Death penalty opponents to hold prayer vigil before execution

graphic by Jenn Sparks

+ Enlarge

SALT LAKE CITY - In keeping with the teaching of the Catholic Church, the Most Rev. John C. Wester opposes the death penalty. He put his beliefs into action on April 23, when he spear-headed a press conference just prior to Third District Court Judge Robin Reese signing the execution order for Ronnie Lee Gardner.

Bishop Wester followed up with a June 11 letter to the Board of Pardons of the State of Utah, asking the members to commute Gardner's death sentence. He also asked priests in the Diocese of Salt Lake City to include a petition against the death penalty in the Prayers of the Faithful at all Masses the weekend of June 12. And, while he will be out of town the night of the planned execution, he has asked Msgr. M. Francis Mannion to represent him at the prayer vigil scheduled for June 17.

"The Church has consistently and always defended human life, from conception to natural death," said Bishop Wester, who follows a precedent set by Bishop William K. Weigand, who opposed the 1992 execution of William Andrews in an unsuccessful effort that was joined by Pope John Paul II. "Human life is sacred. It is created by God through, with and in Jesus Christ and must always be given the highest protections."

While the Church doesn't hold that the death penalty is an intrinsic evil, as is abortion or euthanasia, it does teach that in societies such as the United States that have non-lethal means to protect its citizens, capital punishment shouldn't be used.

"I still remember Pope John Paul II successfully pleading for the life of a convicted murderer" in Missouri in 1999, and forgiving the man who attempted to assassinate him in 1981, Bishop Wester said. "These give us excellent teachings and examples of a Catholic response to murder and to extreme violence. It is always characterized by love and forgiveness. As hard as it may be to extend that forgiveness, that is the call of Christ and that is the firm teaching of the Church."

While murderers have committed heinous crimes, "they are still loved by God; they are still our brothers and sisters," Bishop Wester said. "We can never relegate them to any kind of a sub-human category, which we tend to do. We call them condemned, we call them vicious animals, we call them all kinds of names that somehow rob them of their humanity so when the state gets ready to execute them it somehow lessens our feeling of guilt or eases our consciousnesses."

The June 17 prayer service will be interdenominational and "a reverent and dignified acknowledgement of the seriousness of this event," said Dee Rowland, the diocesan government liaison, who helped organize the event. And the fact is that, if we are residents of Utah, the execution is taking place in our name, and we can't let that go by without speaking out on our opposition to the death penalty."

In addition, the vigil is a way to draw attention to the issue, said Nancy Appleby, chair of The Episcopal Diocese of Utah's Peace and Justice Commission, who, with Rowland, organized the event.

Not every Christian opposes the death penalty, Appleby said, but "I think that capital punishment is so inconsistent with the Christian message that we need to be saying this. It's not something that comes to mind in a normal day, but we're about to have a really hideous event here. I can come up with all kinds of religious reasons that have to do with loving and not exchanging hate for hate and so forth, but I think there are also some humanistic reasons that have to do with what a society does to itself when it carries out the death penalty. We turn ourselves into brutes. We brutalize ourselves and, for a country that likes to think of itself as civilized, this is just not acceptable."

After the prayer vigil at the Cathedral Church of Saint Mark, a public rally sponsored by Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty will be held on the Capitol steps. Appleby said she and other organizers purposely are avoiding going to the prison site because prior to the last few executions pro-death penalty people have been at the Point of the Mountain and "there has been an atmosphere out there that's been really distressing, a number of people celebrating and drinking too much. It's not good to add to the attention that that's going to get."

Instead, the protest rally will be in keeping with the seriousness of the occasion, she said, and "the Capitol steps seems like a good place to take it since it is the state that would have to act eventually if we were to look at the alternatives."

Both the vigil and the rally "are ways to call attention to the fact that not all Utahns support the death penalty, and there's a growing number of us who agree that, since we now have that alternative of life without parole, there's no need to have a state-sponsored execution," Rowland said. "We need to remind ourselves that when we kill someone, it's not about them, it's about us. Do we really think that killing is the answer?"

Although appeals against the death penalty in Utah have thus far been unsuccessful, "I think there hope," Rowland said. "Other states are abolishing the death penalty, and the momentum is going in our favor on this."

The interfaith prayer vigil will be 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. June 17 at The Cathedral Church of St. Mark, 231 East 100 South, Salt Lake City, followed by the public rally from 9 p.m. to midnight on the south steps of the Utah State Capitol Building, 355 N. Main St. in Salt Lake City.

For more information on the Church's teachings about the death penalty, visit www.usccb.org or www.catholicsmobilizing.org.