For your information:
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28567
The truth about Jefferson's 'wall' By Jon Dougherty
"What we have today is not really Jefferson's wall, but Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black's wall," said American University professor Daniel Dreisbach, whose forthcoming book explores how Jefferson coined the "wall" metaphor.
Justice Black was avidly anti-Catholic views "learned in the Ku Klux Klan" and which, no doubt, "influenced his 1947 ruling that the First Amendment created a 'high and impregnable' wall between religion and government," said the Times. Black first cited the "wall of separation" in the high court's Everson decision, which forbade New Jersey from spending state education funds on religious education.
Second, Everson didn't forbid New Jersey from spending state educational funds for religious instruction; it stopped just short of it. The usage of funds was held to be Constitutional, but walking on shaky ground. And while the case involved a Catholic school, it very well could have been a Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim school, or even a private academy, and in fact, the decision was binding to almost all private schools.
Third, Justice Frank Murphy, a Catholic, joined in Black's decision. For some reason, if Black was outwardly anti-Catholic and wrote the majority opinion in that manner (as you allege), I don't see another Justice outwardly seeking to join in it, especialliy if said another Justice is Catholic.
While I won't deny that Black was KKK and he was in the Twenties and Thirties anti-Catholic, the article doesn't prove beyond any doubt he was anti-Catholic on the bench.
Absolutely correct. Jefferson's letter to Danbury talks only of a seperation of Church and State, a reference to the first amendments prohibitions on establishing a State church, as the Brittish had done with the Church of England. Hugo Black took this phrase and reinterpeted it to mean a seperation of religion or faith and State. This was never contemplated by those who ratified the first amendment and completely different from what Jefferson was refering to in his letter.