Whatever the implications of last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer for a pending challenge of a school-voucher program in Douglas County, Denver’s influential Roman Catholic Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila sees the development as great news for religious freedom in general. That’s the upshot of a piece he penned last week for the Denver Archdiocese’s website.

The nation’s highest court had ruled June 26 in the Trinity case that a church could not be excluded from a Missouri state grant program that funds playgrounds for charitable organizations. A day later, the court ordered Colorado’s Supreme Court to take another look at the Douglas County case. The state court had halted the voucher program two years earlier on the grounds that the state constitution included “broad, unequivocal language forbidding the State from using public money to fund religious schools.”

Supporters of the stalled voucher program have taken heart at the latest development. They now hope a rehearing could jump-start the effort to defray tuition at parochial and secular private schools for parents who opt out of public schools in the Douglas County School District.

Aquila’s column acknowledges the possibilities for DougCo schools but also focuses on the broader significance of the Trinity ruling and its rejection of a long-debated provision in both the Missouri and Colorado constitutions – and in the constitutions of most other states. The clauses date to the 19th century and now are widely viewed as having their origins in anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiments of the time:

You might be thinking, “What does a playground have to do with religious freedom?” The details of the case are revealing. Trinity Lutheran Church Learning Center is a preschool located in Columbia, Missouri that wanted to improve the safety of its playground, which consisted of gravel and grass. It applied in 2012 to a state program that provides grants to buy shredded, recycled tires and was rejected because it is affiliated with a church.

That year there were 44 applicants to the program and based on its proposal Trinity Lutheran’s application was ranked fifth best. And yet, the state of Missouri disqualified the preschool, citing its Blaine Amendment. These anti-Catholic amendments were added to more than 30 state’s legal codes – including Colorado’s – in the late 1800s and early 1900s to prevent state funds from going to Catholic schools in favor of the Protestant-dominated public schools.

Aquila continues, offering an interesting glimpse at the nation’s, and Colorado’s, history:

The cultural force behind these amendments was the “Know-Nothing” movement, which fomented fear of Catholics as papal agents plotting to take over the country and immigrants as competitors for jobs. They earned their nickname by replying, “I know nothing,” when they were asked about their political beliefs. Among their objectives were to prevent Catholics and other immigrants from being elected for political office and denying them jobs in the private sector.

Read the archbishop’s full column for his views on the DougCo schools voucher case in light of the Trinity ruling; here’s the link again.