This is reinforcing the arguments made when Kennedy was running for President, that devout Catholics, contrary to the principles of the Constitution, have a loyalty to a 'foreign prince', which might conflict with their loyalties to the United States.
The citizenship oath states:
Quote:
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I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;
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Native-born US citizens do not have to take the citizenship oath, but the principles are assumed. The oaths of office throughout the US never included this line because noone ever factored in the Vatican.
We have a seperation of church and state for a reason. Our government is supposed to be self-correcting, in that everyone gets the government that a majority of its citizens deserved because thats who voted in the &*(*&^*& idiots running the place.
Right now, thanks to 9/11, we are running backwards to the 1950's, an age of public values and private hypocrisy. Even in this environment, any politician running as '%100 pope-approved' will find himself in the unemployment line. This is partly due to the fact that many of the religious conservatives in this country are Protestant, who do not want to see the Vatican setting US policy.
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I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting. --
Barack Hussein Obama