Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton received the 2007 Abolition Award from Death Penalty Focus on April 19 at a dinner in Beverly Hills.
In accepting the award at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the retired 77-year-old auxiliary bishop of Detroit and founding president of Pax Christi USA, pledged to continue working to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
"We are against the death penalty because it's cruel," he said. "It does cruelty, of course, to those who are executed in that terrible way that we saw in the film tonight. It's cruel to those who do the execution.
"It's also a penalty that institutionalizes discrimination, especially against black people in our country or other people of color and the poor. It's also wrong, and we must continue to be opposed to it, because it introduces into our culture vengeance instead of justice."
Bishop Gumbleton noted that the violence of executions, wars, street mayhem and mass killings at schools and colleges like Virginia Tech all seem to run together. But he asked the 400-plus people gathered in the banquet hall to recall the unconditional forgiving response of the Amish community after the shooting of 10 children, five of whom died, in the one-room Pennsylvania schoolhouse last October.
He said, "Our country could be a place where love is returned for hate, nonviolence for violence," his voice rising. "We could be a leader in the world to bring about peace within our own nation, within our own hearts and throughout the world.
"My hope tonight, in my commitment tonight, is to continue to work against the death penalty. But also, and I'd urge all of us, to continue to work against all the violence that so marks our nation. We must very quickly bring about the abolition of weapons of mass destruction, which are now beginning to spread throughout the Middle East and many other parts of the world.
"We're getting into the most dangerous situation we've ever been," he warned. "We must bring about the abolition of war because as John Kennedy said, 'If we don't end war, it will end us.'"
Death row biographies
Also honored at the 16th-annual Death Penalty Focus dinner for their work in "exposing the injustice and inhumanity of capital punishment" were filmmaker Robert Greenwald, writer/producer David E. Kelley, former Xerox Corporation executive Max Palevsky, activist Jodie Evans, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, and former Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.
Actor Mike Farrell, president of the San Francisco-based organization whose mission is the abolition of capital punishment, introduced four men seated at different tables who were wrongly sentenced to prison for crimes they were later cleared of by DNA tests, witnesses and a reporter's investigation.
One served 19 years in prison for a double murder he didn't commit. Another was on death row for five years for murdering his wife in Oklahoma until the so-called "experts testimony" against him was rejected by a national panel.
Quoting a law professor who defended death row criminals, Farrell said inmates on death row have similar biographies: They're poor, abused as children emotionally or physically, uneducated, come from terribly dysfunctional homes and grow up abusing alcohol and drugs.
McGovern, who was defeated by Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election, quipped that he experienced a kind of "political execution."
"But what I've learned is that if you stand for a great cause as Mike Farrell has done throughout his life, you're never really a loser," the 84-year-old former lawmaker observed. "I don't feel like a loser, and I don't think Mike feels like a loser. And I don't think those of you in this room feel that way because we're involved in a great cause - saving life and trying once again to make this great country of ours great."
Lance Lindsey, DPF's executive director, reported that the fight against capital punishment was being won, but perhaps more slowly than "we would like." He said it was clear political leaders in California who still supported the killing of prisoners were on the wrong side of history.
"The majority of the world of nations all have the tenacity to tell the U.S. that most major religions, most human rights and civil rights groups, and a growing number of the American people recognize that state killing is flawed and a failure, and should be ended," he declared. "Together tonight we join to say we will end it. We'll end it in our lifetime."
'Killing shouldn't be done'
Father Chris Ponnet, a board member of Death Penalty Focus for more than 10 years, told The Tidings he was buoyed by a recent poll showing that among U.S. Catholics support for capital punishment has dropped below 50 percent for the first time. But the pastor of St. Camillus Center for Pastoral Care was also troubled that so many Catholics were still in favor of the death penalty.
"From a life perspective, killing shouldn't be done, so we should have no more executions," he said. "But it's very encouraging considering the number who were in favor of the death penalty was a lot higher only a few years ago. And part of that is the leadership of the U.S. bishops in their campaign against the death penalty.
"Part of it is just society. The execution process has become problematic on many levels. The fact that we as a nation critique the rest of the world about torture, but we're still doing it. Plus, more and more innocent prisoners have been identified. So all of those factors come into play."
Father Ponnet said for many Catholics the question seems to focus on how the guilty need to be punished. Moreover, others still believe that a "life sentence without parole" doesn't actually guarantee that the criminal who's committed a heinous crime won't get out of prison to do more violence.
"But I think we're at that wonderful moment where the insights of politicians and people who work in the prison system - let alone people of faith - are beginning to say, 'There is another way.' So we just need to articulate that more and more."
Bishop Gumbleton has been preaching nonviolence since the '60s. When he was asked at the awards dinner why so many Catholics continue to favor capital punishment, he shook his head and chuckled.
He said it seems like such a "clear thing" that all Christians should be against it. But then he pointed out that some prominent Catholics, like Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scallia, still publicly favored the death penalty despite the fact that recent popes, including John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have condemned it.
Also, the prelate pointed out how the church has justified capital punishment for centuries, only really starting to teach against it about 15 years ago. In the past, parochial school students, like himself, were taught that the death penalty could be justified in a variety of situations. And that kind of ingrained mindset, he noted, was hard to root out - especially when it came to punishing the perpetrators of horrendous crimes like cold-blooded killings and mass murders.
"But the consistent life ethic says differently," said Bishop Gumbleton. "I mean, if you believe in following the nonviolence of Jesus, then nonviolence is across the board. You don't want to kill an infant in the womb, and you're not going to kill a criminal at the other end of life.
"To me," he added, "without a consistency in it, it destroys the credibility of your position along the spectrum.
The bishop, who has been an outspoken critic against all violence - including the Vietnam and Iraq wars - reported that Pope John XXIII before he died in 1963 "wiped out" the Just War Theory's basic premise that violence could be used to vindicate violated rights.
"Once you see the irrationality of using violence to counter violence, it has to go across the board, including the death penalty," he said. "You can't say, 'Well, in this instance violence is OK.' No. When you realize that Jesus rejected violence for any reasons whatsoever, then any follower of Jesus must do the same thing. So you can't make exceptions."
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