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.
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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.