In a melding of two of the bigger news items of the week _ the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the Episcopal Church’s General Convention _ Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero asks an interesting question: “Is it too much to ask for a moment of silence for the demise of the Episcopal seat on the U.S. Supreme Court?”

Writing in a commentary in USA Today, Prothero points out how things have changed. Almost a third of the Supreme Court justices have been members of the Episcopal Church, along with a quarter of U.S. presidents. But now, with the departure of Justice David Souter, “the Supreme Court is losing the last of the Episcopalians.”

Sotomayor would give the high court six Catholic justices, but that aspect of her nomination has been gaining a “collective yawn,” Prothero writes. “Clearly, Catholicism has gone mainstream.”