The Dispatch: More from CWR...

The desperate and dystopian attacks on Amy Coney Barrett

The discrepancy between the fawning over Joe Biden’s Catholicism in the press and the alarm over Barrett’s is centered around one thing.

Amy Coney Barrett before the Senate Judiciary Committee Sept. 6, 2017. (Image: Twitter)

It is a sign of desperation anytime The Handmaid’s Tale is trotted out as invective. Predictably, this has been the lazy response to the possibility of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice—and likely will continue to be now that President Trump is expected to nominate Barrett this weekend.

A thought experiment. A conservative filmmaker makes a television show about a dystopian world in which women dress in sexy Black Panthers-chic uniforms (a la Beyonce, Superbowl 2016), greet one another with, “May the choice be with you,” give nightly homage to “Blessed Ruth,” and chant, “May she rest in power.” They have sex rituals with each other’s partners to insure they maintain their liberation, and then “shout their abortions” after their routine candlelit abortion ceremonies.

Now that we have this show we can just reference it to smear every woman from the left regardless of her intelligence, professional bona fides, and personal reputation. How magical!

The discrepancy between the fawning over Joe Biden’s Catholicism in the press and the alarm over Amy Coney Barrett’s is centered around one thing: abortion. Were she pro-choice none of this alarm would be raised. Her prayer group, People of Praise, does not dictate career and relationship choices, but rather offers individual spiritual direction which, for any Catholic serious about his faith, is a normal type of mentorship and accountability relationship within a context of full freedom. They also are radically dedicated to helping the poor, to service in general, and to praying for and with one another. How scary!

Were Biden in such a group it would be sold as a social justice dream organization in which he really gets his hands dirty and helps the least among us. But woe to her who extends the least among us to the actual least among us: a child in the womb.

They also used to use the term handmaid. “Mary is honored by millions as the first Christian and as a model believer,” states a post on the People of Praise site, “In keeping with this, the term handmaid originally honored a woman with an important relationship with God and a leadership role within our community.” The title, of course, comes from Mary’s words referring to herself as the ‘the handmaid of the Lord,’ (Lk. 1:38).

The term handmaid implies a conformity of our will to God’s. Their rejection of this term is not about recognizing who women ought to be; it is a rejection of who God is. People of Praise stopped using the word because rather than connoting an embodiment of love and service, it became a shorthand pejorative in the minds of the culture of a brainless, automaton slave woman. That we are so biblically illiterate as to let a book and television show distort a word that has had deep and rich significance for over two thousand years is sad, but not surprising.

Least surprising of all is that any of this is being disingenuously raised to discredit a woman who, from all personal and professional accounts, is a brilliant but humble, high-achieving and eminently qualified judicial nominee. She is also a mother of seven children, two of whom are adopted from Haiti, and one of whom has special needs. Her life exposes the lie that children are the enemy of success. But that lie cannot be exposed; the entire sexual revolution religion depends on it.

Should it come under scrutiny and under question women might start asking other questions: Who really benefits from removing sexual consequences? Why do we need to be so available for casual sex with men? How have we been manipulated into seeing this as our road to empowerment? Why is violence at the core of our movement? Why do we feel such sadness and anger as a result of this violence?

Those questions are not allowed to be asked. So the machine of the revolution will busy itself attempting to destroy a remarkable woman. And we will get on with our secular religion, speaking solemnly of our progressive saints “resting in power,” while we dismiss as cultish a religion which formed and shaped culture for 2,000 years. The wisdom of our fave dystopian TV show hath spoken. That’s not cultish or anything.


If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.


About Noelle Mering 4 Articles
Noelle Mering is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a scholar at The Institute of Human Ecology. She is the author of Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology (TAN Books, 2021). She is an editor for the website TheologyofHome.com and the coauthor of the Theology of Home book series.

12 Comments

    • “Pro-choice” ??!! “Pro-choice” ??!! What’s the choice ? Oh yeah, to kill or not to kill. Glad to have that choice. I reckon I might become pro-choice about rape.

  1. The “progressive” critics who resurrect a religious test for holding office are LIVING IN THE PAST:

    One of the earlier grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence was British passage of the QUEBEC ACT following their victory over the French in the French and Indian War. The Quebec Act extended to Catholics in Quebec freedom of religion and the right to hold public office. Many colonials were fearful of such equality for Catholics under the law.

    The Constitution (1789) fixed this attitude at the national level, but state-established (tax-supported) churches existed or even persisted in each of the colonies (all except Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania). These were DISESTABLISHED: Congregational (1818, 1819, the last in Massachusetts: 1833), and Anglican (1776, 1778, 1786).

    Of course, today in enlightened 2020, we now suffer under the de facto NATIONAL RELIGION of Secular Humanism, “established” (!) not by the Congress (prohibited by the First Amendment), but by a different branch of government, the United States Supreme Court, in its activist judicial rulings messing with vocabulary and much more: Roe v Wade (1973, downgrading “pregnancy”), Obergefell v Hodges (2015, redefining “marriage”), and Bostock v Clayton (2020, imposing “gender theory”).

    As a needed PRECEDENT for likely attacks against probable nominee Barrett, in colonial New York (1741), one John Ury, an Anglican priest, was hanged because he knew Latin. Not merely vocabulary, but a language! It was reasoned that if he knew Latin, he must be Catholic, and that was a capital offense.

  2. It’s ironic that being a handmaid of the Lord and mother of seven didn’t impede serving on a federal court or possible nomination to the Supreme Court.
    How many women protesting are serving in a similar capacity?
    A handmaid is a servant, which is what we all should be to one another. And civil servants additionally serve their nation’s interests.

  3. “The Desperate and Dystopian Attacks on Amy Coney Barrett”

    May I add one more adjective – completely predictable.

    “The discrepancy between the fawning over Joe Biden’s catholicism (small c) in the press and the alarm over Amy Coney Barrett’s is centered around one thing: abortion.”

    To the author goes the Captain Obvious award for this month.

    Next up will come the ‘throw the s… at the wall and see what sticks’ portion of the process, courtesy of the democrats.

    Their slogan – “been here done that.”

  4. Bishops,
    This is your chance to show the faithful where your loyalties really lie. If Judge Barrett is selected for supreme court justice will you respond quickly to the attacks on someone who follows true Church teaching or will you stand silently by while she is led like a sheep to the slaughter?

    • It’s getting more and more difficult for me to refer to these bishops in anything but derogatory and inflammatory language. They have been answering your question for 50 years. And in recent developments any prays who stands up in the pulpit and speaks plain Catholic truth is quickly apologized for and yanked. So I think we have our answer as to what the bishops are going to do or in this case not do.

  5. The real issue is the rapidly changing nature of the Dem. party. Starting with Roe vs Wade it slowing transtioned to pro abortion stance, using pro choive as a masquerade. From there is started to drop God out of the party. Now it is full blown atheistic and in particular anti Christain, with a real hatred for an observant Catholic.

  6. Joe Biden is not Catholic. Maybe he was baptized but that doesn’t make someone catholic. He doesn’t practice what Jesus taught.
    He has been in pro-choice position over the years. (He agreed to abort a baby for all 9 months of a pregnancy), in direct violation of bright red line catholic doctrine-
    Biden’s wife was still married when they got into a relationship.
    Mike pence is Catholic too!

  7. You really can’t play the Catholic victim card. Of the 12 justices who were Catholic while serving on the Court, six have been appointed since 1985. Of those, five are still on the Court today. There’s about to be six again, and you are victimized? You are in power.

  8. Beautifully done. Unfortunately, the world it recognizes is one in which only the already converted will give it a serious reading.

2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. The desperate and dystopian attacks on Amy Coney Barrett – On God's Payroll
  2. MONDAY EDITION – Big Pulpit

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*