About the Dayton Catholic Lawyers Guild
Mission Statement
The Dayton Catholic Lawyers Guild is an association of Catholic legal professionals from the Greater Dayton Area dedicated to fellowship in faith, professional development, mutual encouragement, and service to the community. We aim to provide one another with a network of spiritual support and a framework for deepening knowledge. We champion justice and the common good. We sponsor the annual Dayton Red Mass at the opening of the court year, provide a forum for discussion of Catholic jurisprudence and the natural law, foster in Catholic lawyers high standards of ethics and integrity, promote comradeship among Catholic legal professionals, form lay leaders for the Church, and explore the varieties of Catholic identity. We ever strive to be exemplars of the training we have received and of the heritage that is ours, He who is the true law, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All Catholic lawyers, judges, paralegals, and law students are warmly invited to join.
What We Do
The Dayton Catholic Lawyers Guild meets eight times per year to break bread together, plan our events, and discuss topics of interest to Catholic attorneys. These meetings are typically on a Thursday at 11:30 a.m., with the first thirty minutes (optional) dedicated to the business of the Guild and the next hour filled by a presentation by a member or invited speaker, concluded with a lively discussion.
We begin all of our regular member meetings by reciting together the "Lawyer's Prayer to St. Thomas More" (adapted from Henry Bender, Jr.'s 1951 "An Appeal to St. Thomas More"). This grounds our fellowship in prayer and calls to mind our desire to be holy lawyers and laymen and women.
In addition to our regular meetings, the Guild hosts two annual “anchoring” events: the St. Ives Day Dinner on May 19 and the Dayton Red Mass and Luncheon on the last Friday of September. The St. Ives Day Dinner is for our members and friends and features a keynote speaker delivering an address of interest to our members, typically for Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit. The Red Mass and its ticketed luncheon are open to the public and we encourage legal professionals and public officials of all faiths to join us in this ceremony to bless our profession and our community for the coming legal year.
Beyond these events, we host days of service for our members as well as cultural events. Please join our email list or monitor the “Events” Tab to stay abreast of our events.
Our Leadership
President: Nathaniel M. Fouch
Treasurer: Diane Kappeler DePascale
Secretary: Joanna L. Garcia
2026 Board
Deborah Adler
Diane Kappeler DePascale
Hon. Mary E. Donovan
Martin A. Foos
Nathaniel M. Fouch
Joanna L. Garcia
Hon. Mary Katherine Huffman
John Lintz
Hon. Michael R. Merz
Ryan Saunders
Our Patrons
One of the greatest treasures of the Catholic Church is her saints. These are holy men, women, and children of all ages and stations of life from the whole history of the Church. They serve as witnesses, models, and intercessors for believers. Attorneys have their own share of saints, among which the Dayton Catholic Lawyers Guild has selected its patrons. These correspond (with some overlap) to Saint Ives for workaday lawyers, Saint Thomas More for public officials, Saint Raymund of Penyafort for law professors and canon lawyers, and Blessed Rosario Livatino for judges.
For further reading on attorney and law-adjacent saints, see:
James K. Gaynor, Lawyers in Heaven (1979).
Dwight G. Duncan, A Lawyer's Guide to Getting to Heaven, 41 The Cath. L. 317 (2002).
Joan Carroll Cruz, Saintly Men of Modern Times (2003).
Edward F. Mannino, Advocates for God (2020).
Saint Ives of Kermartin (alt. Ivo; Yves, Erwan)
1252-1303
The traditional patron of attorneys, St. Ives was from Brittany, in the northwest of France, and lived during the Middle Ages. Following his legal studies in Paris, St. Ives returned home and began his career serving as what we would today call a legal aid attorney, representing indigent clients in court. Subsequently hearing a call to the priesthood, he was ordained, but did not abandon the law. Rather, he served as a judge in Tréguier until his untimely death. Such was his reputation that he was canonized less than 50 years later. A large annual pilgrimage to his tomb takes place every year on his feast, and the American Bar Association actually commissioned a memorial window in his honor at the Tréguier Cathedral.
For further reading, see:
John H. Wigmore, St. Ives, Patron Saint of Lawyers, 5 Fordham L. Rev. 401 (1936).
François J. M. Olivier-Martin, St. Ives, the Ideal Jurist, 5 Fordham L. Rev. 408 (1936).
Robert J. White, St. Ives, Model of Legal Integrity, 5 Fordham L. Rev. 417 (1936).
Raymond Scallen, St. Ives - Advocate of the Poor, 4 The Cath. L. 338 (1958).
Saint Thomas More
1478-1535
Lawyer, judge, Member of Parliament, Lord Chancellor of England; diplomat, theologian, scholar, poet; but also husband, father, martyr, humanist—it is little wonder that this “Man for All Seasons” captures the imagination. St. Thomas paid the ultimate price for his witness to the Truth: his refusal to recognize as legitimate King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. St. Thomas was canonized on the Feast of St. Ives in 1935, has long been recognized as a patron saint of lawyers, and was also formally proclaimed as patron of statesmen and politicians by St. John Paul II in 2000. He is otherwise immortalized in Robert Bolt’s masterpiece “A Man For All Seasons,” which was adapted for film and won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay.
For further reading, see:
The Fame of Blessed Thomas More (Sheed & Ward 1929).
Brendan F. Brown, St. Thomas More, Lawyer, 4 Fordham L. Rev. 375 (1935).
Leo J. Hassenauer, Thomas More — A Lawyer Martyr, 11 Notre Dame L. 1 (1935).
Miles F. McDonald, St. Thomas More – Lawyer and Politician, 1 The Cath. L. 121 (1955).
William Kinsella, Thomas More: A Man for Our Time, 29 Cath. L. 323 (1984).
Robert H. Bork, Law, Morality, and Thomas More, 31 Cath. L. 1 (1986).
William G. Bassler, More About More, 41 The Cath. L. 297 (2002).
Saint Raymund of Penyafort (alt. Peñafort)
c. 1175-1275
A priest, prolific and profound scholar, and leading law professor, St. Raymund was a Catalonian and an early member and third superior-general of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans). He taught at the University of Bologna (the world’s first law school), wrote what became the cornerstone of canon law for the next seven centuries, revised the constitution of the Dominicans, and established schools for the study of Arabic and Hebrew. He is a patron saint of canon law and the patron saint of law professors.
For further reading, see:
Robert M. Jarvis, St. Raymund of Peñafort: Patron Saint of Law Professors, 8 Barry L. Rev. 111 (2007).
Blessed Rosario Livatino
1952-1990
Bl. Rosario (1952-1990) was a Sicilian judge who was murdered by the mafia. Then-Pope St. John Paul II referred to him as a “martyr to justice,” and Pope Francis beatified him in 2021, and characterized him as “a shining example of how faith can be fully expressed in service to the civil community and to its laws; and of how obedience to the Church may be linked with obedience to the State, in particular with the ministry, delicate and important, of ensuring the law is respected and applied,” and as one who served “the community as an upstanding judge, who never allowed himself to become corrupt, [and] strived to judge not to condemn but to rehabilitate, placing “his work ‘under the protection of God’” and becoming “a witness to the Gospel up to his heroic death.” We pray for his speedy canonization and proclamation as patron saint of judges.
For further reading, see: