Title: (?)Catholic Harvest
Can it possibly be happening? After years of relentless dialogue with U.S. Catholics about
the death penalty, are we at last beginning to see signs of Catholics becoming a significant moral
force in efforts to abolish state-sanctioned death?
I see it and rejoice.
For the last 34 years I’ve been in dialogue with my church about the death penalty - ever
since I walked out of Louisiana’s killing chamber in the early morning hours of April 5, 1984,
after witnessing a man strapped down and killed in front of my eyes.
Now, at last, signs of hope.
A 2004 Zogby poll indicates a seismic shift in U.S. Catholic opinion about the death penalty.
In 2001, 68 percent of Catholics supported state killing;
by 2004, that support dropped to 48 percent.
More significantly, intensity of support has been halved. And what I rejoice in most of all is
this bright and shining fact: Catholics, who regularly attend Mass, support the death penalty less
than those who seldom attend. For a long time it’s been the other way round. Going to church
seemed to re-affirm Catholics in their support for the death penalty. In the late 1980’s, I was
anguished to hear that polls showed that the more people attended Christian churches, including
Catholics, the more they supported the death penalty. As I criss-crossed the nation, giving talks,
in audience after audience, all I heard was: “An eye for an eye.” What had happened to
Jesus’ gospel challenge to love our enemies and to forgive those who hurt us? Had we Christians
become so acculturated that we were virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the populace?
Had the salt lost its flavor?
But, I got to see clear evidence of Catholic transformation on this issue in California this past
October when I barnstormed Catholic churches across Southern California on behalf of the Prop
34 to end the death penalty. How downright refreshing to see Catholics getting petitions signed,
staffing tables at shopping centers, phone banking. I can’t help but remember the lonely marches
in the 80’s of a straggly few of us out on the road trying our meager best to awaken the public to
the need to abolish the death penalty. No doubt, last November, Pope Benedict XVI gave a real
boost to hands-on participation of Catholics on this issue when he invited us to engage in
“legislative and political” action to end state killing. To my knowledge, that was the Pope
Benedict’s most forthright public statement in opposition to capital punishment. Pope John Paul
II, on the other hand, on numerous occasions called for an end to the death penalty. But the
statement of his that I cherish most was the one he made in St. Louis in 1999, when, for the first
time, he positioned the death penalty side by side with the other pro-life issues, so dear to the
heart of us Catholics:
“No to abortion and euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide,” he said, “and no to the
death penalty, which is cruel and unnecessary. Even those who have committed a terrible crime,
have a dignity that must not be taken from them.”
When in 1997 I got to have a personal dialogue with Pope John Paul II, a key questions I
asked was: your Holiness, does the Catholic church uphold the dignity only of innocent life?
What about the guilty? And I shared with him that when I’m walking to execution with a man,
rendered completely defenseless, who appeals to me: “Please pray God holds up my legs” I can’t
help but ask: Where is the dignity in this death?” (I tell about my dialogue with the Pope in my
book, The Death of Innocents.)
Five years after Pope John Paul’s words in St. Louis the U.S. Catholic bishops in 2004
inaugurated the “Catholic Campaign to End the Death Penalty,” and we began to see many more
bishops at press conferences and legislative hearings in active support of bills to repeal the death
penalty.
When Roger Cardinal Mahoney gathered 1400 priests (? Fact check no of priests) of the L.A.
archdiocese, and announced that the California bishops were in strong support of Prop 34 and
that the death penalty issue would be included as an integral part of “Respect Life Month,” the
priests responded with warm applause.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Vatican II guided us rightly. Sustained, respectful dialogue — listening to all voices in the
church — laity and hierarchy together - is the Gospel way to win over minds and hearts. The
gentle art of education and persuasion is always slower and more labor-intensive than juridical
edicts handed down from on high. I say, thank God for Vatican II, which has schooled us in the
art of patient, steady dialogue.
Nothing beats grassroots education and incessant invitations to action.
As one example, I hold up the Catholic Mobilizing Network
(www.catholicsmobilizing.org), launched in 2008 by my congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph.
Its mission is to collaborate with the USCCB’s Catholic Campaign to End the Death Penalty
initiated in 2004. Check out our website, which gives ideas for homilies as well as teaching tools
for adults and young people to understand the church’s newly developed vigorous opposition to
state killing.
What better focus for the Year of Faith than continued dialogue with our fellow citizens to
turn away from an “eye for an eye” mentality to that of restorative justice?
On such a controversial issue as the death penalty, we hope and strive for understanding, to
be sure. We strive to be enlightened. But even more, we pray for the grace St. Bonaventure
taught us to desire: “Ask not for light, “ he said, “ask for the fire.”
In the prelude to my spiritual memoir, River of Fire, that I am presently writing, I take readers
with me into my own call by fire.
They killed a man with fire one night, strapped him in a wooden chair
And pumped electricity into his body until he was dead.
His killing was a legal act (because he had killed).
No religious leaders protested his killing that night,
But I was there. I saw it with my own eyes.
And what I saw set my soul on fire, a fire that burns in me still.
Here is an account of my journey to the killing chamber that night
and the spiritual currents that pulled me there.
(to be published by Random House, fall 2015)
