Many people have observed this. A poet, who was also himself a friar, wrote these lines more than four centuries before our First Amendment:

When the kindness of Constantine gave Holy Church endowments

In lands and leases, lordships and servants,

An angel cried on high above the Romans,

Saying 'This day has [the church] drunk venom

And all who have Peter's power are poisoned forever.;

If Will Langland saw how pernicious state support for the church was in a time when almost no one could imagine any other setup, there can be NO excuse for us!