“Sanctuary: Laws and Lore” is the title of my last article (The Pennsylvania Lawyer, November 2025)in which I hypothesized that the concept of ecclesiastical sanctuary, trailing its nascent progeny academic sanctuary and municipal sanctuary, is sneaking in through the back door of the American courthouse. (If anybody wants to read it, message me. )
In connection with my theme, I wrote that, for a real éclat brilliantly illuminating the concept, you gotta commit a crime IN the sacred space, like Robert the Bruce did by killing ( or maybe just re- killing) John Comyn at the altar of Greyfriars Church, or King Henry’s men killing Beckett in his Cathedral. Or like a defendant in Pa who was mobbed by the congregation when he tried to take the consecrated host home with him.
Now we’ve got those bozos storming a church service in St Paul.
Disrupting a church service in progress would be illegal if a “state actor” did it, but I was surprised to find that the FACE Act, which I associated only with abortion clinics, does explicitly forbid interference with or intimidation of people who are exercising their right to freedom of worship. So the Muslim AG Keith Ellison’s statement that the protesters did not break any law appears to be clearly erroneous.
But, “Is Nothing Sacred?” Well, yuh, it is. It’s just not the same things it used to be. The missionary zeal, lo, even unto martyrdom, of the “protesters, is sacred now. The consecrated space, the House of God— not so much.
The major denominations of the American churches kinda asked for it, though, when many of them publicly declared themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. They mixed it up with politics, and now: politics is mixin’ it up with them.
No matter how you look at it, the Holy of Holies has been breached, sullied. This won’t be the last time.