VALERIE SCHULTZ: Pro-life for all
| Friday, Nov 11 2011 05:22 PM
Last Updated Friday, Nov 11 2011 05:24 PM
Thanks to Sister Marie Francis Schroepfer, assistant director of the Diocesan Social Justice Ministry for the southern part of the Catholic Diocese of Fresno, Bakersfield is now home to an established chapter of California People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty. Since Jesus himself was a victim of the death penalty, it makes sense that people who follow the teachings of Christ would stand against capital punishment. But personally speaking, some of the most vocal advocates of the death penalty I know are folks who consider themselves people of faith.
The pro-life philosophy, which by definition embraces the sanctity of all life, is sometimes hijacked by the narrowly focused anti-abortion movement. In Catholic teaching, the lovely metaphor for life is a "seamless garment": all life is of a piece. If life is a sacred gift from a loving God, it stands to reason that we humans do not get to determine who among us is unworthy to retain that divine light. To be pro-life is to defend all life: the unborn, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the guilty, the enemy. To be pro-life is to relinquish the task of taking life, under any circumstances. It is not an easy belief. It is not a belief for the faint-hearted. It is, however, a belief that straddles the polarized territories of American politics. In the current political scheme of things, if you are pro-choice, you are probably anti-capital punishment, and vice versa: if you are anti-choice, you are probably pro-capital punishment. There is no political party that truly espouses the Gospel message of the seamless garment.
Somewhere along the line, the hard work of Jesus to establish the Kingdom of God here on earth got softened. The tasks that Catholics call the corporal works of mercy -- feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead -- got watered down to putting a few bucks in the collection plate and taking the tax write-off. In many modern religious and political organizations, charity is optional, and the precepts of social justice are dismissed, or even vilified, as socialism. In this climate, support for the death penalty has flourished. If I am not my brother's keeper, I can easily judge him and condemn him to a death he clearly deserves.
Disagree with me? I urge you, then, to reserve Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. on your calendar. Come to the First Congregational Church on the corner of Stockdale Highway and Real Road for a talk by Jeanne Woodford, executive director of the national advocacy organization Death Penalty Focus. She will also speak at CSUB on the following day, Nov.14, at 12:15 p.m. Both appearances are co-sponsored by CSUB's Institute for Religion, Education, and Public Policy and the CSUB Student Interfaith Association. (Full disclosure: I'm a member of IREPP's board.)
Death Penalty Focus was founded in 1988, and is dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment. Woodford, far from the bleeding heart liberal one might expect to direct such a group, is a former head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She was also the warden at San Quentin Prison, where executions in California are performed, and where she oversaw four executions. Jeanne Woodford knows what she's talking about.
"We believe," states Death Penalty Focus literature, "that the death penalty is an ineffective, cruel, and simplistic response to the serious and complex problem of violent crime. It institutionalizes discrimination against the poor and people of color, diverts attention and financial resources away from preventive measures that would actually increase public safety, risks the execution of innocent people, and does not deter crime." This statement pretty much refutes every argument for capital punishment. In California, death row cases cost the state $308 million per actual execution (and the current death row population is 714). Life without parole is far less burdensome on the budget. In states where the death penalty is legal, notably in the South, the murder rate far exceeds that of states without the death penalty. If a defendant has the resources to pay a top lawyer, he or she is less likely to receive a death sentence. Most of all, the specter that the state might execute -- probably has executed -- an innocent person in our name should keep us all awake by night, and keep us agitating to abolish the death penalty by day.
Every few years a capital case rouses our interest, and the name of the condemned becomes familiar: Timothy McVeigh, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, and most recently, Troy Davis. But most of the people who are legally executed die unnoticed, at the sterilized hands of taxpayer-funded executioners. It is to our shame as Americans that these killings take place in a supposedly enlightened democracy. If we believe life is sacred, we must be life's protectors. All life.
These are the opinions of Valerie Schultz, not necessarily those of The Californian. Email her at vschultz@bakersfield.com.
