Saturday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072812.cfm

A dear friend goes crabbing in a Louisiana marsh

his slaves said to him, 'do you want us to go and pull them up?'
he replied, 'no, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time i will say to the harvesters,
'first collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn.'"


Recently I saw a clever bumper sticker: "The Non-judgment Day is near."  If nothing else, it's thought provoking.

Many critics object to the "judgmental" passages in the Bible, and they are many. Lovers of scripture react defensively; they insist on God's mercy and God's universal love for everyone without distinction. They glean the writings of the prophets and sages for every passage that demonstrates God's milder side. Other lovers of scripture chortle as they envision a day of judgment on the critics!

This passage from Saint Matthew invites an attitude of wait-and-see. No one knows when or how the Judgment Day will come, or what might transpire on that day. While  virtually all the books, letters, and assorted documents of the Old and New Testaments agree that God will vindicate virtue and eradicate evil, I can think of no verse or passage giving anyone the authority to judge another human being before the Judgment Day.  Rather, we are told, "'Vengeance is mine' says the Lord."  Retribution, revenge, pay-back: all belong to God. Even vindication is God's responsibility. The Christian should only wait for the Day of Judgment and Justice.

Apparently, the writers of the New Testament did not foresee a day when members of the Church would actually sit on the benches and judge this world's criminals.  For the most part, they were happy to avoid the attention of judges, prosecutors and other representatives of civil law. But since some judges are Christian and most Christians in the United States have an active voice in selecting their judges, we have been handed the duty of judging fairly. Is there a way to live by God's law and not judge others, while living in this world where we must make judgments?  I think there is.

American prisons have three specific purposes: punishment, rehabilitation and containment. Containment entails both removing the criminal from the public sphere where he does harm, and protecting him from harm. Unfortunately the electorate has never decided which of these three policies should govern our prison system. Do we put them in prison to punish them, to give them time to repent and reform, or to protect both our society and the malefactor?

From everything I have seen and read, punishment is ineffective. The criminal usually doesn't think he deserves the punishment, nor are potential criminals dissuaded from committing similar crimes. Many of today's youth expect to go to prison anyway, and they enjoy the company of their friends when they get there.

But more to the point, I think the teachings of the scriptures dissuade us from punishment. That is God's prerogative. But we can and should remove certain individuals from the public for their own good and for our protection. That requires an assessment of this person's future behavior, based on his past behavior. That is not exactly a judgment.  While he is there we can provide him or her with opportunities for rehabilitation.

Granted there are no guarantees the rehabilitation will take effect and in some cases it seems unlikely from the get-go. We need not be foolish about these customers. Some of them would not know kindness, truth or grace if it bit them on the leg. But we need not say, "This person is evil and always will be." That's demonizing one's enemies and that is invariably a projection of one's own worse tendencies on someone else.



Most incarcerated people are there because they're too much like you and me. In a society that values absolute freedom, some people take too much. In a society that values money, some people steal it. A society that is fascinated by violence inevitably produces violent people. A sexually-obsessed society produces all kinds of perverts. A society that wants to fix every problem with a drug generates drug-addicts. That should come as no surprise! Punishing those people only confuses them. They rightly say, "I'm just doing what everyone does!"



You, my dear reader, might say, "Father Ken is idealistic." To which I reply, "A society of romantics produces many foolish idealists!" I still hope ideals can inform our decisions, though they should never dictate them.


I am certain -- and here I have the reflecting church and the Catechism of the Catholic Church to agree with me -- that God has not given us -- neither me nor the collective us which is the State -- full authority to kill criminals. We can put them away, even for life. We can love them as our enemies, deliberately and with all the necessary precautions. We can even provide them with opportunities behind bars to be useful, contributing citizens. I have visited inmates in two jails, talked with prison chaplains and former inmates of prisons, and I am sure Grace can penetrate even electronic surveillance, iron bars, barbed wire and concrete fortresses. There are saints even there, for Jesus has broken down the barriers that set us apart.  

Perhaps, when the Non-judgment Day comes, the Lord will notice that we obeyed his teaching, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."