Biden, 5 justices maintain tradition of Red Mass

[Orleans_Attny]

It’s too bad that a third of the Supreme Court’s Catholic Justices couldn’t attend the Washington DC Red Mass. But it’s also nice to see Justice Breyer (Jewish) maintain his tradition of attending.

Maybe the President will attend next year . . . .unfortunately we’re still waiting.

If anyone has a link to the homily, I’d like to read it.

Here is the Washington Post article:

Pax,
OA

 

[Dale_M]

If anyone has a link to the homily, I’d like to read it.

Here is a link to the advance copy of the homily by Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P. Secretary, Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/archbishop-di-noias-homily-todays-red-mass

In anticipation of the official opening of the Supreme Court term tomorrow, we unite in prayer today in this solemn liturgy in order to invoke the Holy Spirit upon the distinguished justices, the judges, attorneys, and lawmakers, professors and students of the law, the law clerks and paralegals, and upon all others who serve us in the various sectors of the legal profession. We give thanks to God for their precious service, and we humbly pray, “Holy Spirit, Lord of light / From the clear celestial height / Thy pure beaming radiance give”(Veni Sancte Spiritus, Pentecost Sequence, trans. Nat. Lit. Conf. England and Wales, 1967).

Yet, as she invokes the guidance and consolation of the Holy Spirit today, the erosion of this conviction is a source of deep concern for the Church. The alternative view—until recently more or less successfully resisted by democratic societies like ours—is the idea that man can find happiness and freedom only apart from God. This exclusive humanism has been exposed as an anti-humanism of the most radical kind. Man without God is not more free but surely in greater danger. The tragic history of the last century—as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have unceasingly reminded us—demonstrates that the eclipse of God leads not to greater human liberation but to the most dire human peril. That innocent human life is now so broadly under threat has seemed to many of us one of the many signs of this growing peril. Gabriel Marcel said somewhere that in our time “human flesh has undergone such intolerable outrage that it must receive some kind of reparation in glory…The world today can be endured only if one’s spirit is riveted on [the] hope of the resurrection… If this hope were shared by a greater number, perhaps, respect for the flesh and for the body, so terribly lacking in our time, would be restored.” Thus, along with wisdom and light, today we must also beg the Holy Spirit for the gift of hope in the resurrection.

 

[markomalley]

It’s too bad that a third of the Supreme Court’s Catholic Justices couldn’t attend the Washington DC Red Mass. But it’s also nice to see Justice Breyer (Jewish) maintain his tradition of attending.

Maybe the President will attend next year . . . .unfortunately we’re still waiting.

If anyone has a link to the homily, I’d like to read it.

Here is the Washington Post article:

Pax,
OA

The justices attending the service included four of the court’s Catholics: Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas. Stephen G. Breyer, one of the court’s three Jewish members, also attended. Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor, who are both Catholic, were not present, although Sotomayor was there last year, according to the church. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan did not attend.
A copy of the homily can be found at the Archdiocese of Washington web site.

Favorite lines from the homily:

At the deepest level, our invocation of the Holy Spirit here today manifests the conviction that the democratic state does not so much confer the most fundamental human rights and the duties of citizenship as acknowledge their existence and source in a power beyond the state, namely in God himself. (I somehow have a feeling that this would make a lot of secular socialists cringe) Your presence here today bears eloquent witness to the enduring power of this conviction.

Yet, as she invokes the guidance and consolation of the Holy Spirit today, the erosion of this conviction is a source of deep concern for the Church. The alternative view—until recently more or less successfully resisted by democratic societies like ours—is the idea that man can find happiness and freedom only apart from God. This exclusive humanism has been exposed as an anti-humanism of the most radical kind. Man without God is not more free but surely in greater danger. The tragic history of the last century—as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have unceasingly reminded us—demonstrates that the eclipse of God leads not to greater human liberation but to the most dire human peril. That innocent human life is now so broadly under threat has seemed to many of us one of the many signs of this growing peril. Gabriel Marcel said somewhere that in our time “human flesh has undergone such intolerable outrage that it must receive some kind of reparation in glory…The world today can be endured only if one’s spirit is riveted on [the] hope of the resurrection… If this hope were shared by a greater number, perhaps, respect for the flesh and for the body, so terribly lacking in our time, would be restored.” Thus, along with wisdom and light, today we must also beg the Holy Spirit for the gift of hope in the resurrection.
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