No “religious test” for Supreme Court nominee

Kevin Eckstrom writes, in the RNS article of the week, that Catholic groups will be guarding against the use of Supreme Court nominee John Robert’s devout Catholicism to derail his nomination. Eckstrom notes that the debate over a public figure’s religiosity “has reopened questions of whether a nominee’s faith is fair game for inspection, and […]

Kevin Eckstrom writes, in the RNS article of the week, that Catholic groups will be guarding against the use of Supreme Court nominee John Robert’s devout Catholicism to derail his nomination. Eckstrom notes that the debate over a public figure’s religiosity “has reopened questions of whether a nominee’s faith is fair game for inspection, and resurrected age-old fears that some Catholics face an ideological ‘litmus test’ about their ability to divorce their public lives from their private faith.”

But as Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, notes: “If a senator opposes a person based on their position on abortion, and that person happens to be Catholic, to say that is ipso facto anti-Catholicism, that is utter nonsense.”

The RNS weekly e-newsletter has also now been posted.


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