Catholic legislators all over the world will be watching with particular interest as President Trump’s latest nominee for the United States Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, progresses through the Senate approval process. Both she and the Democratic candidate in November’s presidential election, Joe Biden, are practising Catholics. Both therefore stand astride a fault line where the doctrines of their faith rub roughly against the requirements of the secular democratic process.

Both believe, in line with Catholic teaching, that abortion is wrong. But the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade in 1973, allows it in the first trimester. President Trump has presented Judge Barrett as one who, if the court revisited that decision, would be likely to vote to overturn it. He thinks her appointment cements a conservative majority on the court that will do his bidding. Much of the opposition to her nomination is based on the same dubious presumption.