someone smarter than me

Because the pope is an official head of state who has final authority over Roman Catholic doctrine, Roman Catholicism has faced a certain amount of (sometimes warranted, in my opinion) prejudice in Protestant or formerly Roman Catholic societies. The worry has been that people would have divided loyalty between two heads of state, since the Catholic church is literally universal.

While Catholicism was never banned in the US, it was generally mistrusted for the reason given above. In fact, Roman Catholicism was highly critical of liberal democracies up until the early to mid 20th century (not sure which encyclical addressed it or whether it had more to do with Vatican II), which of course contributed to prejudice against Catholics.

So we never had a Catholic president until Kennedy, and Kennedy felt the need in 1960 to give the famous speech in front of the Houston Ministerial Association in which he basically said that his religion didn't determine the decisions he would make. Unfortunately, the sentiments he expressed furthered the idea that the only legitimate way of separating church from state is to push religious concerns out of public life; or, basically to say that your religion should never influence your thoughts about political issues.

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There isn't a "supreme head" of Islam or Judaism

Sep 24, 2015, 2:49 PM

This is another example of why you can't just talk about "religion" in general without knowing the specific structure and theology of a particular religion. The organization of Roman Catholicism is such that it has one authority on doctrine in order to avoid having multiple doctrinal traditions with nobody to decide which one is right. The pope is also a head of state at the Vatican City. There isn't anything comparable to that among any other religion with comparable numbers. The closest thing would be the head of state of Israel or an Islamic state, since their government is technically tied into their religion (although, again, this is true in a different way for Islam than it is for Judaism). I believe the Dalai Lama has offered the opening prayer in Congress before, but again, his status is different from all of the other leaders.

I would say there's nothing wrong with using something he pope says as part of whatever argument you're offering some policy or another. The problem would be if somebody claimed that our country had to do such and such on the authority of the pope, or if we were inviting him here to decide some policy issue for us. In my view (and, I think, in view of the best interpretation of the constitution), there's nothing wrong with any particular religion influencing the political debate, as long as it isn't looked at as an uncontestable authority.

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Because that's not what separation of church and state means

People would lose their #### over that today though.***

Yes, things have markedly improved.***

Catholicism in America is kind of interesting

fair enough

There isn't a "supreme head" of Islam or Judaism

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thanks for the help

Essentially, you're asking ALL of us to post an answer.

Since I'm smarter than you, here's my answer

Re: someone smarter than me

The Vatican is a City-State. The Pope is a political leader

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