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Sister Helen Prejean

Today, March 1, is International Death Penalty Abolition Day and, by coincidence, it’s also the First Sunday of Lent.

On March 1, 1847, the State of Michigan became the first English-speaking area in the world to abolish capital punishment. Since then, other states and nations have followed, but the Bible Belt states remain resolute in their claiming the right to kill. In New Mexico and Maryland, the death penalty could be on its last legs, too.

A visiting priest who will be doing the Lent mission at our parish today mentioned the true meaning of the verb “repent.” It’s not a matter of saying you’re sorry or of giving up chocolate to repent for your sins during Lent, it’s about metanoia, or changing’s one’s way of thinking. Residents of New Mexico and Maryland can change their state government’s way of thinking by expressing their support for legislation to introduce the abolition of the death penalty. What a unique chance to experience the metanoia of Lent in a real way!

Catholics pondering what the church really says about the death penalty should familiarize themselves with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops campaign to end the dealth penalty and read attorney and chaplain Dale Recinella’s Biblical Truth About America’s Death Penalty.

Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae in 1995 acknowledged a clause in the Catechism about society’s need to protect itself, but went on to say:

It is clear that for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: In other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare if not practically nonexistent [italics mine].

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must 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.”

 The dignity of the human person is preserved by the church in its positions against abortion and euthanasia and, here, Pope John Paul II is saying that we debase our pro-life position when we say it’s OK to kill anyone.

Unfortunately, many doctrinaire Catholics prefer to side with the Bible Belt’s evangelical preachers in demanding death for crimes rather than upholding the seamless garment of life with the greatest Pope of our century.

Last year, I searched through countless hours of program listings on EWTN during its pro-life month of January looking for an interesting segment on the abolition of the death penalty. Bud Welch, Antoinette Bosco and Sister Helen Prejean are three of the best-known Catholic abolitionists, after all. Yet, EWTN had zilch on the issue in January. Not an interview with Sister Helen or with Welch and Bosco, who saw loved ones murder and yet have become abolitionists. Nothing on 20th century death-penalty victims St. Maximilian Kolbe, Blessed Titus Brandsma, Saint Edith Stein, Jacques Fesch or Blessed Miguel Pro.

I wrote to the network to ask why and the answer came that abortion is always wrong, but the Catechism allows the death penalty. In other words, don’t even discuss what the Pope or the Bishops say about the death penalty, just follow the narrowest possible excuse for judicial murder. In fact, don’t even feature a program that allows Catholic viewers to consider that the Pope or the Bishops say about the death penalty. Another classic case of scribes and Pharisees straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel.

New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson has publicly stated that he is reconsidering his position on the death penalty. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has marched for abolition this past week. Metanoia, it seems, can be a blessing on everyone, except for those with whitewashed tombs.

In 1987. the Archbishop of Paris, the late Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, opened a diocesan inquiry into the life of a Frenchman who had died 30 years earlier. In 1993, the Archbishop opened the cause for his beatification.

What is remarkable is that the subject of the inquiry was Jacques Fesch, who was guillotined at 27 for a murder he had committed four years before. After a botched robbery, Fesch had shot wildly (he had lost his glasses) and killed the police officer in pursuit. Fesch was captured and sentenced to die.

Something remarkable happened to Jacques Fesch during his years in prison: God spoke to him and effected a transformation in his soul. Some of Fesch’s letters are in Light over the Scaffold and Cell 18: The Prison Letters of Jacques Fesch, as strong a testimony of conversion as I’ve ever read. Here’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote two years before his death:

“Little by little I was led to change my ideas. I was no longer certain that God did not exist. I began to be open to Him, though I did not yet have faith. I tried to believe with my reason, without praying, or praying ever so little! And then, at the end of my first year in prison, a powerful wave of emotion swept over me, causing deep and brutal suffering. Within the space of a few hours, I came into possession of faith, with absolute certainty. I believed, and could no longer understand how I had ever not believed. Grace had come to me. A great joy flooded my soul and above all a deep peace. In a few instants everything had become clear. it was a very strong, sensible joy that I felt. I tend now to try, perhaps excessively, to recapture it; actually, the essential thing is not emotion, but faith.”

God calls prodigal sons home and welcomes them, as did the father in the parable Jesus told to the tax collectors and sinners to explain the Father’s boundless mercy. I recall the nervous laughter from the glittering audience at the Grammy Awards in 1991 when Bob Dylan collected a prize and quoted his father:

“It’s possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you and, if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.”

God does believe in our ability to mend our ways. He graced Jacques Fesch with salvation and he uses all of in the same way. And yet, many states in our nation continue to use the judicial murder called the death penalty to punish sinners like Fesch. France abandoned the death penalty long ago, as did the civilized nations of the world that profess some measure of human rights. As a body, our Bishops have spoken out forcefully against the use of the death penalty, as did Pope John Paul II.

The United States stands with Syria and China as nations that still murder those who commit crimes. The Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, a political show pony who never met a media opportunity he couldn’t glom on to, signed a death warrant recently and, tonight, another human being was killed by lethal injection in our state. The judicial process couldn’t make time for DNA testing to ensure they were not killing an innocent man, even though it has no problem killing those they deem guilty, either.

Jacques Fesch is in a better place with his God, as are all those who are the victims of violence. Only God can judge us in life or death. Whether murder is committed by an individual the State then judges or whether it’s committed by the State that kills without impunity, murder is murder. We serve a God who believes we can mend our ways, to quote Dylan. It’s time to erase the death penalty from our nation’s history of violence.