Stats Of The Week: Catholicis Ubique Sunt

Catholics, who make up just under a quarter of the U.S. population, enjoy outsized representation at the highest levels of law and government.

Today, Pope Francis continues the New York City leg of his U.S. tour. This current papal visit comes at time when Roman Catholicism is a longstanding mainstream and unremarkable feature of our national life (unlike, um, some other religions).

In fact, Catholics, who make up just under a quarter of the U.S. population, enjoy outsized representation at the highest levels of law and government. Even the most demented anti-Papist nightmares of Thomas Nash could not have foreseen a world where:

  • 31% of Congress are self-identified Catholics;
  • Biden is the first-ever Catholic VP;
  • 7 presidential candidates are self-identified Catholics;
  • As are 6 of 9 SCOTUS justices.

A few years back, Orin Kerr floated an interesting and plausible theory concerning the religious composition of the Supreme Court (hint: it’s an indirect consequence of Roe).

Finally, it must be noted that the religious makeup of SCOTUS has uncanny parallels to that of the ATL editorial team — i.e., mostly (at least nominally) Catholic, plus a Jewish minority. Can this be a coincidence? Almost certainly.

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