The Death Penalty in America, The Death Penalty
Gaffney, Edward McGlynn Jr.
THE JURY IS OUT The Death Penalty in America Current Controversies I'tlilcd by Hugo Adam Bedau Oxford University Press, $35, 524 pp. The Death Penalty An Historical and Theological...
...But, I have talked to a number of priests about what bothered me and understand this sacrament much differently now...
...As Hugo Bedau writes in the foreword to the Megivern volume, this "is history with an attitude, scholarship in service of an argument...
...It forces a focus on sinfulness as opposed to a list of sins...
...Politicians who prey on our fear of violence should not try to fool most of us most of the time with tough talk on the death penalty...
...To Mr...
...Just as popular support for the death penalty in America reaches an all-time high, both in raw numbers and in intensity of feeling, two new books on the subject challenge the consensus...
...The editors reply: To Mr...
...What great advice...
...It was wonderful to have dear John Dunne—your media critic's "favorite living theologian"— referred to in a review of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare ["The Source of Our Selves," November 6,1998...
...MARY FITZGERALD Albuquerque, N.M...
...I need to be comfortable with the priest, so I make an effort to get to know him...
...13:3-4...
...He spends too much time on byways and not enough time on the highways of his subject...
...One of the essays in the Bedau volume shows how "little is known about what the American public really thinks of capital punishment...
...Both are written by critics of the penalty who are also both academic philosophers, and who do not disguise their views...
...Another study by William Bowers cited in the Bedau volume shows that support for the death penalty plummets still further when a requirement is added that a murderer work in prison industries for money that would go to the families of their victims...
...Good answers to hard questions about capital punishment abound...
...Richard kuebbing Smyrna, Calif...
...He also states that "the story of the capital execution of Jesus is central to the message of the Christian gospel," but offers no exegesis of the Passion narratives or any sound biblical theology of this fundamental theme...
...The readings in this collection shatter the illusion that anything about the death penalty—its purpose, its effect, its cost, its method—is as simple as its advocates on and off courts would have the public believe...
...But the economics of whole issues online doesn't work—at least, not yet, not for us...
...Perhaps analogizing gay unions with marriage will elevate our insights into both...
...Commonweal 3 7 January 29,1999...
...Let me just say I've loved Commonweal for many, many years and find it very hard not having my husband to exult over the articles with...
...Of the two volumes, Bedau's is far more valuable...
...Megivern also refers frequently to Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's effort to link the issues of abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, and war in a "consistent ethic of life...
...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) ing to the church almost four years ago...
...It has taken some hard work, but with the help of some wonderful priests, I have a completely different perspective on confession now...
...Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr., is professor of law at Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana...
...He acknowledges that "more needs to be said" about the teaching of Jesus on deliberate killing, but deals with it only fleetingly hundreds of pages later...
...Far from creating or encouraging guilt, confession frees us from it...
...After some three years of going every two or three months, a priest I respect insisted that one needed to go once a month, so I gave it a try...
...It is truly a very healing process and an important part of my life...
...Enlightenment & exultation My ability to read is becoming more and more difficult...
...I am passing the piece on to a grandson who just performed in King Lear off-Broadway...
...What a waste of paper in a time of electronic media...
...in the meantime, keep the paper copy handy...
...If this letter prompts even one person to make the sacrament meaningful for them, I will be happy to have written it...
...But, having been gone for more than twenty years and having found such peace in my faith again, I want to make sure I don't stray...
...Since the death penalty continues unabated, Marshall's hypothesis appears to be invalid...
...Since I work full-time, have a family, volunteer, etc., it isn't as if I'm twiddling my thumbs, looking for things to do at church...
...The Death Penalty An Historical and Theological Survey lames J. Megivern Paulist Press, $29,95, 641 pp...
...Anyone who wishes to be an informed participant in this debate must become familiar with the arguments in Bedau's superlative anthology...
...I don't know why my experience is different...
...Regular reception of the sacrament develops a mindfulness that leads to inner peace...
...Megivern succeeds in demonstrating that neither is a proof text requiring the administration of the death penalty, but his treatment of the biblical materials is too skimpy to be very helpful...
...On the index When I got my December 18 issue I was annoyed to see the index for the year...
...When Paul analogized the union of Christ and his church to the union of two persons in marriage, both the church and marriage were enhanced in our understanding...
...The most curious aspect of the Megivern volume is his editorial judgment of what to say and what to leave out of his historical narrative...
...For example, both polling data and jury behavior show that Americans differentiate among Commonweal 3 5 January 29,1999 kinds of killings, with much greater willingness to apply the ultimate sanction to a serial murderer, say, than to a battered wife who reaches in desperation for a knife to kill an abusive husband...
...I am grateful that those who taught me the second go-around and helped me get to this place...
...But he dwells briefly on only two texts: "If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed" (Gen...
...HELEN AKINC Winston-Salem, N.C...
...With the church's blessing on the state's elimination of theological error came a muting of the church's voice when the state Commonweal 34 January 29,1999 imposed the death penalty on a host of crimes, many of which would now be regarded as petty offenses...
...Web matters Has thought been given to permitting Commonweal subscribers online access to entire issues of the magazine...
...The principal question Megivern sets out to resolve is how the Christian community not merely tolerated but actively defended—until fairly recently—the intentional infliction of death as a right of the state and a desirable and necessary institution...
...And a 1991 Gallup Poll showed a marked falloff in support for the death penalty if the public is told of a more effective and far less costly alternative, life without parole...
...Brummel: Thought has been given...
...He casts serious doubt that provisions for death in the "law codes" in the Torah were ever regularly or systematically enforced...
...Confession was the first piece, and I felt as if I needed a computer disk to bring with me that scary Saturday morning...
...a strong majority indicates support...
...Megivern's "chief interest is to trace the remarkable change in attitude toward the death penalty among the contemporary leaders of the American Catholic church...
...Curiously, however, the profound shift in official church teaching on the death penalty represented in Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae, is confined to less than two pages in this very large tome...
...If these facts were well known, Marshall thought, "the great mass of citizens...
...He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer" (Rom...
...The obvious added benefit is that he knows me...
...As the subtitle of Megivern's book suggests, he explores the role of religion in the history of the penalty...
...Bedau fills this gap by including a sample from the debate on the death penalty by a Baptist theologian, Wayne House, and the late Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder...
...Thank you for many hours of happiness and enlightenment...
...9:6), and "the one in authority...does not bear the sword for nothing...
...As long as pollsters only ask for a "Yes" or "No" reply to the question "Do you favor the death penalty...
...There is passion in Bedau's own volume as well, but a greater sense of balance in the presentation of the modern debate about the penalty...
...Without citing this encyclical on the point, Megivern concludes that a trio of values—the sanctity of human life, the right to life, and the equal dignity of all persons—now requires that "from a Christian perspective, the death penalty has nothing to be said for it, and everything to be said against it...
...FRANK C. ARRICALE Bayside, Queens, N.Y...
...Stay tuned...
...He makes clear his own unalterable opposition to the death penalty in deft introductions to each section of the book and in four of his own essays...
...Once I was told to make a list of twenty-five things I was grateful for, and they had to be significant...
...I need to sit down with the priest one-on-one and not be rushed, so I make an appointment...
...Gay unions & marriage Re: the dialogue between Dignity's Robert Miailovich and writer Dennis O'Brien [Correspondence, November 6,1998], may I suggest that just as religious orders and communities are called "families," populated by "brothers" and "sisters" and led by "fathers general" and "mothers general," could we not identify committed gay sexual unions as marriage by analogy...
...Reconciliation was something that bothered me a lot...
...Or is it...
...would conclude that the death penalty is immoral and therefore unconstitutional...
...A Jewish court that imposed the penalty more than once in a century was known as a "bloody sanhedrin...
...Both volumes contain comprehensive bibliographies...
...Killing killers will not give us the security from violence we all seek...
...In the unfortunate metaphor of Aquinas, the heretic was like an infected limb, needing to be cut off to save the health of the body...
...I see that as Catholics we are reCommonweal 36 January 29,1999 ally incredibly fortunate to have this available to us...
...For example, he begins logically enough with a prologue on biblical material...
...The 1997 and 1998 indexes will shortly appear on our website...
...But this support may be a mile wide and an inch deep...
...In Furman v. Georgia (1972), the case that found the penalty as then administered unconstitutional, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that popular support for the penalty was based on ignorance about several facts: that the death penalty does not deter homicide more than long terms of imprisonment, that its operation is inhumane, that its administration is discriminatory, that convicted murderers are rarely executed, and that they pose little future threat to society...
...I found earlier indexes on your website, but where are 1997 and 1998...
...I still have the list...
...And he notes that by the first century of the common era, the rabbis had virtually eliminated the death penalty by escalating the procedural requirements before the penalty could be imposed...
...It seems to me that coming to a better understanding of one's shadow side, knowing one's Achilles' heel, trying to work to improve it but knowing one is forgiven, is pretty healing and very powerful...
...The book abounds in snippets from statements on the death penalty issued by individual bishops and by state episcopal conferences...
...Being able to download articles on particular matters into personal archives is certainly preferable for me to (heaven forbid) taking an Exacto knife to my favorite magazine...
...I've never had a threeminute penance...
...Kuebbing: It is not a waste of paper for readers who like to peruse the index while, say, riding a bus or taking a bath...
...Edward rlcGlynn Gaffney, Jr...
...Thanks to his skillful editing of primary sources, Bedau succeeds in being fair not to both, but to all, sides of this many-faceted controversy...
...dick brummel Kansas City, Mo...
...Marshall's hypothesis expresses deep trust in democracy: knowledge persuades the people, and the people change policies known to be immoral...
...Megivern shows that it was a desire for theological certitude—or, more specifically, the itch to extirpate heresy—that led to the church's support of the death penalty in the fourth century...
Vol. 126 • January 1999 • No. 2
