Surely there are few in any issues a blog devoted to the development of Catholic legal theory should be more concerned with than the morality of capital punishment. The article excerpted below, The Right to Life, will appear in the May 12th edition of The New York Review of Books. To print/read the entire piece, click here. Some excerpts follow:
In her book Dead Man Walking, published in 1993, Sister Helen
explained how she first became involved with condemned prisoners, and
she traces the cases of three men whom she accompanied, as their
spiritual adviser, through their final days and hours. It was a
best-selling and highly influential book, its arguments given wider
currency by the film starring Susan Sarandon in the role of Sister
Helen. This new book appears at a time when the death penalty system is
in crisis. In 2000 James Liebman of Columbia University School of Law
led a team which surveyed four and a half thousand death penalty cases
and found "reversible error" in 68 percent of them. In his words—which
seem the more true, five years on—the system is "collapsing under the
weight of its own mistakes."
...
After his death, Sister Helen took O'Dell's body to
Italy for burial, and was granted an audience with John Paul II. This
was the climax of her campaign within the Catholic Church, and she
credits the O'Dell case with helping to change teaching which had stood
since the days of Saint Thomas Aquinas. When she began campaigning,
many individual priests and Catholic laypeople were abolitionists, but
the hierarchy was not, and in Dead Man Walking she tells of her
encounters with an obstructive prison chaplain who incarnated the
conservative, misogynist status quo. After her letters, and her visit
to the Vatican in the wake of the O'Dell case, Pope John Paul spoke out
unequivocally against the death penalty, and the Catholic Catechism was
altered. Unfortunately, it was altered by the removal of words that
specifically endorsed capital punishment, rather than by the addition
of words to exclude it. There is plenty here for theologians and
Catholic lawyers to argue over, so the change may not be quite the
lasting triumph that Sister Helen thought it.
Among the promoters of the death penalty, Sister Helen picks out
Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court for special odium. He is
a prominent Catholic; how can he vote against the Church's teaching?
"My morality and religious beliefs have nothing to do with how I vote,"
he says, and he aims to keep "personal predilections, biases, and moral
and religious beliefs" out of the process of constitutional
interpretation. Where does he leave them, the reader wonders, when he
goes to work? Is there a sort of depository or a left-luggage office
where you check in your personal experience and judgment, while you
shrink yourself to a cog or spring in the great machinery of the law?
...
Even if you cannot stand behind every argument the author makes, The Death of Innocents
is a deeply convinced and deeply convincing book. Now we know what's
wrong: racial bias, bias against the poor, inept counsel, overzealous
prosecutors trying to make a name, self-serving judges, missing
witnesses, careless science, coerced confessions. Add in the use of
jailhouse informants, the propensity of police officers to lie, and
their evident inability to reason about the facts of a case, and you
have a recipe for the continuing conviction and death of innocent
people.
...
As Sister Helen sees it, attempts to make the penalty more
consistent have failed. Yet where defects are only procedural, they
could be remedied; given political will and a bottomless public purse,
possibly they could be fixed. If the bureaucrats were wise and the
system fair—if the process met tightly defined legal criteria of
objectivity—would it be all right to have a death penalty? Many would
say yes. Sister Helen is clear in her view. "I don't believe that the
government should be put in charge of killing anybody, even those
proven guilty of terrible crimes." This is what the world would like to
hear America say. You do not have to be a Christian, or have any faith
at all, to support Sister Helen's basic position: "Every human being is
worth more than the worst act of his or her life."
The death penalty is not wrong because it is inconsistently
administered. If it were fairly administered, it would still be wrong.
Finally, the issue is moral; a nation so God-besotted should be able to
grasp that. When the government touches a corpse, it contaminates the
private citizen. A modern nation that deals in state-sponsored death,
becomes, in part, dead in itself; dead certainly, to the enlightened
ideals from which America derives its existence as a nation.
__________
Michael P.
Monday, April 25, 2005
I want to share this email that I received in response to my posting on Steinfels and Catholic youth:
Dear Professor Scaperlanda,
Greetings from Washington, D.C.!
Thank you for posting your comments about the JP2-Generation. Your response to Peter Steinfel's article was greatly needed.
My name is John Paul Shimek. Currently, I am enrolled in the M.A./Ph.D. program in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. Previously, I have written for Catholic newspapers and on-line resources about the JP2-Generation. Lastly, I plan to enter the seminary in the fall - I made the decision on the day of the funeral of John Paul II. My older brother, a J.D. program graduate from Notre Dame, is a seminarian at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
At any rate, all of that is by means of an introduction. Here are some thoughts that I have on the issue at hand.
My brother tells me that the journalists in Rome are scrambling for young seminarians who do not support the Church's teaching on difficult moral matters (like contraception, homosexual unions, and the ordination of women to the priesthood -- which really isn't a moral issue, but I digress). Moreover, my brother tells me that one cannot find a young seminarian in the city of Rome that does not endorse the Church's positions. If you have ever visited a Roman seminary (like the Pontifical North American College), then you know that we are talking about large numbers of young men.
Also, I think that one has to look in the places where the new evangelization is being taken up with vigor in order to read more carefully the signs of the times. Here in Washington, we have numerous study groups on Pope John Paul II's Love and Responsibility and his Theology of the Body. Also, the new ecclesial and lay movements are attracting a great deal of attention. I regularly attend an Opus Dei evening of recollection where nearly thirty to fifty young people gather monthly for spiritual growth and direction. Additionally, I have friends in groups such as Communione e Liberazione (which are just as orthodox) whose numbers rival our own. To add to the foregoing, my university quickly fills classes on the thought of Pope John Paul II every time they are offered. In fact, I am currently taking one class on his philosophical anthropology that is offered to the graduate communities of CUA and the JP2 Institute. We are a standing-room-only bunch! Lastly, my generation is continuously bringing forth study circles, outreach programs, and student-led mini-think tanks (like New York's "World Youth Alliance") where we study the writings of Pope John Paul II and celebrate his life.
I should like to make one more point. There has been much talk made so far about the new pope's relationship with young people. While waiting for him to come to the central loggia of St. Peter's basilica on Tuesday, one of the news network's cameras got a shot of a sign that read, in Italian, "we already know that we love you." I think that says it all. I couldn't help but notice the large crowds of young people that filled St. Peter's square on the day of his installation. It was truly impressive to see young people waving flags and banners with great enthusiasm. My brother was at the mass and, afterward, he told me that so many young people -- both at his seminary and elsewhere -- are excited about this new pontificate. Young seminarians have begun to read his books -- I know of one seminarian who bought up six of them already, even though he has to plow through exams and papers before he can get to them.
It does seem to me, however, that one ingredient is key in all of this excitement. Wherever the bishops of the Church have tried to implement the pope's pastoral project, then the youth have responded. That was the case in Denver, Colorado and it is now the case in places like Milwaukee, Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Well, I realize that this is a very long (perhaps, long-winded) e-mail. But, here's the rub: the JP2-Generation is here and we are not afraid of the future! We are so in love with our great John Paul II and we are ready to embrace his successor. Naturally, those in our ranks do not include all of the young people of the Church or of the world. But, we are a growing bunch. Our enthusiasm, hope, and many prayers will very shortly outpower the spinmastery of the E.J. Diones and the Peter Steinfels of the world, you just wait.
Thank you for giving voice to us in your post on MOJ. I appreciated your comments very much.
All the best,
JP
According to this account,a "national group of pro-life Democrats has joined pro-life Democratic members of Congress, adoption agencies and pregnancy centers unveil a package of legislation designed to significantly reduce abortion in the next 10 years."
Rick
In response to Rick's question, I'm not certain exactly how a Catholic university best harnesses or nourishes the importance of its law school, but recognition of the school's importance must be an unmistakable dimension of the relationship. Given Catholicism's focus on the common good, the law is the vehicle through which a Catholic university can best engage (and hopefully transform) society. Law is our common language. As explained by one scholar who has never passed up an opportunity to quote himself:
The story of the legal profession has been told through the religious imagery of the priesthood. While this analogy certainly has a bit of rhetorical flourish at its core, it reflects the widespread perception of the unifying, central role that the law plays in modern American society. Past eras may have looked to religion as the common framework under which everyday existence proceeds, but the law had long since usurped it. So while priests, as administrators providing access to that unifying framework in their role as mediators between God and man, were essential figures in the collective life of society, today their place has been taken by lawyers, who provide access to our common framework of legal rights and privileges.
Perhaps Al Pacino put it best in the otherwise forgettable movie, The Devil's Advocate, when, playing the role of Satan-as-law-firm-partner, he remarks to an associate, "We're the new priesthood, baby."
Rob
