The eerie inquiry came a few minutes after the Marshal of the Court had, in keeping with tradition established long ago, proclaimed, “God save the United States and this honorable court,” and a few minutes before the Court joined in a national “moment of silence” for the victims of the shooting spree in Arizona that left six dead (including a federal judge, as Chief Justice Roberts noted) and has Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life.
As I bowed my head to pray, I asked the Almighty (who now is publicly replaced by silence if not yet laughter) to bind a Devil who seems to be quite actively at work (as evidenced by the actions of a deranged young atheist in Tuscon) even while the real possibility of his evil existence is ignored in the hearts of men and the halls of earthly power.
RICHMOND, Virginia, November 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia slammed the modern U.S. judiciary and the high court for using the idea of a “living constitution” to invent new rules and meanings that have led to a “right” to abortion and decriminalized homosexual conduct.
Scalia made his remarks last Friday during a University of Richmond luncheon lecture entitled “Do Words Matter?” The event was covered both by the Associated Press.
“The Constitution says what it says and it doesn’t say anything more,” said Scalia to an audience of 250 people, most of them legal professionals and academics.
Although the sophisticated may deride them as simple-minded, committed Christians should have the courage to embrace their faith he said. “It isn’t irrational to accept the testimony of eyewitnesses to miracles” Scalia said.
“What is irrational,” he said, “is to reject a priori, with no investigation, the possibility of miracles in general and of Jesus Christ’s resurrection in particular — which is, of course, precisely what the worldly wise do.”
Scalia cited the 10-year-old case of a priest in the Washington archdiocese who was said to have the stigmata. Statues of Mary and the saints appeared to weep in his presence. Reporters for The Washington Post did a story and were unable to find an explanation for the strange phenomena.
“Why wasn’t that church absolutely packed with nonbelievers,” Scalia asked, “seeking to determine if there might be something to this?”
The answer was obvious, he said with disdain: “The wise do not investigate such silliness.”
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently spoke at a conference sponsored by the Mississippi College School of Law. There, he said activists who back the use of international law in the U.S. legal system are selective when they want to use it.
Scalia oppose the use of international law and decisions by foreign courts to interpret the Constitution.
“If there was any thought absolutely foreign to the founders of our country, surely it was the notion that we Americans should be governed the way Europeans are,” he said, according to the Jackson Free Press newspaper.
“I dare say that few of us here would want our life or liberty subject to the disposition of French or Italian criminal justice—not because those systems are unjust, but because we think ours is better,” the pro-life jurist added.
But Scalia says those who advocate using foreign law do so selectively and ignore how many foreign laws oppose abortion and foreign courts have issued decisions allowing pro-life laws and abortion restrictions.
“I will become a believer in the ingenuousness, though never the propriety, of the Court’s newfound respect for the wisdom of foreign minds when it applies that wisdom in the abortion cases,” Scalia said, according to the Free Press.
The issue of international law and its usage in American courts was one that came up during the Senate consideration of recent Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Doug Lawrence's Catholic Weblog 