LETTERS - Letter to the Editor

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 19, 2001

Remnants of slavery

* Two letters in your Nov. 17 issue responding to Robert Drinan's article on reparations to African-Americans (NCR, Sept. 29) bespeak denial and possibly fear driven by guilt, ignorance of history and greed.

The remnants of slavery is everywhere in this country. We could look at the gross injustices perpetrated against African-Americans in the fields of housing, education, the courts, the penal system, the churches, the military, health care and public accommodations. How could this country ever begin to make reparations to those citizens who are descendants of slaves, for the suffering, the loss of land and income, the daily indignities, the lynching of ancestors, the denial of education and jobs? $100,000 for each African-American family would only be a drop in the bucket, of course, but it would symbolize the nation's sincere apologies.

What European-American is there who has not yet realized that we benefit every day -- economically, at least -- by the racial inequalities in the United States? To even discuss surplus spending, while not dealing with racial reparations, is obscene.

CLARK GABRIEL FIELD Evansville, Ind.

Bishops on crime

* I have read with great dismay the recent recommendations for criminal justice reforms by the Catholic bishops (NCR, Nov. 3). As a member of a family victimized by violent crime, I have long resented the attention and focus placed on criminals and their rights, and the almost total disregard for victims and their families.

I am in favor of the death penalty. There are some crimes so heinous and reprehensible that the death of the perpetrator is the only just solution. I could give accounts of some the most vicious and inhuman acts that you will ever review. The death penalty does leave our communities safer by taking off the streets forever those who murder, maim and terrorize innocent citizens.

The bishops began with a false premise that society is "expressing vengeance" when it imposes capital punishment or long prison sentences. What society is in fact doing is making amends for the social contract it betrayed by allowing an innocent victim to be ravaged by some cretin from hell. Capital punishment is the redemption of the contract society owes to all human beings: to protect them and guard posthumously their dignity, by taking the life of those who took their lives.

It would seem to me that the Catholic church has all the difficulties it can handle, with dwindling congregations, fewer vocations, priest dying of AIDS and a recent epidemic of pedophilic priest, some of whom have molested scores of youngsters over the years. I seem to remember something in the Bible about a millstone being tied around the neck of would-be child abusers and their being tossed into the sea to drown, rather than harming one of these innocents. I believe that would be defined as a capital punishment.

MARLIN DECOSTA Richmond, Va.

* It is commendable that the U.S. bishops have strongly criticized the U.S. criminal justice system and have asked us for a change of heart. We have built the largest, most highly technological and, in some ways, most repressive prison system ever known to humankind. At the same time, our justifications for building it are not based on fact or grounded in morality.

From 1972 to 2000, the overall U.S. crime rate as well as the rate of violent crime never appreciably increased. Yet an exponential increase in imprisonment took place. This "imprisonment binge" was therefore driven not by necessity but by choice. This choice to incarcerate went hand in hand with a stubborn refusal to recognize or address the root causes of crime, to seek economic justice or to provide viable alternatives to imprisonment.

It can also be argued that this upsurge in imprisonment after 1972 was driven largely by racial bias or as a premeditated attempt to disrupt and control the African-American community after the civil rights and black nationalist movements. In any case, the criminal justice system today rests heavily on the backs of black community. It has been called the "new slavery."

The bishops' call for a change of heart is essential. If we are people of God, we cannot continue to call for the kind of vengeance currently prevalent in our prison system. We cannot deny anyone a chance for redemption. We cannot support the racism so evident in the system. We have to be truthful about the numbers of innocent people, mental patients or addicts who could benefit from treatment but who are currently imprisoned.

To merely return to the 1972 rate of incarceration (again, a time in which the crime rate was no lower or less violent than today's), we would have to close over 80 percent of our prisons. Imagine -- we have come that far along this wrongful path. Let's begin to dismantle them now!

TONY HINTZE Chicago

Sainthood

* Regarding Richard McBrien's Oct. 27 column, "Looking for balance among the saints": Long ago I had come to the conclusion that the church's decisions about sainthood were irrelevant and often just plain stupid as they applied to my life. The whole business of conferring sainthood, beatification and minor versions of it should be abandoned completely. Why?