Five Out of Nine

(Hat tip: Catholics in the Public Square)

From Ignatius Insight Scoop:

"Five out of our nine!" is what your high school civics teacher used to shout, sticking out the five fingers on his right hand and waiving it through the air. His point: it takes five out of nine Supreme Court justices to decide a matter one way or another.

If the newly nominated Judge Samuel Alito is confirmed, the U.S. Supreme Court will have “five out of nine” justices who are Catholics—Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Roberts. What does that say about the state of things?

Well, in one sense it says something we all already know. Socially and politically, Catholics have “arrived.” It isn’t simply, as it was in John Kennedy’s day, that a Catholic could get elected President of the United States. Catholics can actually be in the majority at the highest levels of what is perhaps America’s most powerful branch of government.

But what kind of Catholicism do the Catholics on the Supreme Court exemplify? We can’t be sure. And that’s part of the problem.

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My Comments:
Apart from the fact that it means that Catholics in America may have "arrived", the Catholicism of the current nominee and 4 of the current members of the Supreme Court mean about as much as Harriet Miers' much-touted Evangelicalism ... squat.