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Exploring the word

02 Oct 2016 - Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Exactly once on Pro-Life Sunday have I heard a homily on capital punishment. It was bold, deeply Catholic, and memorable, and I thanked the presider afterwards for his courage. “Courage?” he laughed. “This is Berkeley. It would be courageous to say this where the folks don’t agree with me.” I’m asking for that deeper sort of courage from preachers facing the six in 10 Americans who support the death penalty, according to Gallup polls. Capital punishment is favored by Republicans more than Democrats, whites more than blacks, and men more than women—no surprises there. Support declines with age, the lowest being among the AARP crowd. Protestant support is higher than Catholic, and Catholics who attend Mass weekly are less likely to favor the death penalty than those who seldom or never go to church. Also, when the alternative of a life sentence without parole is thrown into the discussion, Catholic support drops to an astonishingly low 25 percent. Your assembly may be more open to church teaching than you imagine. In a 2011 bulletin insert titled “Life Matters: the Death Penalty,” the USCCB basically wrote your homily. It describes how our “culture of death” makes war, murder, and hatred daily news. This soup of violence cheapens life and makes us all more willing to entertain violent solutions to problems. Just listen to our outrageous election year discourse. The bishops reframe the death penalty question: not as an indictment on the policy’s former validity, but whether it should endure today. Imprisonment now effectively removes an offender from society. While incarceration allows time for repentance and rehabilitation, the death penalty takes the opportunity for conversion away, “halting the action of the Holy Spirit.” The one certain result of executing criminals “is to make us as a people more vengeful—seeking retribution and satisfying our outrage at the violent crime by more violence.” Retributive justice seems to eliminate a problem—“but a person, even a criminal, is never a problem to be destroyed. It lulls us into thinking we have addressed the problem, but we have not really dealt with the deeper issues of what has gone wrong in society when violent crime is so widespread.” An average of two to three mass shootings a month in this country for the past 40 years makes that evident. The bishops list familiar factors that breed violence: poverty, fatherlessness, discrimination, injustice, lack of opportunity, hopelessness, gangs, the drug trade. Addiction in our society has reached alarming levels. We don’t fix any of these problems by executing people. The bishops lament: “The death penalty just aggravates the injustices we have not yet been able to overcome.” In a year dedicated to mercy, we need to contemplate—and repent—what makes us so violent. Related scripture links Habakkuk parallels: Pss. 4:3-6; 13:1-6; 35:17-28; 74:1-23; 79:5-8; 80:5-8; 82:1-4; 89:39-52; 90:7-17; 94:3-7; Isa. 6:11-13; Jer. 4:19-21; 12:1-20; 20:7-18 Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Isa. 11:2-3 Catechism links Faith: CCC 26; 162; 142-175; 185-197; 1812-16

Authors Alice Camille

pro-life sunday death penalty capital punishment Violence

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Arkansas on death watch this week

23 Apr 2017 - Preaching the News for the Solemnity of the Second Sunday of Easter; Divine Mercy Sunday, Cycle A

“The mystery of Divine Mercy Sunday,” says PREPARE THE WORD scripture commentator Alice Camille this Sunday, “is that Jesus . . . moves through the greatest violence history can muster and comes out the other side as dedicated to peace and forgiveness as before. . . . No excuses, no reprisal. Peace and forgiveness. God’s answer to the world’s hostility is in gently extended wounded and glorified hands.” Capital punishment is one of those complex issues that tests our understanding of mercy, forgiveness, punishment, and justice. The death penalty is center-stage this week as the state of Arkansas deals with pushback on its unprecedented plan to continue with the executions of eight men scheduled over a period of 11 days. Arkansas officials vowed to press on with a frantic schedule of lethal injections, moving on after court orders blocked two executions Monday that would have been the state’s first since 2005. Although the state’s efforts to resume executions Monday night were thwarted by courts and called off at the last minute, Arkansas also won a pair of key legal victories that, for the moment, seemed to clear a path for five other lethal injections on the calendar, beginning with two set for Thursday night. The state entered this week hoping to begin a planned flurry of executions with no parallel in the modern death-penalty era, scheduling eight lethal injections for a period of 11 days. If this slate of executions proceeds as planned, it would be a grisly record, one that only Texas can currently claim. Eight men were originally scheduled for execution over 10 days, because the state's store of a controversial lethal injection drug is about to expire. After one man's life was saved by a late-night U.S. Supreme Court decision and two other death-row inmates received temporary reprieves, Arkansas now plans to execute five men over eight days. Ever since Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announced the historic execution schedule in February, the state's plan has gained national attention from activists and media organizations — leading to death penalty protests in Little Rock and a response from faith leaders across the state. Whether or not the remaining five death sentences are fulfilled will likely depend on pending and soon-to-be filed litigation on behalf of the inmates. Here's what's next for the remaining Arkansas executions. The state plans to put Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee to death on Thursday. Jack Jones and Marcell Williams are scheduled to follow on April 24, and Kenneth Williams' death warrant is signed for April 27. Legal roadblocks have come down at the last minute in many individual death penalty cases—much like Davis' case Monday night. But there's still the possibility of a blanket injunction that would stop all of the executions, which was originally provided by District Judge Kristine Baker on Saturday. Meanwhile, McKesson Medical-Surgical—a pharmaceutical company—has claimed that the Arkansas Department of Corrections duped them into providing one of the key drugs used for executions, believing they were providing the drug for medicinal reasons. Though it had previously earned a temporary restraining order against the state, the company moved to dismiss its case because Baker had ordered a temporary injunction over the weekend. With her ruling overturned, the organization filed a new complaint on Tuesday to stop the Department of Corrections from using its drugs—which would effectively stay all five executions. Lessons drawn from the readings The words of the Risen Lord to the huddled disciples in this Sunday’s gospel captures the ambivalence many feel about the issue of forgiveness and justice: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” Does forgiveness come with some conditions? Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge argued for moving ahead with the executions: “The families have waited far too long to see justice, and I will continue to make that a priority.” Yet the church has been clear in its opposition to capital punishment, and the U.S. bishops issued a statement calling on Arkansas to abandon its plan. Final thought in light of the news Pope John Paul II spoke eloquently of the need to defend life, even in the most difficult of circumstances: “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.”

death penalty lethal injections executions arkansas pro-life capital punishment

Take Five for Faith Daily

Sunday
February 02

FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD

Get ready to fulfill your destiny

The information in scripture on Jesus’ childhood is a bit sketchy. At the end of the story of the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple, we learn that Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom.” When we next hear of him, Jesus is 12 years old, discussing Jewish teachings at the temple, and “astounding” those who hear him. Quite a bit of growth and development obviously transpired in the intervening years! Mary and Joseph are the unsung heroes here, for having nurtured and raised Jesus in such a way that he was ready to fulfill his destiny. How can you continue to grow and develop in your faith?

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