Is Justice Scalia a Cult Member?

[Stephanie]

And if so, should he recuse himself on religious issues before the court?


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http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney01172004.html

January 17 / 18, 2004
Scalia and Opus Dei
Radicals on the High Court

By MIKE WHITNEY

"After I joined they gave me a barbed wire chain to wear on my leg for two hours a day and a whip to hit my buttocks with."

Sharon Clasen, former member of Opus Dei

"Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Glorified be pain"

Josemarie Escriva, Founder, Opus Dei

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Whether or not an alleged member of Opus Dei, like Justice Antonin Scalia, enjoys a touch of the lash on his prodigious derriere from time to time, is certainly no business of ours. However, the affiliation of a Justice on the highest court in the land to an organization that, for all appearances, is nothing more than a right-wing cult should arouse not only suspicion, but an investigation.

Opus Dei is a clandestine Catholic organization based in Chicago, Ill. In size, it is insignificant, a mere 85,000 members (only 3,000 members in the US) compared to the one billion Catholics worldwide. But, its membership boasts of some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the country. The group catapulted to national attention when spymaster, Robert Hanson, was arrested and convicted in what turned out to be the greatest act of treachery in the history of the FBI. Hanson's arrest drew immediate and unwelcome notoriety to the secretive group.

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Grossman goes on to add, "Critics are put off because, as part of their devotional regimen, some Opus Dei members inflict pain on themselves that seems to border on masochism. Supporters respond that mortification of the flesh is an ancient and honorable Christian practice that puts them spiritually in touch with the great saints of the past."

One of the former members, Sharon Clasen remembers, "After I joined they gave me a barbed-wire chain to wear on my leg for two hours a day and a whip to hit my buttocks with." (Again, reported in the Ron Grossman article)

We can only wonder what the Senate hearings might have been like if they suspected that Scalia's attitudes towards self-inflicted punishment might be dramatically out of the mainstream? It certainly may have called his sense of judgment into question. <more>

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[DURHAM D]

1. Why stop at Scalia - Clarence Thomas is member of the same

chapter as Scalia. Also, former FBI Director Louis Freedh (sp?). Robert Hanson in same chapter. I have often wondered about Tweety - something about him is wacked.

[JetJaguar]

2. Spanky?

Justice Scalia


George "Spanky" McFarland

You decide.

[Snap]

5. Suc-u-lator?

What's that funny sound coming from behind the bench?

[Maat]

3. As a law student, one quickly realizes via every opinion ..

that Scalia writes ... that Scalia wants to see a terribly repressive society put into place.

I quake in horror when I think about him being Chief Justice.

[Lexingtonian]

4. um, no

Scalia is most understandable as an Italian archetype you can see everywhere in the history of the Roman Empire and you still run into on the streets of Naples today (and all love Silvio Berlusconi as their kind of guy). He has aspects of Nero and Caligula, but essentially he's a priest to Jupiter and abuses that pretense to authority as an entitlement, as cleverly and Brute-ishly as he can. Considering that the RCC innards are more or less run by people of the sort and are a preservation of the ideas and methods of Roman times, his belonging to OD is less remarkable than if he didn't.

I think he'd be a much happier fellow if he'd been born in 500 A.D. He's not lucky enough to have been born in the Middle Ages, though, which is why he reads choleric idiocy from the bench every six months as Anthony Kennedy decides to let the USSC slowly bring the country up to Modern standards. Scalia frankly misses the rack and the Iron Maiden and the drawing and quarterings, really, not to mention the thumbs-up or thumbs-down in the Coliseum and we're sadly not in a mood to indulge him....

[KingoftheJungle]

6. Opus Dei+the Council of National Policy+Moon Unification=Bush Co.