NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      DETROIT (CWNews.com) - A Michigan Catholic associations this week called on Catholic lawyers to boycott the University of Detroit-Mercy's annual Red Mass next week because the judge asked to give the traditional oath is pro-abortion.

      The Call to Holiness group called the boycott after the Catholic university's president, Sister Maureen Fay, refused to revoke the invitation for Michigan Supreme Court Justice Conrad Mallett to participate in the Mass. The Red Mass is a tradition dating from the Middle Ages in which lawyers annually participate in a Mass and renew an oath to uphold Catholic teaching.

      "It is horrendously hypocritical for a jurist who favors the murder of babies to be allowed a place of prominence in a Catholic Church at a ceremony so steeped in tradition and reverence for Catholic ideals as the Red Mass," said Jay McNally, executive director of Call to Holiness. As a Michigan Supreme Court justice, Mallett has authored key opinions supporting abortion, including the requirement that the state use public funds to pay for abortions.

      Meanwhile, on the pro-life battlefront in Lawrence, Kansas a pro-life protest at the University of Kansas coinciding with the Jewish high holiday of Rosh Hoshana came under attack this week, including physical assault and an attempt to drive a car into demonstrators, university police said on Wednesday.

      A display of signs comparing legalized abortion to the Holocaust was placed on the lawn of dormitory on Sunday. Some Jewish students called the timing of the protest to coincide with the holiest day of the Jewish calendar was offensive. On Sunday, one angry student drove his car into the display, nearly hitting one student-protester. On Tuesday, another student punched a pro-lifer holding a sign. University police said both men have been arrested and charged.

      The group organizing the week-long protest said the timing of the event was a coincidence and that he felt comparisons to the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, are valid. "Abortion is genocide. That's the whole point," said Gregg Cunningham, director of the Los-Angeles-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. "Frankly, I'm weary of genocide snobs who focus solely on their causes."