Sotomayor would be sixth Catholic on Court

The current five, if you’re wondering, are all the conservatives — Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito. Breyer and Ginsburg are Jewish, Stevens is Protestant, and the retiring Souter is Episcopalian.

There’s been a trickle of reaction from talking heads today on the religion issue, and now here comes Catholic League President Bill Donohue with a statement:

“When John Roberts was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, left-wingers accused President Bush of ‘Playing the Catholic card.’ When Samuel Alito was selected by Bush, these same critics sounded the alarms over the prospect of a ‘majority’ of the Supreme Court justices being Catholic. One would think that the selection of yet another Catholic to sit on the high court would drive these folks right over the edge. But for some reason, Sotomayor’s Catholic credentials don’t seem to matter. Is that because she is seen as reliably liberal?

Let’s face it: left-wingers would gladly accept nine Supreme Court Catholics if they were reliably liberal before they would ever accept a diverse court that was reliably conservative. Ancestry, anatomy and religious affiliation have always been oversold: what trumps everything is ideology.

At this stage, at least, the Catholic League takes no position on the merits of Sonia Sotomayor to be on the Supreme Court.”

Donohue added “that having spent four years in the 1970s teaching in a Catholic elementary school in Spanish Harlem, I loved working with the Puerto Rican people. Indeed, I feel some of the pride that Puerto Ricans rightly feel today.”