After President Trump nominated Federal Appeals Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanding Democrats to avoid attacking Barrett’s Catholic faith during the confirmation process.
Hawley specifically mentioned made by Senator Dianne Feinstein about Barrett’s faith during her nomination hearing in 2017 the US court of appeals for the seventh circuit.
Hawley wrote in the letter, “I call on you and every member of the Democratic caucus to publicly reject Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s egregious personal attacks on Judge Barrett’s Christian faith during her previous confirmation hearings and to pledge you will abstain from that kind of anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-faith vitriol in the hearings to come. You owe it to the country.”
“As you will recall,” he added, “Sen. Feinstein, the most senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told Judge Barrett in her previous hearings that ‘the dogma lives loudly within you,’ a clear and condescending disparagement of Judge Barrett’s Catholicism.”
The member of the Senate Judiciary Committee went on to call out other Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin and Mazie Hirono who made it a point to focus on Barrett’s religion during the hearings.
“Over and over these last four years, your caucus has sought to return to the days of ‘religious tests,’ to exclude people of faith from public office and from the public square,” Hawley continued in the letter. “Your members have attacked and attempted to disqualify nominees by questioning their views on the nature of sin, their beliefs about heaven and hell, their memberships in religious organizations, and the activities of their churches. But our Constitution bans religious tests. Democrats’ offensive and wholly inappropriate attacks must not be repeated in this confirmation process.”
Hawley went on to say that there has been “a long history of anti-Catholic hatred by some in this country” and “a growing tide of anti-religious animus on the left now.”
He said, “ I hope you and your colleagues will not play any further part in it.”
The Missouri Republican referred to such attacks as” disgusting” and said their ”religious bigotry” “has no place in the United States Senate.”
