opinion

Is it OK for Congress to target Catholic groups?

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There may be no membership organization with a more politically incorrect name than the Knights of Columbus. Calling its members “knights” is bad because it reminds us of Medieval Europe and all the awful things that were committed there in the name of the church.

But it’s also named for the man who discovered the Americas for Europe — the natives already knew it was there before Christopher Columbus steered the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria to what is now the Dominican Republic on Oct. 12, 1492 — and therefore conjures up all the horrors of colonialism that have caused the day to be renamed “Indigenous Peoples Day” in many jurisdictions.

But whatever we think about the horrors of the Crusades or whether Columbus did more harm than good, the Knights of Columbus (KofC) are not the advance guard of a new Spanish Inquisition. They are a Catholic service organization with 2 million members that has raised more than $1.5 billion for charities in the last decade.

In the United States, the organization dates back to the 19th century and spoke out in favor of religious freedom at a time when discrimination against Catholics was widespread. Its stands were staunchly pro-immigration, but also — reflecting the views of its members — strongly anti-Communist, as well as socially conservative. In other words, its positions are in keeping with the beliefs of the Catholic Church on marriage, contraception and abortion.

Most Americans may no longer agree with them on those issues, but it is one thing to advocate for gay marriage, free access to birth control and abortion, and quite another to label all those who disagree as unfit for public office because of their religious convictions.

Yet this is increasingly the case for some members of the United States, who have taken to treating membership in the KofC as a reason to disqualify candidates for the judiciary and other government posts.

That’s what happened recently when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) sought to grill Brian Buescher, a federal district court nominee from Nebraska, by submitting questions for the record that singled him out as a member of the KofC and labeled the group’s members as “extremists.”

Nor is this the first time that questions for a judicial nominee crossed the line into religious tests. At a September 2017 judicial confirmation hearing for Amy Comey Barrett, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the nominee that she was troubled by her religious beliefs because “the dogma lives loudly with in you, and that’s a concern.”

There are other examples of senators questioning Catholics or KofC members in this fashion in recent years, but a troubling aspect of this story is the relative silence of the organized Jewish world.

The point is that you don’t have to agree with the KofC or the Church. But no one who pretends to believe in religious freedom and the rights enumerated in the Constitution can stand by quietly while confirmation hearings are used to debate whether adherents of a mainstream faith — or any faith — should be allowed to hold office.

This is part of a “free speech for me but not for thee” attitude that is increasingly prevalent on the left. The American Civil Liberties Union that once prided itself for defending anyone’s right to free speech, even Nazis, now only defends people liberals agree with. Even Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan openly worried last year about whether political conservatives are “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

Imagine if senators quizzed Jewish nominees about their memberships in Jewish philanthropic groups like Community Relations Councils, federations or denominational groups like the Reform, Conservative or Orthodox synagogues because of the fact that some of them take stands on social issues. It wouldn’t take long for the Anti-Defamation League and every other Jewish group to blow a gasket.

Yet when Catholics face such questions, the same organizations are silent.

Members of the KofC might not seem like an oppressed minority, but if you deny them rights you wouldn’t withhold from others, then you are condoning bigotry.

This shouldn’t be a liberal or conservative issue any more than it should be considered a Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish one. We either believe in free speech and religious liberty for all in the United States, or we don’t.

If the latter is only true for faiths that share our social views, then freedom really is in peril.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.