Now the commonwealth’s Catholic bishops are attempting to encourage a re-evaluation of the entire institution. In a statement released on Wednesday, Virginia’s bishops argue that “our faith … challenges us to declare sacred even the least lovable among us, those convicted of committing brutal crimes which have brought them the ultimate penalty, the penalty of death.”
Why have Virginia bishops issued this counter-cultural call now? Perhaps exhaustion with the increasingly ghoulish discussion meant to salvage this peculiar and problematic institution. Pharmaceutical companies have become increasingly unwilling to endanger corporate brands by producing drugs used for executions, and recent substitute combinations have led to badly botched executions. (One execution in Oklahoma in 2014 has led to a Supreme Court challenge.)
Virginia’s bishops in recent months have found themselves occupied by campaigns against legislation meant to tackle the “problem.” One measure would have permitted the commonwealth to arrange the production of new lethal drug cocktails, but hide the identities of the pharmacies and compounds used from the public. Another measure—also opposed by the conference—would have permitted death by electrocution if lethal drugs were not available. That proposal followed the logic of a law recently passed in Utah which has restored execution by firing squad as a back-up to lethal injection, a law opposed by Utah’s one-man Catholic bishops’ conference, Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City (recently appointed to the archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico.)
Now Virginia’s bishops argue that nationally “we are having the wrong debate.”
“We should no longer debate which inmates we execute or how we execute them,” the bishops say. “Instead, we should debate this: If all human lives are sacred and if a civilized society such as ours can seek redress and protect itself by means other than taking a human life, why are we continuing to execute people?”
Ending the use of the death penalty, according to the bishops, would be “one important step—among significant others we must take—to abandon the culture of death and embrace the culture of life.”
The bishops point out that “people have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt, and inmates who languished on death row for decades have been freed after their innocence was proven.” According to the bishops, since 1973, some 152 death row inmates nationwide—“including one in Virginia”—have been exonerated. They add, “We must also be aware of the racial inequity inherent in the system, and that the death penalty has been administered to individuals with severe intellectual disabilities.”
In urging the end of capital punishment, the Virginia conference joins a growing chorus of U.S. bishops who have challenged the death penalty, suggesting that for the church leadership, if not yet for an absolute majority of Catholics in the pews, the institution has become untenable.
By resurrecting firing squads, Utah’s leaders “have substituted state legislation for the law of God,” Bishop Wester charged in a March 24 statement. “[The legislators] argue that, because executions are lawful, they are then moral. This is not so. No human law can trump God’s law.”
Wester called state-administered killing “a slap in the face of hope and a blasphemous attempt to assume divine attributes that we humble human beings do not have.” He added, “Execution does violence to God’s time, eliminating the opportunity for God’s redemptive and forgiving grace to work in the life of a prisoner.”
A Massachusetts jury is still pondering the fate of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but the state’s Catholic bishops have already indicated where they stand on the matter. “The church has taught that the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are ‘rare, if not practically nonexistent.’ The church’s teaching is further developing in recognition of the inherent dignity of all life as a gift from God,” the state’s bishops, including Boston’s Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, wrote in a statement released on April 6.
The statement continues: “The defendant in this case has been neutralized and will never again have the ability to cause harm. Because of this, we…believe that society can do better than the death penalty.”
In condemning the use of capital punishment, these bishops are following the lead of their vastly popular leader, Pope Francis. On March 20 the pope bluntly rejected executions administered by states as “unacceptable.”
Pope Francis had met that day with a delegation from the International Commission Against the Death Penalty and issued a letter urging the worldwide abolition of capital punishment. He called capital punishment “cruel, inhumane and degrading,” adding, “as is the anxiety that precedes the moment of execution and the terrible wait between the sentence and the application of the punishment, a ‘torture’ which, in the name of a just process, usually lasts many years and, in awaiting death, leads to sickness and insanity.”
Noting that “human justice is imperfect,” Pope Francis said the death penalty “does not bring justice to the victims, but only foments revenge.” In a modern “state of law,” he added, “the death penalty represents a failure” because it obliges the state to kill in the name of justice.
How has this consistent message — a hard Catholic turn against capital punishment can be traced back to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae — been received by U.S. Catholics? Overall Catholics have registered a significant drop in support of the death penalty since high levels — 70 percent or more — were recorded in the ’90s. Now according to a March 2015 Pew Research Center survey, just 53 percent of all U.S. Catholics support the application of capital punishment. (The results among Catholics are sharply divided by race, with 63 percent of white Catholics still supporting capital punishment, but strong majorities of Hispanic Catholics opposing it.)
Polls emerging from the Tsarnaev trial indicate that the decline in enthusiasm for capital punishment — among Catholics and mainstream America — is likely to continue. According to the Boston Globe, although nearly a third of Massachusetts residents say they support the death penalty for egregious crimes, less than 20 percent believe the Boston Marathon bomber should be put to death. But part of the reason may be that many in Massachusetts believe a quick death would be too easy on Tsarnaev.
If that’s the case, Pope Francis will have to put his formidable persuasive powers to historic use. Turns out not only is he not a fan of capital punishment, he has even gone so far as to challenge America’s fall-back institution, life without parole, which he deplored in October as a “hidden death penalty.”
The nation’s Catholic bishops have their work cut out for them.
Kevin Clarke is senior editor and chief correspondent for America media and the author of “Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out” (Liturgical Press). He is on Twitter at @clarkeatamerica.
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