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April 11, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 7Oakland,
CA
U.S. Catholic bishops launch
campaign to end death penalty
WASHINGTON—The nation’s Catholic bishops
have launched a nationwide campaign against the death penalty, citing
new evidence that support for capital punishment is slipping among Catholic
faithful.
The new campaign, released during Holy Week when Christians recall Jesus’
state-ordered execution, comes in the wake of two recent Supreme Court
decisions that outlawed executions for juveniles and the mentally retarded.
“I pray I will see the day when we have given up the illusion that
we can teach that killing is wrong by killing people,” said Cardinal
Theodore McCarrick of Washington.
Although the Church has long opposed capital punishment, the new campaign
is a sign that Catholic leaders think they have gained the moral upper
hand, and public opinion is fluid enough to render the death penalty obsolete,
if not extinct.
A new Zogby poll of 1,785 Catholics commissioned by the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops found that support for capital punishment has slipped
from a high of 68 percent in 2001 to 48 percent in the recent poll.
The poll found that minds can be changed—nearly one-third (29 percent)
of Catholics who oppose the death penalty said they had once supported
it but have since had a change of heart.
Opposition was strongest among 18-28-year-olds, people who attended Catholic
schools, and worshippers who attend weekly Mass. The poll had a margin
of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
One of those Catholics who has changed his mind on capital punishment
is Cardinal McCarrick, who grew up in a family of New York City police
officers and once favored the death penalty. He said he long ago changed
his mind.
Pollster John Zogby said the results mirror a larger “seismic shift”
in public opinion against the death penalty, fueled by the cases of death
row inmates who were freed through advanced DNA testing, and overall unease
with the soundness of the legal system.
Zogby said Catholics are not alone in their reassesement.
“What’s changed is the intensity (of opinion), which is now
in favor of the opposition,” he said.
Bud Welch, who lost his daughter Julie in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing,
also changed his mind on the death penalty. He said the execution of convicted
bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001 brought him little peace.
“When we killed Tim McVeigh, it didn’t bring this little girl
back,” he said, holding up a photo of his daughter. “It only
took another life.”
Church teaching on the death penalty does not carry the same ironclad
prohibition as abortion. Although the Church allows capital punishment
in limited cases, Cardinal McCarrick said it is “very very difficult”
to justify its use.
“In principle, the state does have that right, but it’s the
use of that right” that the Church objects to, the cardinal said.
Cardinal McCarrick, the Church’s unofficial liaison to lawmakers
in Washington, said the Church would seek to persuade politicians, including
President Bush, that the death penalty is no longer warranted.
He and other Church officials noted the confusion generated in last year’s
presidential election when some bishops chided Sen. John Kerry for his
support of abortion rights but did not apply equal criticism to Bush’s
support of the death penalty.
John Carr, the bishops’ director of social policy, said the death
penalty needs to become ingrained as part of the Church’s consistent
teaching of “life issues.”
