c. 2006 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ At an annual Mass attended by this city’s Roman Catholic elite, including four Supreme Court justices, new Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl told packed pews of worshippers on Sunday (Oct. 1) that America must honor its moral and religious roots.

On the Sunday before the Supreme Court opens its fall session, four Catholic justices _ Chief Justice John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas _ sat together in the first pew, facing a phalanx of red-frocked bishops and priests.

Justice Samuel Alito, who gives the nine-member court its first-ever Catholic majority, did not attend the Mass, sponsored by the Washington-based John Carroll Society, a network of Catholic professionals.

Joining the justices beneath the elaborate, gilded mosaics that crown the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle were Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson.

With a controversial abortion case on the Supreme Court’s docket this fall and congressional elections just weeks away, the low-key Wuerl avoided politically charged statements at his first Red Mass in the nation’s capital.

(On Sept. 29, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced a campaign to influence public opinion before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in an abortion-related case Nov.8.)

Instead, the 65-year-old prelate, who succeeded the popular Cardinal Theodore McCarrick last June, chose to warn the 2,000-odd assembled jurists, diplomats and politicians not to neglect the religious “roots” of American society.

“Faith convictions, moral values and defining religious experiences of life sustain the vitality of the whole society,” Wuerl said. “We never stand alone, disconnected, uprooted, at least not for long.”

Adding that “the religious convictions of a people sustain their moral decisions,” Wuerl said “the goal of public policy, and its application and interpretation, must not be what we can do, but what we ought to do; not what we have the ability to achieve, but what in our hearts, in our conscience and in our souls we know we must do,” Wuerl said.

In his former post as archbishop of Pittsburgh, Wuerl was known as a patient teacher who was more likely to whisper in one’s ear than blast pronouncements from the pulpit. Church conservatives, who continue to challenge Catholic lawmakers on issues such as gay marriage and abortion rights, have lamented that a more outspoken prelate was not appointed to Washington.

In a brief interview after the Mass, Wuerl said he spoke against attempts to “bleach God from our public life.”

“There is a separation between the sphere of church and the sphere of state,” he said, “but we cannot separate faith and public life. People who are believers are also citizens.”

The Red Mass, which dates to the 13th century, is celebrated to invoke God’s blessing on judges and public officials. The Mass’s name derives from the celebrants’ red vestments, representing the tongues of fire that mark the presence of the Holy Spirit.

KRE/JL END BURKE