Biden promises to continue crusade against Catholics

Washington Examiner [Opinion] | July 10, 2020 12:46 PM


The Democratic Party’s crusade against Catholics suffered a setback when the Supreme Court ruled once again in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor on Wednesday. But have no fear; Joe Biden has promised to drag those nuns back to court if he becomes president.

Biden said that the Supreme Court was “attempting to carve out broad exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s commitment to giving all women free access to recommended contraception” and that if elected president, he “will restore the Obama-Biden policy that existed before the Hobby Lobby ruling.”

This is to say that Biden, who is ostensibly Catholic, views the First Amendment’s free exercise clause as a “carve-out” and that he would renew the near-10-year court battle against the Sisters if he were to beat President Trump in November. Biden said that this will be done through a third-party administrator, but as Charles Krauthammer once wrote, that is nothing but an “accounting trick that still forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions” to violate their moral doctrines.

This animus against Catholics and Catholicism is not a new development in the Democratic Party. In 2017, Sen. Dianne Feinstein attacked judicial nominee Amy Coney Barrett for her Catholic faith with the phrase, “The dogma lives loudly within you.” Feinstein then implied that Catholics shouldn’t sit on the nation’s courts, saying, “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”

Two years later, another Catholic nominee to the courts, Brian Buescher, came under fire from Sens. Mazie Hirono and Kamala Harris for the crime of being a member of the Knights of Columbus. The Knights, a Catholic social organization founded in 1882, are opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, and this prompted the senators to argue that Buescher could not be trusted on the court. Of course, the Knights are nothing special within the Catholic Church, deriving these positions from its teachings. By extension, neither Hirono nor Harris think Catholics should be judges at all.

Catholics are the boogeymen for the Democratic Party mostly because of the Church’s opposition to abortion. Hirono, Harris, and Feinstein want the courts to preserve and even expand abortion by judicial fiat, and so any devout Catholic must be prevented from serving in the judiciary. Biden wants a decadelong legal battle to force nuns to violate their faith to be dragged out even longer until they’re finally brought to heel.

The continued push against Catholics by the Democratic Party has been in place since Obamacare, which kick-started the legal crusade against the Sisters. Biden was vice president then, and as president, he promises to continue the persecution.