Death penalty proponents may view Papal pronouncements as fightin’ words

It has been a few hours since Pope Francis’ comments Thursday about the death penalty being “inadmissible” in all instances, and I’m still trying to figure out why anyone should view this as a radical change.

FRANCIS: Church to more actively oppose death

As a reporter-type person who has, on several occasions (although none since 2001 when the federal government put Timothy McVeigh to death), covered the process leading up to executions, one of the standard pieces of the story is that the Catholic Church is opposed.

THE POPE HIMSELF invariably will make statements about how cruel the concept is of putting someone to death as a form of criminal punishment. As though it is Homicide, committed in the name of Justice.

I know church officials I have spoken to have always tried to describe capital punishment as something obsolete – something that there’s just no need for in the modern-day world.

There are provisions in Catholic teachings that were taught in the past to justify an execution as a form of public protection. Meaning that the criminal in question was so violent and such a risk to society that putting the person to death was the only way to ensure that nobody else was hurt by his acts.

The governors who did away … 

Modern-day prisons and life-without-parole prison terms are considered sufficient protection – thereby eliminating the need to take away an individual’s life.

ONE THOUGHT I always was taught was that execution as a form of providing someone with vengeance for a criminal act was wrong – if not a sinful thought to have itself.

Almost as though someone who is eagerly awaiting another person’s execution ought to be making a trip to their priest to perform confession of their sin – and seek penance so as to avoid the pains someday of Hell and eternal damnation.

… with death penalty in Illinois, … 

But now, Pope Francis is proclaiming that execution “attacks” human dignity, even in those who have committed violent criminal acts. A thought that is not going to be a popular one amongst those who publicly proclaim their desire for more executions – and those who think that one of Illinois’ drawbacks is that we had the sense to do away with the state’s capital crimes statutes nearly a decade ago.

… and the governor who hints at bringing it back

To the point where Gov. Bruce Rauner’s political re-election strategy has included making pronouncements implying he’d like to see executions restored in this state (there hasn’t been an execution in Illinois since the 1999 date when Andrew Kokoraleis was put to death by lethal injection at the now-shuttered prison in Tamms).

IT WOULD SEEM that instead of papal pronouncements against execution every time a death row inmate comes close to an execution date, it’s now going to be an active part of Catholic teaching to publicly support abolition of execution.

Catholics are now going to have to become truly “pro-life” in their views on mankind and society, instead of using the label to define their opposition to abortion being a legal medical procedure.

As for those political people who happen to be Catholic, I know there are those who happen to think they’re obligated to follow their religious faith over all when it comes to abortion-related questions. There are some clergy who like to make overly public pronouncements of excommunication for any government official who doesn’t rigidly support viewing abortion as a criminal act.

Are we bound to see government officials now facing a conflict with regards to capital punishment? Or could this become the ultimate reason why we should view a government official’s religious faith as a personal view, rather than one controlling their public policy actions?

YOU’VE PROBABLY FIGURED out that my own leanings go against capital punishment. I was supportive back when Gov. George Ryan effectively ended the death penalty in Illinois (although there are those who view his actions as the most heinous of his record – more so than any of the offenses for which he was convicted and incarcerated), and thought it a good day when Gov. Pat Quinn signed the legislation that abolished the death penalty altogether.

GACY: For some, he didn't die painfully enough

I still remember the day I came to my leanings – it was May 10, 1994. That was the date John Wayne Gacy was put to death for the dozens of slayings of young men he committed in the 1970s.

I was at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet when the execution was performed. There was nothing about the execution procedure that was particularly gruesome (Gacy essentially was put to sleep). But I was most offended by the sight of a trio of nuns and a priest who gathered at the prison to pray for Gacy’s soul – only to be harassed, jeered and taunted by the hundreds of people who gathered outside the prison to cheer on Gacy’s death.

A sight I suspect we’re going to see much more of in coming years as the Catholic Church attempts to show compassion for all of mankind.

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Did the Pope bless Kim Davis’ beliefs? About as much as Mark McGwire bat!

Talk about some serious media mismanagement; how else to explain the fact that the Vatican is feeling compelled to come up with clarification after clarification about the “meeting” the Pope supposedly had with that county clerk from Kentucky who wants to be the heroine of the homophobic community.

Did it really happen?

For it seems that back when Pope Francis was in the United States last week, Kim Davis was one of a dozen people who were taken to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington.

SHE GOT A brief bit of face time, where Davis insists she was told by His Holiness himself that he told her to “stay strong” in her ongoing fight against people who expect her to fulfill her legal duties as clerk of Rowan County, Ky., by signing off on all marriage licenses.

Even those issued by gay couples wishing to have legal legitimacy added to their personal relationships.

Most of what has been spoken about this “meeting” has come from Davis. The woman who isn’t even Catholic (she’s part of an Apostolic faith) wants us to think she has the backing of one of the world’s leading religious faiths.

The Vatican, which likes to think it is above all these worldly considerations, initially came up with a “we can neither confirm nor deny” strategy in response to Davis and her followers’ antics.

IT LATER BECAME a “we confirm they met, but will not elaborate” type of response.
 

No longer the highlight of the papal visit

But even that was not enough to put to rest this issue. By Friday, a Vatican spokesman had to issue yet another clarification – providing scant details about an issue upon which the church usually thinks are no one else’s concern.

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” we were told. Then, we learned how the pope also greeted a gay couple and their friends during his tour -- the same amount of attention that Davis got.

Not that I expect this to put the issue to rest – there are those who are going to keep this issue alive for as long as possible. It may well be that it was people within the Catholic church hierarchy who arranged for Davis to even be on hand to see the Pope in Washington – perhaps those who want to push the church toward the ideologue side with regards to the gay marriage debate.

JUST BECAUSE THE courts may have ruled a certain way doesn’t mean there won’t be those wishing to overturn them. Abortion was decided by the courts to be a legitimate medical procedure more than four decades ago – yet the issue isn’t anywhere near going away.



A comparable moment to Kim Davis?

Now I’m not about to claim Davis is flat-out lying when she talks about her papal moment. Only that I realize being allowed into the pope’s presence shouldn’t be thought of as being a bigger deal than it really is.

I still remember in 1999 when Pope John Paul II came to St. Louis. One of the people he met with was then-St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire. They shook hands, and McGwire got to introduce his son, Matt, to the pope.

The whole incident lasted a few seconds before the pope moved on. Aside from creating the opportunity for some jokes about the pope meeting with a cardinal, it was just a brief tidbit.

YET IN A papal journey to the Americas that ventured into Havana and saw Pope Francis speak both at Madison Square Garden AND before Congress, there’s a very good chance that this trip will have as its lingering memory the few seconds that Davis worked her way to the front of the line and had papal face time. Then again, the pope’s visit also got upstaged by the death of one-time New York Yankees great Yogi Berra, so maybe the pope was going to struggle for top-billing.

His death put Pope on Pg. 14 of NY Post

By that definition of papal attention, perhaps I should consider my own ’99 moment – I was a United Press International reporter back then and I was in St. Louis for the John Paul II trip. At one point, I was watching a motorcade through the city and the pope was about 50 feet away from me when he looked in my direction and waved.

For his later mass at the now-former TWA Dome, I was relegated to another room and had to watch him speak via a video screen connection. Admittedly, Davis’ proximity to a Pope was better than I had.

But somehow, I think her experience was closer to mine than to a true papal audience – which is the impression some conservative ideologues seem to want to create. Which strikes me as a repulsive use of religion for one’s own beliefs!

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Immigration reform too strong an issue for ideologue resistance to endure

The new Republican-oriented Congress that took control earlier this month has made it clear it is prepared to resist at all costs the efforts of President Barack Obama to impose the reforms of national immigration policy that are desperately needed in this country.

Every opportunity they get, they engage in trash talk about the reforms that would accept the fact that there was no legitimate reason to deny valid visas to many millions of the people who are now living in this country without official status.

BUT I CAN’T get too worked up about these people whose political morals are repulsive – largely because I realize the momentum is working against those individuals. Come another three or so decades, and these same people are going to be the ones engaging in doubletalk to explain how they ever could have been quite so vacuous with their current rhetoric!

Kind of like now how the surviving people who once were critical of Mayor Harold Washington now try to claim it was a misunderstanding and they were really, really on Harold’s side way back in the 1980s.

Easing the restrictions on people wishing to come to this country and realizing the ones who are already here are making worthwhile contributions to our society is going to seem so blatantly obvious someday.

Now in my family’s case, it was my grandfathers who were the immigrants from Mexico who ultimately settled in the South Chicago neighborhood, where they wound up working in the steel mills that used to be all over the place near the Illinois/Indiana border.

ONE OF MY grandfathers came prior to the first federal immigration policy being put in place, while the other came during the period when Mexican citizens were specifically exempted from immigration restrictions (because the ideologues of that era were more concerned with keeping “the Jews!” out of this country).

Yet when I look at the modern-day people who are allegedly in this country “illegally” (that’s INS bureaucrat-speak, because people are NOT illegal by nature), I don’t see any real difference from my grandfathers – who came here because they saw an opportunity to work toward a better life.

The only people who see a difference are those people with ethnic-inspired hang-ups that shouldn’t be allowed to influence our nation’s laws.

That is why I was pleased to learn how Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is working the nation, so to speak, to try to influence people everywhere to lighten up on their hostility toward newcomers to this country.

GUTIERREZ IS IN Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday and North Charleston, S.C., on Friday, before returning to Chicago Saturday for an event at the Rebaño Church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

In coming weeks, he will speak to groups in Minneapolis and Houston, and also a Valentine’s Day event in suburban Des Plaines, where he is scheduled to appear with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., to talk about the issue.

Although I’m sure there are those who will quickly dismiss anything Gutierrez has to say. Their hang-ups are that strong.

It is with them in mind that I’m wondering what they’ll think of statements earlier this month by Pope Francis, who is scheduled to make an east coast tour of the United States (New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.) later this year.

THE POPE SAYS he’d also like to include a stop in northern Mexico in which he would go to the Rio Grande and cross over the river into south Texas – replicating the same image that the bigots of our society would have you think was made by many millions of people who snuck into the United States to subvert our society.

Which is such a nonsense statement that it makes me laugh just to write it!

Perhaps one of those “Minutemen” nincompoops along the U.S./Mexico border (whose use of historic images is even more gross than those ‘Tea Party’ types) thinks it will be cool to be the guy who “stops” the pope from crossing the river into the United States.

Then again, it probably would take that blatant of an image to make the bulk of people realize how obscene much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric truly is.

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EXTRA: Francis, the 1st Americas pope

FRANCIS: As American as anyone in U.S.

I have to confess – when I first learned that the College of Cardinals had managed to pick a new pope Wednesday (I was sitting in an auto repair shop and a television set happened to be turned on), my initial reaction was to think that they had reverted back to tradition of picking Italians to head the Catholic Church.

Yet I quickly realized that while the one-time Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio may be Italian in ethnic origins, he is very obviously the first American pope.

HE’s FROM ARGENTINA, and he had been the cardinal based in Buenos Aires to head the Catholic Church in that region of the world.

Which means he’s a reminder that I think people in this country often need – not every European who chose to immigration to the Americas wound up in the United States.

Pope Francis was born in Argentina – but is the child of immigrants who made their way to a new country to try to build a better life for their families (all five of their kids).

One of whom grew up to be the Pope – so perhaps they didn’t do so badly!

OTHERWISE, WE’RE NOT going to be in for any significant change, even though some want to believe that a non-European pope means “radical” change for the church.

It’s not like the new Pope Francis (he gets the “I” added after his name if there ever is a Pope Francis II in the future) has many stances on issues that differ from the official rhetoric of the Catholic Church.

Which means we’re still in for the partisan fights amongst Catholics as to who is legitimately “Catholic” enough to qualify.

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