Red Mass includes diverse component Catholic bishop, Orthodox Jew urge judges, lawyers to live their faiths

PORTLAND – A Roman Catholic bishop and an Orthodox Jew on Friday urged lawyers and judges in Maine to better integrate their religious and professional lives.

That theme dominated the sermon Bishop Richard Malone, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, delivered during the annual Red Mass held at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. More than 100 attended.

At a luncheon after the Mass at the Portland Country Club, Louis H. Kornreich, chief judge of U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maine and an Orthodox Jew, delivered a speech titled “The Religious Personality: A Jewish Perspective.”

Kornreich has lived and worked in Bangor for 30 years. He was appointed to the bench in 2001.

Traditionally, the Red Mass is held so that judges, lawyers, government officials and people of all faiths may invoke God’s blessing and guidance in the administration of justice, according to information in the bulletin provided at Friday’s Mass.

The name is derived from the red vestments worn by the celebrants to symbolize the tongues of fire that indicate the presence of the Holy Spirit and recalls the traditional bright scarlet robes worn by attending royal judges many centuries ago, Malone said during his homily.

The Red Mass was revived in the Portland diocese seven years ago when a group of Catholic attorneys approached Malone’s predecessor, Bishop Joseph J. Gerry, about conducting it again.

Malone asked worshippers Friday to consider “the connection between the religious dimensions of our lives and our professional lives. … Believers in God are called to serve God in all that we do and all that we are.”

Kornreich said at the luncheon that as a Jew, his religious and professional lives were closely connected by two sets of laws – those that came from God and the ones created by man.

“Jews have lived by the law for 3,000 years,” he said Friday. “Every aspect of Jewish law is given equal weight with the religious components. There is no deference to one kind of law.”

Kornreich compared abiding by one’s faith with wearing a yoke.

“A yoke is designed to be worn by a beast of burden to lighten the burden,” he said. “If the yoke is properly fitted, it doesn’t cause pain. [Jews believe] you should approach your religious obligation and civil duties with joy and wear the yoke with pride.

“If we think of one side as the yoke of Judaism, or the Tora, and the other as the yoke of Christianity, or the Gospels, then together we can plow parallel roads in our civil society,” Kornreich concluded.