Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
June 13, 2001
Reflections on the execution of Timothy McVeigh
Capital punishment continues violence, culture of death
By Father Jim Sunderland, S.J.
Timothy McVeigh is deserving of death . . . so he should not be executed. I heard someone say that once. Before McVeigh died.
He was poisoned to death June 11 —"lethal injection" is the government's euphemism for carrying out its own murder. McVeigh was killed by the very forces that taught him how to kill.
He earned Army medals for heroism during the Persian Gulf War. The acts that earned McVeigh those medals certainly included "collateral damage," violence inflicted on helpless victims. McVeigh would use the same expression to refer to the children who were killed in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bombing for which he was convicted and sentenced to death. That monstrous act will live in infamy for the families of the 168 victims — and for our country, as well.
McVeigh's death continues the circle of violence.
As were many, McVeigh was bitter about the sniper-like killings at Ruby Ridge. An appeals court has ruled that Idaho prosecutors can try the FBI sharpshooter for killing a mother and son there in 1992. McVeigh was outraged, as were many, at the government's inferno at Waco. McVeigh lived and died in a very violent country.
"If there was ever a man who deserves to be executed, it is Timothy McVeigh," said both the U.S. vice-president and attorney general. By the law of the land McVeigh deserved execution. Does that law — that authority — come from God, as some have claimed? It is that same law that gives this country the right to bomb helpless people mercilessly; the same law that allows life in the womb to be "terminated." Just who gives this country the right to murder murderers?
"Thou shalt not kill," declared God unequivocally. The Divine Lawmaker's commandments are ever ancient, ever now, and are always for our own good. Jesus Christ was absolutely non-violent.
We are a violent nation. There are millions of handguns and worse weapons in this country. Bigger and better nuclear weapons proliferate our missile silos — and the current administration wants even more costly ones. America is not the only violent, vengeful, blood-lusting nation. Weapons made here saturate Third World countries as well.
Timothy McVeigh was deserving of death . . . but he should not have been executed. We must end the culture of death and replace it with a culture of life. That is the cry of our Church, led by our Holy Father.
Pope John Paul II asked President George W. Bush to spare McVeigh. He has asked many governors to stop state-sponsored killing, including former Colorado Governor Roy Romer at the time Gary Davis was executed. All American Catholic bishops are of the same mind as the pope. Our Colorado bishops recently issued another strong anti-death penalty letter.
Our new American cardinal, Avery Dulles, delivered a long, thorough condemnation of capital punishment at Fordham University. In recent months, some of our best theologians and philosophers have written clear arguments opposing the death penalty, as have many religious women Scripture scholars. None of them are unaware of the immoral, cold-blooded, premeditated killing that McVeigh thought was for a just cause.
Life in a small cell in solitary confinement is much worse than a sanitized death chamber.
Our European allies just shake their heads at this country. None use the death penalty. When I think of the huge amount of money needed for death penalty cases and of the superb talents of prosecutors and defense lawyers that could be used, instead, for the real problems plaguing our land, when I think of the millions spent building bigger and better prisons, filling the coffers of the prison-industry, I think of the real problems we have: homicide and violence. Read the daily papers. See what plays on TV and in the movies — utterly rampant killing.
Last fall at their semi-annual meeting in Washington, our bishops issued a strong statement on crime and punishment. So-called "correctional institutions" are, in fact, not correcting anything. They are punitive; they are failures. They have to be changed. But tell that to politicians. Anyone seeming to be soft on crime is dead in the water at election time.
In his statement opposing McVeigh's execution, Archbishop Alex Brunett of Seattle wrote: "Timothy McVeigh is still a child born in the image of God." That most fundamental truth in our Christian faith should be our solemn guide. How dare we usurp God's gift by dispatching a human person with a venomous syringe. McVeigh long ago fell into darkness. We could hope that God's light could resurrect him — as it has done to so many of us.
Raised a Catholic, McVeigh scorned contact with chaplains and prison volunteers. Unlike Terry Nichols, whom I visited for months, he had apparently rejected his Christian inheritance. But just recently a priest and a religious sister, Father Ron Ashmore and Sister Mary Beth Klingel of St. Margaret Mary Church in Terre Haute, had begun to make a difference — Father Ashmore by visiting McVeigh and Sister Klingel by organizing protests. If he had been given a lifetime to ponder his fate and to accept God's welcoming hand, he could well have been a forgiven man. Only God knows now whether he repented.
This April I sent a letter to McVeigh. In closing I wrote: "In God's eyes you are His own, His child. To you and to me God says, `You are Mine. Fear not. I have called you by name.'
"Our God, Tim, is a God of mercies."
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