Sr Helen Pejean, author of "Dead Man Walking" will be speaking at St Madeleine Sophie on Thursday, April 15 at 1:30 PM in the Church.
She is both an entertaining and thought provoking speaker who has lived out Catholic Social Teaching and reinforced the value of the "consistent life ethic" in many ways but is perhaps most well known for the story that was made into a movie that garnered Academy Award nominations for Tim Robbins (Best Director) and Sean Penn (Best Actor) and the Academy Award for Susan Sarandon (Best Supporting Actress).
The event is being sponsored by CCS, but all parish ministers are welcome to attend.
St. Madeleine Sophie Catholic Church
4400 130 pl. SE
Bellevue, WA 98006
www.stmadsophie.org
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"Dead Man Walking" & Sr. Helen Prejean: A Critical Review
ReplyDeleteFrom Dudley Sharp
" . . .makes you realize the Dead Man Walking truly belongs on the shelf in the library in the Fiction category."
"Being devout Catholics, 'the norm' would be to look to the church for support and healing. Again, this need for spiritual stability was stolen by Sister Prejean."
The Bourques, Victim Survivors, Dead Family Walking
"Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/05/04/sister-helen-prejean--the-death-penalty-a-critical-review.aspx
Other, related links
"Death Penalty Support: Christian & Secular Scholars"
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2009/07/death-penalty-support-modern-catholic.html
"The Death Penalty: Neither Hatred nor Revenge"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/20/the-death-penalty-neither-hatred-nor-revenge.aspx
"The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/05/the-death-penalty-more-protection-for-innocents.aspx
"The Innocent Executed: Deception & Death Penalty Opponents"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/10/08/the-innocent-executed-deception--death-penalty-opponents--draft.aspx
"Killing equals Killing: The Amoral Confusion of Death Penalty Opponents"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/02/01/murder-and-execution--very-distinct-moral-differences--new-mexico.aspx
"The Death Penalty: Not a Human Rights Violation"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2006/03/20/the-death-penalty-not-a-human-rights-violation.aspx
"Physicians & The State Execution of Murderers: No Ethical/Medical Dilemma"
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2009/10/physicians-state-execution-of-murderers.html
"Pope John Paul II: Prudential Judgement and the death penalty"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2007/07/23/pope-john-paul-ii-his-death-penalty-errors.aspx
"At the Death House Door" Can Rev. Carroll Pickett be trusted?"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/01/30/fact-checking-is-very-welcome.aspx
More topics upon request.
Sincerely, Dudley Sharp
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com
"The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life in every situation. A sign of hope 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." (Pope John Paul II, St. Louis, MO, January 1999)
ReplyDeleteFrom the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."
The position of the Church is clear, and Sr Helen Prejean is not, in any way, in conflict with the position of the Catholic Church.
My review of 2267:
ReplyDelete2267: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor."
That passage could hardly be more misleading.
The traditional teachings of the Church neither exclude recourse to the death penalty nor so restrict it as to make it useless, as this newest Catechism wishes. Much more often, biblical instruction and tradition insist on the death penalty being imposed, describes those many sins/crimes for which it "shall" be imposed and, otherwise, reviews the legitimacy of the death penalty (see paragraphs/references 1-4, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, within Reference 2 and see also 5, below).
There is an obvious conflict between:
(a) the ill conceived "the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude . . . recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor." and
(b) the "common good" "requires" an unjust aggressor be rendered "unable to inflict harm", which is in concert with "If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." "This teaching remains necessary for all time.", both of which contradict (a).
The contention that the new limitation in (a) above is a product of evolving doctrine is in error. It is, instead, a doctrinal disaster which conflicts with well known teachings. (review all of Reference 2, starting with 1-4, therein and see also 5, below).
The verbal, moral, rational and biblical strength of a required protection overwhelms the limitations wrongly put forth in the Catechism, which eviscerates that protection.
Such obvious conflicts shouldn't exist within the Catechism and show how poorly considered and constructed this subject was.
2267: "If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person."
Consider this newest recommendation:
"If bloodless means are sufficient" in this eternal context:
"If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." (1) "This teaching remains necessary for all time." (2260)
This Catechism decides that an eternal biblical mandate should be overruled by a poorly considered dependence on current penal security. Astounding. The Church has knowingly done this.
Then this: The "more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person." are a humanist base, not a biblical one.
Can the death penalty, per se, conflict with "the common good and with the dignity of the human person.", when the sanction is God invoked?
NOTES
Even within humanism, one can safely argue that execution is more in keeping with the common good and more supportive of human dignity.
NOTES
2267 "Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'[John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56)
The restriction of the Catechism, that the death penalty should only be used "if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor." is barely a footnote in the overall biblical, theological and traditional death penalty teachings of the Church (Reference 2 and 5 below).
NOTES
contd
contd
ReplyDeleteThis is such a poorly considered prudential judgement as to negate its "prudential" moniker.
All villages, towns, cities, states, territories and countries have widely varying degrees of police protections and prison security. Murderers escape, murder in prison and are given such leeway as to murder and/or harm, again, because of "mercy" to the murderer, leniency and irresponsibility to murderers, who are released or otherwise given the opportunity to cause catastrophic losses to the innocent when such innocents are harmed and murdered by unjust aggressors. (4)
Incarcerated prisoners plan murders, escapes and all types of criminal activity, using proxies or cell phones in directing free world criminal activities. All of this is well known by all, with the apparent exception of the authors of the Catechism. (4)
Some countries are so idiotic, reckless and callous as to allow terrorists to sign pledges that they will not harm again and then they are released, bound only by their word, a worthless pledge resulting in more innocent blood. (4)
The Catechism, as does EV, avoids the many "possibilities', whereby the unjust aggressor has too many opportunities to harm again. Do the authors of the Catechism have no grasp of reality? (4) Apparently not.
The only known method of rendering a criminal "unable to inflict harm" is execution. "Unable to inflict harm" has the same meaning as "impossible to do harm".
Has a prudential judgement ever been placed in a Catechism, before? If not, the current one would seem to make the reasons clear and would denounce any possible repeat of that error.
NOTES
Inexcusably absent from consideration, within the Catechism, is any specific discussion of harm to "innocent" murder victims and potential murder victims and the effects on their earthly and eternal lives when we give known murderers the opportunity, too often realized, to harm and murder, again. These are not just "possibilities". Executed murderers cannot harm, again.
contd
contd
ReplyDeleteWhy has the Church chosen to depend upon widely varying and error prone incarceration systems, when the reality is that so many innocents are caused further suffering by known unjust aggressors, because of the failings in those systems?
It appears the Catechism's (& EV) authors never considered reality. (3&4)
Here are the known realities of all unjust aggressors: murderers and other violent offenders. They can morally/criminally/spiritually (a) stay the same, a bad result for them and others; (b) become worse, a more severe, negative outcome which puts the unjust aggressor and all others even more at risk or (c) improve, which can mean everything in a spectrum from still quite bad to sainthood.
The only way to, humanly, make a criminal "unable to inflict harm" is to execute them. Rationally, factually, there is no other way.
There are at least four Church recognized foundations for criminal sanction; 1) defense of society against the criminal; 2) rehabilitation of the criminal; 3) retribution or the reparation of the disorder caused by the transgression and 4) deterrence.
There is a 5th, biblical instruction, which must guide the 4 others. It isn't mentioned, because it is a constant.
The traditional teachings of the Church find that, with murderers, all of those foundations are better met with the death penalty than by lesser sanctions, just as reason concludes.
The Catechism provides little time for justice, which must dominate the utilitarian aspect of protection. Still, the Church miscalculates and fails to realize the rational reality that innocents are more protected when murderers are executed.
NOTES
"While punishment does serve the purpose of protecting society, it also and primarily serves the function of manifesting the transcendent, divine order of justice--an order which the state executes by divine delegation." " . . . it may be argued that such a conception of punishment, rooted in the restoration of moral balance, always presupposes an awareness of the superordinate dignity of the common good as defined by transcendent moral truths." (5)
contd
contd
ReplyDelete"Yet the presence of two purposes--retributive and medicinal justice--ought not obscure the priority of assigning punishment proportionate to the crime (just retribution) insofar as the limited jurisdiction of human justice allows. The end is not punishment, but rather the manifestation of a divine norm of retributive justice, which entails proportionate equality vis-à-vis the crime." "The medicinal goal is not tantamount merely to stopping future evildoing, but rather entails manifesting the truth of the divine order of justice both to the criminal and to society at large. This means that mere stopping of further disorder is insufficient to constitute the full medicinal character of justice, which purpose alike and primarily entails the manifestation of the truth. Thus this foundational sense of the medicinality of penalty is retained even when others drop away." (6)
NOTES
Justice is the soul of sanction. All other results - protection, safety, rehabilitation and deterrence - although beneficial and desired, are a result of sanction, not the reasons for it.
NOTES
"The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent" (1566)
"The just use of this power (execution), far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord."
"PARAMOUNT OBEDIENCE" to God vs the newer Catechisms references to man's accomplishments within the error prone criminal justice system.
There is this additional problem:
2267: "without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself".
The Church is, hereby, stating that the death penalty is "taking away from him (the executed party) the possibility of redeeming himself".
The Catechism is stating that the God invoked sanction of death takes away the possibility of redemption. Think about that. There is nothing to defend such a claim, in such a context.
All of our sins have us die "early". Is there a case, whereby God has erased the possibility of our redemption, solely because of our earthly and "early" deaths? Such an interpretation is, in context, flatly, against God's message and cannot stand.
contd
contd
ReplyDeleteYet, that is what this newest Catechism is stating. Consider:
The universal blessing that God gives us is that we all have the same opportunity of redeeming ourselves "before we die". The death penalty does not take that away anymore than does a car wreck, cancer, old age or any other "early" death, meaning all deaths, because of our sins. We all die "early" because of our sins.
It is as if the Church had, completely, forgotten the meaning of St. Dismas' death, his words exchanged with Jesus and the promise to come. (7)
The Catechism, wrongly, finds that all "early" deaths, meaning all deaths, negate the possibility of our redemption. Such is an astonishing claim, if not much worse.
In God's perfection, we suffer an "early" death, because of our sins. The Catechism wrongly tells us that our "early" deaths takes away the possibility of our redemption. It can't and does not. God gives all of us the opportunity to redeem ourselves, in His grace, before our earthly and early deaths, no matter what they may be. This newest Catechism cannot rewrite that, even though it is trying to.
Furthermore, a unique benefit of the death penalty is that the offender knows the day of their death and therefore has a huge advantage over the rest of us and, most certainly over the innocent murder victim.
". . . a secondary measure of the love of God may be said to appear. For capital punishment provides the murderer with incentive to repentance which the ordinary man does not have, that is a definite date on which he is to meet his God. It is as if God thus providentially granted him a special inducement to repentance out of consideration of the enormity of his crime . . . the law grants to the condemned an opportunity which he did not grant to his victim, the opportunity to prepare to meet his God. Even divine justice here may be said to be tempered with mercy." Carey agrees with Saints Augustine and Aquinas, that executions represent mercy to the wrongdoer: (p. 116). Quaker biblical scholar Dr. Gervas A. Carey. A Professor of Bible and past President of George Fox College, Essays on the Death Penalty, T. Robert Ingram, ed., St. Thomas Press, Houston, 1963, 1992
St. Thomas Aquinas: "The fact that the evil, as long as they live, can be corrected from their errors does not prohibit the fact that they may be justly executed, for the danger which threatens from their way of life is greater and more certain than the good which may be expected from their improvement. They also have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so stubborn that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from evil, it is possible to make a highly probable judgement that they would never come away from evil to the right use of their powers." Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, 146.
References:
1) Genesis 9:5-6 - "For your own lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting for human life. If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; For in the image of God has man been made." (NAB)
contd
contd
ReplyDelete2) Death Penalty Support: Modern Catholic Scholars
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2009/07/death-penalty-support-modern-catholic.html
3) Pope John Paul II: Prudential Judgement and the death penalty
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2007/07/23/pope-john-paul-ii-his-death-penalty-errors.aspx
4) a) Anwar al Awlaki, a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, a native-born U.S. citizen who left the United States in 2002, was arrested in 2006 with a small group of suspected al-Qaida militants in the capital San'a. He was released more than a year later after signing a pledge he will not break the law or leave the country. He is now missing and encourages violence against Americans from his website, Awlaki used his site to declare support for the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab and celebrated the acts of US Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who murdered 13 and wounding 29 in a shooting spree. al Awlaki called upon other Muslim's to duplicate those acts. "Radical imam praises alleged Fort Hood shooter", Associated Press, 11/9/09, 6:19 pm ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091109/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_fort_hood_muslims
b) 16 al Quaeda Escape in Jailbreak in Iraq
http://www.theage.com.au/world/alqaeda-members-in-jailbreak-20090924-g4no.html
c) 23 escape from Yemen prison, 13 are al Quaeda
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/massive_jailbreak_in_yemen.htm
d) Repeat sex offender,"cripple" serving life, overpowers guards, escapes
http://blog.taragana.com/law/2009/11/30/authorities-sex-offender-pulls-gun-on-texas-guards-during-prison-transfer-search-ongoing-17934/
e) Governor commutes 108 year sentence: Offender later murders 4 policemen, while on bond for two child rapes
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5if_tdQrE5B6tvgSYXBtfmfMOLEwwD9CACTHG0
f) Officials "embarrassed" by Texas death row inmate escape, Houston Chronicle, November 06, 2005
http://www.policeone.com/corrections/articles/120563-Officials-embarrassed-by-Texas-death-row-inmate-escape/
". . . Thompson claimed he had an appointment with his lawyer and was taken to a meeting room. However, the visitor was not Thompson's attorney." "After the visitor left, Thompson removed his handcuffs and his bright orange prison jumpsuit and got out of a prisoner's booth that should have been locked. He then left wearing a dark blue shirt, khaki pants and white tennis shoes, carrying a fake identification badge and claiming to work for the Texas Attorney General's office." "This was 100 percent human error; that's the most frustrating thing about it." "There were multiple failures." Trial jurors and victim's relatives were terrified.
g) one, inclusive of the Holy See, could find these types of cases every day, seemingly forever.
5) "Evangelium Vitae, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Death Penalty", p 519, Steven A. Long, The Thomist, 63 (1999): 511-552
6) ibid, p 522
7) Luke 23:39-43 "Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." (Jesus) replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (NAB).
It is not about the method of earthly death, but about the promise of eternal salvation.
This Anonymous appears to be followng me around.
ReplyDeleteIt could be one of several people who do that, too embarrased to now use there own name, thereby not willing to to stand up by their own words.
This is not surprising.