About the only thing we’ve been able to discern about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s faith is that she’s Catholic and attended a Catholic high school. The White House says she attends Catholic Church for “important events, including family celebrations,” which doesn’t sound like she’s a daily-Mass-kind-of-Catholic.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the sixth Catholic on the nine-member Supreme Court, an all-time high. But here’s the question: does any of this even matter?

Michael Paulson up at The Boston Globe scans the blogosphere and tries to make sense of it all.

Update: Douglas Kmiec, the prominent Catholic lawyer who bucked the church hierarchy and backed Obama during the campaign, says: “Sooner or later the Catholic faith of Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be raised as an objection to her nomination and appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

But he doesn’t think it should: “There is an implicit understanding that the church’s admonition to its faithful to change the law permitting the choice of abortion is best understood and applied in light of the scope of office. Catholic legislators make policy and could be so instructed, but as Justice Scalia posited, `a judge has no moral responsibility for the laws his nation has failed to enact.’ So let’s put this canard to rest.”

(photo credit: AFP)