Many people concentrated on Pope Benedict’s reprimand of Pelosi and her fellow lawmakers after a meeting at the Vatican last week.

But Douglas Kmiec, the prominent Catholic legal scholar who turned a lot of heads when he articulated a Catholic case for voting for Obama last year, examines the entire statement from the Vatican.

Until now, Kmiec says, the Church had not formally instructed judges, as it has legislators and others in public life, to work to end abortion.

“As written, the Pope’s statement has the potential, at least theoretically, to empty the U.S. Supreme Court of all five of its Catholic jurists and perhaps all other Catholics who sit on the bench in the lower federal and state courts,” Kmiec writes.

According to the Vatican’s statement, the pope spoke to Pelosi about “the church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work … in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

Kmiec sees church-state issues ahead: “If the Holy Father is pointedly telling … judges that they must use their office to undo the legal protection for abortion, how is this consistent with their judicial oath, or with the fact that the Constitution in Article VI puts religious belief off-limits for selection or qualification for office, including judicial office?

…If a Catholic judge invalidated laws restricting abortion in conformity with the constitutional precedent, he or she would presumably be cooperating with the evil of abortion. On the other hand, if a Catholic judge ignored the precedent – perhaps seeking to avoid Church sanction, such as the threats of communion denial aimed at pro-choice Catholic lawmakers by some bishops in the past election – there would likely be increasing claims of religious bias.”