Dec. 21, 2005

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Perry Mann Does a Sorry Analysis of Scalia’s Support for Death Penalty

Dear Editor: Perry Mann's analysis of Supreme Court Justice Scalia's support for the death penalty is sorry at best. (Mann Talk: Thoughts Evoked Through Recent Reading, Huntington News Network, 12/19/05).

Mann incorrectly attributes Scalia's support for the death penalty to only one quote from one source St. Paul. Scalia, a Catholic, draws his support from thorough biblical and theological considerations, including nearly 2000 years of biblical and traditional teachings by the Catholic Church. Scalia has never based his death penalty support on only one quote.

Mann calls Scalia's position "animal instinct" and attempts to conflict that with "Christ's turn-the-other-cheek ethic". Further, Mann asks: "Why, in view of Christ’s teachings, would a Christian country not consider the death penalty immoral?"

Any attempt, by Mann, of an honest assessment of Scalia's, or the Catholic Church's, support for the death penalty, would have found volumes of material. Instead, he wrongly and inaccurately, attacked Scalia and mislead readers as to the proper Catholic position on the death penalty. Some recent examples, contradicting Mann.

As Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles SJ stated in 2000, "At no point, however, does Jesus deny that the State has authority to exact capital punishment. In his debates with the Pharisees, Jesus cites with approval the apparently harsh commandment, "He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die"(Mt 15:4; Mk 7:10, referring to Ex 21:17; cf. Lev 20:9). "Jesus commends the good thief on the cross next to him, who has admitted that he and his fellow thief are receiving the due reward of their deeds (Lk 23:41). " "Turning to Christian tradition, we may note that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are virtually unanimous in their support for capital punishment, . . .". "The Roman Catechism, issued in 1566, three years after the end of the Council of Trent, taught that the power of life and death had been entrusted by God to civil authorities and that the use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to the fifth commandment. "

In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) stated: "While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty . . .".

Mann might consider fact checking in the future. Scalia did.

Dudley Sharp,
Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com
Houston, Texas

(Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, BBCĀ and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.

A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.

Pro death penalty sites
http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
http://www.dpinfo.com
http://www.prodeathpenalty.com
http://www.prodeathpenalty.org
http://www.yesdeathpenalty.com (Sweden)
http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html
http://www.vuac.org/capital)