Antonin Scalia, the man most likely to be our next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, turned history on its head recently when he attended an Orthodox synagogue in New York and claimed that the Founders intended for their Christianity to play a part in government. Scalia then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to initiate the Holocaust was because of German separation of church and state.
The Associated Press reported on November 23, 2004, "In the synagogue that is home to America's oldest Jewish congregation, he [Scalia] noted that in Europe, religion-neutral leaders almost never publicly use the word 'God.'"
"Did it turn out that," Scalia asked rhetorically, "by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?" He then answered himself, saying, "I don't think so."
Scalia has an extraordinary way of not letting facts confound his arguments, but this time he's gone completely over the top by suggesting that a separation of church and state facilitated the Holocaust. If his comments had gotten wider coverage (they were only noted in one small AP article, and one in the Jerusalem Post), they may have brought America's largest religious communities - both Christian and Jewish - into the streets.
Born in 1936, Scalia is old enough to remember the photographs that came out of Germany when he was a boy - they were all over the newspapers and news magazines at war's end. It's difficult to believe he wasn't exposed to them as a teenager, particularly having been raised Catholic. And if he missed all that, one would think that his son the priest would have told him about them.
The photos that can be seen, for instance, at www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm of the Catholic Bishops giving the collective Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler's birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared "Gott Mit Uns" ("God is with us"). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig M
