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‘Simply Reprehensible’: Jewish Group Condemns Anti-Catholic Attacks Against Amy Coney Barrett

AP Photo/Alex Brandon
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
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By Tré Goins-Phillips
Editor

October 2, 2020

An Orthodox rabbinic group is condemning the anti-Catholic attacks against President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Barrett, who is Catholic, has faced myriad attacks from Democratic lawmakers and media outlets ever since 2017, when her objectivity was called into question by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said, “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.

The then-nominee for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals made clear she would never allow her personal convictions to infringe on her duties as a federal judge.

Perhaps the most grotesque attacks have come from those who have taken shots at the SCOTUS nominee for adopting two children from Haiti, one liberal professor accusing her of being a racist “colonizer” and a reporter negatively pointing out the Chicago judge’s “large” family.

On Friday, Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, chair of the rabbinic circle of the Coalition for Jewish Values, condemned such attacks against Barrett as “simply reprehensible.”

“Invasion into a person’s family choices, including adoption, is simply reprehensible, while questions about her religious views violate the separation of church and state required by the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “The fact that critics must resort to such bigoted lines of attack indicate that when it comes to the relevant issues, her credentials, experience, jurisprudence and expertise, there is nothing to criticize.”

The CJV also drew a comparison between Barrett and President John F. Kennedy, who in 1960 faced unfounded attacks over his own Catholic faith. He said at the time attacks on his personal religious beliefs could easily be deployed against “a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist.”

If Barrett was Jewish — as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was — attacks against her faith would be roundly condemned, argued Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, vice president of the CJV.

“If a person’s Jewish religious views were attacked in this fashion, we would immediately and correctly identify that as anti-Semitism,” he said, “and thus it is especially incumbent upon us to condemn it.”

In a Haaratz column published earlier this week, Jonathan S. Tobin, editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, said anti-Catholic attacks against Barrett “are dangerous for Jews.”

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