It’s been two weeks since President Donald Trump officially nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Right on cue, Barrett’s Catholic faith and religious life became the focal point of news coverage, particularly by the secular press.

What has ensued is an exercise among journalists — particularly in elite newsrooms — to question Barrett’s fitness for the lifetime position, particularly because of her religious beliefs.

For many people in elite zip codes, this is life-and-death territory, since Barrett would give the Supreme Court a solid 6-3 conservative majority on some issues.

The nomination — taking place just weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election — has already triggered a nasty tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to hold a vote, leaving Democrats with very few options to halt it. In retaliation, Democrats have threatened to pack the Supreme Court with as many as 15 members (from the current nine) should Joe Biden win the race and his party gain a Senate majority in 2021.

Barrett, 48, currently serves on the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, a position she attained after being nominated to the bench by Trump. Barrett, who also teaches at Notre Dame Law School, was one of Trump’s finalists for the Supreme Court two years ago, but he instead went with Brett Kavanaugh.

As Election Day draws near in an atmosphere of near chaos, both the Trump and Biden campaigns have made appeals to communities of faith — particularly Catholic voters in the Rust Belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania — by highlighting issues they believe resonate with them. In Pennsylvania, Biden has seen his lead widen in recent weeks. It remains a key battleground state with a very large Catholic voting bloc that Trump needs to win.

Overall, Catholics, according to recent polling, favor Biden — but traditional Catholics do plan to join evangelicals and vote for the president. Trump’s pick will certainly serve as an overture to faith voters like evangelicals and a segment of white Catholics who tend to be politically conservative.

With religion so crucial to this campaign season, here are three things you need to know about Barrett’s faith:

This past week was quite the drama-filled battle of church vs. state fought out in, of all places, Louisville/

Here you had a mayor saying one thing, a governor saying another, the nation’s oldest Southern Baptist seminary weighing in and members of Congress jumping in with angry tweets and phone calls. And a federal judge jumped into the drama, as well.

The Louisville Courier-Journal did yeoman work — with one or two small holes — in covering this battle that began with an announcement on Good Friday that cops were going to be taking down license plates in church parking lots and plunking quarantine notices on car windshields.

But there was a ton of confusion as to who was in charge.

Louisville Metro Police officers will be writing down the license plate numbers of those who attend church services over Easter weekend, Mayor Greg Fischer said Friday.
Fischer has asked Louisvillians to forgo in-person gatherings, including drive-in services, to lessen the spread of the coronavirus. He said the license information would be given to the city's health department.
"If we allowed this in Louisville, we'd have hundreds of thousands of people driving around the city Sunday, and boy, the virus would just love that," Fischer said.

Really? Is that what Louisville is like on a typical Easter? (Also, note the phrase “including drive-in services.”)

This is where the reporter should have pointed out there’s never “hundreds of thousands” of locals driving about the city on a Sunday morning.

Dr. Sarah Moyer, the city's public health director, said knowing who was at gatherings, such as in-person church services, can help the department notify those who might have been exposed if an attendee later falls ill.
"If we have a case, we have a list of names of who needs to quarantine and isolate," she said. "And it'll just make our investigation go quicker, as well."

Kentucky’s governor issued a similar order Friday, saying in-person attendance at religious services was forbidden — but not drive-ins.

So you’ve got two standards being pushed here by public officials who didn’t check with each other first. That confusion lingered over the online firestorm that grew out of this conflict.