on moral quietism: another response to Tom

I have a couple of thoughts on this. I don't think that Justice Scalia means to articulate a broad doctrine of Christian timidity. In fact, most of his writing about the role of judges is that that they shouldn't be promoting a moral agenda because that is the responsibility of those who have direct input on the democratic process. So, judges ought to be quietist, but other political actors should not. I don't think Justice Scalia at all has in mind the idea that the faithful ought to privatize the moral views that they hold. Justice Scalia's comments are more directed at the hierarchy. (Perhaps he is thinking about Vatican II's exhortation that it is the responsibility of the laity to build up the temporal order.) Even here, his view doesn't seem to be that the hierarchy should not be making moral statements or should not be trying to influence the moral development of the faithful. He seems to be objecting to "creeping infalllibility"--where non-binding moral teachings are treated as such because that would he says, in the matter of the death penalty, drive Catholic out of public service.

Although some of his language is more sweeping than I am suggesting here, I don't think that it is appropriate to charge Justice Scalia with advocating some broad-ranging doctrine of moral quietism or Christian timidity. 

Richard