(P)resident Joe Biden's Latest Judicial Nomination Shatters 'Devout Catholic' Narrative

From the very beginning of his tenure at the White House, questions about how resident Biden’s Catholic faith square with most of his policy and personnel choices have been met with the response: “the President is a devout Catholic.”

To paraphrase Inigo Montoya in the classic movie The Princess Bride: “You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Few personnel choices stand out for their record of hostility towards the Catholics more than Beth Robinson, Joe Biden’s nominee to be a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It is doubtful that any “devout Catholic” would be comfortable with Robinson’s views towards their faith.

Prior to her appointment to the Vermont Associate Supreme Court, Beth Robinson once represented the (now defunct) pro-abortion organization headed by Linda Paquette called Vermont Catholics for Choice. Ms. Robinson’s client sued a Catholic couple, the Bakers, who owned a printing company called Regal Art Press in St. Albans, Vermont for refusing to print the pro-abortion organization’s business cards. The printers said that they did not believe Catholics could be in favor of abortion.

In a legal brief supporting Ms. Paquette, future Judge Robinson referred to the Baker family’s pro-life beliefs as “invidious” and “pernicious.” A Vermont superior court correctly ruled against Linda Paquette and stated that forcing the Bakers to print the pro-abortion group’s materials would violate their First Amendment rights. The First Amendment gives special protections to people engaged in printing, as well as to people engaged in putting their faith into practice. In spite of this, Beth Robinson took Catholics for Choice’s case all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court.

In September of this year during a Senate committee hearing, Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) questioned Ms. Robinson about the case. She made it clear she took offense at the Baker’s refusal to print the materials because they didn’t think a Catholic could properly be called “pro-choice.”

The Bakers were right. The actual teachings of the Catholic faith embrace a consistent ethic of life from conception to natural death, and categorically condemn abortion as an act of violence against the most innocent and defenseless among us.

For Catholics, the Church’s guidance is principled, not partisan, and rightly takes into account that various political opinions can be compatible with faith and the natural law. With some issues, Catholics make prudential judgments by applying moral principles to specific policy issues and can come to differing conclusions about these issues. These include areas such as war, housing, health care, immigration, and others. But with certain other issues, there is far less room for disagreement. For Catholics, these foundational issues pertain to “intrinsic evils.” Among these are “issues that always involve doing evil, such as legalized abortion, the promotion of same-sex unions and ‘marriages,’ repression of religious liberty, as well as public policies permitting euthanasia, racial discrimination or destructive human embryonic stem cell research.”

Ms. Robinson attacked the Bakers because they adhere to Catholic teaching on non-negotiable issues – something actual “devout Catholics” must do. Such hostility towards a basic tenet of America’s founding, religious freedom, disqualifies her for the job of judge and is why the United States Senate should oppose the nomination of Beth Robinson. And it certainly would cause a lot less confusion if those who oppose Catholic teaching in areas where there’s no room for disagreement stop using terms like “Catholic” or “devout” to describe themselves.

There is something so evil about the arrogance of Pelosi and Biden gaining Catholic votes by their hypocritical and totally bogus states as devout. While basking in the glory of people casting ballots for them who promote and agree with killing babies by abortion.

National Catholic Register had this quote from Trump operative Brian Burch Nov.17, 2020
“The generic Catholic vote is somewhat irrelevant in the sense that … a large portion of the respondents to that exit polling are not practicing or don’t take the faith seriously at all. So in terms of its relevance to the Church, [among] those who are still practicing the faith, Trump won in a landslide yet again,” Burch said, adding that Trump got about 60% of the “practicing Catholic” vote.

Burch said, “Did Joe Biden make some progress? Marginally, if you trust these polls.”
//////////
Article said:
One exit poll showed Biden winning 51% of the Catholic vote, with 47% going to Trump, according to data published by The Washington Post. That would be a reversal of 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton among Catholics, 52% to 45%, according to one analysis of the data. However, a second exit poll for the 2020 election, taken by The Associated Press and Fox News, suggested a closer race for Catholics, with Trump at 50% and Biden with 49%.

Despite the discrepancies, both exit polls agree, once margins of error are taken into account, the Catholic vote was “a tie,” according to Mark Gray, a pollster at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

“Clearly, what we see in the national polls is marginal gains for Biden,” said John White, a political scientist at The Catholic University of America, who was one of the co-chairs of “Catholics for Biden.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.