Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Eileen, Cecil & Leonard Stocker, (Anniv).
11.00: Frank Kelly, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

The sight of a convicted terrorist being treated to a hero's welcome is truly sickening. It doesn't matter whether the genial host involved is Colonel Gaddafi or 'Captain' Martin Ferris. Nausea knows no borders! Imagine how the families of the victims felt in both instances?

In theory, we are dealing with two very different cases. The killers of Jerry McCabe had served just over 10 years of their 14 year sentence for manslaughter. However, the unvarnished truth is somewhat different. The original murder charge had to be 'downgraded' because the IRA intimidated key witnesses. In the Lockerbie case, Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, a Libyan, was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released on compassionate grounds as he is suffering from terminal cancer. He had served just 8 years of his life sentence.

So, in theory at least, we are dealing with two very different cases. But, in practice, there are similarities. In the McCabe case, the state failed to protect its witnesses, rendering the appropriate murder charge impossible to pursue. In the circumstances, the charge of manslaughter was ludicrous and Anne McCabe is right to feel that justice was not done. The relatives of the Lockerbie victims had their own misgivings about justice. Al Megrahi was released 'on compassionate grounds'. This raises the question as to what right the State has to exercise compassion independently of the rights of the victim.

Perhaps, as some have suggested, there's a hierarchy of compassion. At the top there are the victims themselves who have suffered the tragedy. Clearly in this case they are not with us to exercise their rights; next, we have their families who are also the victims of loss and grief; and then comes the State that speaks on behalf of the whole community. But what happens when the State proposes to act compassionately against the wishes of the majority of the victims? Whose voice should then prevail?

According to the Scriptures, justice is about being in harmonious relationships - acting justly, loving tenderly, and walking humbly with God. This is the vision that God gives the human family. It's one in which relationships that are broken are repaired and restored.

The value of state-administered justice is that it elevates that virtue beyond the reach of the lynch-mob. But one of the problems of justice by the State is that it depersonalises crime and instead of bringing the offender face to face with their victim drives a wedge between the two. The weakness is that it doesn't restore the broken relationship. That can only happen when the offender recognises the enormity of their offence and feels the impact it has had on the victim. Only when there's repentance can the quality of mercy be savoured, and the relationship restored.

Neither the IRA gunmen or the Libyan terrorist showed any such remorse. On the contrary! It is not surprising then that the families of their victims took such umbrage. In none of these case was justice or compassion well served.

-Dick Lyng

HAPPENINGS

Death of Augustine

"When he lay down to die, Augustine wanted to be alone. For ten days in August 430, he lay undisturbed, except when they brought him food and drink, or when the physicians came to check on him. He was seventy-five.

We have a very clear account of his final days from the pen of his first biographer, Possidius. Augustine had ordered his monastic brothers to paste the penitential psalms on his bedroom walls. And so when he faced that familiar text on the wall above his deathbed, the famous bishop approached his end not with satisfaction in a life well lived but in hope that a life badly lived would yet be absolved and redeemed. If his "heart" was worn and humbled, then he took it to be the paradoxical sign of a happiness to come. He had spoken memorably in his most famous book of the restlessness of the human heart, and he carried that restlessness with him still.

The only miracle story his biographer tells isn't much. While Augustine was dying, the story goes, a sick man was brought to him and Augustine was asked to lay his hand upon him to make him well. Augustine ventured what, for him, was almost a joke: if he had any power of this sort, he said, he would have used it on himself first. But then the man's friend tells Augustine about a dream he had in which he heard a voice say to him, "Go to Bishop Augustine to have him lay hands on this man and he will recover." When Augustine heard that, he did as he had been asked and the sick man went away healed. A fragment of divine power pushed its way through its (reluctant?) instrument, just that once. One suspects the old bishop remained rather skeptical!"

Augustine: A New Biography, James J. O'Donnell, (2005) P.320.

Sepllnig Nwes

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearcr at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe. -Ceehiro

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