INDIANAPOLIS — Paul Dietrich won't be working at his job with the Indiana Air Guard on April 21. He'll be playing his guitar at the Good Friday services at St. Aloysius Parish in Yoder, Ind.

That's because the U.S. Supreme Court decided March 6 to let stand a lower court's decision to uphold Indiana's state holiday.

“I'm glad I have the day off,” said Dietrich. “I can go play my guitar and worship.”

The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case is good news, say religious freedom watchers.

“Indiana can celebrate free of judicial harassment — for now,” said Kevin Hasson of the Washington, D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Good Friday has been a holiday in Indiana since 1941. He added that the action doesn't preclude the court from deciding against a similar law in the future.

Russell Bridenbaugh, of Bloomington, Ind., had challenged his state's law on the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state by establishing religion. He called the Supreme Court's decision “dangerous.”

“I don't think justice was served, nor was the Constitution,” Bridenbaugh told the Register. “One has to be vigilant when this happens. I take it seriously.”

But Hasson said the battle over Indiana's law is just the latest attempt to erase any aspect of religion from public life. Other Christian holidays have been targeted in recent court battles. The Becket Fund last year successfully defended in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court in Cincinnati the federal designation of Christmas as a holiday.

“This is the logical extension of challenging menorahs and Nativity scenes,” said Hasson. He also mentioned that citizens have had to remove Christian symbols, like the cross or the fish, from their city seals due to court challenges.

“The radical secularists never miss an opportunity to remove whatever religion they can find in public life,” he said.

Bridenbaugh sued Indiana in 1997, but a federal magistrate threw his case out without a trial. He brought the case to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the law with a 2-1 decision on July 21.

In the majority opinion, Judge Daniel Manion wrote: “No court has ever held that the [First Amendment] is violated merely because a state holiday has the indirect effect of making it easier for people to practice their faith.”

But Judge Thomas Fairfield dissented, concluding that the selection of Good Friday was a “direct” bow to religion.

“It is a day of solemn religious observance, and nothing else, for believing Christians, and no one else,” wrote the dissenting judge. “Unitarians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists — there is nothing in Good Friday for them, as there is in the other holidays we have mentioned [Thanksgiving and Christmas] despite the Christian origins of those holidays.”

Judge Manion countered that Indiana had secular reasons to give the holiday to its employees.

“Indiana does not celebrate the religious aspects of Good Friday; for Indiana, the holiday has absolutely no religious significance,” wrote Manion. “To Indiana, Good Friday is nothing but a Friday falling in the middle of the long, vacationless spring.”

Why Is It a Holiday?

Bridenbaugh said that the state is trying to ignore the obvious: that the holiday was established for religious reasons, not for the secular explanations offered by Indiana.

“If they had said, ‘Because many … employees are Christian and would take the day off anyway,’ at least that would be more honest,” said Bridenbaugh. But he added, “It would still be unconstitutional.”

Hasson also expressed concern about a solely secular defense of the Christian holiday, saying Bridenbaugh and other critics carry the separation of church and state too far.

“I think it's appalling that we can have holidays for National Catfish Day and National Jukebox Week and mean it,” said Hasson, “but we can't recognize that large numbers of people want to celebrate a religious holiday and simply give them the day off.”

Indiana had to argue the secular reasons behind the holiday, Hasson said, because the 6th Circuit Court overturned Wisconsin's Good Friday law in 1996.

The Wisconsin statute stipulated that “On Good Friday, the period from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. shall uniformly be observed for the purpose of worship” and required state offices to close after noon.

Since it's in the same circuit court as Wisconsin, Indiana was left to defend the secular benefits of giving its workers a day off.

Said Hasson, “That was the only option available to allow the Indiana law to stand.”

In 1988 the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued a letter on Holy Week celebrations for Catholics.

The letter begins by stating the importance of Good Friday, which is not a holy day of obligation: “On this day, when ‘christ our passover was sacrificed,’ the Church meditates on the passion of her Lord and Spouse, adores the cross, commemorates her origin from the side of Christ asleep on the cross, and intercedes for the salvation of the whole world.

“On this day, in accordance with ancient tradition, the Church does not celebrate the Eucharist: Holy Communion is distributed to the faithful during the Celebration of the Lord's Passion alone, though it may be brought at any time of the day to the sick who cannot take part in the celebration. Good Friday is a day of penance to be observed as of obligation in the whole Church, and indeed through abstinence and fasting” (Nos. 58-60).

It adds: “The Celebration of the Lord's Passion is to take place in the afternoon, at about 3 o'clock. The time will be chosen which seems most appropriate for pastoral reasons in order to allow the people to assemble more easily, for example shortly after midday, or in the late evening, however not later than 9 o'clock” (No. 63).