Cal Thomas - Faith and public service

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Commentator Cal Thomas now on fear and faith.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: What is it about faith that so scares secular progressives? They are OK with a politician or a judge who is Jewish, as was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They don’t mind Roman Catholics like Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As long as faith doesn’t interfere with their liberal agenda, progressives are all for it. You can worship a tree, as long as you favor abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, and the rest of the LGBTQ agenda.

I recall a talk show host some years ago commenting on a presidential candidate. He said, “What I like about him is that he doesn’t take his faith seriously.”

That attitude is truer today than it was then.

President Trump’s latest nominee for the supreme court, Amy Coney Barrett, is a practicing Roman Catholic who does take her faith seriously. Democrats are trying to smear her for this, especially her involvement in a group called People of Praise. It’s part of a Charismatic movement within the Catholic Church that dates back to the 1970s.

Amy Coney Barrett’s opponents want to paint the group as extremist, one that encourages the subjugation of women. They point to the group’s use of the term “handmaid” to refer to women in leadership roles. It was meant to be a reference to Jesus’ mother Mary as “the Lord’s handmaid.” But Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaids Tale, turned it into something sinister. People of Praise no longer uses the term.

Nevertheless, Judge Barrett’s critics have seized on the label to draw a connection between the group’s beliefs and the novel’s dystopian conclusion.

Peggy Noonan destroyed that argument in her recent Wall Street Journal column. She quoted Notre Dame law O. Carter Snead, who said Judge Barrett “appears to be failing at being submissive and a total disaster at being subjugated.”

I’ll say!

The Constitution specifically prohibits a religious test when considering someone for public office. But that doesn’t matter to the secular progressive agenda. Judge Barrett is faithful not only to God, but to the Constitution. Secular progressives are faithful to neither.

I’m Cal Thomas.

(Greg Nash/Pool via AP) Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trumps nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, meets with Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., not pictured, on Capitol Hill in Washington. 

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