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13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty, by Mario Marazziti. Seven Stories Press,
2015..
This book gives “a moving account of why the hateful practice of the death penalty should be abolished. It dehumanizes those who use it and its mistakes cannot be corrected,“ according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. According to Sister Helen Prejean who claims Marazzit as her personal friend, “No one has worked harder to abolish the death penalty than Marazziti.”
As the spokesperson for the Community of Sant’ Egidio, Marazziti weaves strains of reportage, research, personal narrative, and soulful reflection into a
portrait of what the death penalty looks like today, and where it may be leading into the future. This is a book of social activism that really works, and about the ways a personal commitment to human rights can have real-world consequences. Together with his friends at the Community, the group had gathered three million signatures in 152 countries calling for a world-wide moratorium on the death
penalty.
Marazziti lives near the Coliseum in Rome, a symbol
of our Roman history, but also a symbol of the death penalty. There it was where in early Rome, hundreds of Christians were thrown to the lions simply because they were Christian. In our day, this Coloseum is lit up when another country gives up the death penalty. In the Introduction, the author writes that today the Coloseum suggest different ways for our society to move a little closer to the goal of a world where capital punishment is seen as the practice of an earlier, crueler
time.
Besides many personal stories of victims who escaped
or nearly escaped capital punishment, this book contains many facts and figures of persons who were victims, guilty or not, and prices for the cost of their deaths or imprisonment. At the close of this book, the author suggests that the death penalty is used for the elimination of enemies, the unpopular desire of a leader to hold power, and the dehumanization of a group of people. And it never really accomplishes these uses.
Marazzi gives thirteen ways to live without the
death penalty, such as, show how the death penalty works and does not work; stress that freedom from death is a basic universal right; work to create a society that is not enslaved to revenge and fear; recognize that the death penalty does not make the nation any safer; open a correspondence with a person on death row, his relatives, and relatives of his victims; work to ensure that your government has a constitution that prohibits death penalty; work to bring about a
moratorium on execution, whether by law or in practice.
“A world without the death penalty: it is possible. And we can see it. It is happening already.”
Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman, OP for this review.
Paperback
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St. Therese of Lisieux: (1873-97): October 1.
From obscurity as a young, idealistic Carmelite, Thérèse of Lisieux has emerged as one of the best-loved saints. Her simplicity attracts us because she puts holiness within our reach. Thérèse was the daughter of Louis and Zélie Martin.
When she was four years old, her pleasant childhood was interrupted by Zélie’s untimely death. Then Thérèse’s older sister, Pauline, took responsibility for raising her in the faith. In 1882, Pauline entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux, igniting a desire in Thérèse to do the same. Thérèse’s fourteenth year was pivotal. Her sister, Mary, joined Pauline at the convent. And at Christmas, the young saint had an experience she described as her “conversion.” Later, in A Story of a Soul, her
autobiography, Thérèse described it as a release from depression and oversensitivity: “Jesus flooded the darkness of my soul with torrents of light. I got back for good the strength of soul lost when I was four and a half. Love filled my heart, I forgot myself, and henceforth I was happy.” In spite of Thérèse’s youth, the next year the bishop allowed her to become a Carmelite at Lisieux.
From childhood Thérèse aspired to become a missionary and a martyr. It soon became clear to her, however, that neither option was open to a cloistered nun. So she sought the Holy Spirit and searched the Scripture for another way to excel:
We live in an age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs. And I am determined to find an elevator to carry me to Jesus, for I was too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in Holy Scripture some idea of what this lift I wanted would be, and I read, “Whoever is a little
one, let him come to me” (see Luke 8:16). I also wanted to know how God would deal with a “little one,” so I searched and found: “You shall be carried in her arms and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her son. . . .” (Isaiah 66:12–13 NAB) It is your arms, Jesus, which are the elevator to carry me to heaven. So there is no need for me to grow up. In fact: just the opposite: I must become less and less.
In 1897, Thérèse thought her dream of becoming a missionary was about to come true. The Carmelites at Hanoi in Indochina, now Vietnam, had invited her to join them. But on the early morning of Good Friday she began to hemorrhage from the mouth. She had contracted tuberculosis, which tortured her for several months before
it took her life on September 30, 1897. Calendar of Saints
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