But once a year, many of the justices sit through a lecture where they are patiently instructed on how to vote on a number of important constitutional issues. This event takes places in the context of a worship service. It is called the "Red Mass."

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., working with the John Carroll Society, sponsors this special service, so named for the red vestments the presiding member of the clergy wears. The annual event takes place the Sunday before the first Monday in October, the opening of the Supreme Court's new term.

This year's service at St. Matthew's Cathedral took place Sept. 30. It was attended by six members of the high court - Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer. (Members of Congress and other government officials also were present).

By some unspoken tradition, the homilist at the mass usually takes a swipe at separation of church and state - albeit sometimes in carefully couched language - and speaks out against legal abortion, stem-cell research, same-sex marriage or other issues that may be occupying the church's leadership. In previous years, some bishops have even used the mass to carp about the lack of tax support for Catholic schools.

At Sunday's event, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee told the justices, "It is a cherished part of our American heritage, then, to rejoice in a mutually enriching alliance between religion, morality, and democracy, since, as de Tocqueville observed, `Respect for the laws of God and man is the best way of remaining free, and liberty is the best means of remaining upright and religious.' No wonder the bishops of the Catholic Church of the United States, meeting in council in Baltimore in 1884, could write, `We consider the establishment of our nation, the shaping of its liberties and laws, as a work of special Providence, its framers building better than they knew, the Almighty's hand guiding them.'"

Dolan didn't name the religion he wants to see in "alliance" with democracy. It's probably not Buddhism. Moments later he prayed, "[P]erhaps a way to view our participation in this annual Red Mass in our nation's capital is as our humble prayer for the red-hot fire of the Holy Spirit, bringing the jurists, legislators, and executives of our government the wisdom to recognize that we are indeed made in God's image, that deep in our being is the life of God, and then to give them the courage to judge, legislate, and administer based on the consequences of that conviction: the innate dignity and inviolability of every human life, and the cultivation of a society of virtue to support that belief."

He later asserted that in contemporary culture, "we're tempted to act like animals instead of like God's icon" and blasted "a culture where life itself can be treated as a commodity, seen as a means to an end, or as an inconvenience when tiny or infirm, in a society where rights are reduced to whatever we have the urge to do instead of what we ought to do in a civil society...." That's bishop-speak for opposition to stem-cell research and abortion rights and dogma-based mandates on care for the dying.

Dolan's sermon fits the pattern. At last year's Red Mass, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., insisted that opposing "threats to the dignity of life" - church code language for its anti-abortion lobbying - is not an effort "to force values upon society."

Wuerl asserted, "Politics and faith may mingle, because believers are also citizens. Church and state are home for the very same people."

In 2004, Boston Archbishop Boston Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley called on lawmakers to conform laws to church policy, telling attendees, "Too often when politicians agree with the church's position on a given issue they say the church is prophetic and should be listened to, but if the church's position does not coincide with theirs, then they scream separation of church and state."

During the 2003 mass, Cardinal Avery Dulles bluntly called on government to "protect and support" religion. He then blasted public schools for failing to include moral instruction and implied that private institutions may need to take over the task of educating youngsters.

The bishops' rhetoric has actually become a bit more guarded in recent years. That may be because the ham-fisted sermons annoyed one justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a writer last year that she attended one Red Mass after being placed on the high court in 1993 but doesn't plan to do so again.

"Before every session, there's a Red Mass," Ginsburg said. "And the justices get invitations from the cardinal to attend that. And a good number of the justices show up every year. I went one year, and I will never go again, because this sermon was outrageously anti-abortion."

Judges and politicians may attend any religious service they like, of course. But when the hierarchy of a powerful religious denomination uses a worship service to demand that its theology be written into the law for all to follow, Americans have a right to be concerned.