QUEENSLAND Governor Paul de Jersey, Queensland Supreme Court chief justice Catherine Holmes and many of the state’s brightest legal minds filed into St Stephen’s Cathedral to begin the legal year with a blessing in an ecumenical liturgy led by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge this morning.
Dozens of judges and lawyers from across the state and federal levels attended the Law Year Church Service, which is an ecumenical service hosted by different Christian churches each year.
Archbishop Coleridge, reflecting on the Gospel, urged the legal professionals to listen to the words of Jesus who spoke of the wise man who built his house on rock.
He said the rock in our culture was the rule of law, “which we regard as the foundation of the civilised society – worthy of the human being and even of God”.
“Without this, human societies become little more than a brutal play of power in which the strong trample on the weak, human dignity counts for nothing and God is completely ignored,” he said.
“Such societies are built on sand; when the flood rises and the river bursts, they quickly fall and great is their ruin.”
Archbishop Coleridge said the rule of law was one of humanity’s great achievements, which was achieved across time and across many cultures and was “not yet complete – since the rule of law is always under threat and therefore requires constant vigilance”.
He said while the law changed over time and reformed, if those changes and reforms “unsettle or even violate” the transcendent truth at the heart of the law then “we are moving from rock to sand”.
“That is not the change or reform we need,” he said.
“It will not lead to justice.”
He said the justice that is the bedrock of civilised society embodies a wise balance – a balance of the individual and community, of the particular and the universal, of freedom and constraint, of mercy and rigour, of change and changelessness.
“The letter of the law will doubtless guide you in the search for that balance, so too will your skill in interpreting the letter, but more will be needed – which is one reason why we gather this way in this place on this morning,” he said.
“In so far as you find that balance in this legal year, you will not be self-serving legal functionaries building on sand, but wise servants of justice building on rock.
“You will have a deep and strong foundation; those floods may rise and the river bursts the banks, there will be no great ruin but instead a true flourishing because you will stand firm and so too will the community which you serve.”
