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On Thursday, inside of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, there were many messages about love, God, redemption and righteousness delivered in both speech and song.

“May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life,” said the Most Reverend Larry Silva, the Bishop of Honolulu.

“Amen,” responded the congregants, who included about a dozen legislators including the former and current speakers of the Hawaii House of Representatives.

“Come, bow down and worship, kneel to the one who made us,” sang Keoki Kerr, a television news reporter who performed Psalm 95 in his fine tenor. “This is our God and our shepherd, we are the flock led with care.”

Meanwhile, on the outside of the cathedral, very different messages were delivered, though ones arguably as righteous.

“Respect the First Amendment,” read a sign carried by a protester on the Fort Street Mall. “Stop Clergy Sex Abuse” and “Women’s Rights Over Bishops’ Wrongs” read others.

Together, the demonstrations both inside the cathedral and outside represented the ongoing battle between church and state, between those who believe the two should forever be separate and those who argue they are eternally intertwined.

It’s a battle taking place right here in Honolulu. The relationship between religion and politics has a long history in Hawaii, one that shows no sign of ending.

Prayers for the Protesters

Just last fall, for example, conservative groups were instrumental in helping a Republican challenger knock off a longtime Democratic legislator in Mililani. Supporters of gay marriage want Hawaii to be the next state to make it legal, something sure to be opposed by many churches, especially the Roman Catholic Diocese.

On Wednesday, during opening day of the Hawaii Legislature, state Sen. Sam Slom responded enthusiastically to an invocation delivered by entertainer (and one-time lieutenant governor candidate) Danny Kaleikini.

“Thank God, Danny, this body will once again have daily prayer, because if ever there was a time elected officials should call on a higher authority for guidance, it is now,” he said.

It’s unclear whether the Senate will reinstate the practice of invocations after senators have been gaveled into session, something it halted two years ago — said to be the first time a legislative body in the United States voted to end invocations. (The House has not stopped the practice.)

The Senate ended invocations after a legal challenge from . The religion and government watchdog was founded in 1997 “to oppose the Christian supremacy movement and defend the constitutional separation of state and church.”

Fittingly, it was HCSSC and its leader, Mitch Kahle, who were doing the protesting Thursday outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace. That’s Kahle in the photo on this page, holding signs that read “Freedom From Religion” and “Thousands of Priests, Millions of Victims.”

The occasion was the Honolulu diocese’s Red Mass, which has been held most every January since 1955 to coincide with the opening of the Legislature.

Described as a 700-year-old tradition in Europe, the Red Mass was introduced in this country more than 100 years ago and has become an annual event in many places across the country, including in Washington, D.C. The mass is named for the color of the vestments.

Locally, the public liturgy is the church’s “prayer to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and guidance for our islands’ public servants,” as the diocese explains.

In addition to Speaker Joe Souki, Speaker Emeritus Calvin Say and other lawmakers, those in attendance this year included Bruce Coppa, the governor’s chief of staff. Neil Abercrombie has been known to attend the Red Mass, too, but on Thursday morning he was speaking at Chaminade University of Honolulu, a private Catholic Marianist college.

This year’s Red Mass featured a special guest speaker: Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dolan is known for his conservative values and outspoken views on issues ranging from clerical celibacy to abortion, from marriage to the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal, from the Iraq war to the 9/11 attacks.

Dolan’s presence thus added currency to the HCSSC protest.

The Red Mass also featured as its focal point Hawaii’s newest saint, St. Marianne Cope of Molokai, whom Pope Benedict XVI canonized in Rome Oct. 21. Dolan was in town to participate in the celebration for Marianne in Kalaupapa Jan. 12; she was a member of the Sisters of Saint Francis of Syracuse, New York.

In his homily, Dolan said the service’s first reading — Hebrews 3:7-14, a warning against unbelief — was “appropriate,” given the honoring of Marianne.

“How providential,” he said. “The first reading urges us to be open to the illuminating, enlightening power of the Holy Spirit, the mass called red, the spirit’s burning rays that unites us in our prayer for public service.”

What inspired Marianne and Father Damien on Molokai (Dolan pronounced it MA-la-keye, as many malihini do) to do their work is the same inspiration for many people, including, he said, lawmakers: “a conviction that all of us are made in God’s image and likeness, that humans are a reflection of the divine and thus uniquely deserving of dignity and respect, and that is the core conviction of the Bible. …”

(It wasn’t all about God; Dolan joked that it would be good for him to return to Manhattan where there is “much less traffic.” That got big laughs.)

Hawaii-born Sister Alicia Damien Lau, a registered nurse, healthcare executive and 47-year member of the same religious order as St. Marianne, recited the state motto — “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono” (The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness) — and encouraged people to “live a life in pono.”

“It means to discern the true condition or the nature of things and situations and then to act and make decisions consistent with what is moral, truthful and good,” she explained.

Bishop Silva then brought the Hawaii elected officials before him for a blessing, a blessing that he extended to the protesters outside “so that they too will be inspired by the lord Jesus.” The Red Mass closed with the singing of “America, the Beautiful.”

As the congregation exited the cathedral, Kahle and company were still holding their peaceful protest and demonstrating their own view of what is pono.

Told that the bishop asked people to pray for him, Kahle told Civil Beat, “Tell him thank you, that he can pray for me, but I’ll think for him.”