Antonin Gregory Scalia, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who died this week, was honored today at his funeral in Washington, D.C.   I watched the entire solemn funeral mass and was moved by the spiritual tone set by the service. His son Paul Scalia, a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, officiated at his father’s mass. The Reverend Scalia referred to his father as “the country’s good servant.”  For the day Washington set aside its political bickering. The mass was not a political event but a spiritual ceremony.  I’m almost afraid to watch the television news tonight, because broadcasters have a tendency to put a political color on everything that happens in Washington.  

Justice Scalia and I disagreed on many social and political policies.  I am a Democrat, and he was a Republican.  How I feel about him and about his service to our country has nothing to do with our political differences. He was a good, a very bright man.

In the next few weeks, perhaps months, political weapons will be sharpened and drawn in Washington and all over the country.  This election year is an unsettling time for our country.  The Supreme Court  represents the country to the world in a way that no other institution does.  I am hoping that Americans, and especially political leaders of both parties, will handle the transition of the Court and political campaigns with the kind of dignity and reverence characterized by Justice Scalia’s mass today.