The Old Testament Jews, as a civil state as well as a religious body (they probably did not realize that there was a distinction), had the authority and even the command of God to use the death penalty. The book of Leviticus witnesses to that. The rabbis in Jerusalem invoked this civil (and in their minds, religious) right to demand the death penalty for Jesus.

Jesus did not erect his Church on the church-state model of the Jews or that of the Romans. His kingdom transcended politics; it was “not of this world.” Such a novelty was not understood by either the Jews or the Romans. Jesus made it clear that his kingdom was not political, and never claimed the right or the power to issue a death penalty. The Church may recommend that the state use the death penalty sparingly, even most sparingly, as Pope John Paul II has done, but the state nevertheless retains its right to use the death penalty as part of its means of survival, just as the Church has its ultimate and necessary penalty of excommunication.

Where the boundary between state and church has been blurred, as when the Church became a state (the Papal States in Italy) or where the state has subsumed the church as one of its departments (as has been the case in Europe more often than not) there have been problems. In such cases the distinction between church men and civil servants has not been easy to see. In such cases the death penalty could become an ugly issue. Political churchmen or zealous politicians overstepped their bounds and have shamed the Church. But for all that, the state does retain its right to the death penalty (Romans 13:4), just as the Church has its own deterrent of excommunication which it must use to keep its teachings clear and authoritative. At present, just as the state is struggling with the issue of the death penalty, the Church is suffering the effects of neglecting excommunication as its means of self-preservation. When I was a student in a Jesuit college (Regis in Denver), I picked up the ethical principle that without an ultimate deterrent, soon the lesser and intermediate deterrents would also become ineffective. That bit of wisdom has served me well for a half century, and has made the current chaos in our civil government and in the American Church understandable.

Death-row, and even death-bed, repentance has ever been looked upon with an eye of suspicion. Repen tance in any form or at any stage of life is suspect to the world as a weakness of character or a ducking of due responsibility. For the Christian, repentance is a necessary element of conversion and growth in the spiritual life. As St. John the Baptist said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This said, I would add that capital punishment does not (at least as practiced in the U.S.) preclude the opportunity to repent. It merely sets a time limit for exercising that option. If we had access to God’s view of individual repentance (which we do not), I think that we would find that the quality of death-row repentance would likely average out no worse and possibly even better than repentance in any other circumstance. From the frequency and apparent earnestness of death-row repentance, we might even say that the time limit imposed by the death sentence is an effective aid toward repentance. From the New Testament we have the beautiful example of the Good Thief (our first canonized saint) who repented as he hung on a cross next to Jesus (Luke 23:38-43).

And thank you for Dossier, it’s wonderful.

Yours truly,
Fr. Howard Curtis
Lafayette, Oregon

As a number of your contributors to the issue on the Death Penalty observed, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the Catholic Church could now declare the death penalty to be intrinsically evil. Such a declaration would implicitly acknowledge that, for most of its history, Church teaching on a penultimate moral question had been wrong.

That popes have merely made “occasional assertions” about it, or that no “definitive teaching” has been offered by the Magisterium are notions that must find a footing in reeking pools of blood spilled by state executioners for almost two millennia. I accept the position suggested by Janet Smith; whatever the Holy Father might wish to do, he is constrained by the authority he exercises. Thus, Evangelium Vitae and the amendments to the Catechism continue to affirm that the state can, in appropriate circumstances, justly impose a sentence of death.

What constitutes appropriate circumstances is, of course, the problem. Father Thomas Williams invites us to seek answers by asking a different question. Perhaps we should consider the one raised by the Holy Father in Veritatis Splendor (6): “Teacher, what good must I do...?”

If capital punishment is sometimes permissible, should our attention be directed primarily to discover the “rules to be followed” (VS 7) when we seek to hang a man, valid though they may be? By keeping such “commandments,” will we discover “the full meaning of life” (VS 7)? Certainly, the desire to abide by the restrictions identified by Church teaching is “the absolutely essential ground in which the desire for perfection can take root” (VS 17). But this is hardly sufficient to support a “vocation to perfect love” (VS 18).

“Go, sell your possessions... then come, follow me.”

The young man’s possessions, while lawful, were a hindrance. Might the same thing be said of capital punishment, even when it can be justified? On this view, there would be no inconsistency in affirming the right of the state to impose the death penalty in appropriate cases, while insisting that the right should yield to something better.

Yours truly,
Sean Murphy
Powell River, British Columbia

I wish to respond to Dr. James Hitchcock’s article “Crime and Punishment” that appeared in the Septem ber/October 1998 issue of Catholic Dossier.

With all due respect, I disagree with Dr. Hitchcock’s arguments and conclusions. It pains me that one can still come up with a seemingly faith-based argument in support of the death penalty. It is clear that in the twenty years of his papacy, John Paul II has moved Catholic thought away from an idea of punishment for punishment’s sake. That term, in itself, implies a negative. Evangelium Vitae does use the term “punishment,” but the document clearly moves us to ward an understanding of justice as restorative and not retributive.

There has not been an abandonment of the search for the root causes of crime. It is not only a “liberal dog ma,” since contemporary magisterial documents begin with a social analysis (the Signs of the Times) in discussing the effects of crime. Catholic social teaching is founded on the principle of protecting the dignity of every human being. The root causes of crime include those things that deny that dignity, i.e. lack of educational resources, lack of health care, etc. The major cause of recidivism in our nation’s criminal justice system is that inmates are not given opportunities to better themselves while incarcerated, thus acquiring the skills needed to function in our complicated society.

I find Dr. Hitchcock’s arguments vague and unconvincing. The Catechism is clear when it acknowledges that our society has the resources to “defend human lives against an unjust aggressor” (# 2267) and, therefore, has no need for the death penalty.

Christianity promotes life. Jesus proved this by his resurrection. The Consistent Ethic of Life says it is inconsistent with Catholic teaching to, say, oppose abortion while supporting the death penalty. These words are echoed in many of John Paul’s writings. We must encourage this by our practice of defending life always. It is our duty.

Sincerely,
Fr. Dennis Woerter, O.P.
Wisconsin Catholic Conference
Task Force on Corrections
Madison, Wisconsin

Sister Prejean barely disguises her contempt for the Church she purports to represent in her best selling, Pulitzer prize-nominated book, Dead Man Walking. I read Dead Man Walking after seeing the Hollywood screen version. As a Catholic and federal prosecutor who has successfully argued for the imposition of the death penalty, I was searching for a cogent treatment of the issue. I found only liberal drivel.

Camus is the intellectual inspiration for Sister Prejean’s views. The ACLU, Amnesty International, and other like minded organizations are her guiding lights. For fellowship, well, there is the “Sisterhood.”

What really dismays is Sister Prejean’s cynical portrayal of the Catholic Church. For example:

Sister smiles at the “fierce irony” of nuns teaching children that God is love by hitting them with a ruler. She laughs at herself for following a lawyer’s advice: “I haven’t practiced blind obedience like this since the old days of convent life, when I obeyed my superiors unthinkingly.”

She’s thankful that the Archbishop does not silence those who disagree with him “as some prelates do.” But she’s troubled that he could hold in general that the death penalty is licit yet agree in a particular case to petition the governor for commutation. This she says is “an incomprehensible position logically”— as if justice and mercy do not coexist without conflating. Throughout the book, Sister attributes inferior motives to those who disagree with her view; either they are logically impaired, politically motivated, or “just doing their job.” Good faith disagreement is not an option.

Perhaps nowhere in the book is her condescension toward the Church so palpable as in her treatment of the Catholic priest who served as chaplain at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. In the movie the priest is portrayed sympathetically. To Sister Prejean, he is the “old priest,” dismissed rather easily as a “strictly old-school, pre-Vatican Catholic” who in his first encounter with her shows her a pamphlet on sexual purity and modesty of dress. She rebuffs his encouragement to wear her habit to model obedience: “I have serious doubts that the Angola inmates know– or care– what dress code the Pope recommends for nuns.” It is ironic that Sister would desire the Pope to enjoin Catholics from supporting the death penalty and expect the flock to follow that lead, when in fact she is unable to acquiesce in the small matter of wearing a habit.

The “old man” is completely ineffectual. She em pathizes with the death row inmate, Pat Sonnier, who confessed the “heavy duty” stuff to the priest and then had to endure the priest’s questions about impure thoughts and obscenity: “And it was all he (Sonnier) could do, he says, not to hit the ‘old man.’”

In Sonnier’s last days, the priest can do nothing right. Sister requests the priest’s presence at her prayer service. But when the “old priest” arrives, he wears the stole around his neck– symbolizing “priestly authority.” The tape recorded “sweet” harmony of the “young Jesuits” singing the contemporary song “Be Not Afraid” is juxtaposed to the “old priest [who] says prayers in Latin and takes the communion wafer from the container and places it on Pat’s tongue, then into my outstretched hand.” She “feels sorry for the old man.”

He is performing his priestly office as he has performed it for fifty years or more. The Latin prayers said, the communion wafer given, he has nothing else to say to this man about to die. His trust is in the ritual, that it will do its work even in a foreign language. For him, the human, personal interaction of trust and love is not part of the sacrament.

In the hundred or so pages it takes to describe the days leading up to Patrick Sonnier’s execution, she manages to name more than ninety people, including reporters, lawyers, wardens, associate wardens and twelve executed murderers. In the same pages, repeatedly referring to the priest as the “old man” or the “old priest” or “elderly man,” she refuses to give him a name. In naming, we recognize personality, identity and significance. Sister dehumanizes the priest, relegating him to anonymity, reducing him and all he stands for to nothingness. So much for compassion and dignity. Compassion is reserved only for those who agree with her. Dignity is accorded to death row inmates, not “old priests.”

Ms. Rice is certainly right when she declares that “the problem with Sister Prejean’s views is that the moral voice of the Catholic Church is not seen as the rallying point which will unify mankind, but as the stumbling block to progress and enlightenment.” Sister’s “enlightened” view seeks “to harness religious thought to social justice.” Funny, I thought it was the other way around; that God was the end, faith and duty the means.

This surprisingly shallow book wallows in worn-out liberal shibboleths and dated anecdotes. Perhaps its most damning and damaging characteristic, however, is the near total contempt displayed for the Roman Catholic Church. The truly fierce irony is that, increasingly, on the issue of capital punishment, the mind of the Church is equated with the voice of this Church-hating nun, resulting in a diminution of its credibility and confusion in and out of the pew.

Yours truly,
Robert J. Conrad
Charlotte, North Carolina

You really gave it to that Sister Helen Prejean in the September/October Catholic Dossier.

And she deserved it! One can only conclude that people like her have lost the Faith– sad indeed!

All good wishes and prayers.

Yours in Domino,
Fr. Paul Marx, O.S.B.
Front Royal, Virginia

First of all, I want to thank you for the quality of the work to be found in Catholic Dossier. The recent issue on Capital Punishment came in, and I have read a number of articles therein already.

Although I have not subscribed from the 1995 beginning of Catholic Dossier, I have been able to get copies of all the issues so far, save one.

I am writing to you to suggest to you a subject for a future issue, perhaps two subjects for two future issues.

I have recently finished James H. Jones’ book Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, and I found the work fascinating. It is a well researched book and one that is copiously footnoted. Since Kinsey has had such a deleterious effect on the moral life of the country, I would like to see an issue of Catholic Dossier devoted to certain aspects of his life. As far as I can see, from the reading that I have done, the man was a fraud: an exhibitionist, a voyeur, a homosexual, and a masochist who basically devoted his life to getting homosexuality accepted as a normal and natural activity primarily because of his own inability to control his impulses. There has been a number of people who have written on this subject in a pretty definitive way: Dr. E. Michael Jones (Degenerate Moderns), Dr. Judith Reisman (The Children of Table 34) and Dr. James H. Jones (Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/ Private Life), among others.

The second suggestion that I have is something with flowed from Kinsey, his flawed work, and his followers: sex education. Human Life International has several people on their staff who are experts in this field, and there are a number of people in the Couple to Couple League who have done a great deal of work in this area. In addition, two of the people mentioned in the above paragraph are quite knowledgeable about the field and have written about it: Dr. E. Michael Jones and Dr. Judith Reisman.

I realize these are not Catholic subjects per se, but the havoc which they have wreaked on Catholics, purity, marriage, whole neighborhoods, particularly in large cities where, forty years ago, there were large Catholic populations and into which the War on Poverty with its contraceptive mentality was introduced, certainly should make them eligible at least because of the negative effects that Kinsey and sex education have had on Catholics.

As I read and hear more about President Clinton, I think to myself, “That man is a Kinsey product.”

Sincerely,
Rev. John McMenamin, O.S.F.S.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma