[Notwithstanding]

1. You are wrong about Maryland being Catholic at the time of ratification.

2. Up until the post-civil war amendments, the states could establish a religion for their state if they so desired and their own state constitution allowed it. (Thus Utah could have Constitutionally established Mormonism as the state religion if their state constitution allowed for that and the people enacted such a measure legislatively). This all cahnged after the civil war amendments, with the states now being generally bound to the bill of rights (a s they had not previously been bound.

[JaimeD2]

You're right; that's my mistake. But Maryland was noticably more Catholic than nearly every other state at the time. Instead of allowing only Protestants to hold local office, Marylanders merely limited it to all Christians (Jews were disallowed until the first few decades of the 1800s, and athiests were until the 1960s, as was the case everywhere). Yeah, I just looked that up, but my "research" was spurred by your reply.