BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD…
By: Father Tom McNally
C.S.C.
When I celebrate Mass at the
Indiana State Prison I occasionally look up at the back wall of the
chapel and see a sign that has been there for many years. It reads
“But For The Grace Of God.” It’s a reminder to me that if I had
faced the same challenges as the men in front of me I might be
occupying a cell next to theirs.
Most of them come from home lives
shattered by poverty, addiction and broken promises. By contrast my
home life was serene and my parents never had to wonder where the
next meal was coming from. How blest I have been!
Furthermore I consider myself blest
to be a volunteer chaplain at this maximum security prison in Michigan City, IN.
I’ve been chaplain at ISP for the past six years, shortly after
“retiring” in 2001. Up to that point my ministry had included many
years at Notre Dame in the halls and on campus ministry, plus work
in parishes as pastor and associate, a couple years in vocational
work, and an eight-year term as editor and publisher of two youth
magazines. I also served briefly in Chile but had to return after 1-l/2
years because of respiratory problems.
No-one really “retires” in Holy
Cross! There’s always ministry to be
done in one way or another. When the opportunity came to work
as a prison chaplain I jumped at the chance. I had some background
in the field. In fact my first experience in prison work came before
I ever entered Holy Cross. I was a United Press reporter in
Sioux Falls, SD and covered a prison riot there in 1955.
The prisoners even used me as a middle-man to get their demands to
the warden and governor!
Much later, as a Holy Cross priest
in California, I helped out many times at famous
San Quentin prison in the
San Francisco Bay
area because a priest friend was chaplain there. (On several
occasions seminarians came with me—including John Jenkins, now Notre
Dame President and Austin Collins, a professor in Notre Dame’s art
department.)
There’s no question in my mind
about the value of this ministry. Look at the 25th
chapter of Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus identifies himself with the
marginalized and needy: “I was in prison,” he says, “and you came to
visit me.” (Mt. 25, v36.) Or consider the Constitutions of the
Congregation of Holy Cross: “Christ was anointed to bring good news
to the poor, release for prisoners, sight for the blind,
restoration for every broken victim. Our efforts, which are his,
reach out to the afflicted and in a preferential way to the poor and
oppressed.” (Constitutions of Holy Cross: 2, 13).
Visitors who take part in Sunday
worship at ISP and meet the inmates usually are surprised at what
they find. Contrary to Hollywood
stereotypes, the men are low-key, friendly and pretty much like the
men in any parish in town. No guards are present even though some of
the men belong to rival gangs and factions. There is an unwritten
rule—No fights or other disturbances in the chapel, and the men
adhere to that rule. Fr. Don Guertin C.S.C. and I alternate weekly
as celebrants for a congregation which varies from 60 to 100,
depending on many factors. Married deacons from the Gary Diocese
join us as well as volunteers from parishes in that diocese and from South Bend’s Little Flower
parish. Before and after Mass there is time for visiting the men and
strong friendships are frequently formed. It’s easy to forget that
these men have committed serious crimes—not excluding murder.
Not all the inmates at Mass are
Catholics. Some are interested in becoming Catholics, others are
curious about our faith, still others are there because their
friends are there. What binds most of us together, I think, is a
common need to worship the God who created us and to allow him to
enter our lives in some way.
For instance, one of my good
friends is Fred (not his real name) who has experienced a real
conversion in his life. Three years ago he came to me and said that
he hoped some day to enter a monastery as a monk. Lots of luck, I
thought to myself. Not only was Fred serving a long sentence for
murder—he was not even a Catholic! But he entered the RCIA program
(run by the deacons) and I was privileged to baptize him. More
recently he has entered a plea for sentence modification. If
successful he may indeed some day knock on a monastery door!
It is men like Fred that make my
ministry both exciting and fulfilling!
On Mondays and Thursdays I return
to the prison and visit men in the disciplinary units. Here are men
who are locked up in their cells 23 hours a day because they have
committed some infraction within the prison. Obviously the Catholics
among them cannot attend Mass so I will bring them Communion and
occasionally hear their confessions. I walk the ranges, speaking to
anyone who wants to talk to me, Catholic or not, and praying with
those who wish to do so. I wear a “stab vest” which is required
attire for anyone visiting these units. As the name indicates the
vest is designed to ward off an attack from someone wielding a
make-shift knife, or “shiv.” I’d rather not wear it but I have no
choice.
“You
don’t need to wear one of those things, Father,” my friend Cory said
to me one day. “You’re one of the good guys!”
Good guy or not, I trudge up and
down the ranges carrying a satchel filled with Catholic magazines,
bibles, rosaries,
greeting cards, and calendars (a favorite item around the first of
the year). At age 81 I’ve lost a step or two and I imagine that I
must look like Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”
Every other Thursday I celebrate
Mass for the Catholics on Death Row. The six Catholics gather in one
large cell and I push a food tray against the bars as my altar. At
Communion time I serve them the consecrated host through the bars.
(I alone receive the consecrated wine!) Afterwards I stop by their
cells for a private talk and also visit the non-Catholics. On
alternate Thursdays a deacon brings Communion to the Catholics. On
one or two nights a week other visitors stop by from the Catholic
group.
Hollywood
has done a super-job of depicting any Death Row as super-sinister. I
certainly have not found it so, and I know I speak for the deacons
and the other men (and even women) who visit prisoners on the “row.”
Granted the 20 or so men there have generally committed terrible
crimes but most have long since repented and begged God for
forgiveness. Many have been on the “row” for at least 10-15 years,
awaiting their destiny as their appeals inch their way through the
courts.
What happens if the appeals fail? I
have been with several men during their last hours and have been
present on two occasions when the executions by lethal injection
took place. It is a scene I’d just as soon forget and has made me
more strident than ever in favor of a moratorium on the death
penalty. What strikes me about the final scene is how strange and
unreal it is. From behind a screen a few yards away you give a last
blessing and wave goodbye to someone on a gurney. He waves back, the
poison is injected, and a few minutes later a voice announces that
he is dead. Everything is very neat and antiseptic. Then you and the
other witnesses are escorted from the building into a waiting van
and driven to the lot where you have parked your car.
At times like that I wonder what we
have come to as a nation.
I wonder about the death penalty. I
wonder about my own complicity in a procedure which seems so
terribly flawed. My only choice, I think, is to work actively to
overthrow this barbarism while continuing to administer as well as I
can to any inmate who asks me to be with him in his last hours.
For that matter, I not only wonder about the
death penalty but about the entire prison system, which is chock
full of problems. But one thing I don’t wonder about is my role as a
prison chaplain. It is good ministry and I am grateful to God for
allowing me to do it.
