Lawyers told: Live by God's principles

MIAMI | With a nod of thanks to her mother — “who instilled a deep-rooted faith for which I am forever grateful” — Judge Beatrice Butchko accepted this year’s Lex Christi, Lex Amoris award from her peers at the Miami Catholic Lawyers Guild.

“Attending the Red Mass in my robe, among my colleagues and members of the bar, has always had a liberating feeling for me,” said Judge Butchko of the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida, a member of St. Patrick Parish in Miami Beach. Her son attended Belen Jesuit Prep and her daughter is a student at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami.

She addressed her remarks to a room-full of federal and state judges, attorneys, her bailiff and other court personnel gathered for a reception in Gesu Church’s basement hall. Moments earlier, Archbishop Thomas Wenski had celebrated the group’s annual Red Mass upstairs in the church itself — Miami’s oldest and one of its most beautiful.

Judge Butchko alluded to that beauty, and to the fact that Gesu is many Catholic attorneys’ “home away from home” because it is located in downtown Miami, where most of the courts and legal firms have offices.

“It is the place where many of us attend Mass on holy days of obligation when we are at work and away from our parishes,” Judge Butchko said.

In her remarks, she noted that “my faith is a very important part of my life, as is this wonderful profession. Yet I find that in today’s world it is more and more uncomfortable to express any feelings of faith or religion in the work place.”

Nevertheless, she reminded her peers that “there is no need to outwardly profess religious beliefs as elected officials if we lead and serve in accordance with God’s teachings. We can worship our God and show our devotion to him when we practice our profession with grace, mercy, compassion, love of humanity, patience, fellowship — even when making tough and necessary decisions involving punishment and retribution.”

Alluding also to the Florida Bar Association’s recent efforts to emphasize professionalism, Judge Butchko said, “We show our devotion to God when we practice with professionalism, when we act like ladies and gentlemen, when we practice intelligently with good diligence, ethics and hard work. When we love one another, when we are tolerant, supportive, reliable, team players.”

“I pray every day for strength and the ability to live my life according to these principles,” she added.

Archbishop Wenski made a similar point in his homily, reminding the members of the legal profession that they are, in the words of their patron, St. Thomas More, “the king’s good servant but God’s servant first.”

Focusing his remarks on the current controversy over same-sex marriage — and the Supreme Court’s expected decision on two pending cases — the archbishop stressed the difference between natural law and man-made law. He said that in recent decades American jurisprudence has moved away from its Judeo-Christian roots — which hold that truth is “not constructed but received” — to “a radical autonomy” in which truth is determined “by one’s own will.”

“There is little reason for optimism (on same-sex marriage),” the archbishop said, alluding to the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions in Casey v. Planned Parenthood and Roe v. Wade. “We have gone from ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’ … to a new secular religion based on the ‘right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.’”

He urged members of the Catholic Lawyers Guild, “as Catholic Christians and officers of the court,” to recall St. Thomas More’s example and seek his prayers. “May you be, in his words, ‘for the greater glory and honor of God and in pursuit of his justice … able in argument, accurate in analysis, strict in study, correct in conclusion, candid with clients, honest with adversaries, and faithful in all details of the faith.’”

The Red Mass is a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, so-called because the celebrants wear red vestments. It dates back to the 13th century, when it officially opened the term of the court for most European countries. The goal is to invoke the wisdom of the Holy Spirit on those involved in the legal profession.