Island clergy and the congregation at the diocese’s annual Red Mass, Jan. 17, raise their hands in a blessing over local civic, military and law enforcement leaders in attendance at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz )
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire Catholic ministries, delivers the homily at the Red Mass. He spoke on the topic, “The Noble Project: Law, Politics, and the Gospel.” (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
The topic was law, appropriate for an audience of law makers, law enforcers and law interpreters. The homilist was Bishop Robert Barron, a high profile Catholic video evangelist and author. The setting was the diocese’s Red Mass, Jan. 17 at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, the traditional annual liturgy for Hawaii’s public servants.
The speaker praised his audience’s “noble profession” before launching into a lesson on the foundation of “positive law.”
Quoting thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Jefferson, Bishop Barron said that all good law is a “reflection of the divine mind.”
“All positive law — everything from traffic regulations to the tax code — is rooted in the natural law, which is to say the fundamental precepts of the moral life,” he said
“And the moral law is grounded, furthermore, in the eternal law, which is identical to the mind and purpose of God,” Bishop Barron said. “This is why decent and well-formulated positive laws, including the simplest regulations, are reflective of the divine mind.”
On the other hand, he said, “once the transcendent reference has been lost, law loses its dignity, for it is no longer grounded in a firm moral foundation. Untethered from an ethical and spiritual project, it becomes but a vehicle for the expression of personal desire and inclination.”
“This has, quite obviously, opened the door to the legalization of acts that more morally informed generations would have considered ethically repugnant,” he said, giving the examples of unlimited access to abortion and assisted suicide.
“But there is an even more profound danger that follows from the systematic elimination of God from our civil discourse: the tyranny of the strong,” Bishop Barron said. “When positive law is removed from its nesting relationship with the natural law and the eternal law, it becomes a weapon in the hands of those who can commandeer power within a society, whether through intimidation, military force, or the manipulation of majority opinion.”
The bishop pointed to disturbing trends of atheism, materialism, scientism and relativism among the young that hints that America is heading in the wrong direction.
“That this descent into non-belief is bad for them personally goes without saying,” he said. “Convinced that God is an illusion, they have turned, at the prompting of both the high and the popular culture, to the false gods of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor.”
“But this has led, as every spiritual teacher through the ages would have predicted, to deep unhappiness and patterns of addiction,” he said. “Precisely because we are wired for God, anything other than God will leave us feeling unsatisfied, and in our frustration, we will tend to return obsessively to those limited goods that can never answer the longing of the heart.”
In closing, the bishop noted that the “climax of the Scriptural revelation is, in short, a political image, a picture of a rightly ordered city” — the New Jerusalem.
He said that the city had no temple. Because the “city itself has become a temple, every activity in it dedicated to the praise of God.”
“May this great image spur you on and inspire you, as you labor in the fields of law and politics,” he told his audience. “You practice a noble art. Dedicate it to God.”
Bishop Larry Silva presided over the solemn liturgy, concelebrating with 27 priests and accompanied by 14 deacons. A handful of ministers from Protestant denominations were also present.
As is customary, the Mass opened with a procession of members of Hawaiian Royal Societies entering the church to the Hawaiian chanting of Ikaika Bantolina.
Thirty one dignitaries attended including a dozen members of the state House of Representatives, two Hawaii Supreme Court justices, military officers and members of the Honolulu City Council and other city officials.
Sen. Donna Mercado Kim was there. House speaker Rep. Joseph Souki and speaker emeritus Rep. Calvin Say were also present. Also in attendance were chief justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court Mark Recktenwald and associate justice Michael Wilson.
While in Hawaii, Bishop Barron, who is also an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, also visited Kalaupapa, which he described as “one of the great spiritual pilgrimages of my life,” celebrated Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa on Jan. 15 and returned to the co-cathedral the next evening to speak to a crowd of 800.
