Denver Newsroom, Oct 4, 2020 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court would make her, if confirmed, the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-person court.
While this is deeply concerning to some – and a reason to celebrate for others – both canon and civil lawyers told CNA that the Catholic legal tradition has much to offer the United States.
The Catholic Church has already contributed much to the United States’ legal system – including “the whole idea of law in general,” Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, told CNA.
Fr. Pietrzyk practiced corporate and securities law in a large Chicago law firm before joining religious life, and he currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation. He is also a canon lawyer and professor at St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in Menlo Park, California.
“It’s the development of canon law (the law that governs the Church) that gives both the United States and Europe their modern notions of law,” he said.
While aspects of canon law were present since the early days of the Church, the use of the term ‘canon law’, as rules and laws governing ecclesial matters rather than civil ones, started around the 12th century, according to New Advent. While the code of canon law has been updated numerous times, it is the longest still-functioning rule of law in the West.
“Even the idea of a professional legal class, that is of lawyers, finds its root in the professionalization of law and the development of the Church’s canon law, in the 12th century. Just the fact that there is a legal profession is something that is owed to the Church,” Pietrzyk said.
More generally, he added, the Catholic tradition has always understood that faith and reason work together. They are, as Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Stephen Payne, dean of the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, said it is this emphasis of reason in the Catholic tradition that makes Catholics good lawyers and judges.
“God is the creator of reason and law is an important field in which human beings seek to apply reason for the common good,” he said.
“It’s that commitment to reason that is an especially important contribution Catholic judges and lawyers…can make in today’s environment, in which many people on both sides of the political spectrum seem to prefer to decide important questions by sheer force of power guided by appetite, or emotional sentiment, through a process that involves attacking other people and attempting to undermine their God-given dignity,” Payne added.
Pietryzk said that the Catholic Church has also always strongly prized education, because of its understanding of how faith and reason work together.
“Education is something that’s very important, particularly the United States. When a new group would come from whatever country to America as Catholics, they built the church and built the school, usually together,” he said.
There are many aspects of the U.S. law and the legal process that also find their roots in canon law, Pietrzyk said, such as the idea in corporate law that entities sometimes have rights like persons would, or the idea of due process.
“People condemn the Inquisition, but the Inquisition was a step above the civil courts because there was real, procedural due process with the Inquisition that just didn’t exist in secular law,” he said.
Payne said he sees a Catholic influence in U.S. law with respect to some issues of social justice, especially as they are treated in Pope Leo XII’s encyclical, “Rerum Novarum” and other works by the three most recent popes.
Their writings on social justice have had “a significant influence on how many people, at least in our country, think about social justice, especially in such arenas as helping the poor, healthcare, immigration, abortion, end of life, workers’ rights, the death penalty, and so on,” he said.
Payne added that the U.S. legal system also includes ideas that come from natural law, a concept emphasized in the Catholic tradition that has roots in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and even further back to Aristotle.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, natural law is “present in the heart of each man and established by reason….It expresses the dignity of the human person and forms the basis of his fundamental rights and duties.”
“Our break with King George III was justified on natural law grounds, and many of our constitutional rights and much of our common law was founded in and flows from natural law and natural rights,” Payne said.
Furthermore, Payne said, “the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching have a great deal to say about the common good and the dignity of the human person. And a significant part of that focuses on the natural law, and how seeking the common good enables individual human beings to flourish in community.”
In a way, Pietrzyk said, the Catholic understanding of human dignity is reflected “in the Declaration of Independence. ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and they’re endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.’”
“This is a very Christian idea,” he said. “As much as we talk about the common good, there’s still a reality to the individual value and the dignity of the person and that the person has rights. Not simply because he’s a citizen of a particular country, but simply because he’s human and that human nature itself, whether born or unborn, endows that person with rights. Modern progressivism in some ways assumes that without understanding it.”
Modern progressivism “collapses” as a philosophy, Pietrzyk said, because it lacks “a coherent sense of a human person. It’s really just this sort of naked kind of freedom, or I would say autonomy.”
Conor Dugan is a Catholic attorney who practices in Michigan. He said the conflict between the Catholic understanding of the human person and the modern progressive understanding of the individual is due to the U.S. founding fathers, who mostly held Enlightenment principles and ideas, such as those from English philosopher John Locke.
The American legal system takes a Lockean view of people as individuals with rights, “which doesn’t necessarily nestle the person in a community,” Dugan told CNA.
On the other hand, Catholics understand the human person as someone who is always in relationship – to God, to others, to himself – and therefore while a person has rights, he also has responsibilities, Dugan said.
“It’s almost like the individual becomes atomized” in the U.S. legal system, he said, and “an individual who is cut off from all those things just has a packet of rights and no responsibility.”
Pietrzyk said an example of this Lockean understanding of the individual can be seen in U.S. law under the 2015 Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
That decision demonstrated “a strong belief in an individual’s rights to marry whomever he wants, regardless of the nature of the institution or the nature of the person. It’s this raw exercise of will, but disconnected from any reality or any nature or anything like that,” he said. “It has no rational core to it.”
The concept of the common good, while mentioned in passing by some U.S. lawmakers, is another area where Catholic lawyers and judges may be able to have an impact, Dugan noted.
“I wonder if that’s something that Catholics can do, is try to bring about a deeper understanding of the common good,” he said.
“None of the Constitution makes sense, unless we have (human dignity and the common good) as a background assumption. And maybe we should make it more explicit at times so that people understand that that’s what the law is for – it’s to protect and to foster the common good, and to protect and ensure the dignity of human persons.”
Pietrzyk noted that it is law that makes a common good possible.
“Pope Francis has talked about this…the importance of the common good, which law helps to preserve. We don’t define our individual good over and against the common good as if the two are in opposition to each other, but our individual good is able to flourish…is only able to reach its fullness with the common good, and that includes the law,” he said.
“We as human beings cannot flourish outside of a society with the common good. And we cannot flourish outside of society that does not have law. It’s law that makes freedom possible. It’s law that makes liberty possible. And it’s precisely within the Church’s legal tradition, that the charismatic side, that is the side of grace, can really flourish.”
Because the United States was not founded explicitly on Catholic principles, Dugan said it makes sense that Catholic lawyers and judges would feel a tension between their religious beliefs and the law of the land.
“I think Catholics in America, and especially Catholic lawyers should feel a tension at times between their faith and the law,” he said.
“And that that’s not necessarily a bad tension. It can help us to offer the contribution [of the Catholic legal tradition] to the world. Because I think we can fill out and make more robust, the good things that are there in the American Constitution, or we can help [them] serve and fulfill their promise,” he said.
Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholicism has been a point of criticism since her 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nomination hearing in 2017, when she was accused of “the dogma living loudly” within her, to recent articles debating – and debunking – whether People of Praise, the charismatic movement to which Barrett belongs, was the inspiration behind the dystopian novel and T.V. series, The Handmaid’s Tale.
Payne said he was not sure why there has been such a sharp focus on Barrett’s religious convictions as a possible problem, since everyone in the field of law brings their own personal views or values to the table.
“I’m not sure why, from an objective point of view, there should be such a focus on the religious commitments of the candidates, especially in a country whose constitution is so clear about the human value of religious liberty,” Payne said.
“Belief in God is well supported by reason, though many in our culture think it’s contradicted by it. In any event, many people who are not religious hold the values they do have very securely and apply them to important decisions in their lives and in their work.”
Pietryzk said that rather than recusing themselves from pertinent cases, it should be the role of Catholic judges or lawyers to bring their understanding of the human person and the common good into their work.
“As Catholics, we understand that human beings are created with a nature, created by God with a nature,” he said. “And discerning what the proper rules are for human beings given that nature is historically part of the work of judges.”
He added that while he does not know Barrett personally, they have many friends in common.
“I do know lots of people who know her and every good thing you hear about her reputation, I’ve heard for a long time,” he said. “She is just an extraordinary woman by everybody’s account.”
Dugan, a former student of Barrett’s, said he thinks that as Catholics and as Americans, “we’ve hit the jackpot” with her nomination to the Supreme Court.
“It’s hard for me to imagine anyone having a negative thing to say about her,” he said.
“I went back and looked at some emails we exchanged over the years, giving me career and family advice, how to navigate the tensions of a busy practice with family and things like that…I just think we’ve gotten a real gift in this nomination. I hope she’s confirmed.”
[…]
Pffft…Clearly, “Catholic” Bob Ferguson never heard the story of St. John Nepmoucene.
Clearly.
Ferguson is NOT a Catholic. By approving this law from a position of authority, he is now an apostate, a traitor to the Faith. Disgusting. And REAL Catholics know that a priest will NEVER break the seal of the confessional. No matter what the crazed leftist nut jobs on the West Coast pretend to vote into law.
The left, hard at work again to prove they are more commie than the communists themselves in trying to destroy faith and religion in the US.
Ferguson is NOT a Catholic. By approving this law from a position of authority, he is now an apostate, a traitor to the Faith. Disgusting. As are the Catholics who voted for him. REAL Catholics know that a priest will NEVER break the seal of the confessional, no matter what the crazed leftist nut jobs on the West Coast pretend to vote into law. If people are ill-informed enough to vote Dems back into power over the next several years, this is an example of the very sick agenda we can expect them to continue pushing onto the American people. Add this piece of legislative idiocy to the same leftist basket pushing men into womens sports and locker rooms, trans surgery for minors and open borders.
He is “not a Catholic” when the Church says “he is not a Catholic “ . Do you go in and out between every confession? Are you no longer Catholic if you are still in grave mortal sin? Isn’t it the prerogative of the Magisterium to make such pronouncements iabout public figures? Many also made Such pronouncements about the late Pope. Are they not being Protestants?
Magisterium
Surely you know that certain actions result in self excommunication. I would think allowing passage of a law to undermine the sacraments would qualify. Some high churchmen cant see sin right in front of their nose. Thats how biden made hay with his supposed devout Catholicism.
Catholic Ferguson was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world (Wikipedia).
Indeed, ahead of his time. The new progressive Catholic who will reshape the Church to fit into its appropriate place in our world. An offshoot of the Biden, Pelosi, Durbin mindset. Although Ferguson is so advanced that even Cdl McElroy would condemn him on this matter. Apparently he’s well versed in the faith but obviously places his intellectual acumen above doctrine. All the more reason why the Church requires a saintly Roman pontiff with intellect to sufficiently address the challenges facing Catholic doctrine.
If I’m not mistaken, Donald Trump was also on that list! Birds of a feather?
TDS can be treated.
Did Ferguson consult a canon lawyer to see if signing such a bill, which attempts to undermine a sacrament, is grounds for excommunication? Is he ignorant enough to think that Catholic priests will comply with an unjust law?
One of the ways of sharing in another’s sin is “By command. Or, in other words, don’t force someone to do something sinful.”
So he certainly should qualify for the same penalty as the one that applies to a priest who breaks the seal of the confessional.
Right on.
This is a cock-eyed bill. What penitent would testify against a priest that he confessed abuse in confession? He would thereby incriminate himself. In the end, it would be a priest’s word against an abuser’s word.
That said, this law will likely cost the church a pretty penny, fighting and defending anyone charged through its enactment.
I live in Washington state. It has been my perception that in the Archdiocese of Seattle, there was not much rallying against the bill. There was more some seven or so years ago when the state legislature attempted to pass a similar bill and failed.
This time, private or ecumenical church-affiliated human rights grassroots groups did most of the heavy lifting against passage of the current law, to no avail. The fact that the institutional church seemed not too involved speaks to its complacency and failed zeal. It is perhaps preoccupied with consolidating parishes into families with the next step to determining feasibility–which properties and facilities are best de-sacralized and sold. That’s what’s happenin’.
For sure, this case will end in the Supreme Court. It infringes upon the free exercise of religion.
Sadly, in a worst case scenario, the Stalinist/gestapo/KGB state enforcers could send in “ringers” to the confessional, make a bogus confession, and then wait to see if the priest reports it in. If this bill is not suppression of religious freedom, I dont know what is. I think any Catholic who voted for the reps who approved this bill should be pronounced excommunicated immediately.
I would say now that priests will be in fear the law, as a recording can now be made of a confession by any number of small electronic devices, and a “reconciliation room” rather than blind traditional confessional particularly vulnerable since both parties can not help but be able to accurately describe one another.
As for who might do such a thing, a molester is already a twisted individual, and a recorded but unreported confession of molestation then leaves the priest vulnerable to manipulation/extorsion, and likewise vulnerable to any attempt by activist media who could make the rounds of confessionals with false confessions and then post “shocking exposés” on lack of compliance with the law.
These law attempts are clearly unconstitutional state attempts to regulate religious practices, and are bad juju for too many reasons to list. Hopefully, this will now make its way up to the Supreme Court. As without it being struck down, there is nothing to prevent the state from requiring recordings of all confessions, which would destroy anyone going at all, same as this law will stop molesters from confessing their sins.
This act could be a blessing in disguise. If the sacrament were to return to priest and penitent both shrouded behind a veiled screen, the priest could not know and could not certify the identity of anyone who confessed anything to him.
You mean to say that all confessions are not done behind the screen? How backwardist is that? Do those same people receive Holy Communion in the hand while standing as well?
Yes.
Very.
Yes.
😀
Actually, it’s what the late Pope would call “forwardist.”
I was thinking along the same lines. If X confessed behind the screen and the priest had no idea who he (or she — such things do happen) was, what’s the priest supposed to do? Go to the police and say, “Someone confessed to abusing a child.”
Police: Who?
Priest: I don’t know.
Police: Name of victim.
Priest: I don’t know.
Police: Where?
Priest: I don’t know.
Police: When?
Priest: I don’t know.
It might read like something from a Monty Python skit, except it’s not funny. Do people who craft such legislation even know how Confession works?
If I were a priest, I would go to prison before I would violate the seal of the Confessional!
Not to sound snarky, Karen, but if you were a Priest you would have NO CHOICE. To violate the seal of the confessional is to incur instant excommunication and your soul is in a state of mortal sin.
Any governor who calls himself a ‘catholic’ (small c) and who signs legislation like this has also excommunicated himself by an action like this, and if Bishop Daly doesn’t do the honors – ASAP – then he too is in serious (spiritual) doo-doo.
Are we to assume that perverts have such tender consciences that they will run to the confessional to seek forgiveness? Are there any cases of priests shielding confessed child abusers and freeing them to go on and on with their abuse? And how is the government going to discover what anyone confesses? Will the sinner blab to the police what he confessed? Surely the priest will not.
This law is an excuse for the government to intrude on the sacred, and an attempt to bully and intimidate the Church.
In a world where the price of truth is too often bartered in the marketplace of influence, we must all tread carefully among those who wield power — be they politicians, educators, or merchants of ideologies. Authority, when stripped of virtue, becomes an empty vessel, and titles, when proclaimed without deeds, ring hollow. If one professes to be Catholic, we should all learn to ignore the mere label affixed in conversation, “I am Catholic”. Instead, we need to evaluate each individual on the degree of light radiating through action — a faith lived, not merely spoken.
As an aside, I think this lens of seeking for Light should be used to evaluate all individuals; not to condemn, but to identify those that inspire and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to lead.
What’s disappointing is that Seattle archbishop Etienne has been relatively silent on this, whereas he was very vocal on his disdain for deportation of illegal immigrants (the three Washington bishops issued a joint statement that was read in all the parishes). He was also the first bishop to voluntarily close down parishes for covid. This mentality is rife in this diocese and Seattle Catholic schools are not helping tomorrow’s generation. Ferguson is a graduate of Bishop Blanchet H.S. so of course everyone thinks he’s adequately formed in the faith. Especially himself.
Any public comment yet from the apostolic successors in the Yakima or Seattle dioceses?
Spokane’s bishop did alert his diocesan parishioners to oppose the bill. I have not seen or heard Seattle’s archbishop say anything….the Heal Our Church group has been publicly calling for the archbishop to meet with them; he may have done so, and he may have urged parishioners to oppose the bill, but I have neither seen nor heard any such reports. I typically read bulletins and newsletters from three different Seattle parishes, and I have seen nothing in any of these in 2025. I do not read the diocesan newspaper, so perhaps there was something there….
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/262023/spokane-bishop-urges-voters-to-oppose-bill-that-forces-priests-to-break-seal-of-confession
This has the same likelihood of succeeding as seeing women priests in the future. They might as well sign in a law to do that too. Meaningless.
Kathleen. I admit that I am confused by your comparison of women priests and the proposed Washington state civil “law” on confessions. The Church has full control by suppressing gender specific prelates. I don’t struggle with the confession secrecy, but I object the not offering half of God’s creation and the heavy lifters’ Holy Orders.
Well, fortunately for all of us, Morgand,your objections, like your progressive ideology, are irrelevant to the discussion.
Here’s MorganD being patronizing again.
No, MorganB, the Church has absolutely no authority to ordain priestesses. It has never had the authority and never will. Our Lord did not will it or He would have made provision for it. And, please, spare us any “Oh, but it would just have been too much against the culture of the times and that’s why He didn’t!” drivel. Informing one’s followers that one is God the Son and that in order to have eternal life they must eat One’s flesh and drink One’s blood isn’t exactly in keeping with the culture of the times, either, and yet He did it. And many of his followers said what a hard teaching that was, and left him. Just as so many deeluded people now leave the Church because it doesn’t fit in with their particular culture of moronic feminism and mindless support of abortion.
God gave equal opportunity for salvation to men and women. Surprisingly, God, in His superior knowledge and will to morganD, created them in a manner to assume different burdens in life, even defining some specifics. Believing women are necessarily of greater burden than men is juvenile obsequious pandering, inherently insulting to women.
I, along with many others I’m certain, am eagerly awaiting seeing a Priest in handcuffs – which he should INSIST ON, on the evening news because he refuses to violate the seal of the confessional.
From there it will be quickly picked up by Newsmax, Fox News, MSNBC, and, I’m certain, those worthies on The View will be eager to share their wisdom on the subject with us – the gum-chewing public.
To quote Sonny & Cher – The Beat Goes On.
We could use a few martyrs these days. Persecution unites the faithful. Apathy & complacency have brought us to the low point we’re at currently.
Want to sign up to be one? Perhaps on some other issue?
A Catholic Reform Group called Heal Our Church gave testimony in the Wa. State Senate hearing, supporting the bill. Another member who testified in support of the bill was a priest, retired, from the Diocese of Milwaukee, who has publicly supported the breaking of the confessional seal in cases of abuse. Fr. James Connell was stripped by his archbishop of his faculty to absolve and hear confession in the RCC. You can find more info online about misguided Washington Catholics supporting this bill and subverting Catholic teaching, healing, reconciliation.
Members of the Heal Our Church group are about as Catholic as the Roman Catholic “Womenpriests” fringe group of radical leftist women attempting to seek “ordination”.
I am wondering how a confession can even be licit, if one’s Penance does not require that one makes restitution to the injured party when a criminal crime has been committed?
What, pray tell, is a “criminal crime”? That is, as distinct from a non-criminal crime, for instance.
Ferguson appears to be yet another ape in the ape of the church about which Fulton Sheen warned us.
There are a few hundred total priests in Washington State. It is very difficult to get a law passed. Note the maniacal focus on a few people. This is not a shot over the bow for Catholics. This a shot into the bow.
Wake up!
For the record, on May 4 Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle was quick to make a response (after testifying earlier). Part of which reads:
“Once the state asserts the right to dictate religious practices and coerce information obtained within this sacrament – privileged communication – where is the line drawn between Church and state? What else may the state now demand the right to know? Which other religious practices will it try to legislate? Why is this privileged communication between priest/penitent the only one singled out? Why not attorney/client? Doctor/patient? Spouses?”
There are laws that make exceptions to doctor/patient and attorney/client privilege. One issue here with Sacramental Confession is that it is not a civil matter but a soul matter. Those who have committed serious crimes, be they child abuse or murder or ? arson or …. and who may be legitimately struggling with remorse and fear will now be afraid to tell any priest to save his soul. A question I have for priests is what would you say to a penitent who confesses such crimes but has avoided civil responsibility for his crimes. A good priest may be the right person to guide such a sinner to true repentance and turn him/her self into the civil authorities to make restitution and accept his penance from the state as best can be so that he can be spiritually absolved from his sins.