BVM Anne Carr observes that after Vatican II, “a truly Christian morality…needed to include the specific kinds of relationships to God and to Christ and to the Holy Spirit that authentic Christianity embodies.” Such relationships are broader than the practice of individual holiness and encompass a sense of social sin.

In modern parlance, such relationships are referred to as “right” or “just” relationships. Right relationship involves love, not hate; justice, not vengeance. I am not an isolated and self-sufficient being who can create my life independent of others.

Relatedness, Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara tells us, “is a kind of vital connectedness to all that exists.” The term implies a sense of rightness or honesty with oneself and with the various communities to which one belongs, including the overall social order and the global community.

Western culture, derived largely from Greek philosophies, has stressed a cultural dualism. According to such dualism, those who live “outside” prisons are considered more valuable to society than those who live “inside.” But, according to right relationship, I am connected to all persons on Earth, including those on death row.

Regarding the death penalty, on the surface, society weighs the severity of a crime committed with the overall social order or “common good.”

But, who decides the “common good”? Study after study demonstrates the death penalty is arbitrarily applied in horrendous murder cases and has resulted in a disproportionate number of African Americans and of those who are economically poor on death row. This is a travesty to me, certainly not a manifestation of a just relationship.

As a Christian, my moral values need to surpass those of the state. I believe EVERY person is created by a Loving God and is both a Child of God and a brother/sister.

Scripture is full of references to the unending mercy and forgiveness of God and to restoring of right or just relationships. God's mercy does not stop at the death chamber door.

Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, noted death penalty abolitionist, once spoke about the need for us, for me, to forgive the guilty. Sometimes that is a tall measure, given the nature of a specific crime, but I consider all persons involved. Innocence is not a pre-condition for God's love.

The forgiveness of God is an integral dimension of Christianity. Philip Brasford, a former death row inmate, once wrote, “The death penalty victimizes each of us over and over again by its intrinsic devaluation of human life and its denial and rejection of reconciliation and redemption.”

Christ calls me and all Christians, I believe, to continue a mission of nonviolence, reconciliation and healing in today's violent, broken and fragmented world. To oppose the death penalty means a total acceptance of God constantly resurrecting God's self through and in us.

Many Christians, while professing to be “pro-life,” support the death penalty. Personally, I refuse to be more shaped by a culture of violence than by a nonviolent Christ. Just because a convicted murderer has not accepted the value of the connectedness of all, I am not freed of my own efforts at living as someone who respects all of God's created life.

Thus, I believe those who are guilty of even the most heinous crimes are sacred in the eyes of God and I take action to abolish the death penalty, because I will not allow death by the state to be perpetrated in my name, will not allow myself to become the injustice, the evil I deplore.

Anne Carr notes that the value and dignity of all life at every stage presents many moral challenges. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin wrote, “Society must send a message that we can break the cycle of violence, that we need not take life for life. As a civilized society, we must struggle to find more humane, more hopeful and more effective responses to violent crime.”

As an abolitionist, I am deeply involved in this struggle, working for a legal system of right relationship.

About the author: Mary Ellen McDonagh, BVM is a member of the Eastern Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. She is the former secretary of the board of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

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© 2006 Sisters of Charity, BVM