The Red Mass
By John M. Swomley, Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics
St. Paul School of Theology
The Red Mass, a colorful religious ceremony of the Catholic Church, is celebrated in the United States before members of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and other high government officials. It also occurs at state capitals and other metropolitan centers. It is not only the occasion of the sectarian cultural event involving the legal profession, but has become the only institution in which one church has an exclusive opportunity to influence judges and other government officials.
The term "Red Mass" traditionally refers to the color of the vestments worn by the bishops who speak at the event, but also to the robes of the judges who attend. The origin of the Red Mass is not precisely dated, but it first occurred in France during the Inquisition, probably during the reign of Pope Gregory IX or one of his successors, Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254). It was a religious ceremony of the state when the Inquisition was in full swing and when the state customarily used torture. Innocent IV subsequently permitted some forms of torture not as brutal or deadly as those of the courts.
It is also likely that a Red Mass occurred in England during the reign of Edward I (1274-1307) to inaugurate the opening of the judicial year, though some claim it was first celebrated there in 1310 at Westminster Abbey. In both France and England it was a ceremony that marked the union of church and state. The Mass was brought to the United States in 1928 by Catholic officials and subsequently organized through an association of Roman Catholic lawyers into a nationwide cultural and promotional event for Vatican policy.
Although the Red Mass in America is a religious ceremony, the celebrant (usually a bishop or a cardinal) uses his address to promote the political agenda of the Vatican. His audience consists of many of the members of the judiciary, Congress and, on the state level, judges and legislators, along with members of the legal profession, all of whom are invited. Some do not attend.
One of the early celebrants of the Red Mass in America was Bishop John Wright, later Cardinal Wright. He delivered many Red Mass sermons in which he spoke against that "totalitarian secularism and practical atheism which rule out all idea of the sovereignty of God." ("Sermon of 1959," in The Christian and the Law: Selected Red Mass Sermons, Fides Pub., Notre Dame, IN.) In 1950 Wright entitled his Red Mass sermon "The Common Good" and asserted that "upright men find themselves unable to meet with one another on questions of either public or personal good" and referred to "the present polarized condition of society" that can only be rectified "in the super-natural order which God has revealed" (Ibid.).
During the years 1944-1952, I was in Washington coordinating the campaign against permanent peacetime military conscription. It began with the Society of Friends, Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, Methodists, peace organizations, other Protestant groups, and soon included farm, labor, and educational groups. Then the Catholics came on board. It was the most united religious activity in American history. Bishop Wright, with whom I was in telephone communication, not only knew about this "common good," but cooperated. I phoned him in February, 1952, and asked him to persuade Roman Catholic Congressmen from Massachusetts to vote against peacetime conscription. He did, and all but one opposed it.
Wright never acknowledged that the religious groups prevailed for the common good, though it was later acknowledged by the armed forces, who came to pride themselves as an all-volunteer force. Wright continued to speak against secularism and the secular state.
The Red Mass continued to be used by the U.S. Catholic Bishops to oppose separation of church and state. At the October 1, 1989, annual Red Mass in Washington, Philadelphia Archbishop Anthony Bevilaqua said, according to the Washington Times, that conflicts between church and state have excluded religion from public life. He said, "The time has come to restore the vital relationship between religion and law, church and society." His claim of an exclusion of religion from public life was untrue.
The Catholic hierarchy had been successful in having only anti-abortion judges appointed during the Reagan and Bush years. Time magazine reported that "in response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the Church`s teaching on birth control." In 1984 the U.S. withdrew funding for the International Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
There have been many more Vatican successes since then. The Red Mass, which now has spread into Florida, Alabama, and most other states, has taken its message to judges, legislators, lawyers, and others, insisting that the Vatican agenda become the law of the land. It has even spread into counties, cities, law schools, and universities such as Pat Robertson`s Regent University Law School.
Efforts have been made to get Protestants to collaborate with and sponsor the Roman Catholic Red Mass. For example, the Greater Jasper Ministerial Association in Alabama held its fifth Annual Red Mass service October 1, 2001, at the First United Methodist Church.
In other words, presumably under the guise of ecumenism, papal theology and the Vatican political agenda are presented to all who attend in spite of the fact the pro-choice, tax support of public schools only, and other positions of some major Protestant churches are not permitted in Roman Catholic churches.
The most recent Red Mass in Washington on October 28, 2001, featured Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who dealt with a number of topics, one of which was to speak of the U.S. Armed Forces as "accomplishing their difficult task of punishing the guilty, of destroying the evil that threatens the free world and of restoring justice and peace to this critical moment in the history of humanity." He also asked that "all our courts . . . might always be touched by that love and respect for the dignity of every person-we believe from the moment of conception to the moment God calls us home. . . ."
In an internal pastoral letter in 1975, the U.S. Catholic bishops outlined an ambitious plan for controlling judicial appointments and influencing Congress and other national and state political offices. In his book, Catholic Bishops in American Politics, Catholic writer Timothy A. Byrne called the bishops` plan the "most focused and aggressive political leadership" ever exerted by the American Catholic hierarchy. That plan called for involving twenty major Catholic organizations such as Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Press Association, the Catholic Physicians Guild, and the Catholic Lawyers Association to establish structures "to activate support for political programs."
Catholic lawyers and judges have been organized in the St. Thomas More Society, which now includes national, county, and state societies. It has among its functions the promotion of the Red Mass and the influencing of judicial appointments. There is an underlying assumption that law and morality began with the Roman Catholic Church and divine revelation.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is undoubtedly the More Society`s best-known spokesman. He not only attends national and some state Red Mass celebrations, but speaks on occasion to those lawyers who meet after the Mass. In a formal address to a Catholic audience in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 14, 2001, following a Red Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Scalia was reported by The National Catholic Register as saying, "We attorneys and intellectuals who don`t like to be regarded as unsophisticated can have no greater [role] model than St. Thomas More."
Speaking of the beheaded advisor to King Henry VIII, the Register indicated that "the saint died because he refused to recognize a king`s authority as being higher than the Pope`s, and his conviction was rejected by society, friends, and `even his wife,` Scalia said"(National Catholic Register, November 4, 2001). Scalia, in effect, was promoting the idea that papal policy is superior to the U.S. Constitution and secular government.
What actually happened during the reign of Henry VIII was an Act of Parliament in 1534, known as the Act of Succession, that forbade all payments by the government to the Pope, and ruled that all bishops were to be elected rather than appointed by the Pope. The recognition of papal authority was done away (Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, New York: Charles Scribner`s Sons, 1943, 404).
Henry and each of his successors were declared the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England. This "was not understood by either the King or Parliament as conferring on the King spiritual leadership such as ordination, the administration of the sacraments and the like, but in all else it practically put the King in the place of the Pope" (Ibid.). The Lutheran Reformation had already taken place, and in 1535 John Calvin was safely in Protestant Basel. So it was not just England that rejected papal authority.
Although there were various Protestant revolts against the Papacy, the one of England was less a doctrinal revolt than a question of supremacy. Sir Thomas More was willing to accept the Act of Succession but unwilling to take the oath of supremacy to the King. He saw this as a matter of conscience. He was convicted of treason on the basis of perjured evidence and executed.
What Scalia did not mention in his commendation of More is that England`s rejection of the papal authority was timely, since Pope Paul III in July, 1542, "reorganized the Inquisition largely on the Spanish model, on a universal scale, though of course its actual establishment took place only where it had the support of friendly civil authorities" (Ibid.). So England was spared.
One St. Thomas More Society in an official statement says, "The duty of a Catholic lawyer is to remain faithful to Jesus Christ, His Church and its teaching at all times [emphasis added] despite the personal consequences" (Mission statement of the St. Thomas More Society of Orange County, California).
If this reflects the position of all Thomas More Societies or is the model for its various members, it is essential to note the 1995 Encyclical of Pope John Paul II, known as Evangelium Vitae. In that encyclical, the Pope specifically called abortion "contrary to the Law of God" and said, "It is never licit to obey it or . . . vote for it." Since there is no statement against abortion in the Bible, the "Law of God" is proclaimed by the Pope and therefore binding on those who place loyalty to the Pope ahead of secular law and democratic judgment. The Pope specifically wrote, "Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality."
What this may mean is that Thomas More Societies are expected to place papal teaching or mandates ahead of secular or constitutional government. The mission statement of one county Society also expects its members to participate in monthly meetings and "encourage interfaith understanding," as well as "to attend and support the Red Mass" (Ibid.).
It is obvious that the purpose of the Red Mass and the St. Thomas More Society is not only to promote the Red Mass as a Catholic cultural event in the United States, but also make papal decisions influence the law of the land. The chief resistance to such influence comes from progressive Catholics who oppose patriarchal rule and support women`s rights. Most Protestant denominations are silent under the influence of the ecumenical discussions instituted by the Vatican.
In the case of the Southern Baptist Convention, there is political acceptance of rightwing Catholic politics and patriarchy. The relatively few humanists and atheists are also silent. So far as this author knows, no other analysis of the Red Mass has appeared in any major periodical.
