By Dave Andrusko

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It was no doubt merely a coincidence, but it was an intriguing one nonetheless. Yesterday, C-SPAN began its week-long series on "The Supreme Court: Home to America's Highest Court" [http://supremecourt.c-span.org/Default.aspx]. C-SPAN bills Supreme Court week as a documentary that will "offer viewers a rare window into the Supreme Court and those that serve there." The first night was well worth watching.

As you might know, the High Court, by law, begins its term the first Monday in October--today.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl talks with Chief Justice John Roberts after the Red Mass.

But yesterday the unofficial start to the new session commenced with the celebration of the "Red Mass." [According to the Catholic News Agency, "The title of 'Red Mass' dates to the 13th century and comes from the red vestments worn by the celebrants. The Mass is conducted to ask for guidance for those who seek justice."]

The Red Mass, "an initiative of the John Carroll Society, a group of Catholic legal professionals," has been celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle since 1953. There were a number of reasons the celebration this year was so intriguing.

For one thing with the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor, there are now an unprecedented number of Catholic on the Supreme Court--six: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor. All but Justice Thomas (who was attending a wedding) were present.

For another, the celebration of the Eucharist was presided over by Most Rev. Donald W. Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington D.C., who celebrated the Eucharist while Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, delivered the homily.

As one legal blog pointed out last week, "Last spring, [Cardinal DiNardo] 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."

Specifically, "I find the invitation very disappointing," DiNardo wrote in the Texas Catholic Herald. "Though I can understand the desire by a university to have the prestige of a commencement address by the President of the United States, the fundamental moral issue of the inestimable worth of the human person from conception to natural death is a principle that soaks all our lives as Catholics, and all our efforts at formation, especially education at Catholic places of higher learning."

Some accounts that mentioned DiNardo's unmistakably pro-life comment in his homily treated it as almost an afterthought. By contrast the Associated Press headlined its story, "Cardinal makes plea for rights of unborn at Red Mass before Supreme Court opening."

If context is everything, we have to read the full homily to understand how powerfully life-affirming were the remarks of Cardinal DiNardo. (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/red-mass-homily). Let's see how it all fits together.

Referring to those people the legal profession represents, Cardinal DiNardo (the newest American Cardinal) told the assembled crowd yesterday, they are more than "clients."

"They are poor and wealthy, confused and lucid, polite and impolite," he said. "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, and require our most careful attention and radical support."

But if you read the homily with discernment, it is clear that the whole message was a quiet but unmistakable admonition to the legal profession against the sort of specialization that produces "wondrous formal knowledge" but at the cost of "frequently becom[ing] semi-mechanical and distancing" towards the very people it is supposed to serve.

In many ways his explication of Old Testament and New Testament texts was an extended meditation on what Cardinal DiNardo called the "work of Living Memory," specifically how "The Holy Spirit recalls us from religious amnesia, from forgetfulness..."

A few minutes later, Cardinal DiNardo said, "Yet the Holy Spirit rarely works at the surface of things but probes more deeply into the heart. On the same day of Pentecost, the Church sings a poem, a sequence as it is called, that salutes the Holy Spirit for: "bending the stubborn heart and will, melting the frozen and warming the chill." Anyone who has watched a block of ice melt knows the subtle way that occurs."

When I read this section, I instantly thought of how apt a description this also is of what we are trying to do. Pro-lifers gently seek to (1) awaken our nation from a kind of spiritual amnesia while (2) subtly "bending the stubborn heart and will" and "melting the frozen and warming the chill."

None of this, ultimately, can be successful if we are foolish enough to think it can be done by our own strength. But if we understand the rightness of our cause and who it is who has called us to defend the defenseless, we can rest assured that one day the littlest Americans will once again be welcomed in life and protected in law.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com

Part Two