Justice Antonin Scalia, RIP

Another Canary in the Coal Mine

It's a very well known piece of wisdom that in coal mines, canaries are placed at key points within the mines to alert the miners in case of noxious and fatal fumes.  Many men's lives have been saved by these creatures in dangerous environments by sacrificing their lives.

Justice Antonin Scalia was a man that all American men should aspire to.  He was a patriot of the country of his birth.  He was a faithful son to the Catholic Church throughout his life.  He was a faithful husband to his wife, producing 9 children and offering one up to the Lord as a Priest, like all large Catholic families use to do.  He was thoroughly logical, well-read, intelligent, witty and honest.  And he died in the Faith.  May God have mercy on his soul.  St. Thomas More, please pray for him.

I won't speculate here about his death, though I am quite surprised that Pewsitter has linked to numerous articles already speculating on this matter.  May God bless us with the truth and may any crimes be suitably punished with divine retribution.

I think, though, the most important part of this past weekend's events is that, as another blog wrote, another great man is gone.  This world cannot last much longer with so few great men walking the Earth.  

It would be too much for a consistent Catholic reaction to his death, from the Pope on down to all the "Catholic" media sites on the Internet.  And I am glad to see that for many Catholics, they saw the kind of man who was unabashedly Catholic in every way.  That is why I have the picture of him above -- wearing the same headgear as St. Sir Thomas More.  With such a thoughtful man, it is clear that he saw himself in a similar position to the good servant of God's who Henry VIII felt didn't need his head any longer since it conflicted with his lustful, diabolically inspired ideas of himself and his line.

With such confusion, of which many posts here have addressed, inside the Church, it is becoming rarer that Catholics can find another Catholic in the public sphere to be proud of, to follow, and to model themselves after.  The public Catholics, by and large, are heretics who indulge in the modernist fallacy of the moment.  They accept the latest inventions in liturgical theory and who have proudly abandoned archaic rules from a begone age.

Antonin Scalia embodied the best aspects of the lay Catholic life.  I even heard that he traveled a good distance to attend the traditional Latin Mass of his youth (doesn't one have to travel great distances to attend the Mass of the Saints?).  

Things will not get better, folks.  They will get worse.  Much worse.  All the aspects of Catholic public life - the schools, the orphanages, the hospitals, and the food kitchens will all go away.  The "unused" parishes sitting on valuable land will be sold off.  And public Catholics who are really Catholics will cease to be around.  

It will be dark times.  But this is just punishment for the crimes we have committed against Our Lord.  We forgot Him.  Now He is forgetting us.

But one who didn't was Antonin Scalia.  

Please say a prayer for his soul.  He didn't benefit from a final confession, viaticum or the last rites (debatable here).  He deserved better.