Court documents show that a New Jersey man arrested Oct. 5 outside of St. Matthew’s Cathedral just hours before the start of the annual Red Mass had a “fully functional” arsenal of explosives that he threatened to detonate. According to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, after officers took [the defendant] — a 41-year-old resident of Vineland, New Jersey — into custody, they discovered he had “multiple suspicious items, including vials of liquid and possible fireworks” inside a tent he erected on the steps of the cathedral.
[The defendant] had previously been barred from the cathedral premises and was encountered when authorities were making a security sweep several hours in advance of the annual Mass to mark the start of the Supreme Court’s new term.
Published reports indicate that [the defendant] had in his tent 200 incendiary devices including handmade grenades, bottle rockets, Molotov cocktails, and vials of nitromethane, the compound used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. . . . Court documents show that [the defendant] had expressed hostility and disdain for the Supreme Court, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Catholic Church and Jewish people.
The Red Mass is an annual start-of-term Mass of prayer for the Supreme Court and the administration of law. Given recent security threats, it is perhaps unsurprising that none of the Catholic justices attended the Mass, as they have in the past. And the fact that the assailant was previously barred from the cathedral suggests that his motives may have been as much anti-Catholic as anti-Court. It is, nonetheless, part of a growing pattern that is likely to end badly sooner or later.