President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, is a devout Catholic. Obviously, that has no bearing on her fitness to join the court. The Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is a devout Catholic. Justice Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, as are four conservatives currently on the court: Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh. It is hard to make a case that Catholics, who make up roughly 23 percent of Americans, face discrimination when nominated to the high court (though Biden, if elected, would be only the second Catholic president in our history). Raised Catholic (and still a much-derided “cafeteria Catholic”), I’ve grown up sensitive to anti-Catholic prejudice.

The questions about Barrett’s religious beliefs are not that. They stem from her long membership in the small, charismatic South Bend, Ind.–based Christian sect People of Praise. Although it is open to all Christian denominations, an estimated 90 percent of its 1,800 members are Catholic, the Jesuit magazine America reported this week, adding,“The group also tends to skew conservative, at least politically,” In a 2018 interview with the South Bend Tribune, Barrett’s home paper, the group’s current “coordinator,” Craig Lent, confirmed that People of Praise opposes abortion, gay rights, and marriage equality, and believes that “men are leaders of their families, but that they should be ‘servant leaders,’ as Jesus Christ was.” Still, Lent insisted the group “stays out of politics,” the paper reported.