Six Supreme Court justices, two Cabinet members and Vice President Joe Biden were on hand along with dozens of other judges and public officials Sunday at the traditional Roman Catholic Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in D.C., the unofficial start to the Supreme Court's fall season. The cardinal giving the sermon at the mass called on lawyers to give "radical support" to the unborn.
It was Sonia Sotomayor's first Red Mass as a justice, and she was joined by four of the five other Catholics on the Court: Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito Jr. Also attending was Justice Stephen Breyer, who is Jewish. The sixth Catholic justice, Clarence Thomas, was attending a wedding and could not attend. As we reported here on Friday, this year's Red Mass was drawing attention not only because of the record number of Catholic justices, but because of the cardinal designated to give the sermon: Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston. Last spring, he was the first American cardinal to criticize the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to be its commencement speaker, because of his position in favor of abortion rights.
DiNardo's sermon stuck close to his interpretation of the Bible readings of the mass, with only one brief mention of the rights of the unborn. He lamented that the legal profession has become "semi-mechanical," detached from the human need for justice. Clients, he said, "are poor and wealthy, confused and lucid, polite and impolite. In some cases the clients are voiceless for they lack influence; in others, they are literally voiceless, not yet with tongues, and even without names. They too require our most careful attention and radical support."
That message, brief as it was, was not the first reference to abortion that the more than 1,200 people at the mass heard. Because Biden was scheduled to come, attendees waited in long lines to go through metal detectors before entering the majestic downtown cathedral. Longtime anti-abortion protester Randall Terry, armed with a bullhorn, addressed them as they waited from behind a roped-off area reserved for the media and for demonstrators. "How dare you present yourself for Communion with the blood of babies on your hands?" Terry said. Himself a Catholic, Terry said he was directing his comments to Biden and members of Congress and the judiciary who were attending and who, in their official duties, had lent any kind of policy or legal support to abortion.
As the mass began, Washington, D.C. Archbishop Donald Wuerl welcomed participants to the 56th Red Mass celebrated in Washington. With ancient roots, the Red Mass -- named to signify the flame of the Holy Spirit -- has grown in significance as the Church's official blessing of both the high court and other civic leaders, including diplomats, in the D.C. area. It is scheduled on the day before the first Monday in October, when the Supreme Court term officially begins. Chief Justice Roberts and his wife Jane have longstanding connections to the John Carroll Society, an organization of Catholic professionals that sponsors the mass each year.
The two Cabinet members attending were Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. As it happens Salazar, by dint of his position, is the named petitioner in an important church-state case set for argument this Wednesday, Salazar v. Buono. It involves a war memorial in the form of a Christian Cross that has stood on federal land owned by the Interior Department in the Mojave Desert for more than 70 years. In response to an Establishment Clause challenge to the cross, Congress sold the land under and near the cross to a private party. At issue is whether that sale cures the constitutional problem, and whether the person objecting to the cross had standing to sue.
Comments