"Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral."

"Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that for the believing Christian, death is no big deal.... The post-Freudian secularist... is most inclined to think that people are what their history and circumstances have made them, and there is little sense in assigning blame.... You want to have a fair death penalty? You kill; you die. That's fair. You wouldn't have any of these problems about, you know, you kill a white person, you kill a black person. You want to make it fair? You kill; you die.... In my view... the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty.... I am happy to have reached that conclusion [that the death penalty is not immoral] because I like my job and would rather not resign."

Said Justice Scalia, back in 2002. The part I've boldfaced was quoted in Slate yesterday, which links to the longer quote at (of all places) the World Socialist Web Site. The WSWS calls Scalia's statement "reactionary drivel." The Slate article, by Dahlia Lithwick is: "Pope Francis’ Message Isn’t Echoed at Red Mass/A reminder that the only faith that should matter at the Supreme Court is faith in the Constitution."

Lithwick speculates about why Justice Scalia did not show up for the Pope's lecture to Congress. That is... she doesn't speculate.... she only observes that "there was some inevitable speculation" that Scalia stayed away because he didn't want to have to be seen hearing the Pope call for the abolition of the death penalty.

But nothing in that Scalia quote is an objection to the abolition of the death penalty! I hope you can already see why, and I hate be to so pedantic as to spell out something so obvious, but Lithwick seems not to get it. She's probably only pretending not to get it, but it's significant that she doesn't mind posing publicly in the position of someone who doesn't get it.

Scalia is talking about how he can continue to be a judge when he's forced to decide death penalty cases and must decide them according to the Constitution, which, in his view, cannot be interpreted to ban the death penalty. As a judge, he's bound by the limitations of judging, which preclude importing his religion into the analysis, and at some point, his religion might require him to resign from the Court. He's explaining why he does not need to resign. There's utterly no reason to interpret that to mean he'd object if Congress or any state legislature were to pass a statute abolishing the death penalty.

There's more detail in this earlier post, from 2005, which quotes another speech of Scalia's in which he explained the difficulty which "need not be faced by proponents of the living Constitution who believe that it means what it ought to mean. If the death penalty is immoral, then it is surely unconstitutional, and one can continue to sit while nullifying the death penalty. You can see why the living Constitution has such attraction for us judges."

"Death is no big deal" wasn't a statement of callousness toward the convicted murderers our government executes. It's an observation about the mindset of societies that choose to keep the death penalty as part of their statutory law, the law that judges can only invalidate if it is unconstitutional.