A Catholic majority on the nine-member court would be a significant historical shift. Until 1988, there had been no more than two Catholic justices at once. And for most of the court's history, there was typically only a single Catholic.
"This would add a whole new meaning to the Catholic rite of confirmation," said Barbara A. Perry, a Supreme Court expert at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. "This would mean that the religion factor no longer matters."
The religious factor shouldn't matter. The secularists, however, shouldn't believe that religion won't influence how a person thinks, even though JFK implied that such a mental bifurcation is possible.
The "theological-political" problem goes back to the collapse of the Roman Empire and a single mantra--"Separation of church and state"--isn't going to resolve it. Indeed, all such simplistic efforts to address a delicate and complex problem are objectionable. As Theodore Dalrymple observes in The Mandarins and the Masses: Philosophical fundamentalism is as objectionable as theological fundamentalism.
