Connecticut, Catholicism and Abolishing the Death Penalty
These days it can be difficult to find good news associated with Catholicism in the public square. Sure, the experience of pastoral care and concern on the personal, local and individual level continues to reflect God’s love and mercy in the lives of many, but events and decisions that garner much more public attention tend to be of the negative variety (so much for “no such thing as bad publicity.” On the contrary, there is such a thing and it is indeed bad). However, this week, perhaps overshadowed by other news items, some good news for Right-to-Life and Social-Justice advocates has come out of the State of Connecticut. Governor Dan Malloy signed a bill into law that abolishes the death penalty in Connecticut. This is, without a doubt, a laudable move, the only reservation on my own celebratory mood is that the law is not retroactive, so the dozen or so prisoners currently on death row will still be executed. Nevertheless, no death penalty in the future is still something to celebrate.
While this might seem like some politically neutral or wholly ‘secular’ affair, Lisa Miller of the Washington Post wrote a short piece in the paper last week, prior to the signing of the bill into law, that picked up on the possible influence of the Roman Catholic Church and its (in my opinion, entirely laudable) effort to lobby against capital punishment in each of the half-dozen or so states that have abolished this form of punishment. Miller observed that of the five most recent states to abolish the death penalty, three of those states governors were raised Roman Catholic. Gov. Malloy, it turns out, is a Boston College alum and someone who, while a prosecutor in Brooklyn, came to change his view from support of the death penalty to having very serious legal and moral reservations about it.
“I don’t want to overemphasize my Catholicism here,” the governor, who grew up in a family of eight children and went to Jesuit-run Boston College, told me. “But I know my religion. I know religions in general. In the New Testament, the one place where Jesus talks about the death penalty, he says, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ When I’ve reflected on the death penalty, the reality is I frequently ponder that passage.”
Miller does an excellent job highlighting the true complexity that is actually reflected in Catholic moral teaching — something that those who remain so-called “one-issue voters” in the Church should as keenly observe.
Powerful, vocal Roman Catholics have been much in the news of late, mostly for their hard-line positions on abortion and birth control, and their self-serving rhetoric on the subject of religious rights in the health-care debate. But Catholic activists are playing another political role, too — under the radar — on an issue that hasn’t made the same sorts of headlines.
They are helping to turn the tide of public opinion in the United States against the death penalty. (According to a Pew poll earlier this year, about a third of Americans now oppose capital punishment, up from 18 percent in the mid-1990s.) And they are appealing to the consciences of Roman Catholic politicians to do it.
The sanctity of human life is central to Catholic theology, and for death penalty opponents, this sanctity extends as much to living men and women convicted of capital crimes as it does to embryos and fetuses. Malloy’s change of heart is reflected in the opinion of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, for 30 years ago, popes and bishops were not so clearly emphasizing their opposition to capital punishment.
Regardless of the personal, confessional faith of individual governors, my hope is that other states in the US will continue to follow the lead of Illinois, Connecticut and others that have made this important move. And, that a Catholic Governor had something to do with this in Connecticut might indeed be something to celebrate amid troubling and challenging times about the public face of the Church and its involvement in things such as American politics.
Gov. Malloy even has a little bit of additional wisdom for us people of faith: “on the morality of death as punishment for crimes, Malloy believes the Gospels contain something like the first word. ‘Jesus Christ — he laid out what the standard was.’”
April 27, 2012 at 8:27 am
Gov. Malloy’s biblical confusion
To: Connecticut General Assembly and
media throughout Connecticut
From: Dudley Sharp
Date: April 21, 2012
Gov. Malloy’s ignorance of the death penalty, within scripture, is par.
He states:
“I don’t want to overemphasize my Catholicism here,” the governor, who grew up in a family of eight children and went to Jesuit-run Boston College, told me. “But I know my religion. I know religions in general. In the New Testament, the one place where Jesus talks about the death penalty, he says, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ When I’ve reflected on the death penalty, the reality is I frequently ponder that passage.” (1)
The Governor may, frequently, reflect, but without understanding.
First, Jesus makes quite a few references to the death penalty, not just one (2).
One of many examples:
Jesus: ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and ‘Whoever curses father or mother must certainly be put to death.’ Matthew 15:4
This is a New Testament command, which references several of the same commands from God, from the OT (3).
With the Governor’s referenced passage, we have:
John 8:6 : “They said this to test (Jesus), so that they could have some charge to bring against him.”
This passage is very clear. The Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus, by getting Him to violate Roman law or God’s law. Jesus was a bit to smart for that.
Even anti death penalty nun, Helen Prejean, often wrong on death penalty issues, states:
Even Jesus’ admonition “Let him without sin cast the first stone”, when He was asked the appropriate punishment for an adulteress (John 8:7) – the Mosaic Law prescribed death – should be read in its proper context. This passage is an entrapment story, which sought to how Jesus’ wisdom in besting His adversaries. It is not an ethical pronouncement about capital punishment.”
“It is abundantly clear that the Bible depicts murder as a capital crime for which death is considered the appropriate punishment, and one is hard pressed to find a biblical proof text in either the Hebrew Testament or the New Testament which unequivocally refutes this”
Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking.
It was, however, an ethical pronouncement about the death penalty. Jesus could not say the adulteress wasn’t subject to the death penalty, because the Pharisees would claim Jesus had violated God’s law.
Jesus simply avoided the entrapment, by shaming the Pharisees, who retreated.
More complete review of J0hn 8 at Footnote 4.
This is very similar to the other arguments against the death penalty – they’re “Dead Wrong”.
Footnotes
1) “Catholic activists pushing politicians to turn tide against the death penalty”, Washington Post, April 19, 2012
2) God and the Death Penalty, by Pastor Bob Enyart, Theology Online,
http://www.theologyonline.com/DEATH.HTML
3) This passage is about the importance of God’s law over man’s laws or traditions and about not perverting scripture to serve earthly wants, very pertinent, in the context of Gov. Malloy’s statement. Jesus brought specific OT passages into His teachings to emphasis the importance of them and to make clear they are still relevant in the present time.
4) John 8 and the death penalty: The Woman Caught in Adultery
Compiled by Dudley Sharp
a) What about the woman caught in adultery? From “Why I Support Capital Punishment”, by Andrew Tallman, sections 7-11 biblical review, sections 1-6 secular review See Part 11
http://andrewtallmanshowarticles.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-i-support-capital-punishment-part_07.html
“the Pharisees wanted to make Jesus a heretic for opposing capital punishment, but He evaded their trap. The tremendous irony is that now, two thousand years later, people who claim to love Jesus teach that He was precisely the heretic His enemies wanted to paint Him as.”
b) “Sanctity of Life & the Death Penalty: Flip sides of the same ‘Divine’ coin”, Richard Eric Gunby, Quodlibet Journal: Volume 5 Number 2-3, July 2003
ISSN: 1526-6575 John 8:2-11 (NRSV)
“Therefore their motives (to entrap Jesus) were nothing but evil. They were not seeking to follow God’s Law-Word in godly fashion; rather, they were attempting to employ surreptitiously what Moses said, towards their own evil ends of trying to trip Jesus up. What a foul thing.”
“This cannot be read as an example of Jesus doing away with the law. Far from it! This is an example of Jesus, again, going by the clear unencumbered dictates of the law and not allowing it to be used towards evil ends in His presence. It is Jesus together with the Law triumphant over His enemies and their tradition. This is clearly an upholding of the law.”
http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/gunby-sanctity.shtml as of 4/24/10
c) John 8: The Woman Caught in Adultery – Dealing with Capital Offenses Lawfully
http://reocities.com/CapitolHill/lobby/3562/adultry.html
“John 8 in no way sets a precedent that would eliminate the penalties for committing capital crimes such as adultery, murder, rape, sodomy, abduction, etc. Instead, it re-establishes them and demonstrates the continuity of Theonomic Law into the New Testament era initiated by Christ. It is only the ceremonial elements of O.T. Law like instrumental music during worship, blood sacrifices, avoidance of certain meats and food/fabric mixtures, New Moon celebrations etc. that were done away with at Christ’s crucifixion. These things are made clear in the Epistles of Paul (Galatians 2-3) who re-establishes the old principle that “obedience is better than sacrifice”.
“The Pharisees, upon hearing Christ condemning them by quoting the context of the Law and knowing that they were without witnesses (v.17) turned their accusations against him as a true witness of the Law. (v.13) Jesus responded to their “fleshly” accusations (v.15) by revealing to them that he was not only a true witness of the Law but rather the author of it. (vs.16,58) He was one of the three witnesses of Heaven, the second person of the Triune God. (1 John 5:7) Let us not fall into the same error as the Pharisees by circumventing the Law. Let us rather honour it by demanding that our ministers of the Law enforce it. Doing so will enhance the proclamation of the Gospel and sinners will understand that if the temporal punishment of sin is so great, how much more the eternal punishment that God will bring upon those who disobey is righteous commands. Let us “Go, and sin no more!” (v.11)
e) Excellent review of the challenges to the authenticity of John 8
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/religion/spurious.htm as of 8/6/10
Start here: • John 7:53 – 8.11: The “woman taken in adultery” story: Metzger’s statement. Just before page 105 and through page 201
more
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11457c.htm
November 29, 2012 at 11:53 am
excellent website dod…