To Contact Us
Write:
PO Box 1603
Lafayette, IN 47902
Phone:
(765) 742-2050
Fax:
(765) 742-7513
E-mail
our office
Buy, Sell, Trade or Rent with Classified Advertising
Happening ... in the Local Church
  Left:
Nancy Sauer: “I give credit to the Catholic Church for giving me that
heart to forgive.”Right: Glenn Tebbe: “Her story is really a lived experience of what the Church is trying to teach.” (Photos by Kevin Cullen) |
One woman’s story of faith and forgiveness brings new perspective to death penalty discussion.
By Kevin Cullen
The
Catholic Moment
LAFAYETTE — It’s easy to oppose the death penalty if your world has never been shattered by the murder of a loved one.
Then there’s Nancy Sauer. Her father, mother and sister were stabbed to death by a crack cocaine addict who entered their house to steal money he needed to pay a drug debt.
Still, Sauer is relieved that the murderer, Brad Kirchner, won’t receive the death sentence that he was given. Life without parole is fair enough, she said.
“The only thing that helped me heal was to forgive, and the only way I could do that was through my faith in Jesus Christ,” Sauer told a group of approximately 50 people at St. Lawrence Church, where she is a parishioner.
They gathered Jan. 30 to hear Glenn Tebbe, executive director of the Indiana Catholic Conference, talk about the Church’s opposition to the death penalty. There — encouraged by her pastor, Father Dan Gartland — Sauer told her story publicly for the first time.
“Until now, the death penalty has been something that happens out there, never a real thing,” said Father Eric Underwood, associate pastor. “This really brings the situation to life.”
Tebbe agreed. “Her story is really a lived experience of what the Church is trying to teach,” he said.
Sauer recounted the Aug. 8, 1997, murder of her dad, Charley Brewer, 69; her mom, Jean Brewer, 65, and her sister, Bonnie Brewer, 37, near Atwood, Ill., 28 miles east of Decatur. Charley was playing solitaire at 3 a.m.; Kirchner, then 27, saw lights on in the house, and made his deadly move.
Kirchner — who had prior convictions on burglary, battery and weapons charges — was arrested a week later. In 1998, he was found guilty of first-degree murder in the three slayings, and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
When the sentence was read, Sauer said, she and her family “just sat there. None of us were happy. None of us were joyful. We all just sort of sat there and stared at the floor. It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t heal. It didn’t help.”
But in 2000, then-Gov. Jim Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois. Later, he commuted all Illinois death sentences after it was proven that some inmates on Death Row were innocent. Kirchner was resentenced to life in prison without parole.
“I was relieved,” Sauer said. “All I had been thinking about was, ‘Do I really want to see this man die? Isn’t this going to bother me even more? Isn’t this going to make it worse?’ It was really a struggle inside me. I was relieved.”
But Sauer said her older sisters were “absolutely livid” at Ryan’s decision. They said so in an appearance on CBS’ “Sunday Morning.” Sauer chose not to appear on the TV show.
She said her conversion to Catholicism in 2001 led her to oppose the death penalty. Formerly a Protestant, she converted one year after her husband, Joe, did.
Before making her first confession, at age 39, she saw that she and Kirchner were both sinners, and both children of God.
She said she came to that realization “through the whole first confession process, from examining my conscience to the actual confession to doing my penance.
“Studying the Bible was part of it, but it was more the process of looking at my sins that led me to forgiveness.
“It hit me,” Sauer said, “… that (Kirchner) is loved by God as much as God loves me. God is going to forgive Brad Kirchner’s sins as much as my own. It is very humbling to say that God loves the sinner — he just hates the sin, no matter who you are.”
She came to see that without forgiveness, she could not heal.
“I give credit to the Catholic Church for giving me that heart to forgive. I don’t know if I would have gotten it otherwise,” Sauer said.
A few years later, she attended a conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. There, she said, she experienced a “healing moment” that left her transfixed, then sobbing.
“I felt God touched me and healed my broken heart,” she said. “He just removed it all from me. That was a very powerful moment … grief like that really does go deep inside your soul.”
People talk about “closure,” the need to put a tragedy behind them.
But Sauer said she won’t experience it until she’s in heaven with her dad, her mom, her sister … and Brad Kirchner.
When she joins them there, “living in peace with God, that is when closure comes,” she said.
Tebbe, state lobbyist for Indiana’s Catholic bishops, said that the Church recognizes the fact that sometimes — such as in self defense, to protect others or to restore order — the taking of human life is justified. But the Church opposes capital punishment when other options are available.
Jesus Christ, he said, “came to bring reconciliation, compassion and healing,” and the Gospels “challenge us to love and not hate; to forgive and not seek vengeance.”
Studies have shown that the death penalty does not deter crime. Because of the cost of appeals, it costs 37 percent less to keep an Indiana inmate behind bars until death than it does to kill him, Tebbe said.
Ruby Behringer, a junior at Purdue University, said Sauer’s story “put a face” on a philosophical and theological discussion.
“I came to learn about it (the death penalty),” she said. “I know Catholics who think it is all right.”
Tom Rankin, a new Catholic, said that his opinion on the issue has “done a 180.”
Before he retired from the Lafayette Police Department, he was “a huge proponent of the death penalty,” he said, but his study of Church teachings brought a change of heart.
“I’m learning on the other end of the spectrum,” he said. “A person can be incarcerated for the rest of his life, and the public is still safe and secure.
“What changed my mind is a loving God,” Rankin said.