Belief in miracles should not be dismissed, Justice Scalia says. (People & Events).

Reports of weeping statues and visions of the Virgin Mary should not be brushed off lightly by a skeptical society, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a largely Roman Catholic audience Oct. 14.

Addressing several hundred parishioners of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Ind., Scalia said people who report miracles should not be dismissed as irrational or poorly educated. He included among such miracles the resurrection of Christ.

"It is not irrational to accept the testimony of witnesses who had nothing to gain from their testimony, of the occurrence of Christ's resurrection" Scalia told the audience. "What is irrational is to reject ... without any investigation of the possibility of miracles, and Jesus Christ's resurrection in particular."

According to the Associated Press, Scalia was speaking at a brunch that took place after the cathedral's Red Mass, an annual Catholic service for members of the legal profession. During his remarks, he criticized the media, asserting, "Even if a miracle occurred under their noses, they would not believe. To be honest, that is the view of Christians, at least of traditional Christians, taken by the sophisticated in modern society."

The "sophisticated," Scalia asserted, believe that doctrines like the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus and the resurrection are "extraordinarily ridiculous." He urged his listeners to "have the courage to reject the sophisticated world."

Scalia traced this extreme form of skepticism back to Thomas Jefferson, noting that Jefferson's doubts about the accuracy of the Bible led him to edit the New Testament, removing all references to the supernatural.

In other news about the Red Mass:

* Attorney General John Ashcroft was the guest of honor at Boston's Red Mass Nov. 4 and later addressed a gathering of Catholic lawyers. During the homily, Cardinal Bernard Law, who has known Ashcroft for nearly 30 years, called on members of the legal profession to fight "moral chaos" by opposing legal abortion and gay marriage. (While the Red Mass is billed as merely a service to seek the blessings of God on judges and others in the legal profession, church leaders often use it as an opportunity to lobby for church positions on issues that come before the courts.)

* Several Supreme Court justices attended Washington, D.C.'s Red Mass Oct. 28. Among those in the pews at St. Matthew's Cathedral were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer. Also attending was Washington Mayor Anthony Williams and Mel Martinez, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the homily, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick urged those present to enforce and interpret civil law in ways that conform to divine law. "The challenge," he said, "is to recognize when [the law] fulfills the divine law, the law of nature, the laws of the common good, and when it seems not to be faithful to that, to apply it restrictively and where it is faithful, to apply it benignly and with great courage."

McCarrick also argued for the Catholic church's stance on abortion, asking for respect for "every human person ... from the moment of conception to the moment God calls us home."