The DEATH Penalty
Opening Remarks, Introduction, & History of the Death Penalty from a Catholic perspective
James Megivern Event
November 23, 1999 (and still current)
Orlando, Florida
Opening Remarks by Karen Koerner Crane, Amnesty International's Florida State Death Penalty Abolition Co-Ordinator, November 23, 1999. St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, Winter Park Florida.
Good evening and welcome to St. Margaret Mary for another of our regular events about the death penalty.
Before I introduce our special guest tonight, I want to say a few words about what has been happening here at St. Margaret Mary regarding the death penalty program and ministry, and about what I perceive to be a pressing need for more active participation by Catholics, church people, and people of faith and conscience, in the struggle to abolish capital punishment.
As Amnesty International's Florida State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator, and a Catholic anti death penalty activist, I want to acknowledge and thank again St. Margaret Mary and Amnesty International Orlando for co-sponsoring this event and making it possible.
About 18 months ago now, St. Margaret Mary gave Catholics Against the Death Penalty Florida a home and with the assistance, co-operation and leadership of Mary Ann Gilbert, the social justice/neighborhood apostolate leader, Fr. Richard Walsh our parish priest, and Sr. Rosemary, we have progressed to an established ministry and active anti death penalty presence with the full support of the Orlando diocese of the Catholic Church.
Our special guest tonight is of course Professor Emeritus James Megivern, author, theologian, philosopher, and one of the USA's leading Catholic anti-DP advocates who believes that now that the Church leadership in the USA has awakened and changed regarding capital punishment, it is time for the "sleeping giant," the Church people, the people of faith, the parishioners, to also change and convert, and accept the challenge of eliminating the death penalty. Professor Megivern will expand on The Need For A Higher Ethic, the living of a higher ethic, a higher moral standard for Church people, people of faith -- people like you and me.
His book, The Death Penalty an Historical & Theological Survey" is available for purchase tonight. It is the definitive work for anybody who wants a clear & detailed analysis of Catholic Church teaching on the death penalty; it leaves no doubt that the Church is formally opposed to it. This book should be read by all of us, certainly those who think that somehow the seamless garment of life can be divided. As Sr. Helen Prejean described the book, "Grist for the mill of mind & conscience."
Before I hand the forum over to Professor Megivern I want to talk a little about Pope John Paul II & his making it clear that it is immoral to use the death penalty. There are no "rare instances" in which the DP is the only viable option in a developed, civilized nation like the USA.
Certainly, the "self defense" rare exception in the Encyclical, "Evangeleum Vitae" is not needed in the USA. We can defend ourselves by life in prison without parole or long prison sentences. We have non-lethal means for "effectively controlling crime." Execution is not needed.
But what we are finding in the Catholic Church, the religious/faith communities, is that the Church people, the parishioners, are not taking up the cause of abolition in an active way.
As people of faith, as people of conscience, as believers in human rights & the right to life, we cannot sit idly by and allow our elected representatives to scream out that this is what the people want -- more executions! more vengeance! more retribution! & more violence! We cannot and should NOT allow this to go on.
In the November 1998 U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops' statement: LIVING THE GOSPEL OF LIFE: A CHALLENGE TO AMERICAN CATHOLICS directed to Catholic public officials and office holders, Par. 23 states:
"Opposition to abortion and euthanasia does not excuse indifferences to those who suffer from poverty, violence and injustice. Any politics of human life must work to resist the violence of war and the scandal of capital punishment....Catholic public officials are obliged to address each of these issues as they seek to build consistent policies which promote respect for the human person at all stages of life."
Then, from the balcony of St. Paul's Basilica on December 25 last year, we saw Pope John Paul ask that the death penalty be "banished." In the text of his Christmas message, given aloud and to the press, he asked for "an end" to the death penalty. Then later, addressing abolitionist demonstrators, without text, he repeated that the DP "must be banished."
When the pontiff preached against the death penalty in St. Louis, Missouri earlier this year, he summoned the toughest language he had yet used on the subject in the U.S.A., calling capital punishment, "cruel and unnecessary."
"A sign of hope" he declared, "is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.
I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary."
Governor Carnahan of Missouri was "deeply moved" by the Pope's personal request to spare the life of Mr. Mease.
** Those events in St. Louis offered a powerful teaching moment, that the Church is concerned that the protection of society does not run into vengeance. Yet we still see our politicians characterize capital punishment as vengeance, as retribution, as a just dessert, as necessary to make our streets safer and to improve our criminal justice system.
You know that when someone as great as the Pontiff takes that kind of position, we all have to take notice.
Then on Good Friday, April 2, 1999, the US Catholic Bishops again reiterated the call to abolish the death penalty when they released a statement representing the first time the Catholic Bishops have made opposition to the death penalty an urgent priority.
It addressed, not just Catholics, but "all people of goodwill" & specifically addressed the disparity between Catholics who tend to support capital punishment and their Pope, who strongly opposes it.
"On this Good Friday, a day when we recall our Savior's own execution, we appeal to all people of goodwill, and especially Catholics, to work to end the death penalty...we hope they will come to see, as we have, that more violence is not the answer.
We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing. The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life."
** Our own Bishops urged Catholics to lobby at the state and national level to reverse the growing number of executions, which they said had become numbingly routine.
QUESTION:
So what are we actively doing, those of us who honestly believe that the DP is wrong?
What are we as Catholics, as people of faith, as church people, actively doing to help in the fight to eliminate this barbaric form of punishment? I submit NOT MUCH. We must take a public stand; no politician is going to change unless he knows his constituents support him.
As a Catholic activist, and as Amnesty International's State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator, I am appealing to your integrity as Catholics and people of faith who oppose capital punishment, to let your true feelings be known. You are the "sleeping giant" that Professor Megivern is concerned about, you are the masses who can do away with this practice. You must now get active in the movement to eliminate this practice.
That you have somewhere along the line thought about this and discerned that capital punishment is wrong, you KNOW it is wrong, that it is NOT right, mandates that you must, in order to be a person of integrity, a complete, whole and integral person, take your understanding of what is RIGHT & WRONG further, which requires action consistent with what you know to be right.
It is so much easier to follow the crowd, be like sheep, and look the other way when we see something is wrong, that we know is not right, to refuse to think independently.
If we truely, honestly & deeply believe in a difference between RIGHT and WRONG, in this case that capital punishment is WRONG, then we MUST as honest citizens who want to live with integrity, do something about it. We must be whole not piecemeal. Too many of us say one thing and do another. We see it all the time.
One only has to look at our judges, politicians, Janet Reno, who says she is against the death penalty but has no problem asking for it because she says she must follow the law. What sort of a defense is that? Sounds like the Nuremberg defense, "I followed the law." It's not unlike the anti-slavery judges in the early 19 century who handed down clearly pro-slavery decisions.
Whenever we execute somebody, there is a body, a corpse, and somebody has to take responsibility for that body. Is it us, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, the police, the judge, the jurors, the prison guards, the warden, the executioner? Somebody must be responsible, somebody must step in to stop that State homicide.
As an active abolitionist, a Catholic human rights activist, I find it very frustrating when I come into contact with people who are committed to our cause but who simply don't want to be an active part of it, to get involved, to be seen to be against the death penalty, or to be seen to be moral dissenters. We MUST act on our honest beliefs. We must be whole and integral people who go the full mile. We must do something about the death penalty in Florida, over and above "honestly believing" that it is wrong.
In order to be truly Catholic, in order to have complete integrity as Catholics and people of faith, we must get involved & fight openly for what we believe to be RIGHT, TRUE & GOOD, even if we run the normal risks of alienation and so forth.
Of course, I'm not asking you, certainly all the silent non-active anti death penalty people, to become militant or strident activists throughout their life; but I am expressing a sadness, a frustration and disappointment when I meet folks who KNOW the death penalty is WRONG but who prefer to be idle about it, silent, apathetic, and who float through life without any practical involvement/assistance or activism on behalf of their honest, and professed beliefs.
Simply, if we have truly discerned that the death penalty is wrong, we must, in order to have integrity, to be complete, whole and integral people, act in conformity with what we honestly believe is RIGHT.
Maybe our Catholic Governor, Jeb Bush, is a flabby Catholic based on what he perceives to be ambiguity in current Catholic church teaching on the death penalty.
I submit that there is NO ambiguity in the Catholic Church teachings on capital punishment. It is now the clear teaching of the Catholic Church that the application of the death penalty is useless. Society has non-lethal means for protecting itself and we must stop there. "It is cruel and unnecessary."
I am honored now & have the greatest pleasure in introducing Professor James Megivern who will further elaborate on what the "higher ethic" is and what is required of us as Church people in taking up the challenge and following Catholic leadership in the fight against the death penalty. Thank you very much. Professor Megivern.