Pope Leo XIV puts on a Villanova baseball cap in support of his alma mater at a Wednesday public meeting.
The two great debates of my lifetime have been the following: “Is it gravy or sauce” and “Can a pro-lifer support the death penalty.”
The first one is more controversial in my family, because there are differing opinions depending upon the generation.
The older women insist that it is only gravy if you simmer some sort of meat in the pan before dumping in the canned tomatoes — and in the case of the purists, tomatoes from grandpop’s garden — while a meatless concoction is sauce.
Others from Gen X to the present say that there is no difference and the only people who make a big deal out of it need to get a life. I fall somewhere in between, which is ironic since I can’t make either of them.
The second conundrum doesn’t have the philosophical gravitas of the first, but it has always troubled me from the age of eleven.
That was in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided and abortion became legal in all 50 states.
When the decision came down, I was sitting in a classroom in my small Catholic girls' school in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
The nuns, who belonged to the Sisters of Mercy, asked us to pause and say a moment of prayer for the babies.
From that moment on, I knew which side I was on. I was on Team Baby, all the way. That hasn’t changed in over a half century, and I have called myself pro-life in every biography that someone has asked me to provide for a public appearance, in every social media profile, and pretty much everywhere I’ve had an opportunity to express that view.
Who am I kidding? It’s not a “view.” It is my north star, my moral center, the thing around which I have built my identity.
It is also the thing that oriented me towards immigration law. To me, helping the most vulnerable, whether they are children in utero or persecuted refugees is the exact same thing.
I’m pretty much on the same page as the pope. I’m talking about the new one, the American, the White Sox fan and, this is the best part of all, a Villanova grad.
I root for the same college team as the holiest man in the Catholic Church. I hope we get seated at the same table at some future alumni dinner.
Except I learned the other day that the pope thinks I can no longer call myself pro-life if I’m in favor of the death penalty.
I suppose that it was always that way, even though I had the good fortune to grow up around Catholic priests who gave you a bit of leeway on capital punishment.
I remember once asking a priest of my acquaintance if he thought that the electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment, and he said that he did.
But then he added, to my surprise, not all forms of capital punishment were morally wrong. He said that while we should never willingly make a human being suffer, there was some grounding in Scripture for what essentially was the “eye for an eye” theory.
He was reading from the Old Testament, or as I call it, the original, not the sequel.
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not, but that conversation led me to wonder whether the whole idea of the death penalty was skewed.
There is no question that an unborn child has done nothing wrong, and is innocent of any sin or crime.
Similarly, people who are fleeing persecution need protection, compassion and care.
But murderers? Cold-blooded sociopaths? Child rapists? Serial killers? People who ambush cops? People who set bombs at abortion clinics? People who target health care CEOS and conservative activists? People who mow down kindergarten students in their classrooms before Christmas? People who kill their spouses so they can avoid alimony? Those people?
When the pope came out and essentially said that I am not pro-life if I look at the life of one of these miscreants as being of lesser value than that of a Christian being persecuted in the Middle East or a child with Down syndrome who would inconvenience his pregnant mother, I have to think he was watching a bit too much MSNBC, or the Vatican equivalent.
All of this kumbaya about how even the worst sinner has value is nice enough when it’s not your family that has been victimized. It’s very politically correct and makes you look like a wonderful person, but it ignores human reality.
There is no through line between abortion and the death penalty. One kills innocent life. The other balances the eternal scales of justice.
I am quite sure that this column will not sit well with the sort of Catholic who thinks that vengeance has no place in our hearts. Those readers, and those Catholics, are missing the point.
Capital punishment is not vengeance. It is not even unconstitutional. It is the recognition that there are certain crimes that require the forfeiture of your life, in order to provide some balance to society.
A civilization that looks at murderers in the same way that it looks at refugees and innocent children is not … civilized.
So while I am a fan of the pope, and while he is making me proud to be a Wildcat, I’m going to have to have a conversation with him the next time he shows up at an alumni function.
One where they will hopefully be serving gravy.
This article was originally published in the Delco Daily Times.
