[Breitbart] The archbishop of Philadelphia has joined the chorus of those condemning the anti-Catholic harassment of U.S. district court nominee Brian C. Buescher by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.A Breitbart News reported, several Democrats assailed Mr. Buescher for his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic charitable organization, declaring that the organization holds "extreme" position on abortion and same-sex marriage.
"The sheer ignorance, not to mention injustice, in the senators’ describing the Knights as ’extreme’ would be baffling ‐ if it weren’t part of pattern of bigoted thinking already sanctified by other senators like Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in her vulgar 2017 grilling of now-Judge Amy Coney Barrett (’The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern’)," Archbishop Chaput (pictured) wrote in a column this week.
In their interrogation, the senators suggested that the Knights’ opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage could impair the candidate’s judgment and render him unfit for the post in the District of Nebraska. The questions asked by the senators seemed remarkably close to a religious litmus test, since the positions under examination are held and taught by the Catholic Church itself and are not unique to the Knights of Columbus.
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution forbids the government from considering a person’s faith when appraising fitness to hold federal office. This clause is part of the original Constitution and has been a bedrock principle since the founding of the Republic.
In his column, Archbishop Chaput cited a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by the Rev. Eugene Rivers, an African-American Pentecostal minister and a leader of the black Christian community, who decried the "anti-Catholic bigotry" shown by the Senators in their examination of Mr. Buescher.