Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s embrace of victimhood suggests the guy has lost touch with reality.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday that people of faith should not fear being viewed by “educated circles” as “fools for Christ.”
The justice was in Baton Rouge, La., to address the Knights of Columbus Council 969 centennial celebration. He told a crowd of 350 that there’s nothing wrong with “traditional Christianity,” Penny Brown Roberts reports at www.theadvocate.com.
“To believe in traditional Christianity is something else,” Justice Scalia said. “For the son of God to be born of a virgin? I mean, really. To believe that He rose from the dead and bodily ascended into heaven? How utterly ridiculous. To believe in miracles? Or that those who obey God will rise from the dead and those who do not will burn in hell?
“God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools … and he has not been disappointed.”
Scalia’s whining went on (and on). He concluded with a message that implored Christians to be proud of the scorn and mockery they face from non-Christians.
“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.”
Scalia’s remarks, while bordering on incoherence, are relatively common among the far-right. But I couldn’t help but notice that Scalia, and others who share his ideology, never point to any actual examples of this pervasive, widespread anti-Christian animus. Where, exactly, is this “contempt” for Christianity?
In Scalia’s nightmarish fantasy, he’s constantly fighting a culture that hates religion and mocks Christianity. Where are these bigots? He doesn’t say. They must be hiding well, ridiculing people of faith in secret.
For the rest of us, our society is dominated by Christians who are proud of their religious tradition. Our president brags of having been “born again,” after having defeated a candidate in 2000 who professed to asking himself WWJD and another in 2004 who boasted of attending weekly church services and having been an alter boy. The mainstream media highlights religious issues, particularly for Christians, on a regular basis. Popular entertainment figures in sports and music praise their God publicly, without criticism, all the time.
Scalia believes he’s viewed as “stupid” and a “fool” by all non-Christians because of his faith. Scalia’s half-right: speeches like this one lead us to question his intelligence, but contrary to his paranoia, it has nothing to do with religion.