Tea at Trianon: The Supernatural Faith of Justice Scalia

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The Supernatural Faith of Justice Scalia

From Catholic Pop:

As you may have heard by now, Justice Scalia was found dead in a hotel room early February 13th, apparently having died of natural causes. He was 79 years old. Most people know him as one of the most influential conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices in recent memory. Depending on your politics and morals, that makes him either a hero or a villain.

What isn’t as well known about him, though, is that he was a life-long faithful Catholic, and one who, though reaching the heights of worldly success in his field, took seriously even those doctrines which are held in the most contempt by the modern world.

“This kid was a conservative when he was 17 years old. An archconservative Catholic,” a high school friend said about him. “He could have been a member of the Curia. He was the top student in the class. He was brilliant, way above everybody else.”

Perhaps the time he most opened up about his Catholic faith publicly was in a wide-ranging interview he did with New York Magazine in 2013, from which the exchange at the beginning is from. “Yeah, he’s a real person,” Scalia continued, speaking of the Devil. “Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.”

The interviewer asked if Scalia had ever personally seen evidence of the Devil.

“You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.”

“What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way. […] He got wilier.”

Scalia sensed the interviewer was taken aback by his literal belief in the Evil One.

“You’re looking at me as though I’m weird,” Scalia said. “My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil?”

“I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.”(Read more.)