We Need Prayers, But Answers Too! - January 12, 2001

By Earl Bousquet

          The relationship between a determined pursuit of justice and compassion for the accused is not always clearly discernible. World history is pregnant and today’s news headlines are punctuated with proof that there can be a deep a blur between justice and compassion, but that justice can also be dispensed compassionately. It all depends on the circumstances, which determine the relationship.

In the December 1988 case of the Lockerbie airline disaster involving the death of 270 people in a bombed Pan Am 103 flight over Scotland, the two accused Libyans remained out of the reach of prosecutors for many years. Libya risked the cost and pain of international sanctions while insisting that appropriate steps be taken to ensure they got a fair trial. Given the understandable passions in Scotland, it was determined that the accused should not face trial there. After several years, they have faced a Scottish court established at a military base in the Netherlands and their fate is in the hands of three judges.

In the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, successive Chilean governments have been overly circumspect in their handling of their efforts to prosecute him for crimes he ordered or condoned while he ran a brutal, repressive and intolerant military junta. The British claimed he was too sick to stand trial last year and sent him home. But as soon as he touched Chilean soil, the supposedly ailing former dictator suddenly became well enough to rise from his wheelchair, embrace his army supporters and walk the length of an airstrip. He’s been stripped of immunity from prosecution, but given the support he enjoys from a military he fashioned and led for years, successive democratically elected administrations have been very cautious in their efforts to bring General Pinochet to justice.

In Indonesia and the Philippines, former President Suharto and President Joe Estrada, respectively, are both facing lengthy judicial processes that can see them face court on corruption and other serious charges that can eventually see them jailed.

In Rwanda, Bosnia, Serbia and East Timor, those with responsibility for various brands of “ethnic cleansing” are now facing international courts in internationally-backed judicial processes that were thought impossible ten years ago.

In Britain, a doctor is serving 15 concurrent life sentences for having murdered his own patients. He’s now being accused of having possibly murdered scores more during his 24-year career, recording more than 297 more deaths than other general practitioners in his town – the majority of the victims being women over 75 years old.

The judicial processes involved in all the quoted cases have all brought a certain degree of satisfaction to the victims of the dead and disappeared and those committed to good governance. But none has been likened to the pursuit of justice in the case of the shooting of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish citizen in Rome in1980.

The gunman aimed and shot to kill and claimed he was sent by God. The Pope survived and surprised the world after his recovery when he personally visited the would-be assassin in jail, praying for him and pardoning him in the process. But, as with each of the other cases, despite his the Pontiff’s pardon, the law took its course, the accused went through the judicial process and he served his time before being released. Back in Turkey, he’s doing time for another alleged shooting.

The case of the Pope’s shooting is not far removed from that involving the two accused in the case of the heinous crime at the cathedral on the last day of last year, who also claimed they sere “sent by God.”

Concerns about the likelihood of a fair trial here have been raised, with at least two lawyers here arguing that an unbiased jury in this predominantly Christian country would be difficult, if not impossible to find. But the Catholic Church has made it clear that while it wants justice, it does not want the two to hang. It prefers to forgive the sinner and hate the crime.

Monsignor Patrick Anthony’s statement of the church’ position is based on the fact that the Pope and the Church had long adopted a position against capital punishment. It’s a position that has not gone down well with the average Catholic, less so with the general population. Like Monsignor Theo Joseph’s suggestion that he might consider visiting the two accused in jail to try to reach their hearts and read their minds, it seeks to reflect the compassionate and forgiving position of the Pope after he was shot.

But there are some yet unexplained aspects of the Pope and the Church’ response to the effort to kill him. Researchers and investigators quoted by the BBC said they had been told by Vatican sources after the gunman’s release from an Italian jail that there was a biblical connection between the papal shooting and certain “prophecies” that were intended to be “a warning” to the Catholic Church. It was for that reason, they explained, that the Pontiff insisted on even asking the Italian judicial authorities to pardon him. But while the request was not completely ignored, the Italian justice system ensured the gunman paid time for his crime. After serving his sentence, he was released to the Turkish authorities, who were investigating him on a separate murder charge.

Interestingly, the bullet removed from the Pope’s body is said to have been transported by the Vatican around the world. Word in some church circles last week was that the pope’s bullet is now here – its arrival coinciding with the arrival of the pope’s top Caribbean representative for the funeral of Sister Theresa Egan in aftermath of the attack on the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Castries.

The significance of this, if true, will some time, somewhere, hopefully, be explained.   But with Christians crying for vengeance against the two accused in the recent attack, the Church has had a bit of immediate explaining to do, like clarifying the position on capital punishment and telling the congregation  that even though it wants justice in this case to be swift, it does not support vengeful justice.

That stated position, put aside the Prime Minister’s call in his New Year Address for a better national understanding of the need to protect and defend human rights, opens the way for new and interesting angles to the continuing debate -- both within the Church and the Society -- on such issues as rights and responsibility, unemployment, crime and punishment.

As was the case with the Pope and the Turkish gunman, the Church’s pardoning of the sinners in St. Lucia cannot have been intended and cannot be expected to affect, influence or interfere with the normal course of the judicial process. The two accused have already been charged and will soon begin to face trial in a society where the highest expression of the punishment for murder continues to be death by hanging.

Not that there aren’t historical precedents of justice being laced with compassion. In the most recent case to grab world attention, two 18-year-old British boys who eight years ago kidnapped and murdered a two-year-old boy have served their time and are to be released from jail. Since they were too young at the time of the crime (aged two) to face the courts and feel the full weight of the law, they were given juvenile penalties. Britain is outraged at their release and the State fears for their life. As a consequence, they are to be given new identities upon release and the press has been forbidden by the courts to publish anything about them that could reveal who of where they are.

Will the justice system in St. Lucia be expected to act likewise in the case of the attackers at the cathedral? That, like many other things about this case, is debatable. But even while the debates continue, one of the serious questions that must be occupying the thoughts of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church at this time has to be why there continue to be such open, public, bold attacks on it in various parts of the world.

Like elsewhere in the world, the church in St. Lucia has seen its share of attacks over the past 25 years. These range from the chopping of a nun to death by a deranged man in a church in Laborie in 1976, to the more recent attack on tourists by another deranged person at the very same Cathedral a few years ago. There was also the even more recent effort to burn the Soufriere church and the most recent being the Old Year’s Day attack on the Minor Basilica.

But St. Lucia isn’t the only place where Church officials were attacked on the altar during mass. One day after the Cathedral attack, on the very first day of this year, a man carrying handcuffs tried to “arrest” a Catholic archbishop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. The man was wrestled to the ground and arrested by a policeman posted at the church, an off-duty officer attending mass and several ushers.

In that particular case, the assailant clearly didn’t intend to kill, as he was armed only with a can of mace. But he carried a in his back pack a copy of a lawsuit the size of a phonebook. He’d lost an earlier case he filed in Manhattan against “all organizations teaching the New Testament of the Bible as true fact and accepting money for that deception.” He also claimed that the church’s contention that Jesus lived “is at best a legend,” that his resurrection was “a mistaken diagnosis” and that Catholicism is “a lie and a fraud.” He further said the church was aware of the fraud, but continued to perpetuate it to make money. He wanted the courts to hand over all church property to him and to rule that the teaching of Christianity for money is illegal.

The court threw out the case last October, but the man filed it again in New Jersey a few weeks later in December. It was later revealed that the same individual had been arrested in 1999 by the US Secret service after he threatened President Bill Clinton’s life.

Again, in both cases (USA and St. Lucia), the questions go beyond the obvious and beg clear answers about why anyone would want to take their opposition to Catholicism to such lengths as to physically attack bishops, priests and worshippers. Or why these attacks are planned to take place during or immediately after Holy Communion, the time in the Holy Mass when the “body and blood of Christ” is given. Or why, in both these cases, the Church is being accused of “making money” or of “practicing corruption.”

But while the search for answers continues, it is important that we avoid manufacturing suspects or target groups in the society. Since the cathedral attack, over-zealous and traumatized Catholics have blamed Rastafarians, Muslims and still unidentified “strange sects.” Reggae and Rap musicians have also been named and blamed for writing and singing songs that encourage attacks on the Catholic Church in particular. Radio and TV stations have also been blamed for broadcasting “songs of hate and violence” that spur such attacks. And “the media” has been collectively blamed by some of promoting anti-Catholicism.

Here again, the debate can come to an early end if it’s to be simply accepted that music naturally influences people. But if so, given the worldwide popularity of Reggae and Rap, why haven’t there been more such attacks in many more places over the past 25 years since Bob Marley put his brand of rebel music on the world map? If so, why aren’t scores, hundred or thousands among the tens of millions of American youth who purchase and listen to Eminem’s records cited his hate lyrics as justification for crimes against their parents? And would Eminem’s nomination for four Grammys be regarded as rewarding filth?

Clearly, the church has realised that it’s preaching today has to be to targeted at and taken to more than just the converted. It cannot continue to offer “we need more prayers” as the main answer or solution to the problems it faces in a less tolerant society. Like the rest of the society, it must draw and pull on all its resources to reach out to specifically and strategically target and embrace the same rebellious youth beyond the cathedral walls who criticize the Vatican and say it’s evil.

The positive social changes inspired and encouraged by Pope John Paul I and which led to Vatican II have gone quite some way in addressing the wide gap that existed between its teachings and human practice in the first part of the second half of the last century. But the close of the Second Millennium and the beginning of the Third has brought with it a fresh set of challenges that will continue to test the mettle of the Vatican. These new challenges will also test the ability of the church around the world to acknowledge such changes, to react and respond to them and to be both creative and flexible in the application and implementation of its reactions.

Questions will continue to be asked about the motive behind the December 31 attack, but the Society in general will also continue to search for answers to the wider question of what is to be done about the current state of affairs.

Taking the youth off the street and channeling their energies in positive and creative directions have all for a long time been spoken of, but that need has never been so urgent as now.

The Church has its own mysterious way of providing answers to the mysteries of its teachings and explaining its own interpretations of worldly events, whether Man-made or Acts of God. But it will not be sufficient today to explain the shooting of the Pope 20 years ago or the terror at the Cathedral on the final day of last year in Biblical terms, or through recital of parables. Nor will it be sufficient to blame it on the existence of unknown local cults or rival religions groups. Today’s youth clearly want to hear and see more practical responses, answers and explanations than that offered by way of parables, prophecies, psalms or proverbs. And they want such answers, not only from the Church and State, but from the Society in general.

No easy task. But who ever said solving any society’s most pressing social problems or saving souls and preparing them for Heaven was easy?

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