Archbishop: Red Mass is a reminder of 'different truth'

Sydney
10 February 2002

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Archbishop: Red Mass is a reminder of 'different truth'

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Christian and Jewish worship at the beginning of the legal year is a public reminder that our legal tradition is based upon a different truth than atheists will admit, says the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr George Pell.
He told the congregation in St Mary's Cathedral for the annual Red Mass, which commemorates the start of the law year: "We belong to a monotheistic tradition, compassionate and rational, which claims the scales of justice will balance in eternity.
"We claim that humans stand under a moral code, an objective order of right and wrong which our parliaments and courts try to identify and defend.
"And we believe that after death each one of us, woman and man, rich and poor, will answer to the good God for our lives, with those of us who have shown mercy receiving mercy."
Archbishop Pell said the operations of the courts were "a much needed if indirect teaching about the true nature of life, and a strong vindication of the search for justice found in most human hearts, which points beyond us to our God of truth, love and justice".
Since 1931 Sydney's Catholic legal fraternity has come together at the Red Mass to ask for God's blessing on the work of the courts.
All levels of the legal fraternity are represented.
Similar services are held in the Anglican and Jewish communities.