I
guess by now most of the American readers of my blog have heard that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away Saturday.
I
have to say I am a bit heartbroken over it.
Antonin Scalia was a personal hero of mine. As an Italian-American and a conservative and
a Catholic I was so proud of him. It is
my perception that until Scalia hit the national scene, Italian-Americans and Catholics
were predominantly center-left on the political scale, which is to say moderate
Democrats as far as political party affiliation goes. And I would assess that over 90% of my family
would consider themselves Democrats, even today.
Now
it is without question that it was the Democratic Party which left traditional
values behind, which made a new generation look toward the political right for
a fit. As I matured and found my philosophic
match, there was no question that I was a conservative. I think it’s in my genetic makeup. Antonin Scalia, with his pugnacious
personality, his wit and charm, his intellectual brilliance, his devout
Catholicism, his loud and larger than life energy—the very essence of Italian
male extroversion—his dedication to family and tradition made him an icon for
many, but specifically for those of us of Italian ethnicity. Some of us have crazy uncles and some of us
have brilliant uncles: Antonin Scalia was our brilliant uncle, and we could
point to him to justify our political leanings.
There
are many great Scalia quotes. I love the
one where he’s being interviewed by a writer for New York magazine, which is a publication somewhere left of Pravda, where the interviewer is shocked that Scalia actually
believes in heaven and hell. Scalia leans
in to him and adds, “I even believe in the Devil.”
But
the quote of his I most embrace is this one on the courage to be a Christian:
“God
assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as
fools ... and he has not been disappointed…If I have brought any message today,
it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity…Be fools
for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated
world.”
- Speech at Living the Catholic
Faith conference, 2012
Antonin
Scalia was an intellectual giant compared these petty, conventional “sophisticates.”
There are only a handful of people that
I would love to hang out with in heaven, if I should be graced with getting there. Antonin Scalia is one of them. May eternal light shine upon him as he rests in
peace.
May he rest in peace.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you and yours, Manny.