Thank you. Yes, I do see the concern, as I stated earlier. I do not however, see this as a reason to question Barrett’s capability to serve as a Supreme Court Justice to any greater degree than one would with any faithful Catholic.
Her academic opinions are public, whereas others are not.
It’s, in my opinion, concern trolling designed specifically to poison conservative opinion against a really solid conservative justice, and does in fact make that argument BASED ON HER CATHOLICISM.
I will admit that Zmirak muddied up his argument bigtime via his long excursions about Catholic-this vs Pope Francis-that. All rather irrelevant to his main point.
But his basic argument is that a SC justice is to make a finding, not on whether such-and-such a law is wise or imbecilic, virtuous or diabolical, but on whether it is Constitutional.
I would argue that finding that the death penalty is Constitutional, would in no way impugn her virtue or make her a formal or material cooperator in a given execution, or in all subsequent executions. If she thinks it does, one wonders whether she thinks her decision constitutes Eternal Moral Law rather than what it is and ought to be, flat dry jurisprudential textual exegesis.
For the record, if I in the SenateI would vote for Judge Barrett for the USCC. But Zmirak has raised a valid point.