Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Chris Coons and John Paul II’s Theology of the Body

National Catholic Register, 22 October 2020

Coons’ grilling of Barrett over contraception employed a reverse theology of the body that contrasts radically with what JPII taught about the ‘language’ of conjugal self-giving.

The Senate Judiciary Committee vote on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett falls on the Oct. 22 feast of Pope St. John Paul II, who proposed his concept of the “feminine genius” as a counterpoint to anti-Christian feminism. 

Yet there was something else from John Paul simmering below the surface at the Barrett hearings — another one of his creative teachings, the theology of the body. It was given an explication not by Barrett, but by one of the Democratic senators opposed to her nomination, Sen. Chris Coons, who occupies the Delaware seat that Joe Biden held for 36 years. 

The theology of the body is about love and its bodily expression in both marital union and celibacy. It is not principally about contraception, but it is there that the theology of the body is most countercultural. Conjugal union is meant to express a union of persons, John Paul taught, and so it has “language” of its own, a language of “total self-gift.” The Supreme Court has taken a different view, one agreeable to Sen. Coons, and he follows the same logic to different ends.

It was curious that Coons would question Barrett about contraception and the 1965 Griswold decision that ruled unconstitutional a Connecticut law (passed by a Protestant-majority legislature) that regulated the use of contraceptives by married couples. The court struck down the law, ruling that it violated a constitutional “right to privacy,” which, though not written in the U.S. Constitution, was found by the majority to “emanate” from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments, creating a “penumbra” of rights that, though not enumerated, enjoy constitutional protection.

Barrett declined to give her view of Griswold. It was entirely unlikely that it would be challenged because, she noted, there were no laws today barring contraception and it was “shockingly unlikely” that there would be any. So why did Coons want to talk about a potential ban on contraception? By his line of questioning Coons clearly knows that there is a direct connection between contraception and abortion, as the theology of body teaches. Barrett knew what Coons was really getting at.

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