Taking faith off the shelf: What it means to be a Catholic lawyer

By L. Michael Brooks Jr.

I was paging through a law book recently when I came across the text of an oath for judges to administer to witnesses testifying in court.  It reads, “Do you solemnly swear by the ever living God … that the testimony you will give before this court shall be the truth.”

I could not recall ever having heard the oath administered with the “ever living God” phrase left in.  Still, I was pleased that the vestigial reference to God was safe from secularization, on a shelf in my office.  As a Catholic lawyer in 2008, I have to admit that many of my reflections about faith enjoy their best days on a shelf, like a book that is neither banned nor burned, but not well-examined.

What makes us take our faith off the shelf?  Sometimes it’s the witness offered by other Christians when faced with a test of conviction.  Case in point, a few weeks ago Colorado Christian University, an interdenominational Christian college, won a legal challenge against a Colorado law that prohibits state scholarship money from going to students who attend colleges labeled as “pervasively sectarian.”  The prototype for this kind of law “arose at a time of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was an open secret that ‘sectarian’ was code for ‘Catholic,’” as the U.S. Supreme Court discussed nearly a decade ago in a different case.  In Colorado, some religiously-rooted universities had adapted to the law and curbed their curricula to avoid the “pervasively sectarian” label.  But CCU didn’t escape the label, and it sued to have the law declared unconstitutional.

The zeal and conviction reflected by CCU and its lawyers in fighting to protect religious liberty and refusing to compromise their Christian faith is part of the lesson of taking faith off the shelf.  Another part of the lesson is displayed by the attorneys for the state who were duty bound to fight in support of the Colorado law.  After losing to CCU in the appeals court, they (together with other state officials) chose not to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.  Colorado’s lead lawyer on the case explained:  “As we were obliged to do, we presented the strongest case we could to the court.  The court has now made clear, though, that Colorado’s law is outdated and must be changed.”

Both sides of the case help me to reflect on what it means to be a Catholic lawyer.  On one side, it is the zeal to fight for the protection of religious freedom and expression, to speak for those who have no voice, and to uphold the dignity of those whose value is not recognized by our society.  On the other side, the practice of law sometimes puts lawyers in the position of having to advocate for a person or institution with whom they may not agree, based on the recognition that a higher value is at stake.  Long before he was president, John Adams defended the British perpetrators of the Boston Massacre, not as a loyalist to the crown, but as a believer in the right to counsel.  The state’s lawyers in the CCU case owed it to their client to present their best case.  But when they lost, they counseled their client to help change the law.

St. Thomas More is the patron saint of lawyers because he refused to put his faith on a shelf.  He understood the competing visions that are often involved in law.  In his fictionalized view of an ideal island state, Utopia, no one needed lawyers and the laws were justly enforced.  In his real-life job as lord chancellor to King Henry VIII, he saw a different world, where challenges to the pope’s authority were growing and political intrigue had all but replaced statesmanship.  When the king challenged the pope’s authority, St. Thomas attempted to counsel the king, and sought to resign his post only after his efforts proved fruitless.  He was ultimately executed for refusing to compromise his Catholic faith.

On Oct. 26, Catholic lawyers and judges will gather at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception for the annual Red Mass.  We will be praying through the intercession of St. Thomas More for the zeal to exercise our faith in Christ in our personal and professional lives, and for the wisdom to counsel others to do the same.

L. Michael Brook Jr. is president of the St. Thomas More Society of Colorado.