05/06/01
...Even McVeigh
Since the average person recalls the average Sunday homily about
as far as the parking lot after Mass, it was a surprise when a
parishioner told me, “You know, I can’t stop remembering what
you preached last month when you told us that ‘God is crazy in
love’ with us.”
Maybe that’s because having God “crazy in love” with us is not
something we think about often. We should.
What was not a surprise, however, was how little play secular
media gave the request by Pope John Paul II to President Bush
to spare the life of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, scheduled
to die by lethal injection May 16.
There is, of course, a connection.
Media may have downplayed the pope’s plea because it’s one he
makes virtually every time an execution is scheduled. (Though
even the pope may have trouble keeping up in Texas.) Repeated
news is no news, or so the logic goes. So the item rated a couple
of paragraphs. Bush turned down the pope. (See story, Page 4.)
McVeigh, though, is hardly just another murderer on Death Row.
Even Cardinal George, who also opposes the death penalty, acknowledged
that if anyone ever deserved to die for his crimes, it’s McVeigh.
It’s just that no one deserves to die at the hands of other human
beings.
That’s the consistent ethic of life that flows through our faith,
reaching from abortion through capital punishment.
Despite the great evil McVeigh perpetrated, killing 168, “we need
to move to forgiveness so what he has done does not kill us morally,”
the cardinal said recently. “It is a tragic illusion to think
that we can defend life by taking a life.”
Pope John Paul II, in his “Gospel of Life,” urged caution regarding
the death penalty, saying it should only be done for the protection
of society. But it’s no longer necessary to execute to protect
the public welfare, and “we must be unconditionally pro-life—even
in the case of someone who has done great evil.”
The horror of McVeigh’s crime has, thankfully, not deterred death-penalty
opponents—including the pope, U.S. Catholic bishops and many others—from
reminding us that life is sacred.
God, you see, truly is “crazy in love with us.” Even criminals.
Even Timothy McVeigh.
Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager
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