Peggy Noonan’s evaluation of Mitt Romney’s faith speech last Thursday included this aside:

He had nothing to prove to me regarding his faith or his church, which apparently makes me your basic Catholic. Catholics are not his problem. His problem, a Romney aide told me, had more to do with a particular fundamentalist strain within evangelical Protestantism.

I haven’t seen any surveys on this, but anecdotal evidence suggests to me that she’s right.

After the Mormons built their Temple in Kensington, Maryland, in 1974, my Catholic parochial school in nearby Bethesda took our entire student body on a pre-consecration tour of the building; and no one gave us any lectures afterwards about the “errors” of the Latter-day Saints.

It’s also worth noting that Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard Law School professor and prominent Catholic “theocon” whom President Bush recently nominated as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, has been an adviser to the Romney campaign.

Mormon friends tell me that they feel much closer to Catholics than to Protestants. They note key similarities between Mormonism and Catholicism, including the importance of sacraments and the “prophetic” role of leaders in both churches.

Still, I find it paradoxical that members of the one of oldest Christian churches and one of the newest should get along so well, at least in the American context.

Anyone else know how to explain it?