The Oct. 6 New York Magazine features a fascinating interview with Justice Antonin Scalia, including this excerpt about his religious beliefs that has received much attention: (interviewer's questions in bold):
Whatever you think of the opinion, Justice Kennedy is now the Thurgood Marshall of gay rights. [Nods.]
I don’t know how, by your lights, that’s going to be regarded in 50 years. I don’t know either. And, frankly, I don’t care. Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. At least standing athwart it as a constitutional entitlement. But I have never been custodian of my legacy. When I’m dead and gone, I’ll either be sublimely happy or terribly unhappy.
You believe in heaven and hell? Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?
No. Oh, my.
Does that mean I’m not going? [Laughing.] Unfortunately not!
Wait, to heaven or hell? It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other.
But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it? Of course not!
Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God. I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?The entire interview is worth a read.
