LETTERS

LETTERS
July/August 2006

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YOU SHOULD SPELL IT OUT

The "News Shorts" in the February Faith contained an item concerning the death penalty that shed much doubt on the understanding of that punishment by the bishops and possibly the Faith.

It is superficial for the bishops to say that "the death penalty does not serve the common good" because it "contributes to a culture of death," when this only blurs the distinction with millions of homicides of innocent babies. This is blatant guilt by association. Executing a proven murderer is hardly the same! It is not apparent what evidence the bishops or the Faith might have for announcing that the death penalty "doesn't make for a more just society." Rendering unto Caesar the responsibility for law and order would seem to foreclose interference by bishops without more compelling reasons. In our country, Caesar is represented by representatives of the people, who up to now have decreed that the death penalty is justified. Contrary to the bishops' claims, the "alternative of life imprisonment" has not been shown to minimize homicides more than executing murderers does. It is hardly an "illusion that we can protect life by taking life," if it happens to be true!

And then comes the emotivist argument -- under the frayed banner of racism -- that "application of the penalty is deeply flawed," because a study "says that those who murder whites are far more likely to get the death sentence than those who killed blacks or Latinos." In other words, flogging that floppy American straw man, "those who are poor or from racial minorities." It is surprising that you still publish such stuff after all these years without amplification! From my reading 15 years ago, only when statistics showed that disproportionately more whites were executed between '76 and '85, did race-complainers switch to the above track. The "flaw," however, is in their own data base, not application of the death penalty.

For one thing, most murders were committed within one's own race. Interracial murders were uncommon. (Those that did occur were far more likely to involve blacks killing whites than the reverse.) More killers of whites were executed because more whites were killed. Courts bent over backward to give blacks and Latinos a fair shake and make sure they didn't execute a disproportionate number, so they ended up executing more whites and murderers of whites. The predominance of death penalties for whites hardly showed the special protection blatantly inferred in the Faith. If things have changed since then, you should spell it out.

On the face of it, in this era of affirmative action, etc., to suggest that blacks and Latinos receive unjust treatment in the courts is really stretching it. To see prejudice against "the poor or racial minorities" in imposing the death penalty is nothing less than naïve, and thus discredits the bishops' whole case.

W. Edward Chynoweth,

Sanger

Editor replies: The inclusion of the news shorts to which Mr. Chynoweth refers in his letter does not signify the Faith's espousal or rejection of the California bishops' position on the death penalty or their reasons for their position. We simply reported on what the bishops said, since this is newsworthy for Catholics.

Since Pope John Paul II issued his statement on the death penalty in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae -- that non-bloody means of executing criminals guilty of capital offenses is more in accord with human dignity if society can be safeguarded by such means -- Catholics have tended to take a dim view of the death penalty. However, Catholics are not called upon to reject the death penalty in any and all circumstances, only in those where society can be protected without it. Mr. Chynoweth disputes the bishops' contention that sufficient means are available to protect society from murderers, as well as the bishops' judgment that the death penalty unfairly impacts racial minorities. It is his right to do so, of course, since the bishops may be wrong in their assertions here. However, he himself merely asserts that the bishops are wrong without giving "compelling reasons" or anything more than contrary assertions.

The contention of the 2005 Santa Clara Law Review study was not simply that, numerically, more killers of whites than killers of racial minorities have been executed. Rather, it was that among convicted murderers, those who killed whites were more likely to be executed than those who killed racial minorities. Mr. Chynowith further seems to say that the study is incorrect because it contradicts statistics from the decades of the '70s and '80s. But the study covered the decade of the '90s. Things do change, and maybe this is one of those things that have changed. Citing what some call reverse racism against whites as a reason to reject the study is not compelling.

One cannot conclude that because the death penalty does not contribute to the culture of death like abortion does, it does not contribute to it at all. Admittedly, if the death penalty is ever morally evil, it is not as evil as abortion. But it does not follow that because abortion is evil nothing else is, or that in speaking out against a lesser evil one is thereby diminishing a greater. Nor does one have to mention abortion every time he inveighs against other violations of the sanctity of human life. One can, and should, speak out against all moral evil in society.

Because "Caesar" justifies a thing doesn't make it right. After all, Caesar has determined that women have a right to kill their unborn children. The bishops, as moral guides, have to speak out against moral evil, even when the majority of the people think and have determined otherwise. Their office is not circumscribed by the vox populi or the laws of nations. Men sin by killing the innocent unborn and by doing a whole host of other nasty things. The business of the Church is to call them to repentance in all matters that offend God.

LIBERAL CATHOLIC MOLE

Thanks for promoting the unknown Victoria Rue and her so-called priesthood ("Who Knows How Things Will Change," June Faith). I'm sure she has pasted it in her scrapbook, but not before making innumerable photocopies to hand out to persons who otherwise never would have heard of her. She has received, thanks to you, unexpected and unnecessary publicity.

Yes, to inform your readers that there are such nutcases is a useful service, but to blast this insignificant poor woman's picture on the front page, above the fold, and to carry on for nearly a full page, goes beyond news and enters into puffery, negative as it is. "I don't care what they say about me, so long as they spell my name right."

You have outdone yourselves. I thought when you created the unholy racket that the Dominicans were isolating their accused -- but never arrested, never tried, never convicted -- seven old men in an institution to keep them away from minors, you had done about as much disservice to the Catholic Church as possible. You topped that, of course, by publishing the howls of their Oakland neighbors, who joined in your indignation while, at that the same moment, there were arrested, tried, and convicted sex offenders openly prowling the very same neighborhood. Perhaps someone in your paper is a mole of the liberal Catholic establishment. I don't know how else to explain your continued drum-beating of non-issues that do little but draw attention to crackpots such as the pseudo-priestess Rue or to cast aspersion upon a respected religious order that has decided, rather than to expel its errant members into the streets around St. Albert's College and other neighborhoods (as the bishops do with their priests who have "credible" accusations against them), choose to keep an eye on them.

Kenn Noble,
Vallejo

Editor replies: There have been other publications, with far greater readership than the Faith that reported on Victoria Rue. I am touched, though, that Mr. Noble thinks us so influential.

I don't know what non-issues we've been drum-beating besides the two Mr. Noble mentions -- which don't seem to me like non-issues, though we're all entitled to our opinions. In bringing up the Dominican affair, Mr. Noble refers to two articles: "Soft Men," November 2004 Faith, and "More than a Witch Hunt," March 2005 Faith. We also ran a letter from Dominican provincial, Father Roberto Corral, in the January 2005 issue and we responded to the letter. While it is true that the "seven old men" Mr. Noble speaks of were never convicted in court of molesting minors, Father Corral, in the first article, "Soft Men," nevertheless admitted that they were sex offenders. Corral said that "priests and/or brothers who are sex offenders [are] living at St. Albert's. The accusations against them go back as far as five decades, and the most recent was 5 years ago. The diocese has been informed of their presence at St. Albert's. These men do not have any public ministry, and they have no interaction with children or young people." That these men were closely watched, however, was a point of contention with the neighbors, one of whom said that one accused molester had made a (then) recent trip to Bangkok -- a fact to which, allegedly, Father Corral admitted at a public meeting. We asked Father Corral about this allegation, but he chose not to respond.

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