Yesterday’s Rave touched upon a widely-shared attitude regarding politics and religion: that a candidate’s religion is a private, personal matter immune from inquiry. Journalists may probe every political, social or corporate membership the candidate has ever held, but his church affiliation is out of bounds, completely irrelevant to judging his fitness for office. It was a “canard” to suggest that JFK might be beholden to the Pope, and to this day any attempt to tie a Catholic office-seeker to the Vatican is condemned as anti-Catholic bigotry.

To be sure, a candidate might put aside his religious convictions in favor of his oath of office. But why should that be the presumption? Elected officials are routinely required to divest themselves of any corporate interest that might pose even an appearance of conflict of interest — the argument that they might place the public ahead of their finances is not given a second thought. And that’s only about money. A candidate’s religion reflects, presumably, his most sacred, deeply-held convictions about morality. Isn’t that exactly what the public is entitled to know?

The Pope recently decreed that no Catholic judge or lawyer should participate in a divorce proceeding. United States Supreme Court Justice Scalia similarly opined that a Catholic judge should resign rather than uphold a law that conflicts with mandatory Catholic teachings. Are we to regard these pronouncements from two of the world’s most powerful clerical and civil authorities as irrelevant to our consideration of a judicial candidate or appointee? It has become a tradition among candidates over past couple of decades to shed membership in any whites-only or men-only golf or other social club. Why shouldn’t they likewise be compelled to sever their ties with the mainstream misogynistic, homophobic orthodox Christian, Jewish and Islamic religious organizations or suffer the consequences?

Just yesterday, in a story no one will pay much attention to, a New York Catholic judge let an embezzling priest off the hook with probation, heralding the convict’s “great gift from God” and noting that “[t]he church really needs good priests.” A women who had been victimized by the same priest — she was fired after she exposed his theft and alleges that he sexually molested her — remarked after sentencing that “[t]he judge is a Catholic, and Catholics are supposed to show compassion for one another.” And a 1985 confidential report on priest abuse, prepared with the help of Cardinal Law at the urging of the nation’s top bishops, openly conceded the Church’s “dependence in the past on Roman Catholic judges and attorneys protecting the Diocese and clerics.” Irrelevant?