Amy Coney Barrett Is Not a Threat to Pluralism

P assing conversations and investments in relationships can go a long way. Our polarized, social-media culture fights against these incredibly human things, but we can fight back.

I was just in the Dallas area, taking an Uber to have lunch with a friend from Tyler. On the way back, somehow, I wound up talking about some of the most controversial topics with my Uber driver. Abortion came up early and often. But also, religion. (Don’t bring me to your holiday meals if you’re not supposed to talk about politics and religion. I’m a magnet for both.)

Turned out my driver was raised Catholic. But as is frequently the case, he had an experience that soured him not only on the Catholic Church but on all religion. He told me he meditates to decrease anxiety, but not on God, necessarily. I heard something similar from another driver in Chicago the week before, that young man born in Mexico, surrounded by religion. Now he believes in communing with the natural elements, and picking me up at a church is the closest he says he’s ever going to get to going into one.

On both Uber rides, we had lovely exchanges. During the latter, I remembered to offer a favorite prayer card, the Litany of Trust, written by a Sister of Life in New York. It’s all about trust in God, and I’ve been amazed by the people willing to take it — who at least say they are grateful for it. (One time, when I actually hailed an Uber I had previously been in, the driver remembered and showed me the card on his dashboard, telling me he prays it daily.)

I share all of this because, in political news, Catholicism is once again a lightning rod. In early December, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case involving a graphic and website designer in Colorado. A talented young woman wound up at the Supreme Court because her art is a creative expression, and so she doesn’t take all jobs. She creates messages about things including marriage, and she wants the right not to create websites for same-sex weddings, because of her religious beliefs. We’re a big country, and there are plenty of graphic and website designers who would celebrate such occasions in all rainbow majesty. Why force the Christian woman who holds a different view about marriage to do so — a view, by the way, that Barack Obama and Joe Biden held not all that long ago?

In advance of the December 6 oral arguments in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, there has been a bit of a campaign to insist that Justice Amy Coney Barrett recuse herself from the case. Why might she be unfit to be a decider? The reason put forth is that she is member of a Catholic community People of Praise. One of the blessings of Catholicism, particularly in recent decades, is that many flavors of orthodoxy have appeared. Whereas we once had religious missionaries leading the way, now lay groups of regular people come together in community to be supports to one another for living the faith in the world. It makes living the Beatitudes a little more plausible for a family, with parents living in the professional world and juggling all the challenges of children, whom they wish to raise for eternity, immersed in the culture.

There was one thread of commentary in particular during Barrett’s confirmation controversy that attacked the very idea that a person would ever submit herself to the spiritual advice of another. I actually got a certification a number of years ago in Ignatian spiritual direction at a school (The Cenacle of Our Lady of Divine Providence in Clearwater, Fla.) associated with the Franciscan University of Steubenville. The concept is rooted in traditions as old as Pentecost and the Acts of the Apostles in scripture. It’s nothing radically new, but it’s radical in a culture losing its moorings and increasingly suspicious of organized religion.

One of the beautiful things about a community such as People of Praise is that it is families freely choosing community. Some of the campaigns against Barrett, in the Colorado case and in general, are full of stories of adults who were raised in such communities and are unhappy that they had to be. I have no doubt some of the experiences involve people behaving badly, as all of us do to varying degrees — some gravely so. Others experience a conflict in their own feelings about themselves and the world. That’s no argument, however, to make a fairly traditional Judeo-Christian view anathema, but there are people who disagree.

All sorts of debates are going on today about the value and sustainability of pluralism. Some explicit, some more implicit, as in the Colorado case. Many of them thrive on caricatures about others, such as Amy Coney Barrett. In a sane world, Barrett would be the kind of woman we would to some degree universally celebrate. She’s a woman who, it would seem, has found a way to “have it all.” She has a beautiful family, even adopting, as the Bible mandates (for which she and her husband have also been attacked — her son and daughter are from Haiti, so the Barretts have been called colonizers), and she has achieved excellence in her professional life. And yet, in a culture that often hates the other, she is attacked for some of the most understandable and practical and virtuous things.

It may seem hokey, but be not afraid to have some conversations with people you don’t know and don’t agree with. One person at a time, we may see that differing opinions can be a beautiful way to understand ourselves, one another, and the world. We don’t have to always be enemies.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.

Editor’s note: The oral argument date has been corrected since posting.