Around the time the pope died Saturday, I was sorting through various letters of charitable solicitation. A word in the epistle from Citizens United Against the Death Penalty stopped my eye: abolition.
Anti-death penalty advocates are, by definition, abolitionists – they’re trying to abolish the death penalty. The word “abolitionist” in America, however, connotes pre-Civil War anti-slavery activists. For a moment, I tried to imagine the loneliness of an abolitionist in 1850 or 1855. In those days, cotton was the number one American export. The value of exported cotton exceeded the value of all other American exports combined. All that money went into the hands of a relatively small group of men, who also wielded an inversely disproportionate amount of political power. Abolitionists, on the other hand, were a marginal group of freed slaves, mild-mannered do-gooders like Quakers and a few violent militia types like John Brown.
So it is with today’s abolitionists, small groups of advocates who sit vigil outside the nation’s prison death houses or lobby legislatures to overturn death penalties. While there is some overlap among those who oppose the death penalty and those who oppose abortion, death penalty opponents have never been able to rally tens of thousands of supporters to the Mall in Washington, as those who oppose abortion do on a regular basis.
On March 1, the abolitionists won a victory when the Supreme Court outlawed execution as a penalty for crimes committed before age 18. Justice Anthony Kennedy, for the 5-4 majority, wrote that the under-18 abolition is called for now by the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
Justice Kennedy’s words were scorned on the Senate floor by Republican John Cornyn, himself a former Texas Supreme Court justice. Sen. Cornyn took particular exception to Justice Kennedy’s citing the laws of every other nation on Earth prohibiting the execution of children. In his speech, Mr. Cornyn linked decisions such as the Supreme Court’s to the recent spate of deadly violence toward judges and their families.
We as a nation should not always follow the example of other nations. We should not let the opinions of the world stop us from being the first to do the right thing, from taking the next step in the evolution of human civilization. Unfortunately, America has not taken civilization forward in recent decades. World opinion should prevent America from the being the last nation to stop doing the wrong thing. America was last among the western democracies to give up slavery and the only one that fought an internal war over ending the practice.
Many of the politicians now kneeling beside the pope’s bier, who recently clamored for a “culture of life” while intruding in Schiavo family affairs, are dedicated to America’s preservation of the death penalty.
In Monday’s New York Times, Sister Helen Prejean (author of “Dead Man Walking”) pointed out that in September 1997, Pope John Paul II removed from Catholic dogma the loophole that allowed the death penalty in cases of “absolute necessity.” For nearly eight years now, the Catholic Church has opposed the death penalty in every instance.
Sen. Cornyn would argue that the U.S government should pay no heed to the Vatican, a foreign entity – and I agree. But if we are to ignore the Vatican in our civic affairs, we should consistently ignore the Vatican. If a politician wants to hide behind the pope’s soutane on abortion or the Schiavo case, he or she should not scorn the pope as a foreigner on the death penalty. If bishops decide they have a duty to withhold the Eucharist from Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, they should similarly withhold it from politicians who support the death penalty (or the Iraq invasion).
As a Catholic, I oppose the death penalty because it takes days and years away from a criminal who might use them to find repentance and redemption. That’s a religious view; as a citizen, I have no right to force my religious views on Americans who don’t share them. As a citizen, I oppose the death penalty because it is inequitably applied, because the police and the courts too often put the wrong person on death row.
Let’s finish the work of abolishing the death penalty – not because John Paul II wanted us to or because every civilized nation on Earth already has – let’s abolish the death penalty because it’s the right thing to do.
Abolitionists
Around the time the pope died Saturday, I was sorting through various letters of charitable solicitation. A word in the epistle from Citizens United Against the Death Penalty stopped my eye: abolition.
Anti-death penalty advocates are, by definition, abolitionists – they’re trying to abolish the death penalty. The word “abolitionist” in America, however, connotes pre-Civil War anti-slavery activists. For a moment, I tried to imagine the loneliness of an abolitionist in 1850 or 1855. In those days, cotton was the number one American export. The value of exported cotton exceeded the value of all other American exports combined. All that money went into the hands of a relatively small group of men, who also wielded an inversely disproportionate amount of political power. Abolitionists, on the other hand, were a marginal group of freed slaves, mild-mannered do-gooders like Quakers and a few violent militia types like John Brown.
So it is with today’s abolitionists, small groups of advocates who sit vigil outside the nation’s prison death houses or lobby legislatures to overturn death penalties. While there is some overlap among those who oppose the death penalty and those who oppose abortion, death penalty opponents have never been able to rally tens of thousands of supporters to the Mall in Washington, as those who oppose abortion do on a regular basis.
On March 1, the abolitionists won a victory when the Supreme Court outlawed execution as a penalty for crimes committed before age 18. Justice Anthony Kennedy, for the 5-4 majority, wrote that the under-18 abolition is called for now by the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
Justice Kennedy’s words were scorned on the Senate floor by Republican John Cornyn, himself a former Texas Supreme Court justice. Sen. Cornyn took particular exception to Justice Kennedy’s citing the laws of every other nation on Earth prohibiting the execution of children. In his speech, Mr. Cornyn linked decisions such as the Supreme Court’s to the recent spate of deadly violence toward judges and their families.
We as a nation should not always follow the example of other nations. We should not let the opinions of the world stop us from being the first to do the right thing, from taking the next step in the evolution of human civilization. Unfortunately, America has not taken civilization forward in recent decades. World opinion should prevent America from the being the last nation to stop doing the wrong thing. America was last among the western democracies to give up slavery and the only one that fought an internal war over ending the practice.
Many of the politicians now kneeling beside the pope’s bier, who recently clamored for a “culture of life” while intruding in Schiavo family affairs, are dedicated to America’s preservation of the death penalty.
In Monday’s New York Times, Sister Helen Prejean (author of “Dead Man Walking”) pointed out that in September 1997, Pope John Paul II removed from Catholic dogma the loophole that allowed the death penalty in cases of “absolute necessity.” For nearly eight years now, the Catholic Church has opposed the death penalty in every instance.
Sen. Cornyn would argue that the U.S government should pay no heed to the Vatican, a foreign entity – and I agree. But if we are to ignore the Vatican in our civic affairs, we should consistently ignore the Vatican. If a politician wants to hide behind the pope’s soutane on abortion or the Schiavo case, he or she should not scorn the pope as a foreigner on the death penalty. If bishops decide they have a duty to withhold the Eucharist from Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, they should similarly withhold it from politicians who support the death penalty (or the Iraq invasion).
As a Catholic, I oppose the death penalty because it takes days and years away from a criminal who might use them to find repentance and redemption. That’s a religious view; as a citizen, I have no right to force my religious views on Americans who don’t share them. As a citizen, I oppose the death penalty because it is inequitably applied, because the police and the courts too often put the wrong person on death row.
Let’s finish the work of abolishing the death penalty – not because John Paul II wanted us to or because every civilized nation on Earth already has – let’s abolish the death penalty because it’s the right thing to do.
© Mark Floegel, 2005