Sotomayor: Too Many Catholics, Jews, on the Supreme Court

[bhikkhu]

36. People are born into their religion

and again, if you think that "catholic" is a characteristic type of thinking that defines an individual, you don't know very many catholics. In the case of "Jew", that is used as either a racial or religious term, and defines an individual even less.

I was raised in a catholic family and went to catholic school myself for 8 years. A common joke is that the best atheists start out that way. Among my friends were catholic stoners, catholic athletes, catholic math whizzes, a catholic history professor, many catholic republicans, catholic democrats...etc, etc. The term defines nothing except a single circumstances of one's birth, which has little bearing on the character of that person later in life.

. I believe we need diversity on the court as well, but diversity of opinion and perspective is the critical thing. An erroneous and bigoted viewpoint would be that you can get that diversity by selecting according to gender, skin color, race, and what church a person was raised in. Really all of that is beside the point, its the mind that matters.