"Catholicism's power?"  You mean, of course, that American hierarchs have access to $billions to spread around among politicians - and money is the mother's milk of politics.  This is a symbiotic relationship.

I don't know how artful these senators were in posing their questions, but they represent my own concern that Barrett, like any right-wing conservative jurist, would impose her religious ideology in making decisions from the bench.  This is not a small concern: Scalia did it for decades; Gorsuch was put on SCOTUS as a sop to the most anti-feminine, misogynist sectors of the electorate.