Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently sat down for a surprisingly intimate interview with New York magazine, and now some of his comments are causing a bit of a stir online. Among his opinions about the Constitution, the best episodes of Seinfeld and homosexuality, Scalia (who is Catholic), said that he believes that Satan is still at work in our world. The exchange between him and reporter Jennifer Senior is genuinely fascinating. After revealing that he believes that the devil has gotten “wilier” by choosing to deceive people into disbelief instead of possessing individuals like in biblical times, he senses Senior’s surprise:
“You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? … You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.”
He tells Senior that her reaction offended him, and references the wisdom of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Though Scalia never says anything unorthodox when it comes to theology, the tense exchange underscores a gap between the basic understandings of spirituality often found between believers and non-believers …
