of the church, Thomas Aquinas, did not believe the fetus was human until very late in its development?  That only then did the fetus receive a “human soul” (it was first a vegetative soul and then an animal soul according to Aquinas.)  And NOTHING in contemporary science has bothered to disprove this teaching (since contemporary science rarely even uses the word “soul”).

5) Where do you stand on birth control?  Doesn’t it seem that the swelling of the human population has much to do with rendering other species extinct, who lose their habitats because of human expansion?  Is it wrong to render God’s creation extinct? 

6) Can you call yourself a serious Christian (or even a human being), and seek to end health care for many millions of Americans?  How would you look yourself in the mirror or dare go to church? 

7) Does your version of Christianity support separating children from parents and locking them up in cages?   (See Matthew 25.)  And hiring a white supremacist as an adviser inside the White House?  To be continued

A fuller version of this Public Letter can be found in https://www.tikkun.org/a-public-letter-to-supreme-court-nominee-amy-barrett}

*In E. J. Dionne has written a thoughtful article about the nominee’s religious background in response to right wing yelling about “anti-catholicism.”  Amy Coney Barrett and the GOP’s hypocrisy about religion

See Matthew Fox, Letters to Pope Francis;

Also see Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion.

Banner Image: Handshake sealing a partnership. Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash.

Queries for Contemplation

Meditate on the questions above.  What do they say to you?  What other questions would you pose to this supreme court nominee?

Recommended Reading

Letters to Pope Francis

Matthew Fox challenges the new Pope to live up to the promise of his namesake St. Francis and reshape a church that has been mired in corruption and bereft of authentic spirituality and rigorous theological debate. Former Dominican priest Matthew Fox presents a series of heartfelt letters to his brother in Christ about the great challenges facing the church today, drawing from the deep spiritual and theological sources that have been suppressed since Vatican II, and implores him to restore the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful) and reshape a church with justice and compassion.

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register