Bishop Peter Smith, a member of a related association of priests, told CNA in 2018 that there is not anything unusual or out of the ordinary about the group, which is a "covenant community," mostly of laity.
"We're a lay movement in the Church," Smith explained. "There are plenty of these. We continue to try and live out life and our calling as Catholics, as baptized Christians, in this particular way, as other people do in other callings or ways that God may lead them into the Church."
Whether or not he selects Barrett, Trump's likely nomination of a Supreme Court Justice to replace Ginsburg has become a matter of serious political controversy, in an already fractious U.S. political and social context.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged Friday that a Trump Supreme Court nominee will be voted on for confirmation by the United States Senate, even while there are fewer than seven weeks until the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Democratic leaders have pushed back, and pointed to McConnell's refusal to consider Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in March 2016, seven months before that year's presidential contest. At the time, Republicans said that it would be more appropriate to wait until after the November election to fill the Court vacancy.
McConnell defended his decision Friday night, saying that "in the last midterm election before Justice Scalia's death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president's second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president's Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year."
"By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary, we will keep our promise," McConnell said.
Also reportedly on Trump's short list are is 11th Circuit Court judge Britt Grant, 6th Circuit Court Judges Amul Thapar and Joan Larsen, and 10th Circuit Judge Allison Eid.