CNN’s Chris Cuomo has said something really boneheaded.
Speaking to Senate Judiciary Committee member Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii who questioned Amy Coney Barrett during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Cuomo said of Barrett, “She does have an affiliation in a religious organization, which I think makes her different than most Catholics. I think that her faith is by design more central to her value system and her behavior and thoughts than it would be for just an ordinary Catholic who doesn’t belong to People of Praise.”
Take all the things about Barrett that the pundits, the press, and Democrats have been scrutinizing (her religious devotion, her personal views on abortion, her very large and interracial family, her obviously traditional values) and ascribe them a foundation. The opposition to abortion, the large family, the decision to adopt children — all of them are rooted in and encouraged by well-established Catholic moral teaching. In fact, as a Catholic, she’s bound to believe that abortion is wrong.
“Her faith is by design more central to her value system and her behavior and thoughts than it would be for just an ordinary Catholic” is quite a notion. Who is designing? What is an “ordinary Catholic,” anyway? Is he one who recites the creed and means it? Is he like Dr. Tom More of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins when he said, “I believe in God and the whole business, but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellow man hardly at all. Generally I do as I please”?
Or is he something else altogether? He’s probably something else altogether. Cuomo obviously thinks the ordinary Catholic differs significantly from Barrett. Is Joe Biden an ordinary Catholic?
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote in a September column, “What degrades religion to the level of political propaganda is conservative double-talk that it’s okay for them to criticize Biden’s brand of Catholicism, but not okay for liberals to challenge Barrett’s brand of Catholicism.” Perhaps — though conservatives who criticize “Biden’s brand of Catholicism” (which basically means Biden’s fidelity to the church with the exception of his support for abortion rights and even for taxpayer-funded abortion) use the admonitions of popes, bishops, and officials teachings opposing abortion as their basis.
Barrett critics challenge her on their own ground. Conservative and especially Catholic critics of Biden challenge him on the ground of his own church. The argument is completely different. Liberals say Barrett is too faithful. Conservatives argue that Biden is selectively so.
All this gets tricky because it starts to look like judgment and quick. There is, however, a critical distinction between judging a man’s behavior, as measured against a moral standard, and judging his soul. Lou Holz ventured too close to the latter in calling Biden a “Catholic in name only,” though it would seem that for Cuomo, the “ordinary Catholic” amounts to little more than that.
