Susanna Again

This is an update on a post I did almost a year ago, I'll begin with the update.  I noted that the first reading in the mass that day (yesterday this year) had the story from the Book of Daniel about how the two corrupt elders falsely accused Susanna of adultery, a capital crime and how Daniel, by questioning the two accusers separately, exposed their lies and saved Susanna.  The two elders, by the law of Moses, suffered the same penalty they tried to falsely impose on the innocent Susanna.  I'm an absolute opponent of the death penalty but I've said that if they are going to have it it should be imposed on police, prosecutors, lawyers and judges who were guilty of falsely charging or convicting people of capital crimes.   I said that knowing it's about as likely to happen as a perfect justice system.

In the post last year I mentioned Antonin Scalia, a member of the Supreme Court who has chuckled over the issue of painful botched executions from the bench and who has contended that there is no right of innocent people to not be executed as long as the petty, official procedures of courts are followed.  If I had time today, I'd look up what he said over the issue of executing people when their information exonerating them or mitigating the circumstances under which the death penalty was imposed on them didn't arrive according to the set scheduling of the courts involved, but I doubt it was much less depraved than everything else he and his pro-killing colleagues have to say on the matter.

I also noted his and other Catholic reactionary justices and judges at the "red masses" on the occasion of St. Thomas More's feast day.  I do think it would be interesting to watch his face if the priest at such a mass preached on the text that Daniel cited, from The Law in the book of Exodus 23:7 "Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent or the righteous, for I will not acquit the guilty."   It couldn't be more appropriate to the occasion and if he were any kind of preacher he'd make it relevant to his audience of lawyers and judges, people for whom the temptation to violate those commandments is part of their job.  I doubt that unless the matter were specifically pointed out that someone as inured to judicial murder as Scalia is would get the message.

Here's what I said last year with the great motet by Orlando di Lasso on the text.

Today's Catholic liturgy reads the story from the Book of Daniel, Susanna and the Elders, about how two corrupt judges falsely accused an innocent woman of adultery after she refused to have sex with them despite their blackmail that would lead to her death.   As with the story of Abraham and Issac, the story ended in her exoneration as a young Daniel insisted on asking the two accusers, separately, under what kind of tree they caught her and a young man who they said had gotten away from them.   So they ended up being put to death for perjury in a capital case.  While I'm entirely opposed to the death penalty, I do think if it's going to be done that police, prosecutors, judges, etc. who put people to death by false testimony or withholding of exonerating evidence should have a mandatory death penalty.  I know that will never be done and it shows why the death penalty should be abolished because it is an open opportunity for the state to falsely kill innocent people.

The gospel for today is the famous passage from the gospel according to John in which Jesus goes even farther, getting off a woman who was actually guilty of adultery by shaming her accusers and would-be executioners with their own sins, though there was no accusation that they were lying about her adultery.   The lesson I take from that is that none of us is qualified to kill someone, even someone guilty as charged.  You can see why that lesson might be good news for people without power and why it would be most unwelcomed news for people with the ability to exercise power.  I doubt that any of the conservatives on the Supreme Court who make a show of being religious would welcome having to consider their qualifications to kill people, which they do as certainly as the crowds who waited, no doubt with a similar thrill of power and self-righteousness, eagerly to kill Susanna and the nameless woman who Jesus, acting as defense attorney, got off with a far lighter reprimand than courts give to anyone but the rich and famous under our supposedly enlightened justice system.

I would think that the questionable fashion of Catholic lawyers, judges and Supreme Court judges making a show of piety at a "Red Mass" on the feast day of St. Thomas More (I believe started by the ultra-conservative St. Thomas More society) would be better held on this day when the focus is on the victims of the legal system, both the innocent and falsely accused and the guilty and disproportionately punished and those destroyed by "justice" as meted out by fallible and less than fully qualified human beings.   Seeing the likes of Antonin Scalia preening for a camera as he comes out of the Red Mass turns my stomach.


Update:  Score   Orlando di Lasso, what an incredible genius he was.