Religion and Procedure

Abstract

When I began telling my colleagues at Notre Dame that I had been invited to prepare a paper on religion and procedure, some of them said How interesting, and looked vague. Others, more forthright, came straight out and asked what on earth I was going to say. The reaction is understandable. Since God made everything, there is nothing that cannot be related to religion if you work at it, but procedure seems to be harder going than most things. It is all very well to talk about God ruling the world and the state exercising authority on His behalf. But God does not seem to have any procedure.1 It is fairly easy, if you go in for analogies of that kind, to think of God as a lawgiver, even as a judge. But to think of Him as a sheriff or a process server stretches most people's imaginations farther than they will comfortably stretch. But it does not follow that the attempt to relate religion and procedure is futile. It is the business of human authority to do justice on behalf of God. If I were talking about substantive law, I would have to say what I mean by justice; but when I am talking about procedure, I can use it without defining it, as the framers of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure did.2 The point is that when God chooses to do justice on His own behalf, He has facilities human beings lack. This is