Reactions to pope on death penalty

Pope’s death penalty
stance praised


By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
The bishop called for forming consciences and reading the official letter.
Activists who’ve known people on death row rejoiced.
Theology professors pondered “change” and “development.”
These were among local Catholics’ reactions to last week’s announcement that Pope Francis is changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church to say the death penalty is “inadmissible.”     Bishop McManus said that the letter Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent bishops about this change was helpful to him. He highly recommended that the diocese’s priests read it.
The death penalty “no longer falls into the category of a prudential judgment,” Bishop McManus said. Catholics don’t have the right to make their own judgments about how to apply this Church teaching: the pope says the death penalty is inadmissible.
“It’s a significant development in doctrine,” Bishop McManus said. “It’s one that’s reasonable. … It’s something the Catholic faithful should not be surprised by.”
The Church previously said the death penalty was justified to restore the balance of justice, protect citizens from violent perpetrators and preserve the common good, Bishop McManus said. But, he said, Pope John Paul II said even a murderer is not beyond redemption, the Church tries to uphold life and United States bishops ask governors to commute death sentences of persons about to be executed.
Now young people must be catechized and the faithful need to form their own consciences according to this “authoritative teaching of the Church” about the death penalty, Bishop McManus said. Catholics need to be introduced to the Church’s moral teaching in order to freely accept it, he said.

Overjoyed

“I’m overjoyed at such a decision,” said Brayton Shanley, of the Agape lay Catholic community in Hardwick. He said he likes how Pope Francis speaks his mind, and reminds people of Jesus “in a loving, compassionate and forgiving way.”
“We’ve been witnessing against the death penalty since 1982” as a community, he said. In 1984, they began writing to Billy Neal Moore, and in 1985 visited him on death row in Georgia, he said. They campaigned to get Mr. Moore a commutation, which went from death to life, then to time served in the 1990s. Now Mr. Moore, who has spoken several times in the Worcester Diocese, is off parole and is to participate in Agape’s day about racism Oct. 6.

 
Grateful

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy said he and his wife, Claire, of the SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker House in Worcester, corresponded with Elmo Patrick Sonnier when he was on death row in Louisiana.
“He was executed not long before our marriage” in 1994, Mr. Schaeffer-Duffy said.  “We had his photo on our wedding program. We had a candle to remember him, on the altar.” (Mr. Sonnier’s spiritual adviser, Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph and prominent abolitionist, wrote “Dead Man Walking” about her work with him and others. The story was made into a movie with the same name.)
“I think, with the death penalty, people focus on the crime,” Mr. Schaeffer-Duffy said. “They don’t know the person. It’s easy to depersonalize someone you don’t know.” He said “we” human beings make terrible mistakes.
Jesus was a victim of the death penalty, who asked people to love their enemies, not execute them, he said.
We’ve incorporated the death penalty into our Stations of the Cross for many years,” Mr. Schaeffer-Duffy said of the Catholic Worker’s Good Friday prayers about contemporary issues. “We would pray for the Church to condemn (the death penalty) completely. And now that has happened. We’re really quite grateful.”
He said he thinks Pope Francis is very thoughtful; he does his homework before making a proclamation, and his statement about the death penalty is great to have in the catechism.        

Doctrine develops

What Pope Francis put into play “is not a significant difference from what has been taught for the last 20 years” or more, said Christopher Klofft, a moral theology professor at Assumption College.
Pope John Paul II allowed for the death penalty philosophically, but saw no reason to use it, he said. Pope Francis says the philosophical underpinning that permitted death penalty is faulty and it is intrinsically evil for the state to execute persons, who are made in God’s image and likeness.
“I teach that capital punishment is wrong and we should not do it,” he said.
Liberals wonder, if this is a change, what other changes they can push for, he said. Conservatives wonder whether a pope can change Church teaching. Professor Klofft said popes can’t change Church teaching by themselves, and that Church doctrine doesn’t change; it develops.         

Marvelous

“I think it’s marvelous,” Jesuit Father William Reiser, a theology professor at the College of the Holy Cross, said of Pope Francis’ statement.
“Some people are upset, but the fact is … the Church has changed its position on things,” like slavery, Father Reiser said. The Church’s thinking changes “as we’re open to the Spirit, as we listen to the times. … It’s what happens when a community is alive.”
The pope isn’t saying something new, but putting it in the catechism makes it official, he said.
“I’m sure there’ll be conversations on campus about this,” Father Reiser said; he expects to bring it up in his classes.
Deacon Peter R. Faford, who serves at St. Joseph Parish in Charlton, said the pastor, Father Robert A. Grattaroti, asked him to give a lesson about this death penalty teaching next month.
“How can you say, ‘Don’t kill,’ when the government’s killing people?” he asked. “If we don’t show respect for the dignity of human beings, why should someone else? … Every human life is precious. There’s only one of you.”