[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 27051-27052]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            RED MASS HOMILY

 Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, on Sunday, October 3, 1999, the 
Most Reverend Raymond J. Boland, Bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph 
area of Missouri, delivered the homily at the Red Mass held at St. 
Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, DC. The Red Mass traditionally marks 
the opening of the Supreme Court's new term. In his address, Bishop 
Boland discusses the idea of having cooperative dialog between the 
Church and State in their mutual search for justice and respect.
  I ask to have printed in the Record the text of the homily given by 
Bishop Raymond J. Boland.
  The text follows.

                         Homily: 1999 Red Mass

(St. Matthew's Cathedral, Washington, DC, Sunday, October 3, 1999, Most 
  Reverend Raymond J. Boland, D.D., Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, 
                               Missouri)

       I am grateful to Cardinal Hickey for his gracious 
     invitation to give the homily at this 47th annual Red Mass. 
     Another legal year, the last of this century, is about to 
     begin and conscious of our fallibilities we gather in prayer 
     to beg God's Spirit to give us understanding, courage, 
     forbearance and, above all else, wisdom. I am also grateful 
     to the John Carroll Society for sponsoring this annual event 
     once again. John Carroll, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of 
     the Republic, played a significant part in defining the role 
     of the church in an infant nation where religion would have 
     freedom but not state sponsorship. John's brother, Daniel, 
     signed the Constitution which gave political and legal shape 
     to what is now the United States.
       Because of a certain anniversary which occurs this year, I 
     would like to think that a fuller acceptance of the dignity 
     of the human person may lead to a more productive 
     understanding of the relationship between church and state in 
     this country and elsewhere. It augurs well for our individual 
     freedoms but it is also a delicate balance which may be in 
     jeopardy.
       This year marks the 350th Anniversary of the Toleration Act 
     of 1649, a significant development for its time which boldly 
     reaffirmed the right of religious and political freedom in 
     the Maryland colony. Many of you are familiar with the 
     monument at St. Mary's City, the first capital of the future 
     state, which symbolically depicts a man with uplifted 
     countenance emerging from the confining stone from which he 
     is sculpted. At his feet three words are carved, Freedom of 
     Conscience.
       The Edict of Toleration provided, ``No person shall from 
     henceforth be in any ways troubled . . . for or in respect of 
     his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof within 
     this Province nor any way be compelled to the belief or 
     exercise of any other against his will.'' (Their Rights and 
     Liberties, Thomas O'Brien Hanley, S.J. p. 115)
       When Jesus enunciated his oft-quoted judgment, ``Give to 
     Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God what is God's.'' 
     (Luke 20:25) Luke tells us that his response ``completely 
     disconcerted'' his audience ``and reduced them to silence.'' 
     (Luke 20:26) Over the centuries we have not remained silent 
     but we have continued to remain perplexed. Couched in terms 
     of black and white the principle is one for the ages but its 
     complexity intensifies as its application uncovers a 
     multiplicity of details. All people of faith are citizens and 
     most citizens are people of faith. Avowed atheists may not 
     believe in God or any god, as Bishop Fulton Sheen used to 
     quip, ``they have no invisible means of support,'' but it can 
     be argued that their secularized or humanistic self-
     sufficiency constitutes a belief system of some sort. The 
     predicament is obvious. The church-goer pays taxes. A devout 
     Christian can be passionately patriotic. Among our citizens 
     are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and adherents of many 
     other religions, all of whom wish to practice their faith in 
     freedom and many of whom honor forebears who came to this 
     country precisely for that reason. According to reputable 
     opinion polls the vast majority of Americans believe in God, 
     pray with some frequency and articulate their sincerely-held 
     beliefs by following rituals and disciplines promoted by 
     their respective churches. These same people are also 
     participants in the political process. They vote, they seek 
     political office, they express their opinions, they establish 
     forums to give wider circulation to their political 
     philosophies. There is absolutely no way they can prevent the 
     influence of their religious beliefs from coloring their 
     public attitudes and forming their political convictions. 
     Indeed, churches as a whole, convinced that they have much 
     which is positive to contribute to the public debate, expect 
     their members to bring their cultural and religious values to 
     the various arenas where ideas are being generated and laws 
     being honed. The church, no less than the state, seeks to 
     meet the challenges of a society where sociological and 
     technological change seems to be constantly outpacing our 
     human capacity to keep it within the bounds of comprehension 
     not to mention control.
       There is another dimension to this reality which is even 
     more important because it comes closer to the cutting edge. 
     Many citizens, whether they be religious or not, only 
     participate in the public debate in a limited way. But we are 
     concerned with the other end of the spectrum--the lawyers, 
     the judges, the legislators who devote their lives to 
     enacting and interpreting laws and who will naturally do so 
     within the context of their own inherited and acquired 
     religious convictions. When they enter statehouses and 
     courtrooms they cannot leave their consciences along with 
     their coats in the cloakroom. Not all matters are charged 
     with ethical or moral overtones but those which are of most 
     concern to our populace--rights and liberties, life and 
     death, war and peace, affluence and poverty, personal freedom 
     and the common good--are so interlaced with cultural, 
     religious, scientific and legal implications that wisdom in 
     all its personifications is called for.
       Is it possible to hope that, as we enter a new millennium, 
     church and state in our land, and even the international 
     world, may all subscribe to a synthesis of basic principles 
     which guarantee freedom for all while equally protecting the 
     rights of believers and unbelievers? Have we been moving in 
     that direction? Surely such an outcome is desirable. Church 
     and state have a lot in common in their mutual search for 
     justice, in promoting respect for all just laws, in their 
     concern for the common good and this, of necessity, includes 
     such important areas as education, health care and social 
     services.
       It is difficult to assess what influence Maryland's Edict 
     of Toleration had on the framers of the Constitution. The 
     Establishment Clause and, later on, the Free Exercise Clause 
     have achieved a hallowed place in our national psyche even 
     though many modern scholars detect inconsistencies in their 
     application and some straying from their authors' intention 
     in their interpretation. History certainly indicates that 
     Congress adopted the two religion clauses as protection for 
     religion, not protection from religion. English teachers 
     constantly warn their students that analogies and metaphors 
     should not be pushed too far. Thomas Jefferson's famous 
     ``Wall of Separation'' metaphor may have suffered this over 
     extension, something certainly not supported by a complete 
     examination of his legal philosophy nor of the Constitution 
     itself. The phrase has become a mantra. How high the wall? 
     How impenetrable? Nobody denies the need for separation but 
     such does not exclude cooperation. This vital area of 
     constitutional law has experienced many twists and turns in 
     its two centuries of history and more cases are winding their 
     way upwards from lower courts. Maybe we need the equivalent 
     of what manufacturers call R and D, Research and Development, 
     to discover where we've been and to propose new ways of 
     legally facilitating those who work with Caesar and walk with 
     God. Instead of tanks and guns and land mines, maybe we have 
     a great opportunity to offer the world a legal system which 
     guarantees elementary human rights and yes, religious rights, 
     and as a result, the potential for peace, justice and 
     economic growth. We may even get to the stage when the words 
     of Deuteronomy will be applied to us, ``this great nation is 
     truly a wise and intelligent people.'' (Deut. 4:6).
       In the last century the Church has made extraordinary 
     strides in its own understanding of pluralism, religious 
     freedom and political liberty. It was not easy because 
     theocracies dominated the scene in the western world for so 
     many centuries. The demise of the Holy Roman Empire and the 
     disappearance of the Papal States gave the Church both an 
     opportunity and a challenge to speak to the world with moral 
     authority unfettered and unprotected by armies, navies or 
     nuclear weapons.
       The high point of this new attitude was enshrined in one of 
     the shortest documents of the Second Vatican Council, that 
     world-wide

[[Page 27052]]

     meeting of Catholic Bishops in Rome in the mid-sixties. The 
     document, known as Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on 
     Religious Liberty, was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 
     December, 1965 after five drafts and two years of vigorous 
     debate. Called by the Pope ``one of the major texts of the 
     Council'' it began with the felicitous observation, 
     ``contemporary man is becoming increasingly conscious of the 
     dignity of the human person'' (Dignitatis Humanae, 1). It is 
     no secret that one of the most influential framers of this 
     document was the American Jesuit, John Courtney Murray, who 
     brought with him to the Vatican a deep understanding and a 
     genuine admiration for the guarantees established by the 
     United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. It may have 
     been indirect but there is no doubt that the American 
     experience, dating back to the Toleration Act of 1649, found 
     a responsive echo in St. Peter's Basilica.
       If there was any question about this new initiative it was 
     resoundingly dispelled by our new Pope, John Paul II, in 1979 
     during the very first year of his pontificate. Here was a man 
     whose only fellow seminarian was snatched in the night and 
     executed by the Gestapo precisely because he was a Catholic 
     seminarian. Here was a priest and bishop who later prevailed 
     over the disabilities imposed upon him and his flock by an 
     atheistic Communist regime.
       In his papal letter Redemptor Hominis, John Paul II would 
     recall and reaffirm that Vatican Council document and again 
     declare that the right to religious freedom together with the 
     right to freedom of conscience is not only a theological 
     concept but is one also ``reached from the point of view of 
     natural law, that is to say, from the purely human position, 
     on the basis of the premises given by man's own experience, 
     his reason and his sense of human dignity.'' (Redemptor 
     Hominis, 17)
       For over 20 years, on every continent, again and again the 
     Holy Father has stressed that the human dignity of each 
     individual is the basis for all law.
       Within the last year, in his New Year's message, addressing 
     people of good will everywhere the Pope reiterated his 
     conviction that ``when the promotion of the dignity of the 
     human person is the guiding principle and when the search for 
     the common good is the overriding commitment'' (World Day of 
     Peace Message, 1999, 1) the right to life, to religious 
     freedom, of citizens to participate in the life of their 
     community, the right of ethnic groups and national minorities 
     to exist along with those rights to self-fulfilment covering 
     educational, economic and peace issues become possible.
       The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, intimately 
     associated with the United Nations Charter, affirms the 
     innate dignity of all members of the human family along with 
     the equality and inalienability of their rights. Even though 
     these ideals are being blatantly ignored in many places 
     across the globe, here in this land we must not ignore the 
     unique opportunity we have to solidify the principle 
     enunciated and developed by our leaders of both church and 
     state that ``human rights stem from the inherent dignity and 
     worth of the human person.'' (Cf. In particular the Vienna 
     Declaration, 1993 Preamble 2).
       Crafting principles is easy in comparison to applying them 
     to the extraordinary complexities of modern life. Mistakes 
     have been made in the past. On the part of the Church there 
     have been excesses of evangelistic zeal: in the halls of 
     justice nobody seems proud of the Dred Scott decision. We 
     live in an imperfect world and we are not all pious God-
     fearing and timid law-abiding clones.
       There will always be tension between church and state. This 
     tension, in many ways, creates a safety valve. It is, after 
     all, when this tension disappears that we should worry.
       In the enactment and administration of civil laws, people 
     of faith do not expect privileges but they do expect 
     fairness. George Orwell in his classic, Animal Farm, coined 
     the phrase that ``all animals are created equal but some are 
     more equal than others.'' Is there a danger that the devotees 
     of secularism are ``more equal'' than those who are proud of 
     the faith they profess? Do secular symbols enjoy more 
     protection than religious symbols? In every age there are 
     some who would like to have religion disappear. As religion 
     has proven itself remarkably durable, the next line of attack 
     is the attempt to trivialize it into insignificance. It seems 
     incredible but now and again there are those who maintain 
     that believers have no right to engage in the public debate.
       ``To accept the separation of the church from the state did 
     not mean accepting a passive or marginal status for the 
     Church in society''. (Responsibilities and Temptations of 
     Power: A Catholic View. J. Bryan Hehir, Georgetown 
     University.)
       The church by definition has a theological foundation but 
     it is also a voluntary association within our society with 
     much to say about social policies. It should be accorded the 
     same rights in the public debate as associations which 
     profess no theological leanings.
       Even Pope John Paul II expressed his apprehension on this 
     matter when he accepted the credentials of one of the 
     esteemed John Carroll Society members, Lindy Boggs, as the 
     United States Ambassador to the Holy See, a year ago. On that 
     occasion he declared, ``It would truly be a sad thing if the 
     religious and moral convictions upon which the American 
     experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a 
     danger to free society, such that those who would bring these 
     convictions to bear upon your nation's public life would be 
     denied a voice in debating and resolving issues of public 
     policy. The original separation of church and state in the 
     United States was certainly not an effort to ban all 
     religious conviction from the public sphere, a kind of 
     banishment of God from civil society. Indeed, the vast 
     majority of Americans, regardless of their religious 
     persuasion, are convinced that religious conviction and 
     religiously informed moral argument have a vital role in 
     public life.''
       Religion will endure. Christianity, for one, has its own 
     inner guarantees revolving around the presence of God's 
     Spirit and the promises of Christ. They are doomed to 
     disappointment who constantly predict that the unfolding 
     discoveries of the many scientific disciplines will make 
     religion obsolete or, at best, the hollow consolation of the 
     feeble-minded. On the contrary, the more we reveal the 
     mysteries of the universe in which we live, and decipher the 
     minutiae of human existence, the more we come face to face 
     with the creativity of God. We can partially answer the 
     ``hows'' and the ``whens'' and the ``whats'' but at the end 
     of the day, there is still the ``why''?
       My accent always betrays my origins and on July 12, 1965 I 
     became an American citizen in the court house of Upper 
     Marlboro, Maryland, which, coincidentally, is the town where 
     John Carroll was born. I willingly promised to uphold the 
     laws of the United States and I acquired the freedom and, 
     indeed, the expectation to be part of the process which 
     monitors, implements and sometimes modifies those laws. 
     During these past thirty something years of my citizenship I 
     have observed the Constitution endure some severe pressures 
     and, by and large, I agree with the national consensus that 
     ``the system works''. There is no substitute for the rule of 
     law.
       Across the impressive facade of the Supreme Court Building 
     are the words ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' If I were the 
     architect I would have been tempted to add two further words, 
     ``For All.'' Criminals should fear the law: good people whose 
     means are meager should not be intimidated by either the law 
     itself or the wealth of those who can retain a bevy of high-
     profile lawyers. Claims are sometimes made that those on the 
     lowest rungs of the economic ladder rarely have access to 
     adequate legal representation. It is for this reason that I 
     wish to commend those legal firms and individual lawyers who, 
     through various pro bono networks, seek to alleviate this 
     shortcoming. They bring a nobility to their profession which 
     is beyond value and it is often the only antidote to the 
     popular cynicism which is foisted upon lawyers in general.
       As we usher in a new millennium, and as the world shrinks 
     around us, we have much to learn from each other. The Church 
     and the state must protect the freedom and the integrity of 
     one another within their respective spheres of competence, 
     and where there is overlapping, the dialogue must be marked 
     by, as one scholar suggested, (J. Bryan Hehir) technical 
     competency, civil intelligibility and political courtesy. In 
     this way the 350 year old vision of the Toleration Act of 
     1649 will endure.

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