Scalia and the New Soteriology

There’s an interesting little profile of Antonin Scalia over at the Register. It’s a fascinating profile of the new soteriology which has been emerging on the Catholic right for a while.

The first part of the profile shows Scalia’s sensible Italian piety:

“Surely those who adhere to all or most of these traditional Christian beliefs are regarded in the educated circles that you and I travel in as, well, simple-minded,” Scalia asserted.

The Catholic justice cited a story in The Washington Post that described Christian fundamentalists as “poorly educated and easily led.”

“The same attitude applies, of course, to traditional Catholics,” Scalia said, “who do such positively peasantlike things as saying the rosary, kneeling in adoration before the Eucharist, going on pilgrimages to Lourdes or Medjugorje and — worst of all — following indiscriminately, rather than in smorgasbord fashion, the teachings of the pope.”

Scalia said believers should embrace the ridicule of the world.

“As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians,” he said, “we are fools for Christ’s sake.”

Who could not love that? Anything that irritates the snobs in the NY Times editorial offices has to have something to recommend it.

He also makes a point I’ve made many times about the radical incuriosity of those who proclaim themselves to be apostles of Reason, vs. Christian obscurantists who allegedly fear the light of investigation and knowledge:

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.”

Then, however, Scalia goes on to pull a full JFK/Cuomo:

While he may take his personal faith seriously, Scalia told The Catholic Review he doesn’t allow it to influence his work on the high court.

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as a Catholic judge,” Scalia said in an interview with the newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese. “There are good judges and bad judges. The only article in faith that plays any part in my judging is the commandment, ‘Thou Shalt Not Lie.’”

Scalia said it isn’t his job to make policy or law, but to “say only what the law provides.”

“If I genuinely thought the Constitution guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion, I would be on the other way,” said Scalia, who has held that abortion is not guaranteed in the Constitution. “It would do nothing with my religion. It has to do with my being a lawyer.”

Scalia never thought he would see a time when there were six Catholic justices on the high court.

“But, as I say, it doesn’t make any difference,” he asserted. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a Catholic justice. There’s a justice who happens to be Catholic and there are some Catholic justices who have been on the other side of the abortion thing. (Former Justice) Bill Brennan was the initiator of the whole thing.”

This rationale has fueled the careers of Catholics from JFK to Mario Cuomo to Nancy Pelosi, all of whom have used it to justify detaching their public judgements from Catholic teaching about the common good.

Only here’s the thing: Scalia doesn’t use it to promote abortion. So he gets a complete pass, even though he is every bit as concerned to argue that the Faith should have absolutely no impact on his deliberations concerning the common good–a highly dubious position for a Catholic to take. And most conservative Catholics cheer for this reasoning since all that really matters is abortion and the rest of Catholic social teaching is dispensible. All of which suggests, yet again, that a great swath of conservative Catholicism has embraced a new soteriology which can be summed up as “Opposition to abortion taketh away the sins of the world.” I wonder how long that new soteriology will last before it collides with actual Catholic soteriology?