Scalia and Thomas are both Catholic. Thomas went to seminary to be a priest.
The link is a good read.
The American Catholic's Problem - Cherishing Ideals
Condemned by the Church
While it is true that the Catholic Church did flourish in this country whose government was professedly indifferent to religion, it must be said that the Church received this "freedom to flourish" at a high price. That price was the nearly complete negligence of the Church's doctrine of union of Church and State, of the duty of governments to profess the one true faith, and to repress non-Catholic religions. Catholics were told that the American system of freedom of all religions was the ideal system, and Catholics had deeply fixed in their heads the notion that you have a civil right to be a Protestant, a Jew, a Moslem or even a Satanist, since religion should have nothing to do with the state, and the state nothing to do with religion. But this idea was condemned by Pope Gregory XVI and Pope Pius IX: "And so from this rotten source of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous opinion, or rather insanity, that liberty of conscience must be claimed and defended for anyone." (Pope Gregory XVI)
"For surely you know, Venerable Brothers, not a few are found who, applying the impious and absurd principles of naturalism, as they call it, to civil society, dare to teach that the "best plan for public society and civil progress absolutely requires that human society be established and governed with no regard to religion, as if it did not exist, or at least, without making distinction between the true and the false religions." (Pope Pius IX)
"And also, contrary to the teaching of Sacred Scripture, of the Church, and of the most holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that the best condition of society is the one in which there is no acknowledgment by the government of the duty of restraining, by established penalties, offenders of the Catholic religion, except insofar as the public peace demands." (Pope Pius IX)
"And, from this wholly false idea of social organization they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, especially fatal to the Catholic Church and to the salvation of souls, called by Our predecessor of recent memory, Gregory XVI, insanity; namely that "liberty of conscience and of worship is the proper right of every man, and should be proclaimed and asserted by law in every correctly established society; that the right of all manner of liberty rests in the citizens, not to be restrained either by ecclesiastical or civil authority; and that by this right they can manifest openly and publicly and declare their own concepts, whatever they may be, by voice, by print, or in any other way." (Pope Pius IX)
From these texts it is clear that the Catholic Church condemns freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Yet these "freedoms" are held as sacrosanct in the American culture. In an effort not to appear un-American, the Catholic clergy in the United States for the most part neglected these condemnations, as well as the teaching of Sacred Scripture, of the Church, and of the holy Fathers which supports them. One searches in vain to find in Catholic catechisms before Vatican II, even on the High School level, the Church's teaching on the duty of states to the Catholic religion. Rather most pre-Vatican II Catholic catechisms and history books are either totally silent on the subject, or actually extol the American system of indifference to all religions, and extol freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.
and so on.........
Scary, isn't it?
Enjoy!
™ Version 4.2
