Antonin Scalia Is Right

According to this Philadelphia Inquirer story…

"The bottom line is that the Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge," (Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) declared.

I should note that Scalia spoke at Villanova University last night, hence the news story (though given Scalia’s propensity for secrecy on these occasions, I’m surprised reporter David O’Reilly was even allowed to do his job).

And I should also add that I agree with Scalia; the Catholic faith that I was taught appears to be nowhere in sight when you look at his rulings.

He obviously doesn’t want to be a steward of the earth, as noted in this prior post where he rendered a rather restrictive interpretation of the Clean Water Act that allowed for pollution in “channels through which water flows intermittently or channels that provide drainage for rainfall.”

He didn’t care about simple decency, to say nothing of Christian compassion, in the case of James Stone, an 81-year-old retired engineer from Rockwell International who filed suit against the company over fraud related to an environmental cleanup (Stone died soon after he lost, with Scalia denying Stone’s claim based on a technicality).

And to be perfectly honest with you, Scalia really doesn’t even care about something as simple and basic as telling the truth; as noted here, he once stated that Al Gore brought the challenge to the Supreme Court in the contested 2000 presidential election, as outrageous of a flat-out lie as you will ever hear.

And by the way, he also once said that “we should look to people who agree with us” when “experiencing a ‘new’ Constitution,” among other choice items as noted here (I’ll let that sink in a bit since the implications are so staggering).

Yep, I would say Antonin Scalia definitely does not act like someone who I would consider to be emblematic of Catholic behavior.

Come to think of it, he really doesn’t act like someone emblematic of American behavior either.