NEWS ANALYSIS: Pope’s execution stance may test conservative U.S. Roman Catholics

c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Long used to standing solidly with Pope John Paul II against birth control, abortion rights and assisted suicide, America’s Roman Catholic conservatives have been suddenly challenged by the pope’s forceful condemnation of a conservative touchstone _ the death penalty.”It’s going to be very difficult for many, sure,”said New […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Long used to standing solidly with Pope John Paul II against birth control, abortion rights and assisted suicide, America’s Roman Catholic conservatives have been suddenly challenged by the pope’s forceful condemnation of a conservative touchstone _ the death penalty.”It’s going to be very difficult for many, sure,”said New Orleans Archbishop Francis Schulte.”They’ll have to take this into consideration. This is a whole new area for many Catholics.” John Paul told 104,000 people gathered at a papal Mass in St. Louis last week that the respect for life that undergirds the Catholic church’s opposition to abortion, doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia applies”even in the case of one who has done great evil.” He called on Americans to reject the death penalty because”modern society has the means to protect itself without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.” Yet the solid American support for the death penalty is well-staffed by Catholic voters, according to death-penalty researchers.

Across all faiths, 71 percent of those polled in 1996 favored the death penalty for murder; and among Catholics, 70 percent endorsed executions, said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.


Although the evil of abortion and state-sponsored execution are crucially different because abortion”takes an innocent life,”the Catholic Church is more and more insistently preaching that the death penalty is nonetheless”seriously wrong,”Schulte said.”I would hope those pro-life Catholics do not end up like pro-choice Catholics, saying `We’re Catholics, but on this one thing we don’t agree,'”Schulte said.”There would have to be a lot of education, no doubt about it,”if the anti-abortion movement in Louisiana, for example, long able to muster thousands of letter-writers and marchers for its anti-abortion programs, sought to enlist the same numbers in a campaign against the death penalty, said Peg Kenny of the Louisiana Right to Life.

After the pope left St. Louis, Gov. Mel Carnahan, a Baptist and supporter of capital punishment, commuted the death sentence of a convicted murderer after a personal appeal by the pope. The previous day after a prayer service, John Paul asked Carnahan, seated in a front pew, to show mercy on Darrell Mease, who was scheduled for execution Feb. 10.

Carnahan commuted Mease’s sentence to life in prison without parole, saying he was moved by the pope’s request and his decision was a one-time event, not a change in his view on the death penalty. Even as John Paul’s call began to sink in around the country, carefully couched reservations began turning up, including one from former Archbishop Philip Hannan, an influential conservative prelate and leader of New Orleans’ 500,000 Catholics for 34 years until his retirement in 1989.

Catholic jurors might still conscientiously vote to impose the death penalty if they do not accept the government’s assurance that a particularly dangerous street criminal will likely never be released, Hannan said. Moreover, terrorists pose a special case because they in effect make war on whole populations of innocent people, he added.”I think the dangers are more prevalent than he believes,”Hannan said of the pope’s denunciation of the death penalty.”When you remember all the trouble we’ve had trying to contain terrorists, well. … And they’re still in my opinion a present danger.” But Schulte supported John Paul’s position.”We must be unconditionally pro-life,”he said, echoing the formulation the pope used in St. Louis.”The teaching of the church is that there are other means”society can use to protect itself from harm.”Therefore, do not take this person’s life,”Schulte said.

The key difference between the analyses by Hannan and Schulte lies in their regard for the state’s guarantee of life without parole.”I’m not saying that the Holy Father is not appealing to the better natures of people. He is, and God loves him for that,”Hannan said.”I’m simply saying it is possible in conscience for someone to think an execution is needed in order to protect the rights of other people.” Schulte, too, implicitly left that door open by stressing that each juror must analyze for himself the worth of the state’s guarantee. But like the pope, who said in a 1995 encyclical,”The Gospel of Life,”that cases requiring the death penalty are”very rare, if not practically non-existent,”Schulte left little doubt that today executions are no longer a practical necessity.”We in the United States have an alternative to the death penalty,”he and the bishops of Louisiana’s seven dioceses wrote in their 1994 anti-death-penalty statement,”Violence in Our Society: Death is Not the Answer.””It is long-term or life imprisonment without parole as punishment for first-degree murder and certain other crimes for which the death penalty is currently imposed,”the bishops wrote.”In 1979 our state adopted a statute requiring all persons convicted of first-degree murder, if not executed, to serve a life sentence without benefit of parole,”he and the bishops wrote.

A prisoner sentenced to life without parole, probation or suspension of sentence may be freed only by the governor’s decision. The Louisiana Pardon Board was unable to provide the number of prisoners freed after having been sentenced to life without parole.

But Paul Connick Jr., the Jefferson Parish district attorney who has sent seven defendants to death row in two years, and Nick Trenticosta, a death-penalty foe at Loyola University’s Death Penalty Resource Center in New Orleans, agreed the figure is very low.


DEA END NOLAN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!