The Washington Post

Catholic Bishops Plan Drive Against Death Penalty

By Alan Cooperman
Monday, March 21, 2005 

In the week before Easter, as Christians reflect on the execution of Jesus, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is launching a campaign to end the use of the death penalty in the United States.

Although the campaign reflects the consistent teaching of Pope John Paul II, it marks something of a shift in priorities for the nation's Roman Catholic bishops, who last issued a major statement against capital punishment 25 years ago.

During the 2004 presidential race, the bishops spoke forcefully against same-sex marriage and abortion, warning in a declaration on "Catholics in Political Life" that politicians who support abortion rights are "cooperating in evil." They gave far less prominence to the church's position that the death penalty is rarely, if ever, justified in modern societies.

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, who played a leading role in developing the new campaign, said the bishops sense that public opinion is shifting against capital punishment, partly because genetic testing has proved that scores of death-row inmates were wrongfully convicted.

"I think the DNA evidence has really shaken up people," McCarrick said. "I think this is a moment, a very special moment, where we can talk about this and people are ready to listen."

The campaign will be formally announced today in Washington and then will move to the state and local level, using all the tools of persuasion at the church's disposal, said John Carr, a staff member of the bishops' conference who will play a coordinating role.

"We'll be filing briefs in court cases, talking with the people who publish textbooks in Catholic schools, using church bulletins, encouraging homilies and addressing legislation through state Catholic conferences," he said. "The death penalty will end in this country in several ways -- legislation, judges' decisions and decisions by individual prosecutors and jurors -- and we'll be seeking all of those."

Experts on the role of religion in politics said the campaign will please many Catholics who see a consistent ethic of life in the church's positions against contraception, abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research and the death penalty.

But they said it may be viewed as a distraction by some antiabortion groups and could lead to tensions with evangelical Protestants, who have made common cause with Catholics against abortion but who overwhelmingly support capital punishment, according to polls.

"Evangelicals are the religious group in the United States that are the most pro-death penalty," said James L. Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., who studies conservative Protestantism. "But as long as both groups place a higher priority on other social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, I think their cooperation will continue unimpeded."

The campaign also could run into opposition from socially conservative Catholics who stress that the church does not flatly ban capital punishment, as it does abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Historically, the Catholic Church itself executed heretics, and it has always recognized that capital punishment is justified in certain cases, said Scott Hahn, a professor of theology and scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

"I think a campaign to stop capital punishment is comparable to a campaign to stop war," Hahn said. "I think we have to clarify that one set of issues, such as abortion and the ban on contraception, does not admit of exceptions. And the other set of issues, such as just war and capital punishment, not only admits of exceptions, but that's where Catholic lay people ought to be granted a certain degree of liberty to formulate their own prudential judgments."

McCarrick, like Hahn, noted that Article 2267 of the Catholic catechism, an authoritative compendium of church teaching, says the church "does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the  only possible way of effectively defending human lives" against a criminal. But the catechism also quotes John Paul II as saying that today, cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

Because of the nuance in the church's teaching, McCarrick said, the bishops will not argue that capital punishment is inherently immoral. "Our job is to try to persuade our Catholic people and everybody of good will that the death penalty in America at this time is not necessary, it's not useful and it's not good," he said.