Known as one of the greatest Supreme Court justices of all time, the late Chief Justice Antonin Scalia was also a devout Catholic who rigorously defended the rights of the unborn, traditional marriage, and the role of faith in the public square. He will be sorely missed!

Justice Antonin Scalia, 79, was on a quail hunting trip at Cibolo Creek Ranch near Shafter, Texas this weekend when he was found dead in his bed on Saturday morning. He is survived by a wife and nine children, one of whom is a Catholic priest.

According to Elizabeth O’Hara, a spokeswoman for the El Paso Catholic Diocese, the Rev. Mike Alcuino of Presidio, Texas made the 30 mile trip to the ranch on Saturday afternoon to anoint the body of the deceased.

It was only fitting that this giant of a man, who fought vigorously in the nation’s highest court for the rights of Americans to practice their religion freely, should receive the last rites of the faith he never hid from public view in spite of the dictates of political correctness.

According to Crux, Scalia was born in 1936 in Trenton, New Jersey and was Jesuit educated through his days at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He earned a law degree from Harvard.

Scalia was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

A devout Catholic, he hung a portrait of great English Catholic martyr, St. Thomas More on the wall of his office and wore a replica of a hat worn by More to President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2013.

Scalia, a Constitutional originalist, believed in the dignity of life and because the Framers of the Constitution did not allow abortion, he considered this to be a settled issue.

He believed Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overturned. He also wanted abortion to be left to the states to decide, not the courts. In the wake of the landmark 1992 Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA vs. Casey, which upheld Roe v. Wade, he wrote in his dissent:

“There is a poignant aspect to today’s opinion [upholding Roe v. Wade]. Its length, and what might be called its epic tone, suggest that its authors believe they are bringing to an end a troublesome era in the history of our Nation, and of our Court. Quite to the contrary, by foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish. We should get out of this area, where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining.”

He was equally tough when it came to defending traditional marriage and issued a warning as long ago as 2003 that unless the matter of same-sex marriage was left to the states it would one day be imposed by the courts.

"One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people.is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusions,” he said at the time. “The people may feel that their disapprobation of homosexual conduct is strong enough to disallow homosexual marriage, but not strong enough to criminalize private homosexual acts--and may legislate accordingly. The Court today pretends that we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage. Do not believe it."

When his prophecy materialized in June 2015, he called the flowery ruling, written by Justice Kennedy, to be full of “showy profundities” that were “profoundly incoherent.”

Scalia, the father of nine who admitted that he and his wife, Maureen, played “Vatican Roulette” when it came to birth control, was also a defender of the family and believed parents had an unalienable right to raise their children as they see fit.

“In my view, a right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the ‘unalienable Rights’ in the Declaration of Independence,” he wrote in 2000.

When it came to defending religion in the public square, he was equally fierce and issued some strikingly bitter dissents in cases that limited public expression of religion, such as the display of the 10 Commandments on government-owned property.

In one case decided in 2005, which allowed a monument of the 10 Commandments to stand on Texas governmental property but disallowed the display of the commandment on courthouse walls in Kentucky, Scalia accused the majority of expressing hostility to religion and deviating from the intent of the Constitution’s framers.

"Nothing stands behind the court's assertion that governmental affirmation of the society's belief in God is unconstitutional except the court's own say-so," Justice Scalia said.

In his private life, he was a devoted husband and father who preferred to attended traditional Latin Masses.

“We have always traveled long distances to go to a church that we thought had a really reverent Mass, the kind of church that when you go in, it is quiet — not that kind of church where it is like a community hall and everybody is talking,” he said in American Original, a biography by veteran Washington journalist Joan Biskupic.

His son, Paul, is a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia who is active in the Latin Mass movement.

“A big part of his legacy will be how navigated the relationship between one’s deeply held faith commitments and one’s role as a judge,” said University of Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett told Time Magazine. “For him, the way to navigate that relationship, it was not to compromise one’s religious faith or water it down, it was to distinguish between the legal questions the judge has the power to answer and the religious commitments that a judge has the right to hold, just like all of us do.”

Scalia’s passage brings a great deal of uncertainty to the outcome of several pivotal cases to be decided before the end of this term. Because the president is not expected to be able to nominate a replacement to the bench this year, the eight remaining members of the court are expected to split 4-4 on several of these cases, which means the decisions of the lower courts will prevail.

This does not bode well for the case involving the Little Sisters of the Poor who will argue next month about how a mandate forcing them to provide insurance for contraception and abortifacients in violation of their religious beliefs. If the justices split 4-4, a lower court ruling denying the Sister’s case will be left to stand.

However, in the case of a decision to allow stricter pro-life laws to stand in Texas, which is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, another 4-4 split could leave the lower court ruling – which was in favor of the new laws – to stand.

Thus far, the pro-life majority in the Senate is refusing to allow a vote on any nominees to the bench that President Obama may make in the coming months. As is usually the case in an election year, nominees to the high court are generally saved for the incoming president.

Which is even more reason to vote pro-life in November!

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