CA bishops call for death-penalty moratorium.
Two days before California was going to execute Albert Greenwood Brown, a convicted rapist and murderer, the California Conference of Bishops issued a statement calling for an end to the death penalty and clemency for the state’s death-row inmates. Today that execution was stayed by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who ruled that the court did not have enough time to review the state’s new lethal-injection procedures. Catholic San Francisco reports:
At the Archdiocese of San Francisco, George Wesolek, director of the Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, noted that fear reigns in our communities because they are permeated with violence. “I think many people think that the execution of criminals will stop some of that violence,” he said. “We know that instead of stopping violence, state-sponsored killing of criminals only serves to increase the atmosphere of revenge and retribution.”
He added, “Our Catholic social teaching calls for protecting the innocents in our community, but doing so by keeping the offender locked up and the community safe. Our principle of the dignity of every human life extends to even the most heinous of criminals. All of us, sinners that we are, are offered the hope of repentance, change and forgiveness.”
“but doing so by keeping the offender locked up and the community safe.”
Does California have “life without parole”? Not sure, since we always hear about Charles Manson coming before a parole board. One would hope that in the event of commutation, they would still be locked up without a chance of being released in the future.
Here in Texas, thankfully, we passed a life without parole sentencing option a few years back and now there is no excuse for any death sentences, IAW Evangelium vitae 56.
Albert Greenwood Brown kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 15-year old girl in, I believe, 1980. But wait for it, he then telephoned the girl’s parents and taunted them with statements that “They would never see their little girl again” or something to that effect. Any normal human being ought to be filled with righteous anger, nay, rage, at such satanic cruelty. Question: Are the Bishops normal human beings? Or are they dessicated walking zombies, devoid of any human feeling except preening holier than thou conceits? How do you vote?
The kidnappers / murderers of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease called his parents and taunted them, too.
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http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/bobby_greenelease/12.html
From that:
Just after midnight on December 18, 1953, a scant 81 days after they committed murder, prison officials led Hall and Heady to the building that housed the prison’s gas chamber. The walked without rancor to the execution chamber’s anteroom. An Episcopal priest led them in the Lord’s prayer. The two were allowed to hold hands for a moment, and they kissed goodbye.
They were blindfolded, led into the chamber and strapped into adjacent chairs. Before gas began seeping into the room, they spoke their last words.
Bonnie Heady said, “Are you doing all right, honey?”
Carl Hall replied, “Yes, mama.”
I would rather this thread not become a catalog of heinous crimes.
So Bob, hate and do as thou wilt?
Question: Are the Bishops normal human beings? Or are they dessicated walking zombies, devoid of any human feeling except preening holier than thou conceits? How do you vote?
Bob,
I vote for the bishops as men of God advocating a practical application of the Church’s teaching against the death penalty. The reason we have laws is so that we do not act out of individual or collective rage.
I think there should be no death penalty. It’s barbarous. Putting a convict to death makes someone else a killer.
The expense involved in the lengthy appeals process is a burden on taxpayers. Unlike in 1953 when Bonnie Brown Heady and Carl Austin Hall were executed just 81 days after snatching Bobby Greenlease from the French Convent of Notre Dame de Sion in Kansas City, it now takes many years to carry out a death sentence.
Better to do away with it. Save money. Avoid the possibility of executing an innocent or retarded person.
“Any normal human being ought to be filled with righteous anger, nay, rage, at such satanic cruelty.”
Bob, if you were the murderer’s mother, you might be filled with incomprehension, wondering what satanic cruelty possessed your son, sad beyond measure, anxious that your son be placed in prison so he cannot cause harm any more, enraged at circumstances that might have contributed to the development of your son’s warped personality, guilty and ashamed that you didn’t somehow prevent this. But you would probably want your son to be spared from the death penalty.
The anger and rage at the satanic cruelty does not have to translate into rage against the person who committed acts of cruelty.
PS – Your comment makes sense in a way: if someone murdered my son, in some contexts I would kill the murderer without a moment’s hesitation. But if my son murdered someone, I would plead against the death sentence. Both reactions are normal, I think, even though they’re inconsistent with one another. “Normal” is just not a sound basis for deciding what’s right.
The anti-capital punishment crowd is obviously unconcerned with equal justice for the victim and their families. You prefer that the executioner of someone’s baby girl be given a reprieve that he sadistically refused his victim. He gave her an immediate and cruel death sentence.
The people of California by law reached a death verdict but you misguided, self proclaimed crusaders for human justice think the punishment should comply only with what YOUR conscious deems fair. How utterly selfish! Well what about the conscious of everyone else?
Here’s the deal: if you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to carry out the justice this victim and family deserves and is entitled to by law, then at least get the hell of the way for those who will.
Pobrecito Grant – He cannot bear to hear about violence that is so obviously in our society. Perhaps some sand would help?
The people of California by law reached a death verdict but you misguided, self proclaimed crusaders for human justice think the punishment should comply only with what YOUR conscious deems fair.
Darrell,
Does this condemnation refer only to commenters on Commonweal, or do you include Pope John Paul II as well?
David;
I make no distinction. The Catholic Pope should NOT be guided by political correctness but by the Bible. I normally would not bring the Bible into this but you opened the door with your comment about the Pope. Those who believe the Bible condemns capital punishment have no idea what they are talking about. The Bible teaches it is wrong for individuals to murder another. Governments, however, are recognize as having the responsibility for carrying out wrath against evid doers.
‘For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:3-4, NIV)
Darrell,
I take it that you are not Catholic, which is fine. (I think most people would consider that I was stretching the definition if I were to call myself Catholic.) And unless I am badly misunderstanding you, you oppose the current position of the Catholic Church. That is that capital punishment is legitimate to protect society, but that in a place like the United States with modern prisons, you do not need to execute people, since you can lock them away for life with little or no chance of them escaping. It seems very reasonable for me, and since the pope has great authority for Catholics, they must at least take his position very seriously, although not necessarily accept it.
David:
I am protestant – in a non-denominational church now but spent most of my life as a Baptist. Additionally, I am in the deep South (Alabama). I must confess that I did NOT know this is a Catholic oriented blog. I was googling the Brown case and clicked on this site thinking it was a news blog. My apologies to all the Catholics on here. I did not intend to intrude on your site. Now I undestand why the Pope Paul comment was tossed out at me.
No one in their right mind enjoys taking another life and, yes, there are modern prisons where the convicted can serve their sentence in a manner that is somewhat preferable to death. Does that mean you’d be okay with capital punishment if the alternative was poor living conditions and harsh treatment? If not, that argument is a red herring.
The entire espoused by thye Bishops completely overlooks equitable justice for the victim, their family, and society. I believe I am bound to kill anyone who takes the life of my family members. However, the government figuratively steps in and asks that the killer be tried by a jury and, if convicted and the law prescribes it, the government will impose that judgment on my behalf. What your group is asking is to ignore the law, ignore the death penalty already carried meted out to the victim by the killer, ignore the life sentence imposed on the victim’s family by the killer, and ignore the Bible which recognizes the authority of government to impose capital punishment. Essentially, you are demanding that the government break its covenant with me – to carry out equitable justice on my behalf. I’m sorry. That is pure selfishness and it is misguided.
Put yourself in the position of this mother and father whose baby girl was raped and murdered by this sadistic person. Then ask how receptive you will be to outsiders clamoring that the murderer of your baby be given a more lenient sentence. It sure is easy to be compassionate to convicted murderers when it wasn’t your child whose life was savagely taken from them.
The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should have eternal life. Nevertheless, there will be those at the judgment that He will sentence to eternal death because they chose their own way rather than the salvation he prepared for them. That is God’s judgment and we know that He is a righteous judge. If God the Father hands out the death penalty, what makes us think that we are somehow more righteous by eliminating that sentence and denying equitable justice to the victims?
Claire:
If my son did what Brown did, I can assure you that I would be more than willing to personally perform the executioner’s task. Or if it was my daughter, likewise. Would I be happy about it? Only in the sense that, having done my duty, justice would have been satisfied.
The problem with the Bishops is that they demand the emotional neutering of their flock in matters of extreme political correctness. They demand what is unnatural, nay perverse, in all things PC. They are, with a few exceptions, pathetic, unmanly, weak and morally bereft crowd of slaves to the whims of the glitteratti, you know, the entertainment-industry blowflies who are increasingly dominating our news. I realize that my rant is tangential at best, but it is what it is.
unagidon: Your point is…
“The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should have eternal life.”
Which is exactly why we must not kill them: unrepentant murderers, of ALL people, are most in need of God’s mercy, are most in need of more time to come to repentance and be saved…as God desires. How dare we oppose the will of God by cutting short their time to repent and be saved?
“The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should have eternal life. ”
Darrell- -
Right. And when we execute someone we make the possibility of a murderer’s repentance impossible. But I think that you would agree (or would you?) that God is always open to the possibility of repentance, with His grace, of course, and that includes the possibility that the murderers shall repent.
No, from the point of view of justice, not taking revenge makes no sense. But being a Christian requires that, with the grace of God, we go beyond revenge, beyond an eye for an eye, beyond a life for a life. Is this “natural”? No, it isn’t. It goes *beyond* nature to the forgiving God to Whom all things are possible, even the conversion of a horrible murder == and even the healing of the hearts of the parents so grievously wounded.
Also, you aren’t entruding here. Please do come back.
Bishops could relieve the overcrowding in penitentiaries by buying the motherhouses that stand vacant in their dioceses and turning them over to the states to house non-violent (Catholic) offenders.
Bob, you seem to see something being accomplished by executing a murderer, not from a utilitarian perspective (preventing his committing more crimes, deterring potential criminals, etc), and not for angry revenge, and not to follow the law, but from some feeling of basic justice (I say “feeling” because somewhere you talk about “emotional zombies”). But I don’t have that feeling. Can you explain why it is just and right that a murderer (who, let’s say, cannot cause harm any more, and whose death cannot serve as an example) be executed?
Claire: My commentsw about emotions refer to the sentiments appropriate to the commission of heinous crimes, especially the rapes and murders of children, and my disgust with those Bishops who seem bereft of any such emotions and rarely have anything to say about the emotional devastation suffered by the mothers and fathers of the victims. When did you ever see a candlelight vigil, led by a Bishop or Bishops, on behalf of the family of such victims. I suspect that the answer is “never”. But my thinking about execution as justice is not about emotions. It is about the balancing of the scales, the closing of a hellish door, the idea that someone has paid the price, that that precious child sees, from wherever she is, that she is vindicated, that her death was not a meaningless event in a meaningless universe.
Beyond that, the demand that I explain my stance is dispiriting to me. You cannot understand? Forgive me, but I have to get back to planet earth. Nice talking to you.
David:
You do NOT eliminate the possibilty of repentence for convicted murderers by executing them. Brown has been on death row for 30 years. The average time on death row is close to 20 years. One of the thieves crucified beside Jesus found forgiveness in a matter of minutes. Really, that is quite feeble.
As I said earlier God is not willing (does not wish) that any should perish. He wants them to choose Christ. Nevertheless, God DOES sentence people to eternal spiritual death. He does not like to do so but still does. They deserve the punishment. Indeed, they chose it. Is He a righteous or unrighteous God?
Likewise, I don’t cherish people being put to death but I have no problem when they have willfully murdered another. Whether they ultimately repent or not is irrelevant. They deserve the punishment and those who stand in the way are nothing less than obstructionists.
I’m afraid the Catholic Church is now worshipping at the throne of political correctness. You’ll find favor among some men for doing so but is that really the approval you should be seeking?
Thanks Bob. I’ve spent my life refraining myself from following notions of people having to “pay the price”, because I link that impulsive, natural reaction (which I share, at the level of feelings, when events hurt me) to ideas of revenge, not of justice. I also think of “balancing the scales” as a very un-Christ-like concept.
I don’t think it’s weakness on my part (certainly “neutering those emotions”, as you call it, can be hard work sometimes), and I don’t think it’s mindless anger on your part, but, yes, we live on different planets.
Darrell and Bob S. –
God does not “balance the scales” with the rest of us. He forgives seventy-times seventy and then some. And He tells us to love each other — He makes no exceptions, you’ll notice — as Jesus has loved us, by giving us more, eternally more good than we ever could deserve.
Yes, this is mysterious, and if you yourself have ever been done a terrible injustice you know from experience that it is utterly infuriating to be called on to love one’s enemies. But I believe that this is Jesus’ message, loud and clear: love one another as I have loved you. No exceptions. Sigh.
Ann:
You are to forgive INDIVIDUALS who wrong you personally. God has another plan for murderers and how government is to deal with them. Read Romans 13:3-4.
God forgives like no one else can. Nevertheless, he is also a God of righteous wrath. God will condemn the unrepentant, non-believer to eternal death.
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36)
By your reasoning is God being unfair? Think you should pray and tell God that He is wrong to allow governments to execute the sword of wrath upon wrongdoers like He says in Romans 13? Perhaps you should set Him straight on this condemnation thing and convince Him to allow everyone into heaven regardless of whether they have accepted Jesus’ atonement on the cross. Why did Jesus go to all that anguish and torment if everyone escapes the judgment anyway?
SIGH back at ya! You don’t comprehend the scripture at all.
Oh and Ann:
It’s not up to either YOU or I to forgive this murderer. He didn’t wrong us personally. He wronged Susie (yes, that’s the 15-year old victim’s name) and her family. All the Catholic bishops in California and everyone else in the world can mouth words of forgiveness all day long and it means NOTHING. It is useless babble. Know why Ann? Because it wasn’t your baby girl or their child who was raped and brutally murdered. You were spared that heartache.
Even if the family forgave Brown, he still owes a debt to society by our law and God’s Word. They haven’t forgiven him and they want the sentence carried out as the law prescribes. How dare you and all the other obstructionists interfere.
“How dare you and all the other obstructionists interfere.”
Darrell –
I dare because revenge and more violence only leads to even more violence. The more violence people are exposed to, the more they tolerate it, and the more of it some people perpetrate it.
So if you want to protect the other children, it is best not to do more violence even it if is natural to want it. (That’s the problem — violence makes many people *want* more violence.).
Darrell, no one escapes judgment. We’ll all be judged by God in God’s time. In fact that’s one of my consolations when I am mad at someone and powerless to do anything about it: one day they’ll have to face God.
Catholics, stop arguing with Darrell!
Most of my relatives are fundamentalists/evangelicals, and they believe that God has directed us through the inerrant word of God in the Bible to perform human sacrifice on criminals in order to restore the balance of justice in the Cosmos.
We should rejoice that they (well, most of them), no longer feel compelled to comply with the directives in Leviticus such as stoning adulteresses, cutting off the hands of thieves, and burning witches. They (well, most of them) find these punishments barbaric, and that they dehumanize all of us, and perhaps they will one day see executions in this light as well.
Until that happy day arrives, it is useless to try to explain that the proscription on capital punishment arises from reverence for life–even life that seems useless and appalling, such as that of heinous murderers.
It is useless to explain the concept that we belong to the Body of Christ. Our actions are his actions. And Christ would not murder murderers. To create a society that performs barbarous acts, even on those whose actions make execution seem a virtue, is not going to restore Creation to the glory God intends.
Remove criminals from our midst, certainly. Never let them out. If we can treat them with kindness and forgiveness in their incarceration and help to change their hearts as Pope John Paul II did with his attacker, so much the better.
But this is not a view Darrell would entertain, embrace–or even understand.
Jean:
I graduated from West Point and studied the Catechism with priests there since I was engaged to a Catholic girl whose family insisted I become Catholic. From my experience, I can honestly say that Catholics are wonderful people who have rudimentary knowledge of the Bible. Unlike most fundanmental protestant churches, the Bible is rarely read and discussed in Mass. The Catholic message centers around traditions of the church and what the priests filter to the flock. Sadly, most Baptist laymen know far more about the Bible than your priests do. By the way fundamental means “back to the basics” such as actually READING the Bible. I’ve had more than one priest, who knowing I was Baptist, asked me what it means to be “born again”. They had no understanding of John Chapter 3. So, Jean, fundamentalists rely on God’s Word rather than the current politically correct flavor of the month. That’s supposed to be a bad thing? And I’m not a fundamentalist. I’m a main line protestant who attends a contemporary worship service. Nevertheless, our Pastor, a former Kansas State basketball star and graduate engineer who chose the ministry over the engineering profession, is a Bible scholar and teaches directly from scripture. That’s why we have the Bible.
You ask other Catholics not to read my counterpoints. That is a sign of weakness. You are obviously uncomfortable contending for your position on the issue. That should make you uneasy with the position. Have you taken it without considering what the Bible says? Isn’t it the lamp unto our feet.
All those who say “we should forgive this murderer” Do you also believe he should be set free? To forgive means to resolve of all guilt. Yet you want him to serve a life sentence. That is not resolving him of his crime. So, the forgiveness angle is a big red herring. First, you are not the one who was wronged so it isn’t your place to forgive him. Second, you simply find execution wrong even though Romans chapter 3 says that God grants governments that authority over wrongdoers. This family suffered and the law precribes the death penalty. In trying to relieve Brown of his legally imposed sentence you are robbing this family of the justice the law says they deserve and that they want. You should be ashamed.
The Church’s position of this is straightforward enough. If it cannot reasonably be assumed that a given society can reliably and humanely confine a murderer; that is to say if a given society does not have the ability to protect its citizenry from a murderer, then – depending of course on the particulars of the case – the death penalty could be justified.
In most modern societies, the government is robust enough, and the society has enough resources at it’s commend to effectively remove a murderer from society and humanely keep him confined for the rest of his days.
An example I would give is Haiti. They government is very weak and corrupt, and society is so poor, that nobody could reasonably assume the government can protect the citizenry from a murderer. Therefore, in such a poor and weak society, the death penalty could be justified.
In modern America, since (thankfully) we have a robust and fair government and the money to humanely house murderers for the rest of their born days, it is more difficult to make a case for the death penalty; that seems to me, what the CA Bishops are trying to say.
Darrell, I did not tell others not to read your posts. I told them it was useless to argue with you.
I’m sorry the priests didn’t do a better job teaching you about Catholicism and its traditions.
I appreciate the seriousness with which you engage everyone on this topic, but I think you and other fundamentalists are wrong in the way you interpret Scripture and view Catholic tradition.
Bless you, and I’m off.
I can certainly understand the desire to exact like-for-like punishment on criminals. It’s a basic human reflex, and is just in its own way. I also can easily understand how victims’ families can feel rage and a strong desire to see the murderer definitively stopped from doing such a thing ever again. To think of one’s own child being treated so horribly must be incomprehensibly awful. There may be cases in which the only way to prevent more horror is to kill the criminal, and there may be crimes so terrible that most people of any compassion might want to see the guy die.
The problem, as I see it, isn’t that there are no crimes so terrible that death might not seem reasonable or fair. There are. The problem is that in the actual practice of capital punishment, the demonstrated inequities are so great that the system itself is unjust. Recall the IL data before a previous governor ended capital punishment there–over the previous years, as many had been exonerated or their verdicts thrown out for other reasons as had been executed. An “efficient” execution system would have killed many many people innocent of the crimes for which they were ostensibly put to death. The inequity isn’t just about executing innocents. The economic and racial disparities in trial and sentencing demonstrate that the system does not, in fact, achieve justice.
I admit that I’d oppose capital punishment even if the system were perfectly fair. But it is not. If we want to kill as a matter of “justice,” we’d need first to get our ducks in a row and have a just system. We don’t. Mr. Brown is guilty–at least there’s been no doubt cast on that. But the system of capital punishment is unjust. As Jesus did in “commuting the sentence” of the woman caught in adultery, unless the system is fair, nobody gets to cast the first stone. A person unjustly imprisoned can have at least some semblance of a reasonable life. But kill them? Not under this judicial system.
Per Darrell: “… Unlike most fundanmental protestant churches, the Bible is rarely read and discussed in Mass. The Catholic message centers around traditions of the church and what the priests filter to the flock. Sadly, most Baptist laymen know far more about the Bible than your priests do. …”
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Darrell,
While I greatly admire military folks in general and West Pointers in particular, you could not be more mistaken. Obviously you are a sincere and good Protestant man, but you are nonetheless mistaken.
The Bible is read and discussed at EVERY single mass, on every single day and has been for the last 2000 plus years.
The First Reading is from the Old Testament, the Second Reading is from the New Testament, and the Gospel is always from; Mark, Matthew, Luke or John. The Psalm is always from one of the Psalms of the Old Testament.
Once the Readings and the Gospel have been read, the priest then gives a homily, his sermon in which he attempts to explain what has just been read.
The rest of the mass is filled with shorter Biblical references. For example, just before Communion, the people say “Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul will be healed.” This of course is a reference to the Bible story about a Roman (pagan) centurion, whose slave was ill and who, upon hearing that Jesus was in that town, sent a messenger to ask the Lord to heal his slave. Because the centurion was a pagan, he instructed his messenger to explain to Jesus about the slave and to say that “Lord I am not worthy that you should under my roof, but only say the word and my slave will be healed” and Jesus healed the slave with his word.
No Darrell, the Bible is and always has been, very much a part of the Roman Catholic Mass.
And Darrell,
Of course your point about forgiveness is correct. I can forgive someone who has wronged me, but I cannot forgive someone who has not wronged me.
Obviously Susie’s family could, if they chose, forgive this murderer for their loss, but that is only part of the crime. What about Susie’s personal loss of life? She is no longer around to forgive him. Thus only God can forgive something this grave.
The Church does not say to set murderers free; on the contrary. Please review my previous post regarding this.
On the question of what Christ wants us to do about the death penalty, we and Darrell have an irreconcilable difference of opinion. He believes the way to know what Christ wants is to find it in Scripture. We believe Christ established the Church to teach, sanctify and govern the Christian faithful until the end of days. (Indeed, the Holy Spirit does not seem to have bothered Himself too much about Ananias and Sapphira’s inalienable right to life, but probably He just wanted to send a message about people who ignore little wicker baskets.) This disagreement has been going on for a while and the odds of resolving it by means of theological disputation are not promising.
So the question is, “How should the legal question be decided?” granted that we and Darrell have to live together under the same laws. Should we take Bishop Nienstedt’s advice and vote on it? If we leave it to the lawyers (courts) we’ll certainly end up with unwieldy, expensive, time-consuming and unjust laws. “The great business of the Law is to make business for the law.” (Bleak House)
@Darrell,
When I was in the Army, many years ago, the chaplain of my unit was a Protestant. He liked to say “Everybody always wants to know what denomination I am. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m an SOB. (brief pause) A Southern Baptist, of course. Now you know.”
I was not particularly devout at the time, indistinguishable in practice from my best friend, the only real atheist in the unit. But I remember how careful and attentive this chaplain was; how frequently he stopped by my post to remind me that he considered himself my chaplain also, regardless of my religion or lack thereof; how whenever he organized any kind of recreational excursion he would make a point of inviting me and mentioning I was under no obligation to participate in the religious parts.
He was one of the best Christians I ever met. I would hope dotCommonweal can be as hospitable to evangelical Christians as we are to Episcopalians and atheists.
Felapton, I think it’s nice you met a Southern Baptist preacher to whom you warmed because he didn’t hold your Catholicism against you and didn’t make you participate in religious activities against your will.
I’d say that’s a very charitable definition of “one of the best” Christians.