Sullivan spots Scalia reconciling his Catholicism with judicial imposition of the Death Penalty:

Last month Justice Antonin Scalia said:

If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign. I could not be part of a system that imposes it.

Lisa Miller puts him in his place:

The U.S. bishops oppose capital punishment. So do this pope, the last pope and documents from the Vatican press office. … And so, in the tradition of millions of Catholics for thousands of years, [Scalia] has rejected official teaching in favor of his own view, which he believes (to be presumptuous for a minute) to be more traditional and more moral than the established one. That’s fine with me. I don’t want a justice sitting on the Supreme Court who submits blindly to religious authority or who holds his religion above the laws of the land. So keep your job, Justice Scalia. Just don’t pretend your church approves of the death penalty. Or that you aren’t like most people of faith, cherry-picking the teachings of your church that suit you best.

One thing I have never understood about the zeitgeist of Catholicism is the fact that there is so much diversity among Catholics as to exactly what Catholicism’s teachings are.  Catholic dogma holds that the Pope is essentially the closest thing to the voice of God on earth, being the successor of St. Peter, whom Jesus appointed as the “shepherd” and “rock” of the Catholic church.  When he speaks, the Holy Spirit speaks through him.  Also, the Pope and the college of Bishops in Rome stand in place for Peter and the Apostles.  As such, their interpretations and pronouncements of Catholic teaching are binding.  If your beliefs stray from those pronouncements, then by definition, you’re not practicing Catholic Christianity.  

Indeed, that was the entire point of Martin Luther’s 95 theses: Luther and his ilk were unable to reconcile what the Catholic Church was doing with their own sense of the Bible, Christianity, and the teachings of Jesus.  Hence, they separated, and the Protestantism was born.  Most fundamentally, this separation was borne out of disagreements with church leadership.  It follows from this that if you disagree with what the church is saying, through the Pope and the College of Bishops in Rome, you are taking the same position in regards to the Church that Luther did when he published his Theses.  I.e. you are putting yourself outside of Catholic dogma as dictated by the Church.

If any Catholic followers out there would like to enlighten me on this issue, feel free.  My understanding has always been that the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility is a fundamental tenet of Catholicism.  If you disagree with the Church, you’re essentially disagreeing with the Holy Spirit insomuch as it manifests itself divinely in the voice of the Pope.  So if you want to criticize with the Church, or part with one of its teachings, you have to discard the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility.  Once you do that, the game is up.  I don’t see any way around this if one wishes to eschew pronouncements from the Church Leadership while maintaining their Catholic identity.  It seems to me that the more fundamental principles of Catholicism don’t really leave room for that.  And I think that’s precisely what Scalia is doing here.