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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

January 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Justice Clarence Thomas goes to Mass before work not out of habit, but because it gives him the “strength to do what I have to do every day.”

The Catholic justice, who is in his 27th term in the U.S. Supreme Court, said in a recent interview that daily Mass helps him do his “job, a secular job, in the right way and for the right reasons.”

Faith in God, he said, “gives you the wisdom, the insights, the capacity to do the work, to decide these things, the discipline. It gives content and meaning to the oath I took. At the end of my oath — and for this job I had to take two — you say ‘So help me God.’ It’s an oath to God. So, if you have a strong faith in God, then that oath gains in meaning and content,” he said.

Thomas — known for upholding life, marriage and the Constitution — said the path of his life, with its beginnings in economic deprivation, his family contending with illiteracy and dysfunction, then leading to the Supreme Court, is owed to divine providence.

Thomas’ father left the family when he was two, and his mother struggled to make ends meet. They lost their house to a fire, leading to Thomas’s grandfather taking the family in when he was seven. The grandparents sent their grandson to an all-black Catholic school run by white nuns where Thomas learned about the Catholic faith. 

It was from his illiterate grandfather that Thomas said he learned the values of humility, patience, and persistence.

Thomas recalled his grandfather telling him as late as the 1980’s, “Boy, you have to stand up for what you believe in.”

The Daily Caller report said Thomas faces constant vilification and defamation in his role as a Supreme Court justice.

Adversity ensued prior to his final confirmation on the Court as he faced allegations of sexual harassment from former employee Anita Hill. Hill claimed Thomas made unwelcome advances and spoke to her in sexually graphic terms. Thomas denied the allegations and was eventually confirmed. Thomas famously called the experience a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.

His dissenting opinion on a homsexual “marriage” case in July 2015 which said in part that the slaves in pre-Civil War America retained their human dignity even though the government failed to recognized it got him called “a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court” by former Star Trek actor and openly gay LGBT-proponent George Takei.

In a 17-page dissent to the 2016 Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt ruling, Thomas denounced “the court's habit of applying different rules to different constitutional rights – especially the putative right to abortion.” The 5-3 Court ruling reversed a Texas pro-life law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges to hospitals and abortion facilities to meet more rigorous health standards.

“As the court applies whatever standard it likes to any given case, nothing but empty words separates our constitutional decisions from judicial fiat,” he wrote. 

Justice Thomas joined the conservative dissent to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision imposing legalized homosexual “marriage” in the U.S. He wrote that the ruling holds “potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty.” His prophetic words were quickly realized as small business owners across the country began experiencing legal challenges from LGBT-activists for upholding the biblical definition of marriage and refusing to offer their services for homosexual “marriages.”

Justice Thomas said in the interview that he often recites the Catholic Litany of Humility prayer to maintain focus and perspective on worldly things.

What really matters, he told The Daily Caller, is whether you do what you are called to do.

Faith, Thomas said, gives him “the strength to do what I have to do every day, to assert the independence, to be willing to take the beatings, the criticism, the unfairness.”