The Anchoress being a wholly more holy person than me talks about the death penalty and Kermet Gosnell and finds herself opposing it:
If you remain unaware of what investigators (who were actually looking for evidence related to drug trafficking) found when they entered Gosnell’s abattoir-for-humans, read the Grand Jury’s Report, if you can take it.
Nevertheless, I would defend this man’s right to live his life out in prison, rather than watch the state take his life. His life is not anyone else’s to take. For pro-lifers, this is a no-brainer.
And he may need many years and much time, in order to understand the enormity of what he has done, and allow his heart to be turned. He may need time for conversion and salvation.
I would have to disagree here, this is not a “no-brainer” for pro-life people.
Unlike the elderly who have committed no offense other than being old, the sick who have committed no offense other than being sick or the unborn who have committed no offense other than being conceived Kermet Gosnell has committed acts that under our laws can bring the death penalty.
She is absolutely right that his may need time for conversion, repentance and salvation and we are OBLIGATED as Christians to pray for this, but even if he is convicted, loses all appeals and the sentence carried out there will likely be many years of time to avail himself of the opportunity. As long as the process takes place before death it will be achieved, remember Timothy McVeigh a lapsed Catholic in fact received confession and absolution mere hours before his execution, saving his soul if not his life.
But there is a huge difference between protecting innocent life and life taken under due process in a free society. Even Ed is ambivalent.
I am totally indifferent in this matter. I have absolutely no problem with him (if convicted) being given life in jail and I also have no problem if he gets the death penalty. Neither Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI nor has any pope proclaimed ex cathedra the death penalty sinful or an intrinsic evil. Until and unless he does so then I submit that it is not a “no brainer” that we oppose the death penalty in this or any case and there is no obligation for us to think otherwise.
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