Posted on 05/19/2008 7:39:40 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
('Dead Man Walking' inspiration Prejean shares mission)
Personally witnessing the execution of her pen pal, a Louisiana death row inmate, lit a fire in Helen Prejean -- a fire she wanted to spark in others Sunday during her commencement speech to Edgewood College graduates at the Alliant Energy Center.
"I want to talk to you about catching on fire. I want to talk to you about passion -- that you might lead a life of passion," Prejean told the class of 2008.
When she began writing to Patrick Sonnier, who was executed in 1984 for the murders of two teenagers, she didn't know he would die before her eyes 2-1/2 years later. She was at his execution as his spiritual adviser.
"You don't walk away from something like that neutral," said the 69-year-old nun. She said she came out of Louisiana's Angola State Prison afterward, in the middle of the night, and threw up.
"I had never watched a human being being killed," she said. "I knew the reason they were killing him. I knew the Supreme Court said it was all right. But I had seen it, and my mind was changed, and my mission began."
In introducing Prejean and awarding her an honorary doctorate, Edgewood College President Daniel Carey said, "Her commitment to justice and compassion, her leadership and her written works align with the values and mission that shape Edgewood College."
Carey presented degrees to nearly 200 undergraduates, and to more than 50 master's and doctoral candidates.
Prejean has received at least six other honorary degrees for her work against the death penalty, including degrees from Seton Hall University in New Jersey and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
The self-proclaimed "Cajun" nun said it took her a long time to wake up to justice and realize "that Jesus is on the side of the poor." The daughter of a lawyer, she led a privileged life, with servants in her childhood home and a trip to Europe at age 15, she said.
"I had never gone over to where poor people were in New Orleans. You know, the ones you heard about in Hurricane Katrina -- 100,000 people were left behind in that city who didn't have cars. They were left to drown. No buses were provided for them. In many ways, we let our poor people drown in the city," she said.
When she began to correspond with Sonnier, Prejean was living among the poor in the St. Thomas housing projects, where she said African-Americans taught her about "the other America."
"I learned what it's like when you're poor and a person of color -- your relationship to the police, what happens to you in school, what happens to you if you don't have health care. I learned it all from the bottom up," she said.
Prejean, who talked colloquially, admitted that she didn't know who Susan Sarandon was before the actress contacted her about turning Prejean's book, "Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States," into what became a popular 1995 movie.
"Susan Sarandon has been nominated four other times and got an Oscar for portraying me, a nun, and it was hard for her to do that role because she didn't have much makeup and she didn't like to wear those clothes she wore as a nun," Prejean said.
Sarandon won the Academy Award because she had a passion, Prejean said, adding that her own passion came out while writing the book -- which was for sale in the Coliseum's lobby with the proceeds going to the The Moratorium Campaign against the death penalty, Prejean's effort to obtain a moratorium on capital punishment.
Prejean said her sister advised her not to let Hollywood touch her book because, she said, nuns never come off well on-screen.
"And if you've ever seen 'The Flying Nun' -- all of those stupid nun movies -- they don't know what to do with nuns in Hollywood," Prejean said.
She’s pro-abortion. Which means this college is pro-abortion.
Yeah, yeah: “Pro-CHOICE.”
Did she care about the two teenagers who were killed? About their families?
Never mind. . .
Sorry, but she wanted to save Sean Penn.
I can’t go along with that.
“I learned what it’s like when you’re poor and a person of color — your relationship to the police. . . “
After seeing the Duke lacrosse case, I’ll never again think that it is only the poor who get mistreated by the system.
Sometimes if you are male, white, and rich, you haven’t got a chance even if you are innocent. (And a jury of the “poor” will convict you just for spite.)
No, it isn’t glamorous to think about the victims, or about innocent ... bits of tissue that some fanatics think are babies.
She never watched a Human being killed? Why didn’t she ask her Pen Pal to describe ot to her. He watched two!
Sad. This ‘nun’, and others like her run around claiming some moral high ground, and claiming to value human life, while actively trying to protect the worst murderers in the country who hold no value on any life except their own...
You're right, Sister. Ray Nagin's administration left hundreds of school buses to flood out in parking lots all over New Orleans. But somehow, I get the feeling you'll blame George Bush for that and not Ray Nagin, right?
}:-)4
From Wikipedia:
“1998 Prejean was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for “Peace on Earth.”
She is not a fake nun.
Yeah. I hear some nuns have a hard time figuring this out. :-p
God is on the side of the poor and He is all forgiving. But He is also all just. I remember a former pastor saying that during a homily and it had quite an impact. Perhaps Sr Helen should spend more time counseling and comforting the families of innocents who have been horribly killed than spending time with the savage killers.
“I had never watched a human being being killed,” she said. “
She should maybe have seen the two teenagers getting MURDERED by that miscreant.
I never said she was a fake nun. I said she is pro-abortion. There are tens of thousands of pro-abortion nuns.
I don’t know whether this Edgewood College is Catholic. But Prejean was disinvited as a commencement speaker at a Catholic college a few years ago because she’s pro-abortion. Or maybe it was one of those cases where the local bishop protested her invitation, and the college refused to disinvite her. Anyway, she’s pro-abortion, which means her commitment to “justice” is not based on Catholic teaching but on anger, resentment, vanity, etc. Jesus is not “on the side of the poor.” Jesus is on the side of everybody—even the rich—even sinners. Prejean is full of Marxist-resentment claptrap.
Arthur, can you document that she’s pro-abortion? She was a signatory to the Consistent Life Ethic thingie. Don’t know if CLE has a protocol for kicking signers off the list...
“I don’t know whether this Edgewood College is Catholic.”
Edgewood is a private, expensive, Catholic college in ‘The People’s Republik of Madistan,” WI.
We’ve got to stop meeting like this!
All I know for sure is what I’ve already said, and I no longer remember the details. I know it came up, there was a kerfuffle involving her position, and it involved a bishop.
As I recall.
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