Tookie and Jack Are Brothers

Whatever happened to redemption? I mean, is it too much to ask for us all to be treated equally?

Two nights ago I went to a meeting regarding my son's upcoming first Confession, or the Sacrament of Reconciliation. During the meeting the priest (or "father" as I have come to refer to him) spoke about the meaning of this sacrament. It is, he said, a chance to speak about those actions of ours that we feel badly about, and to ask forgiveness. This, in turn, would make us reflect on our actions and make us less-likely to do them again. We would then be redeemed in God's eyes. Everyone who comes before God to confess and apologize and atone will be redeemed. The weak and the mighty. The rich and the poor. The pius and the sinner. All are equal in God's eyes. I thought that was a great way to look at it.

Even though I am one who believes there is no God, I still have a great respect for the equality and ethics espoused in the New Testament. As this is a profoundly Christian nation, and as our laws are based in part upon the notions of morality of the Christian Bible, I think it would be great if the equality of redemption worked that way in our civil society. Unfortunately, there seems to be a double-standard of redemption among our modern American Civil Leaders. Most of whom, by the way, profess themselves to be religious men and women.

Consider the recent case of "Tookie" Williams in California. He was not granted clemency because he was not, in the Governor's mind, redeemed because he refused to apologize for the crimes he has never confessed to. On the surface, this would seem to fit into the catholic notion of redemption through confession. It follows the same plot-line: confess of your sins and ask forgiveness before your appointed time of death and I (God, the State) will not kill you. But, what we fail to consider is that unlike the Christian God, mortal man is not without the ability to make mistakes. The State, acting through the Governor, had no way of knowing that "Tookie" never would confess his crimes. Niether does the State know with 100% surety that he did the crimes he is accused of. Not one member of the Jury was there, nor was any member of the court there. The only people who were there were the victims and the murderer. I do not mean to say that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was executed, but that he was sentenced to die by circumstantial evidence that could have been wrong. The Governor's faith in our legal system is such that he took the findings of the jury as fact and therefore cut off any possibility of the redemption he had been looking for. "Tookie's" anti-gang actions from jail were apparently not enough for the Governor. He wanted a full blown confession of sin and asking for forgiveness in order to grant him redemption in the form of clemency.

O.K. That's what he wanted, he didn't get it, and so the sentence was carried out to it's conclusion. Right or wrong. Many people across the country expressed a great satisfaction with the fact that "Tookie" was executed. Many op-ed pieces said if he had confessed and asked for forgiveness he should have been spared, but since he didn't , he shouldn't. His actions attesting to a changed life, and his attempted attonement for his past criminal behavior in gang-life were not enough. His attepmts to fix a problem he helped create were not enough. His attonement was not enough without his confession and apology, and so he paid.

Jump ahead a few weeks and we now have members of Congress and the White House, including the President, rushing to give the money received from Jack Abramoff to one charity or another. I guess they are doing this in an attempt to attone for their own wrong-doings, which, in this case, include taking money from a sleazy lobbyist.

Even the New York Times noticed this in an op-ed piece published today, when they said:

"In the blink of a news cycle, lawmakers and President Bush were turning over tainted donations from the Abramoff money machine to charity, as if they were buying indulgences for a political inquisition to come. They gave no sign of heeding the real messages of the week.
One was that true redemption can come only from a full reform of Congress's porous to nonexistent rules governing members' dealings with lobbyists." (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/opinion/07sat1.html)

Notice that the Times says the Politicians will be redeemed by making up for their actions by fixing a problem they created. They will not be redeemed by confessing and asking for forgiveness, but by making attonement by changing their ways.

Why should we grant this redemption through simple attonement for our civil leaders, but not for our civil citizens? A crime is a crime and all should be punished or redeemed according to the same rules.

Hamlet does not kill the murderer of his father when he has the chance. Why? Because Polonius has just confessed to God, and Hamlet wants Polonius to go to Hell after he is killed. Hamlet then says he will wait until Polonius is in the "full flower of his sin" before he enacts his revenge. Polonius has tried to attone for his sin by being a good king, a good husband, and a good step-father to Hamlet, but it is his confession of sin that stays Hamlet's sword until a more oppotune time.

We should do no less than that. We should require a full accounting from our leaders of their wrongs, and not sit meekly back and accept another "I was out of the loop". Even Bill Clinton came before a national audience to tell us what he had done wrong and ask for our forgiveness. It seems that our current crop of civil leaders, on both sides of the aisle, do not even have the strenght of character to do the one thing we ask of our civil citizenry: say "I'm sorry."

-FP