|
The Church's
teaching on the death penalty
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
This week, continued reflections on the recent meeting of the bishops as
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, held in Washington Nov. 14-17.
While this no doubt will be old news for some, repetition is a basic
catechetical tool. So, here goes.
Three significant documents were approved: a new Lectionary for Masses
with children 10 years of age and younger; a document on lay ecclesial
ministry titled “Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Resource for
Guiding Development of Lay Ecclesial Ministry”; and a document titled “A
Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death.”
My comments this week focus on the document which addresses the death
penalty.
Over the last quarter century, Church teaching on the use of capital
punishment has been articulated in major Church documents, especially in
the encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II, “Evangelium Vitae”
(“The Gospel of Life”), and the more recent Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church. During his 1999 pastoral visit to the United
States, John Paul II called Catholics to join in his persistent and
powerful witness to the sanctity of life when he said in St. Louis: “I
renew the appeal … for a consensus to end the death penalty.”
As doubts have risen about the fairness of the death penalty, support
for its use has dropped dramatically. More and more place it in a
context of public discussion on its morality and utility. The statement
overwhelmingly passed in Washington calls for a more focused and united
effort to end the use of the death penalty as an integral part of
Catholic responsibility to resist the culture of death and build a
culture of life so persistently taught by the late John Paul II.
Here is a key sentence in the document I and my fellow bishops signed
off on: “We affirm our common judgment that the use of the death penalty
is unnecessary and unjustified in our time and circumstances.”
The rationale: The sanction of death, when it is not necessary to
protect society, undermines respect for human life and dignity;
state-sanctioned killing in our name diminishes all of us; the
application of the death penalty is deeply flawed and can be
irreversibly wrong, is prone to errors, is biased by factors such as
race, the quality of legal representation, and where the crime was
committed; and there are other ways to punish criminals and protect
society, specifically life imprisonment without the possibility of
parole.
The document states that it is time for our nation to abandon the
illusion that life can be protected by taking life. It highlights that
ending the death penalty is one important step away from a culture of
death toward building a culture of life.
In Catholic teaching, the state has a right of recourse to the death
penalty for those guilty of heinous crimes, if such a harsh penalty
is needed to protect society from a grave threat to human life.
Capital punishment, be it the death penalty or life imprisonment without
parole, is not to be driven by vengeance. Rather the focus is on the
most effective way to protect society.
The call for the end of the death penalty does not represent a new
teaching for Catholics. Rather, it is intended to help people better
understand and apply that teaching to our own times. The goal is to
build a culture of life in which our nation will no longer try to teach
that killing is wrong by killing those who kill. If it is wrong for a
citizen to kill, it is wrong for the state, in the name of its citizens,
to kill.
The Washington statement points out that while punishment should be
consistent with the demands of justice, it must also embrace respect for
human life and dignity. Even when people deny the dignity of others via
heinous crime, their dignity is a gift from God and not something that
is lost through their behavior, however repulsive. No matter how
horrible a crime, if society can protect itself without ending a human
life it has the responsibility to do so. Human life is sacred. Period.
Life sentences without the possibility of parole provide the protection
society has a right to demand. It meets the demands of justice.
Holding tenaciously to the right citizens have for protection, as well
as the accountability justice demands of those guilty of heinous crimes,
the bishops of the United States teach that it is time to turn away from
a deeply flawed system of state-sponsored executions. Some pertinent
realities:
• The United States stands almost alone in the use of the death penalty;
• There is no evidence the death penalty prevents or deters crime;
• At least 119 death-row inmates have been exonerated of the capital
crimes for which they were initially found guilty — two of those persons
here in the state of Indiana;
• A growing number of victims’ families witness to the fact that ending
the life of another human being does not heal their wounds or make up
for their loss;
• While the Old Testament includes passages about taking the life of one
who kills, both the Old and New Testaments present strong messages about
protecting life, practicing mercy and rejecting violence;
• There are approximately 3,452 state and federal death-row inmates; and
• Twelve states do not have the death penalty.
This is more than theoretical for Hoosiers. At the present time in our
state 18 people are on death row. Five have been executed during 2005.
What action steps can be taken?
Pray for victims of crime and their families, for those who have been
wrongly convicted and those awaiting execution, for our leaders, for
those who work in the criminal justice system, and for one another that
we might help bring an end to the culture of violence and build a
culture of life in our nation and throughout the world.
Learn more about Catholic teaching on the death penalty, and reflect on
and reexamine personal attitudes and positions that are inconsistent
with the teachings of the Church on this issue.
Urge public officials to support measures that restrict the death
penalty or provide alternatives.
The Catholic campaign to end the use of the death penalty is part of the
Church’s broad commitment to defend human life from conception to
natural death whenever and wherever it is threatened. We, as
individuals, can make a difference. |
