DO YOU WISH TO ARGUE?
Schroth, Raymond A.
prison garb but smiling and robust in a bright blue shirt; guments against anti-death-penalty testimony from Loyola Eddie Sonnier and others she has visited. ...
...ing to hear her speak...
...She switched into her the murder rate in New Orleans rose 16.39 pertwo-story mode...
...rural roots and mute her otherwise overwhelming and sophisticated intelligence...
...But his- government too...
...Don't feel isolated and alone...
...Jake Heggie, he can...
...F' . thermore, the death penalty is legally George Pataki's recent legislation-until her audience re- applicable to only a small number of violent minded her that she was in Jersey City...
...then...
...terrorists...
...Third, she lays out the evidence that exejean was receiving an honorary degree, while marching in cutions do not deter crime...
...she would roll out in interviews and work into Her stories are crafted-talks have two to five story sec- her public appearances...
...from Catholic teaching...
...FaNew York's Cardinal John O'Connor, in a sermon to law en- ther Joel LeBauve, priest of the Baton Rouge diocese and Anforcement officers, said that while he personally opposed gola chaplain from 1994 to 2000 (not the chaplain in the film), the death penalty, he allowed the listeners to follow their says Prejean's most significant impact is in influencing church conscience...
...Meanwhile, as she sees it, the pragmatic beloved home state of Louisiana, by many mea- arguments, like the cost of executions, also have surements one of the most corrupt and backward their ethical dimension: It is immoral to waste states in the Union, which now has eighty-eight inmates on social resources, whether the tax money that death row...
...Her campaign against the death penalty only added to lished in the Renew Impact Series (Liguori...
...I'm sorry-I'm so sorry," Prejean told view a moral issue...
...But his position on the has been in bridging the gap between convicts and the surdeath penalty has not changed, and he is convinced that vivors of their crimes, in asserting the humanity of everychurch doctrine is on his side...
...Walking and of whom she had never heard, by dutifully Second, she explains how, because of court studying Sarandon's Thelma and Louise (1991)-only to dis- costs and prolonged litigation, death sentences cover at their lunch that she had confused Sarandon with ultimately cost much more than life imprisonco-star Geena Davis...
...From can't afford good lawyers are swept off to death the beginning she has faced opposition in her row...
...But she's also a clever writer: her edi- if his position had changed, he assured me that he had altor at Random House, Jason Epstein, taught her to start with ways opposed the death penalty, except for international a crime story to grab her audience and not to let them go...
...Valor...
...He in- Prizewinner or not, Prejean's main impact, says Stephen sists that his investigations are scrupulously fair...
...and the state bish- teners, she concludes: If it is wrong for individops' conference is preparing a parish-based campaign urg- uals to kill one another, it is wrong for the ing Catholics to ask the governor for a moratorium...
...Her rugged jocular warmth, which comes through at din- By the time Dead Man Walking was pubner with wine or in small groups, flows into a large room...
...October is brought by District Attorney Connick, a Catholic...
...Because of uphold the law as he sees it...
...She also explained to the pope that to justify his she told Williams, had been weaving his spirit into the opera...
...but they reach What of Sister Helen Prejean's future...
...Kirby Ducote, executive should be contributing to the community...
...and we are complicit in this torically, the church's voice has not been strong...
...later Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger announced moved for a while off the more "religious" section of death that the new edition of the Catechism would emphasize the row in retaliation...
...Eddie explains "I don't like being told that I am in mortal sin...
...her eyes sparkle with the basis of seeing the film, that he thought that she had no good humor, and her voice-when she chooses-carries enough of a disarming Cajun accent to testify to her Louisiana DO YOU WISH TO ARGUE...
...Prejean pointed still churning from January 1999, when she watched the out to the pope that "the lone dissent in the Supreme Court crippled, arthritic, indigent black man, Dobie Williams, after decision to hear the O'Dell case came from Catholic Justice twelve stays of execution, walk bravely to his death...
...At a university graduation where Pre- ment...
...lished in 1993, Sister Helen Prejean had After all, she has been a public speaker since her student-gov- developed a set of arguments, both pragernment days...
...When I asked Hannan storyteller," she says...
...He also reminded me that not have enough information when they vote for death...
...Her sympathy for the victims did not impress the fam- study pamphlet, "Reflections on Dead Man Walking," pubilies...
...call for executions, Connick relies on the "absolute necessi- He may have to weave in Manuel's as well...
...He was also the month, Prejean's friends can't help remembering, instrumental in making the life sentence an actual life sen- in which the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is announced...
...She prefers to save nia, nearly a hundred protesters, representing the families these topics for her next book, a memoir of where her faith of three murder victims, confronted her outside of Saint Bene- has taken her and a reflection on the lives of women she has dict's Catholic Church, where 400 parishioners were wait- met on her spiritual journey...
...Dead Man Walking, with music by Jake Heggie and a libretOver the last twenty-six years almost one-third of the pris- to by playwright Terrence McNally, author of Love...
...guments against anti-death-penalty testimony from Loyola Eddie Sonnier and others she has visited...
...gues that he does not see how it could have become so since Her life says: Don't give up...
...He In 1997, Sister Helen wrote personally to Pope John Paul likes to give gifts and he is making "Sis" a cedar shelf for II urging him to remove the "extreme gravity" loophole the corner of her cluttered home...
...Fourth, she illustrates the unfairness of a judicial system where the black and poor who Nof everybody loves Sister Helen Prejean...
...cent...
...The trustee, shaken, executed eight people in eight and a half weeks, replied, "But, I thought you knew...
...R.A.S...
...he once supported Sister Helen in a clemency case, regularly backed New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick's arCommonweal 1 5 October 6, 2000 shown enough concern for the families of the victims...
...He keeps the Catechism, with one involved-inmates, victims' families, guards, execuits exception clause, allowing the death penalty in cases of tioners, law enforcement officers, even jurors who often do "extreme gravity," by his bedside...
...director of the Louisiana Catholic Conference, has testified Finally, after reasoning carefully with her lisagainst the death penalty to the legislature...
...This July in er Ortiz has shown a streak of independence, filing comItaly, Prejean met briefly with John Paul II who kissed her on plaints when he sees procedures are violated, and he's been the forehead...
...When we talked out and press their hands against the screen...
...When it is time to go, they pray together...
...but he keeps hope alive and has told Our church's unqualified opposition to executions...
...The father of one victim described in In a moment of self-definition she reminds me, "I am a detail how the killer had stabbed his daughter fifty times religious educator," a "prism" through whom others can and left her to die...
...Who is the main speaker...
...Catholic bishops does not express College in Jersey City, New Jersey, in fall 1999...
...Then, she suggests that audience that she had prepared for her first meeting with life sentences without parole can provide the the actress Susan Sarandon, who ports y,,ed her in Dead Man protection citizens are convinced they need...
...she has not suddenly been shoved into the matic and moral, against the death penalty which limelight...
...0 Commonweal 16 October 6, 2000...
...hundred thousand, die of felony-type murders And she gets laughs, sometimes unintentionally, always each year, "roughly the same percentage as those at her own expense...
...and the controversial Corpus Christi...
...At Saint Peter's she exhorted her audi- who di from drowning or accidental poisonence several times to protest against New York Governor ing...
...Told of the Lady of Guadalupe he will make a pilgrimage to her shrine Catechism's change, Connick was unfazed...
...She is excited about her new grouphim...
...in practice it had been ten years and six months...
...in great detail the toys he is making in the craft shop...
...As if to touchabout some of the hot-button topics that now divide and say farewell...
...She then told the crimes-only 1 in 345...
...tence...
...The Catholic bishops of Louisiana went on record should go to schools or the lives of persons who in 1994 against the death penalty...
...Catholics-like contraception, celibacy, abortion, and In fact, though she has formed victims' support groups women's ordination-she said the way to prevent abortion and visits their families, Prejean has agonized over her fail- would be to support women, to save them from the social ure to do more...
...In January of this year, in Hollister, Califor- conditions which pressure them to abort...
...the screen between them they cannot touch...
...As a prisonty" clause in the encyclical Evangelium vitae...
...oners in Angola have been put there as a result of cases Compassion...
...University Jesuits...
...We're not Bright, of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, mad dogs after blood," he told me...
...When the student newspaper, the Loyola I have seen Prejean in action twice: in 1998 at the PEN Maroon, covered the conflict in 1987, Connick replied that Awards for Prison Writings in New York and at Saint Peter's "the position of the U.S...
...Connick was taught at Jesuit High School in New authorities, and, above all, showing the world that "one perOrleans that the death penalty was not immoral, and he ar- son can make a difference when individuals do what is right...
...I'm just a the official position of this diocese...
...The letter was sent to thank the pope The Ortiz visit is more difficult because it stirs up emotions for interceding in the case of Joseph O'Dell...
...He particularly resents going to Mass in a Jesuit church Which is what she is saying to Eddie Sonnier, whom she where the priest will say, "We must speak out against evil- has been visiting for fifteen years, and Manuel Ortiz, while abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty...
...He comments: I have been exploring the prison grounds...
...In mid-October their pain-pain, they argued, that only the death of the killer the San Francisco Opera will premiere an opera version of would ease...
...She Antonin Scalia, who is relentless in his pursuit of legalizing was convinced, for the first time, that the condemned man executions, even of juveniles and the mentally retarded, and was innocent, that he had been railroaded for the death of a who expedites the death process in the courts in every way white woman in a small racist Southern town...
...In Louisiana, for procession she remarked to one of the trustees, "I'm going to example, i i the fall of 1987, right after the state enjoy this...
...For hours, he and Sister Helen just talk about ine a conflict between the church's teaching and his oath to life...
...He cannot imag- if he is set free...
...He praised Helen Prejean's work, but added, on Though over sixty, her face is unlined...
...tions, depending on time available-to disarm a possibly First, she tries to defuse the public's exaggerantagonistic audience, to dispel their misunderstandings ated fear of violent crime, which has been exabout how the death penalty works, to answer standard ob- ploited by politicians and the media, by showing jections like, "The Bible says, an eye for...," and to assert the that a very small number, two persons out of a common humanity of killers, of victims, of us all...
...legal killing because we give the government The former ordinary, Archbishop Philip Hannan, though the power to do it...
Vol. 127 • October 2000 • No. 17
