Sister Helen Prejean

Here is good news to help further galvanize the Catholic troops who number 67 million strong in the US. Speaking in Mexico, the Pope issued a clear statement against the death penalty:

One cannot insist enough on the fact that the right to life must be recognized fully. [Governments must enact laws and public policies that] take into account the high value that a human being has at every moment of existence. In this regard, I welcome with joy the initiative of Mexico, which in 2005 eliminated its capital punishment legislation, as well as the recent actions some Mexican states have taken to protect human life from its beginning.

Meanwhile, here in the US the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty is doing great work, educating Catholics about the death penalty. This group was launched this year under the leadership of my good friend, Karen Clifton, with a coordinating committee that rocks.

The Catholic Mobilizers welcome new members and volunteers as well as your feedback about their programs. Their website is bristling with useful resources, so I urge you to take a look.

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For weeks I’ve been writing about all the changes that came to the Catholic Church through Vatican Council II in the ’60s – especially for us nuns, who were itching for the church to join the modern world. In just four short years we went from habited, blindly obedient, cloistered beings to intellectually curious, self-possessed, self-directed women ready to plunge in to help a hurting world.  Quite a ride, I tell you.

It kind of feels funny, when you descend for two weeks or so into a past period of your life like I’m doing now, and all you experienced – the way you get right in there again and feel what you felt, remember the big insights you got, the parts of books you copied, the friendships that lasted, and even the songs…”yellow bird, high up in banana tree… you sit all alone like me” and… “where have all the flowers gone, long time passing…”  “today while the blossoms still cling to the vine, I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine…”

Writing is one heck of an interesting experience. It definitely does a number on time.  Today I spooled out words for three hours straight and I was back in Canada when I went to school in London, Ontario, back to Marcel Gervais’s scripture class on the Book of Jonah and the humor of the biblical account and what a hoot Jonah was, who was supposed to be a prophet but ran away and ends up getting a free ride in the belly of a whale to the place where God told him to go in the first place.

Tongue River Canyon in Wyoming where I went to write yesterday. Flower is Indian Paintbrush.

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Good news for New Orleans. We’re getting a new archbishop Gregory Aymond, who worked actively and visibly in Austin, TX to end the death penalty.

He’s coming to Louisiana at a good time. The LA Supreme Court is doing its best to expedite executions, setting its legal crosshairs first on Antoinette Frank. The Court is intolerant of the fact that LA hasn’t had an execution in seven years.

Reminds me of Chief Justice Rehnquist of the US Supreme Court, who did his level best to oil the legal gears of the death machine. “Let’s get on with it!” was his cry.

Look around. All around the land the death machinery is slowing down. Even Harris County in Texas, the very buckle of the death belt, had ZERO death sentences handed down by juries in 2008.

Archbishop Aymond is not afraid to speak out publicly about the moral wrongness of the death penalty. We welcome his moral leadership.

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Arrived at San Benito Monastery yesterday for a summer of writing. Feels good to be off the road a while to hunker down and write my new book, River of Fire.

In it I give a step by step account of how I evolved from being a nun sealed off from the (wicked) world, only leaving the convent to teach, then hurrying back to the safety of the cloister.

So, how does such a nun end up on death row and smack in the middle of public debate on the death penalty? One huge thing that happened to bust me out of my isolated, fortress mentality – and not only me but the entire Catholic church – was the unexpected supernova of Vatican Council II in the ’60s, It changed my life, I’ll tell you that.

It is one interesting process, let me tell you, to go back and trace the unfurling of spiritual freedom in your life.

I hope I can write this book in such a universal way that it can be helpful to everybody, even those who shun institutional religion as a point of honor.

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“Give us tears…give us anger…”

Bishop Gene Robinson delivered the invocation at the kickoff event for Obama’s inauguration. I am thankful for his words, which I am committing to memory. I want to quote the entire text of his invocation:

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

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