The Red Mass is an annual mass held by the Catholic Church for lawyers, judges, law school professors, government officials and law students. The history of the Red Mass dates from the middle ages, and it takes its name from the color of the vestments worn by the clergy conducting the mass.
Yesterday's Red Mass was attended by 5 out of 9 of our Supreme Court justices, including the Chief Justice, as well as by Vice President Joe Biden.
At this 52nd Red Mass to be held in the United States, a Vatican Archbishop gave the homily.
In his remarks, Vatican Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia denouced abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage. According to Archbishop Di Noia, laws should reflect divine principles, including the "inviolability of innocent life from conception to natural death" and the "sanctity of marriage".
The Archbishop remarked that the legal profession is charged with protecting the rights that come from God and not the government.
Apart from the fact that one of the basic tenets of our form of government is the separation of church from state (a premise that is incumbent on the government but which the church seems to regularly ignore), in this case, we also have a foreign power, the Vatican, attempting to influence judicial decision making to have it more closely conform to the tenets of Catholic Christianity.
To what extent the 5 members of the Supreme Court who attended might be influenced by the archbishop's remarks we may never know, but it does indeed smack of interference on the part of the church in the workings of our judicial system.
Although this is a very Christian country, our constitution requires our Supreme Court justices to make their decisions based on an interpretation of a very secular document, the Constitution of the United States, not on the dogma or precepts of any religion.
One can imagine if there were nine supremes all of whom were devout Catholics the impact that a Vatican effort to influence their decisions could have.
It would also open the door to other religions to do the same, so, should we at some point end up with nine supremes all of whom were Jews, the Constitution might then be interpreted according to Jewish theology.
Likewise, if we were ever to reach a point where a majority
on the Court was Muslim.
It seems that this is exactly the kind of thing that the framers of the Constitution were trying to avoid by requiring that supreme court cases be decided based on an interpretation of the Constitution itself and not on any religious bias.
Of course, it is impossible for any supreme court justice to completely divorce himself from the precepts of his religion, but the job requires that separation of church from state, even in the rendering of supreme court decisions on matters of law.
But now, we have a majority of the Court subjected to the religious opinions of the Catholic Church with respect to the reaching of legal opinions and a blatant plea on the part of an agent of a foreign power for the justices to "legislate" the law.
Heaven forbid that the supremes pay heed to the homily of the archbishop. We neither want nor need for the justices to render legal decisions based on their religious beliefs, nor do we want them to "legislate" the law from their position as arbiters of the law. Either or both would be antithetical to the demands of the Constitution and an unacceptable influence from outside the United States.
If those in the Holy See are as intelligent and as educated and well-informed as we are led to believe, then they know how our system works, and that raises the question as to what they expected to accomplish by attempting to, by homolitic suggestion, influence the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Whatever it was, the Vatican should have used more forbearance, and the rest of us must hope that the 5 justices in attendance totally ignore the dictates of the Vatican's representative and continue to make their decisions in a religious vacuum.
SIC: EX/USA