Rev. Paul Scalia, the son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, says a prayer during the funeral Mass for his father at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on February 20, 2016.
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Throughout the service, Scalia spoke more often of his father’s faith and belief in God, Jesus Christ and the Hereafter, and his hope he would be deemed worthy of it. Like the majestic church inhabited by messy construction scaffolding, he said Justice Scalia was a work in progress. He knew well what a close-run thing was the founding of our nation, and he, like the Founders, saw in that founding a blessing, one quickly lost when faith is banned from the public square or when we refuse to bring it there.
“We are gathered here because of one man”, Paul Scalia said. He was the father that God gave us for the great adventure of family life. Many Republicans say that a lame-duck ultra-liberal president with less than a year to rule should defer the nomination of a Supreme Court justice to the next president. Justice Clarence Thomas read a passage from the New Testament’s Book of Romans while the executive director of the Federalist Society, Leonardo Leo, read a passage from the Old Testament’s Book of Wisdom.
Scalia – a conservative icon – was a devout and tradition-bound Catholic. “He trusted the power of her sacraments as the means of salvation”, he said. Retired Justices John Paul Stevens and Justice David Souter were there.
So as both parties prepare for political brawling, the eight remaining justices could spend the next year hearing critical cases alongside an empty chair, unable to break a tie in the event of a 4-4 split.
The service, attended by Vice-President Joe Biden, is being held in the country’s largest Catholic church. Scalia’s son also will deliver the homily.
Scalia’s son said he was a practicing Catholic “in the sense that he had not perfected it yet”. He lied in repose on Friday in the Supreme Court’s Great Hall with an American flag draped over his casket.
One of the most prominent attendees was Paul Clement, a former clerk who served as solicitor general during George W. Bush’s presidency.
Cruz, who planned to return to South Carolina Saturday, has been among Republican senators pledging to keep Scalia’s seat empty until after the November election. President Obama and the First Lady were among the mourners.
The prospect of a protracted Supreme Court vacancy sounded alarms for those who worry that metastatic congressional gridlock will ultimately grind government to a halt.
Several federal judges who are considered possible replacements for Scalia also were at the funeral Mass, including Judges Sri Srinivasan and Patricia Millett and Chief Judge Merrick Garland, all of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
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His death plunged the Supreme Court into uncertainty, leaving what had been a conservative-dominated body evenly divided in a year of blockbuster cases – on abortion, affirmative action, immigration and President Barack Obama’s health care law.
