Why appeal to conscience when you can misrepresent the church instead?

Sep 27, 2011 by Steve Thorngate

If the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign. I could not be a part of a system that imposes it.

Mark Silk:

What [Scalia] has done, then, is make his church's doctrine do the work that Kennedy assigned to his conscience, and in the process fibbed.

More.

Tags:

Comment

Join the Conversation via Facebook

To post a comment, log in, register, or use the Facebook comment box.

Author

Join the Conversation

To post a comment, log in, register, or use the Facebook comment box.

Support the Christian Century

The Century's work relies primarily on subscriptions and donations. Thank you for supporting nonprofit journalism.

Support us by buying books:

Copyright Information

Tribal Church posts are licensed under Creative Commons, some rights reserved by Carol Howard Merritt. Taking Jesus Seriously posts are licensed under Creative Commons, some rights reserved by Drew G. I. Hart. The rights to CCblogs posts belong to the authors. All other posts are © The Christian Century. The Christian Century hosts Tribal Church and Taking Jesus Seriously and facilitates the CCblogs network but does not edit these posts or take responsibility for them.

The Christian Century