[Photo: CNS]

Below from CNN.Com

Vice President Joe Biden joined five Supreme Court justices to attend Sunday’s annual Red Mass, the Roman Catholic service for the courts that has drawn criticism in recent years.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas attended the service, held at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, on the eve of the court’s new term.

The Catholic News Service gives a good overview of the service and its background here.

Speaking at the 56th annual Red Mass in the nation’s capital, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston said today’s followers of Christ must allow God’s word to abide in their hearts and, guided by the Holy Spirit, they must show God’s justice in the world.

“Graced in this manner, we respond in our personal lives of faith and witness and in our professional lives too, not only for the good of our souls but also for the sake of our professions,” said the cardinal, who delivered the homily at the Oct. 4 Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

Would I have attended this year’s Red Mass? A similar event? Not an easy answer for me. And that’s surprising.

Do I think that mixing one’s faith and professional life is a good thing? Depends. Would I have attended the Red Mass? No. Would I have attended a similar service, say, one sponsored by the Society of Christian Philosophers? Maybe. The Society meets at the three regional meetings of the American Philosophical Association, of which I am a member. I’ve attended one non-APA related meeting. I know some of the folks who were instrumental in getting the Society going.

I’m nowhere near Anne Rice’s position on organized religion, but I do have to draw the line, at least right now, with the Vatican Roman Catholic hierarchy and the American hierarchy. Does that mean I won’t step foot in a Catholic church? No. I’m still lovin’ my peeps in the pews. It means I don’t think I could attend such a hierarchically, high-profile Roman Catholic event filled with cardinals and bishops who, Lord only knows knew what, when, where, why and how the “bodies”, so to speak, are buried and who disposed of them. Or at least should have known.

Of course, I’m the one who advocates for an American break from the Vatican anyway in order to have a truly parochial American Catholic Church. But that’s another and quite a long story.

I’m not sure this school board in Louisiana has thought this through.

Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, “I agree … you don’t have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”

Even though creationism in the minds of these school board members may not be the same thing as intelligent design, a Federal court already weighed in on this with a resounding verdict on the side of science, which in that instance fell on the side of evolution.

From The New York Times (Dec. 20, 2005):

A federal judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania school board’s policy of teaching intelligent design in high school biology class is unconstitutional because intelligent design is clearly a religious idea that advances “a particular version of Christianity.”

In the nation’s first case to test the legal merits of intelligent design, Judge John E. Jones III dealt a stinging rebuke to advocates of teaching intelligent design as a scientific alternative to evolution in public schools.

The judge found that intelligent design is not science, and that the only way its proponents can claim it is, is by changing the very definition of science to include supernatural explanations.

On p. 64 of the Court’s decision (pdf), the Court held that Intelligent Design (ID) was not science:

We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980′s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is
additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the
subject of testing and research.

It also seem apparent that the Livingston School Board has not passed the “Lemon” test. (No. Not that kind of “Lemon Law”.) Quoting again from the Dover case:

As articulated by the Supreme Court, under the Lemon test, a government-sponsored message violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment if: (1) it does not have a secular purpose; (2) its principal or primary effect advances or inhibits religion; or (3) it creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion. Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13. As the Lemon test is disjunctive, either an improper purpose or an improper effect renders the ID Policy invalid under the Establishment Clause.

The bigger catch here is that the there is something governmental that “inhibits” religion, namely, the First Amendment and the court cases that restrict religious education in public schools. But it’s not much of a snag. If the schools in question are parochial schools there’d be no issue at all. The smaller catch might be that if the school board does not encourage the teaching of other “scientific” views, they are harming their students. This is a clear secular purpose. But one would think the Dover case closed that avenue.

Doesn’t Louisiana have enough on its plate?

I’m not up on my contemporary American eschatology, but some of the comments here pinpointed some rather nuanced, for me, distinctions. The most startling comment was by Prof. Butler from Univ. of Pennsylvania when she made the distinction between merely “believing” in x and the believing that makes x come to pass.

Here’s a video discussion from New York Times. Christians with guns.

Well, I’d rather have them do this than be guilty of the intense Christian proselytizing they were doing.

I want to say this is “stunning” news, but given the state of things in the world, sadly, it was to be expected.

There were protests in Malaysia yesterday and four arson attacks on Christian churches, apparently provoked by a court decision to allow Christians to use the word Allah.

[Photo from afp]

Police at Kuala Lumpur church torched in arson attack

It must be getting late because I first thought they were talking about “tribal” issues. Nope. It’s triable, i.e., appropriate issues for a court to decide.

A retailer that required a female employee to wear clothing similar to its own brand was not entitled to summary judgment on the EEOC’s claim that it violated Title VII’s religious accommodation requirement. The employee alleged that the retailer’s “look policy” consisted of clothing that was “sexy, form-fitting, and designed to show off body contours and draw attention to the wearer.” The policy conflicted with her religious beliefs. She had recently converted to the Apostolic religion, and began to adhere to its regulations regarding dress. Unable to reach an accommodation over how to dress, the employee resigned and the EEOC filed suit on her behalf.

But here’s the kicker:

The court also ruled that the EEOC was not entitled partial summary judgment on the issue of liability, finding that that the retailer raised triable issues as to the sincerity of the employee’s religious beliefs after she appeared for her deposition wearing “clothing that was potentially inconsistent with her alleged faith”

Ruh-roh! For those of you who enjoy reading these (I do!), the court’s decision is here (pdf).

This news item from the Guardian:

Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.

The fine for blasphemy? About $31,500.

This in contrast to the recent Swiss ban on building any new minarets:

The minaret of the new Grand Mosque of Marseille, whose cornerstone will be laid here in April, will be silent — no muezzin, live or recorded, will disturb the neighborhood with the call to prayer. Instead, the minaret will flash a beam of light for a couple of minutes, five times a day.

Normally, the light would be green, for the color of Islam. But Marseille is a port, and green is reserved for signals to ships at sea. Red? No, the firefighters have reserved red.

Instead, said Noureddine Cheikh, the head of the Marseille Mosque Association, the light will almost surely be purple — a rather nightclubby look for such an elegant building.

…Youcef Mammeri, a writer on Islam in France and member of the Joint Council of Muslims of Marseille, says that the debates over minarets, burqas and national identity have angered many French-born Muslims and brought them together in a defensive circle.

This is a tough call. On the one hand, I’m all for religious tolerance. But on the other hand it seems that historical tradition should be respected, too. But then that also cuts both ways. Take Spain and its transformation from Islamic to Catholic rule. If we just go by “who was there first”, this would often thwart the natural flow of history, whether that “flow” came at the end of a sword or not. If Maryland had been settled by Muslims but over the past 50 years a vibrant Christian minority had flourished, should church towers and bells be banned in deference to the over 200 year history of a predominantly Muslim populace? Or if Maryland had been predominantly Catholic (which it was) but now Orthodox Jews were in the ascendancy, should synagogues and payos be banned?

The sad truth is that tensions between different cultures (even those that share the same religion) is practically inevitable especially when there’s a lack of sensitivity and understanding on both sides.

Huh? The warden allegedly turned inmates away from church services for punitive reasons, such as their hair being too long.

The warden at Virginia’s largest women’s prison is retiring amid allegations the prison discriminated against gay inmates and denied others access to religious services.

What were they thinking? No, seriously. I wonder what they were thinking to allow this.

The suit alleges that one campus, Saddleback College, routinely opened events with prayers and showed a faculty-training video, called God Bless the U.S.A., that included religious imagery and compared American soldiers to Jesus Christ.