From the very beginning of his tenure at the White House, questions about how President 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.
Brian Burch is president of CatholicVote.org