By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Journalist While speaking to an Italian-American law group in Philadelphia on Tuesday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he was frustrated with repeated comments in the press about the Court’s Roman Catholic majority. According to a report by The Associated Press (AP), Alito told his audience: "There has been so much talk lately about the number of Catholics serving on the Supreme Court. This is one of those questions that does not die." He went on to complain about "respectable people who have seriously raised the questions in serious publications about whether these individuals could be trusted to do their jobs." He said he thought the Constitution settled the question long ago with its guarantee of religious freedom. Alito, 59, is one of six justices on the nine-member court who were raised Catholic. The list includes Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and the newest member of the bench, Sonia Sotomayor. Because the Catholic Church has a definite position on issues such as abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage and the death penalty, some commentators have argued that Catholics in the court's conservative voting bloc may try to apply Catholic teaching to their rulings. However, Notre Dame law professor Richard W. Garnett told the AP that the religion of qualified justices would not determine their views of pending cases, but their experiences might shade it. "It's not the calling of a Catholic judge to enforce the teachings of the faith. It's the calling of a Catholic judge, as well as he or she can, to interpret and apply the laws of the political community," Garnett said. However, noting Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" comment, he added: "No one thinks the moral commitments of a judge are irrelevant. I don't think anybody can completely put aside who they are." Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said he believes the focus on the religious makeup of the court is really a ruse. "I think it comes down to one issue, it's abortion," he said. "The people who are complaining about Alito and Roberts are the same people who would have nine Nancy Pelosis on the Supreme Court who are pro-choice Catholics." © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com What is the proper role of a judge, and how do activist judges threaten American freedom? Read Phyllis Schlafly's The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, available in our bookstore http://womenofgrace.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=287