Catholic doctrine and Justice Scalia

Maybe it's because my twitter feed is filled with religion writers, law geeks and policy wonks, but it's seems like everyone this morning is talking about Justice Antonin Scalia's “>contributed to GetReligion: The media has a very poor understanding of religion.

An example for the Scalia interview:

You believe in heaven and hell?
Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?

No.
Oh, my.

Does that mean I’m not going?
[Laughing.] Unfortunately not!

Wait, to heaven or hell?
It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other.

But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it?
Of course not!

Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?

Can we talk about your drafting process—
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.

You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

Now, no reporter can be an expert on every religion. I wouldn't even expect an ace writer on the religion beat (to the extent it still exists, which is sort of myth) to know the name of every religion. But if you're going to interview one of the better-known American Catholics, and especially if you plan on asking questions about how his religious beliefs inform his jurisprudence, you should bone up on the basics.

And that's all this is. The basics. There is no tricky question of dogma in Scalia's statements on heaven and hell and the devil. We could break the misconceptions here down line by line, but I don't want to insult you, good reader.

Even Scalia's statements on Pope Francis (“He's the Vicar of Christ. I don't run down the pope.”) and the pontiff's statements that the Catholic Church should “>liberal leanings of this pope, was that Pope Francis said it at all. The only real unusual thing about the pope's statement was that he questioned “Who am I to judge?”–the same thing Scalia said to Senior about who's getting into heaven and hell.

Don't get me wrong. This is a fascinating interview with tons of valuable nuggets on Scalia's entertainment interests, on his judicial philosophy, on his relationship with his clerks, on his style on the bench, on his suspicion that he has some gay friends. But the nexus between religion and jurisprudence comes up terribly thing–breezy, even–because the conversation gets bogged down on the basics of Catholicism.