Bishop William K. Weigand will celebrate the annual Red Mass on Wednesday, Oct. 4 at 5 p.m. in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento.

Attorneys, judges, elected and appointed officials and all those working in the legal system or involved in the process of government in the five-county Sacramento region are invited to attend the Mass.

The Red Mass is the traditional gathering of members of the legal profession and public officials to invoke the aid of the spirit of God in their deliberations for the year to come.

The homilist for the Mass will be Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry of Los Angeles. Bishop Curry has served as regional bishop for the Santa Barbara pastoral region of the Los Angeles Archdiocese since 1994. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1967, and served in various ministries in the archdiocese for 27 years prior to being named a bishop. He is the author of two books on church and state in America.

Following the Mass, a 6:30 p.m. dinner event will be held at the Sutter Club, where Bishop Weigand will present Superior Court Judge James Mize with the first St. Thomas More award. The new annual award honors a member of the legal profession within the diocese who has shown integrity in the practice of law, leadership in the community, and faithfulness to Gospel values in his or her personal and professional life.

“I’m very humbled and surprised by the award,” said Mize, a member of St. Philomene Parish in Sacramento for the past 25 years who currently serves as assistant presiding judge of Sacramento Superior Court.

“It’s a statement to my colleagues in the profession that any of us can make a difference, that getting involved in the community makes you a better human being and a better attorney,” he said. “Those of us privileged to serve in this profession are responsible for giving back in abundance.”

Mize and two other parishioners of St. Philomene Parish founded the free meal program, “Sharing God’s Bounty,” in January 1983. Since then the ministry has served more than 650,000 meals on Tuesday evenings to men, women and children in the Sacramento area, as well as distributing bags of groceries to needy families.

He was a founding member of Sacramento’s Loaves & Fishes, which provides survival services for the homeless, and until his appointment to the bench in 2000, he served pro bono as counsel to Loaves & Fishes.

He also founded the Voluntary Legal Services Program in Sacramento as a joint operation of the Sacramento County Bar Association and what is now the Legal Services Corporation of Northern California. With more than 800 attorneys and legal assistants serving as volunteers, the program provides free legal services to the poor and disadvantaged.

Mize and his wife, Rita, have also served for many years on the team coordinating the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults at St. Philomene Parish.

At the dinner event, Douglas Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., will give an address titled, “Religious Freedom and the Truth of the Human Person.”

Kmiec formerly served as dean of the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., as head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and for two decades on the law faculty at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

He told The Herald via e-mail that history has “been contended for by two unsatisfactory views — those who would impose religious belief under law and those who would use law to deny the public expression of belief.”

His address will explore “how both positions dehumanize or deny the intrinsic nature of the human person, and how the way back is to honor religious freedom in the fullest sense,” Kmiec said.

For more information about the dinner event or reservations, call the law offices of Sweeney and Greene at (916) 388-5170. Dinner tickets must be reserved by Sept. 25.

Copyright © 2006 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved