Commentary on the Discussion of Amy Coney Barrett's Religious Views and Their Pertinence to Her Supreme Court Nomination

Robert Ellsberg on Twitter, 27 September 2020 

Frank Cocozzelli, "A Catholic’s Case Against Amy Coney Barrett":

The issue with the Barrett nomination for me as a Catholic is quite simple: I choose to dissent from my Church on certain issues such as choice, birth control and embryonic stem cell research. Judge Barrett, on the other hand, follows a more orthodox approach to the Church. 

That is her right to do so. It is also the Church's right to set such doctrine. But what concerns me is that she may use the power of the federal government to impose her particular Catholicism, one that is clearly not in sync with most American Catholics, on me and those that share my faith who look to the government to shield me from the excesses of Church hardliners.

A number of my co-religionists, the ones who are anti-choice have a peculiar habit of looking at the issue of abortion only through the lens of orthodox Catholicism. What of a SCOTUS justice that sees abortion as "always immoral"? That sounds like someone that is primed and ready to substitute her Church's particular teaching on the matter as the only true religious position on the matter. 

Cameron Altaras's "Voice of the Residue": The Intergenerational Trauma of Growing up Female in a Patriarchal Religious Context

In the past, I have shared here some of the valuable work of Cameron Altaras, a scholar working to combat sexual violence based in patriarchal religious traditions. Cameron speaks from the experience of someone who has roots in the Amish-Mennonite tradition. I have shared her work here and here.

Now I'd like to share another statement by Cameron pointing to a new project on which she is working, and to a website she has set up to share material for the project, which is linked below. I hope readers of this blog may be interested in Cameron's work and her new site. Here's her essay:

Valuable Recent Commentary about Link Between White Supremacy and White Christianity in the U.S.

I'm sorry to have been away for so long. As I noted in a posting some weeks back, we have been dealing with health challenges, and we're hoping that a surgical procedure today will put them behind us.