(Source : CACP)

THE MCVEIGH EXECUTION: SOME REFLECTIONS

"Rational analysis is difficult in the face of the emotion that this man's crime evokes." So wrote Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein, O.S.B., in an April 2 statement on the scheduled execution of 33-year-old former altar boy Timothy McVeigh, convicted on 11 federal counts of conspiracy and murder for an April 1995 bombing that killed 168 people. McVeigh says he wants to be executed, and has refused to file any appeals.As of late April, few if any daily papers or TV news shows were devoid of items about the scheduled May 16 event. Thousands of U.S. and overseas journalists were planning to converge on the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, the site of what will be the first federal execution since 1963. "The 'tantalizing' manner in which this is becoming a national media event compounds the task," Archbishop Buechlein noted. "Yet, in matters such as this, the good of society requires that we rise to the challenge of a measured and larger vision."As this issue of CACP News Notes goes to press, Catholic leaders indeed appear to be rising to the challenge. To wit:"We do not question, in principle, the state's right to impose the death penalty," Archbishop Buechlein said. "Yet we must oppose the death penalty because the circumstances of our day do not warrant it. The state should not exercise its right if the evil effects outweigh the good." The death penalty does more harm than good, he said, because it feeds a frenzy for revenge. "Revenge neither liberates the families of victims nor ennobles the victims of crime. Only forgiveness liberates. We, as a society, must never forget the victims of crime and their bereaved loved ones," he concluded, but added: "The truly honorable memorial is to choose life rather than death."Members of the Sisters of Providence, an order located on the grounds of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Terre Haute, near the prison where the execution will take place, plan to hold a service in their chapel on the night of the execution to pray for McVeigh, his family, and the families of the bombing victims."The challenge is not to forget that Timothy McVeigh is a human being," Sr. Joan Slobig explained to a New York Times reporter. "You have to stay clear and consistent-if life is holy, we don't have a right to take a life under any circumstances.""Those who take to heart the biblical injunction to love our enemy find in the world's McVeighs a profound challenge," writes Sister Camille D'Arienzo, R.S.M., president of the Brooklyn, N.Y. Regional Community of the Sisters of Mercy. "Loving the enemy includes desiring his repentance. A life in prison offers the chance of personal conversion."In remarks to reporters prior to addressing an April 17 pro-life banquet in Evansville, Ind., Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston said McVeigh should not be an exception to the principle that human life should be respected from conception through natural death. "We have so many other ways to deal with heinous crimes and protect the common good," he said. "I deplore the fact that Mr. McVeigh will have his life ended this way."The cardinal did not mention McVeigh in his speech, but said, "I think it is absolutely essential that we be consistently and unambiguously pro-life," and called for "pro-life indentations in the debate over capital punishment." The latter remark was applauded by some in the 2,400 member audience, but not by others, according to the Evansville Courier & Press. The paper quoted the president of the organization that sponsored the banquet, Right to Life of Vanderburgh County, as saying the group did not have a position on the death penalty.In an interview published in the April 20 Washington Post, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, D.C., criticized plans to allow relatives of those killed in the 1995 bombing to watch McVeigh's execution on closed-circuit TV, saying it would bring them only temporary comfort."It's like going back to the Roman Colosseum," he said. "We're watching, in my mind, an act of vengeance, and vengeance is never justified. Vengeance belongs to God. He's the master of life. When you give the state the control of life, you're taking it away from God." He said he would counsel grieving relatives that "there is another way to get closure ... the peace that comes from a relationship with God that spills over into a relationship with your neighbor."The cardinal noted that, having been born into "a New York police family" with an uncle and a cousin on the force, he had not always opposed capital punishment. He also acknowledged that many Catholics still support it despite papal teachings that it is not longer justified. He said he was persuaded to rethink the matter by Pope John Paul II's insistence on the value of every human life, and by working with disadvantaged members of society who, he realized, had no recourse to competent legal help."Our federal taxes will be paying the bill for this execution-for the purchase of the gurney, the deadly chemicals for lethal injection, and the wages of the prison employees who carry it out," said Dominican Sister Dorothy Briggs, organizer of the "For Whom the Bells Toll" campaign that enlists religious communities of all faiths to toll their bells whenever executions take place. "By tolling the bells, we're saying that my taxes should not be used for this," she explained. "We hope to have bells in every state tolling that evening for two minutes. Where there is no bell tower, we ask churches to hang black drapes outside their doors or tie black ribbons on poles." Vigil scheduled at Indianapolis cathedralBoth Pope John Paul II and Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein have urged President George W. Bush to commute Timothy McVeigh's death sentence to life imprisonment. The pope's request was conveyed to Bush in a letter from the papal nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo.Archbishop Buechlein, in whose archdiocese McVeigh is scheduled to die, is asking Catholics to join him in his cathedral May 15 for a prayer vigil for an end to violence