Church meets state in annual prayer service
Christmas is not the only ancient religious ritual observed in Honolulu. A yearly tradition observed here and in many states as legislatures open — as ours did Wednesday — is the “Red Mass,” which was held the day prior at Our Lady of Peace Cathedral.
It’s treated as a prayer service for the benefit of public servants charged with the wise leadership of the community. But it originated in Europe a millennium ago to open the courts’ term.
Red matched the judges’ robes, and in the Catholic Church also signified the symbolic red color of the Holy Spirit.
Government rarely seems divinely inspired, but that could be why they pray.
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The New Year is in session.
You know that the our founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, who attended Unitarian church services, though a self-proclaimed agnostic, all believed in what political scientists call “civil religion.” Practically, all the famous political philosophers from Plato to Rousseau did not believe that the common people could live moral lives without the support of religion. Even Friedrich Nietzsche, who proclaimed himself an “Anti-Christ” believed that the common man without God would become a “last man” living lives of pigs, of mindless hedonism, signaling the end of culture and civilization. The exception is Nietzsche’s famous “superman” a natural aristocrat, the few not the many. Religious or civil religious practices have been in existence since the inauguration of Washington. This won’t change; a hundred years from now presidents will still swear their oaths on a bible or other holy books and presidents will still say “God Bless America.”