Archbishop Chaput writes about slain Catholic Judge John Roll. It’s a beautiful tribute to a good man:
In January 2008, at the invitation of Bishop Thomas Olmsted, I gave a homily at the annual Red Mass for attorneys, judges and public officials in Phoenix. The theme wasn’t new; I’ve said it a hundred times. So has Bishop Olmsted. So have many other bishops. But over the past weekend I dug it out and reread the homily’s last few lines:
“We’re citizens of heaven first. Our time here is limited. This life passes. Eternity is forever. We need to act in this world accordingly, with lives of Christian service to the poor and afflicted—including the unborn child, the immigrant, the homeless and the elderly. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, our choices, our actions and our convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.”
Sitting in the congregation that day was a woman named Maureen, an active and very committed Catholic, and a veteran of crisis pregnancy counseling with Tucson’s Catholic Charities. After the liturgy she moved on to the other tasks of her day, as I did mine. Except that Maureen apparently talked about the Red Mass with her spouse. And 10 months later, after the 2008 election, I got the first of several extraordinary letters from her husband—John Roll, chief judge of the federal District of Arizona; the same John Roll who died in the terrible Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson.
It’s impossible to fully know a man from correspondence alone. But each of John Roll’s letters had the same four clear marks: generosity; intelligence, largeness of spirit and a sincere love for his Catholic faith. Two days after Roll’s murder, his law clerk, attorney Aaron Martin, described to me the kind of man he was.
Roll was devoted to St. Thomas More and kept a biography of the saint on a table near his desk. He liked mentoring young Christian attorneys because he believed their faith gave them a better moral foundation for the vocation of law.
January 13, 2011 at 3:37 am
His faithfulness touched many people. I'm sure his family finds great comfort in knowing he is with his God.
January 13, 2011 at 9:38 am
"He liked mentoring young Christian attorneys because he believed their faith gave them a better moral foundation for the vocation of law."
Divine command ethics are like saying "I don't have the capacity to think for myself in an ethical framework, so I'll just do what goat herders from two thousand years ago thought was moral"
So what it comes down to is a severe lack of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex.
January 13, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Beautiful words from the Archbishop. I continue to pray for my brother Knight and his family, along with the others injured and killed.
Anonymous #2, thanks for playing, but you've demonstrated your own lack of intellect. Or, at least, applying your intellect. You'd be better served by showing how those "goat herders" (which ones were goat herders?) from 2000 years ago were wrong, not just dismissing them because of their jobs (fishermen, tax collector, and a rather important carpenter) or the time that has passed since they walked the Earth.
January 13, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Anonymous @ 4:38:
Forgive me, but your comment was simply stupid. It's quite easy to use a "courageous-sounding" (and self-congratulatory) phrase such as "think for myself in an ethical framework" (and you obviously think that faithful Christians do not think for themselves, for whatever biased and logic-free reason), but I really don't think you spent even two seconds' rational thought while making that statement. How, exactly, did you arrive at your "ethical framework"? I've yet to find an anti-Christian/anti-theist whose "ethical system" isn't simply an anemic copy of what God-fearing people have known for millenia.