The priest or deacon at St Ignatius in SF missed a perfect opportunity to talk about the spirit of the law but instead he apologized for committing a minor traffic infraction and said he should have known better. He was talking about driving thru the city and he was at a red light and there was absolutely nobody around & he was running late for something important and decided to turn right on red even though the sign said no right turn on red.
And suddenly he saw the police lights behind him and received a citation. I thought he was going to going to start talking about the spirit of the law of turning right on red - usually if there's a sign that says no turn on red in certain situations it's at unpredictable & more dangerous intersections, but since he had clearly looked every single way and done everything properly it was okay in this situation because the spirit of the law would justify it (which is related to public policy , which is supposed to be behind every law as every law student knows).
Instead he took the opportunity to apologize publicly to the church & self-chastize & say he shouldn't have done it. Basically he was making a case for being legalistic - the exact opposite of what Jesus was trying to teach to the Pharisees and Sadducees back in the day.
It was a bit bizarre to hear this from a man of the cloth which is why I wonder maybe this was a deacon rather than a priest (a little less educated) but even sometimes the most educated make such a mistake .
Anyways let me use this as an opportunity to let people know that there is the spirit of the law behind Biblical law as well as today's man-made laws ( called public policy ) or supposed to be and when police violate the public policy of the law (ie the intended purpose) you can challenge them in court .
Now in the case of minor traffic infractions you probably won't win simply because judges too often "rubber stamp" everything, but we should keep in mind that there is a spirit of the law . Like if you're driving in the middle of the night and you come to an intersection and it's a really long red & no traffic whatsoever- the spirit of law would say you CAN go through it (after stopping and carefully looking both ways to make sure it's clear)even if the letter of the law would say you must wait until it turns green. Comprende ?
