Lisa Miller in Washington Post Accuses Justice Scalia of Cherry Picking His Catholic Faith - A Response

Lisa Miller wrote an Op-Ed on Justice Scalia and State Execution today at Justice Scalia speaks for himself on death penalty, not the Catholic Church

She ends her piece with rather a strong charge . She says:

...That’s fine with me. I don’t want a justice sitting on the Supreme Court who submits blindly to religious authority or who holds his religion above the laws of the land. So keep your job, Justice Scalia. Just don’t pretend your church approves of the death penalty. Or that you aren’t like most people of faith, cherry-picking the teachings of your church that suit you best.

Now I am not discounting the Church's views on State Execution in the modern era. I think too many Catholics go "oh well its not dogma and I can disagree" without giving the Church's teaching here anything close to sufficient reflection. That is a problem.

However for most of his life the now just deceased Archbishop Hannon had Scalia's views until he took a more modern John Paul II view of it in the very final years of his life. No one accused Hannan of "cherry picking". Further as the late Cardinal Dulles pointed out Catholics do have some leeway here. Now again too many Catholics do not even engage the Church's views and that is not being a good Catholic in my view.

Still I don't think Lisa Miller is paying attention. This is key to the Scalia controversy over execution:
“If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign,” he told an audience at Duquesne University Law School last month. “I could not be part of a system that imposes it.”

Now what does he mean by immoral. There is no doubt that Justice Scalia has to impose judgments all the time that he might think is immoral. I suspect Scalia finds PORN very immoral but he has to uphold laws or strike down laws that violate the Constitutional protections that surround porn in many cases. I suspect that he might have to uphold prison sentences that as to the crime is excessive and he might think is immoral. Scalia is already on record that he thinks the Fed Govt cannot do much about Abortion and it is a matter of the states. Thus we see Scalia , in his own words, most likely having to uphold some State laws on abortion that perhaps some Fed Legislation might want to change. I could go on and on about Judges having to apply law they think is immoral. It happens all the time.

I think he when he says "machinery of death" it is something akin to being involved in an abortion. It is a mortal sin and indeed by Canon law one is excommunicated if one participates in an abortion. That means being the person having it, the person that helps pays for it, the nurses involved, the doctor, and heck maybe the person that drives the woman to the clinic. It is an intrinsic evil.

As to State execution I have never heard at all that the Church demands you even go to confession if you are the Judge , juror, DA, or even the guy that pushes the button to start the death drugs to start flowing as to the machinery of death. Now maybe you should if after you have examined your conscious if that is where God is leading you. But we can see a difference.

It's clear that Scalia is not saying he would resign if he had to validate immoral laws from the examples I show above. Again I think he is seeing this through the prism of the abortion example I gave.