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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, September 8, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput assessed Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s now infamous anti-faith insult to judicial nominee Amy Barrett with a skillfully delivered retort in his latest column.
Responding to Feinstein’s “dogma lives loudly in you” smear of the Catholic law professor, the Philadelphia archbishop turned the tables on Feinstein and pointed to the California senator’s fervent abortion support.
“The day’s signature line came from Democrat Dianne Feinstein,” Archbishop Chaput wrote. “The senator worried to Barrett that “dogma lives loudly in you” – this, from a person whose dogmatic decibel level on abortion ‘rights’ could break windows.”
Feinstein stood out in a repetitive grilling session Wednesday of Barrett, a Trump nominee for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Feinstein and other Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee were fixated in the confirmation hearing on the Catholic faith of Barrett, a distinguished law professor at the University of Notre Dame and the mother of seven.
Senate minority whip Dick Durbin took issue with Barrett’s use of the term “orthodox Catholic,” asserting it unfairly impugns certain Catholics who hold more liberal views.
“Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” Durbin pressed Barrett.
Durbin is a Catholic who supports abortion.
But Feinstein’s statement, though, struck as the anti-Catholic chord heard across the media.
“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”
The remark drew immediate criticism along with ridicule for its resemblance of a cryptic line from a Star Wars movie.
The concern for “big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years” Feinstein expressed presumably means so-called abortion “rights.”
She had similarly grilled Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch earlier this year, telling Gorsuch the Roe vs. Wade decision had “super precedent,” before she questioned him to determine if he agreed that was true.
Feinstein’s abortion advocacy has been evident throughout her time in Congress.
Her “dogma lives loudly in you” attempt to sully Barrett for her faith roused charges of violation of the constitutional prohibition of a religious litmus test for nominees to government posts.
Feinstein and Durbin “came perilously close to applying a religious test” to Barrett, Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement.
Donohue wrote open letters to Feinstein and Durbin, telling Feinstein, “No one was fooled by your question. Why didn’t you come right out and ask her if she takes her judicial cues from the Vatican? That would have been more honest.”
In Archbishop Chaput’s column titled “Sex, sanity, and beliefs that ‘live loudly’ within us,” he addressed the current culture war on Christian morals.
He said there was a methodical effort playing out to “recast biblical truths as a form of “hate,” to reshape public opinion away from those biblical truths, and to silence anyone who stays faithful to Christian teaching on matters of sexual behavior, sexual identity, family and marriage.”
“The message is simple,” Archbishop Chaput wrote. “Conform to the new herd dogmas or enjoy the consequences.”
He then noted how in the confirmation hearing “Senators repeatedly raised thinly veiled questions about Barrett’s suitability to serve linked to her Catholic faith,” before delivering the zinger assessment of Feinstein’s “dogmatic decibel level on abortion “rights.”
“Here’s the thought,” concluded Archbishop Chaput. “A great many faithful Christians still do let their convictions “live loudly” in their hearts and actions. It’s called witness. What it takes is a little courage. So maybe they — and all the rest of us who seek to follow Jesus Christ — should turn up the volume.”