On August 3, 2018, Pope Francis made a decisive change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, declaring that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” For many Catholics, this represented a profound moment of clarity and consistency in the Church’s teaching on human dignity and the sanctity of human life. For others, including some public figures and media personalities who self-identify as “orthodox” Catholics, it marked a point of severe contention. They saw the revised teaching as an unacceptable rupture with 2,000 years of consistent Catholic doctrine. The backlash and open defiance among certain Catholics against the pope’s teaching, especially in the United States, is not just astonishing — it is the symptom of deeply experienced doubts and fears about the veracity of Christ’s promises to his Church. In a nutshell, it signifies a serious crisis of faith.
The shift in the Church’s stance on the death penalty did not happen overnight. It emerged from decades of reflection, moral development, and a growing understanding of human dignity. Many popes over more than a century — spanning from Pope Benedict XV through Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI —contributed to the trajectory that Pope Francis finally formalized. Nevertheless, the reactions from certain quarters expose a troubling rigidity — a resistance not only to change but to the very idea that Church teaching can deepen and develop in unexpected ways while remaining in continuity with Catholic Tradition and faithful to the Gospel.
A Historical Context of Clemency and Mercy
The development of the Church’s teaching on the death penalty is reflected in numerous papal interventions aimed at sparing lives — including in the decades prior to the Second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict XV’s appeal for clemency on behalf of Edith Cavell during World War I and Pope Pius XII’s attempts to save Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the early 1950s are prime examples. These were not isolated gestures of mercy; they were reflections of a broader theological understanding that life, even the life of a condemned criminal, holds intrinsic value.
In the case of the Rosenbergs, the New York Times reported in February 1953 that the Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano stated that Pope Pius XII asked that the execution not be carried out, because “when it was a matter of saving human lives, the Pope never refused to intervene, ‘though without being able to enter into the merits of the case.’” In other words Pius XII’s plea for clemency was an intervention based on moral principles, not a commentary on the Rosenbergs’ innocence or guilt.
As I noted in my original article on Pope Pius XII and the Rosenbergs, the 1953 New York Times article makes an incorrect claim, that Pius “did not intervene in favor of men condemned to death at the Nuremberg war crimes trial.” The historical record demonstrates that this is not true, noting that Pius XII asked for clemency on behalf of numerous Nazi war criminals condemned at Nuremburg, including Arthur Greiser, Hans Frank, and Otto Ohlendorf. All three were notorious for the evil they committed — they were responsible for sending tens or even hundreds of thousands to their deaths — yet nevertheless, Pius XII asked that their lives be spared. Naturally, the pope received harsh criticism for his unpopular appeals, but it’s clear that for Pope Pius XII, neither the gravity of the crime nor the ideology or religion of the condemned held him back from his calls for clemency.
Digging through the archives of the New York Times from 1915 through 1959 alone, I found many articles mentioning pleas for clemency from Popes Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII — with cases including murderers in the US, Spanish Socialists, Italian political prisoners, French Jews, Belgian prisoners of war, and prisoners condemned by Soviet Russia. Digging into this would be a fascinating research subject to explore, and perhaps I will do so at a later time. But based on a preliminary survey of these reports, the historical data contradicts the portraits of the preconciliar popes that death penalty advocates like to present, because it shows clearly the increasing awareness of human dignity over time.
Several decades later, the US bishops began to speak out against the death penalty, both as a body and as individuals. The Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal William Baum, underscored this point in 1976 when he wrote that the abolition of the death penalty is a natural outgrowth of humanity’s increasing moral awareness. According to Baum, “Contemporary attempts to restore capital punishment represent a setback in the growing moral awareness of humanity concerning the God-given gift of life.”
That same year, Bishop Rene Gracida — then bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee — wrote movingly to his diocese against the death penalty:
“We can never forget that our Lord, Jesus Christ, was executed. God has revealed to us why he chose to redeem us. God has also revealed to us why he chose to redeem us by sending as redeemer his only begotten Son. What God has not explicitly revealed to us is why, among the countless ways in which the innocent Lamb of God could have been offered up for our sins, the Father chose to have his Son be found guilty of a law which demanded the death penalty. And so Jesus, who was sinless and guilty of no crime, was judged to be guilty and was executed. Perhaps by planning our redemption through such a miscarriage of justice, God has revealed to us that the deliberate act by which society takes a human life in the name of ‘law and order’ is a heinous perversion of justice.
We Christians must seek to conform our lives not only to the letter of the teachings of Jesus, but also to the spirit of his life and teachings. The manner of his death speaks eloquently to us — more eloquently even than some of the fragments of his verbal teachings which the evangelists recorded for us in the Gospels. The death of Jesus must serve to illuminate our minds as we examine the relationship between Christians and civil law, especially law which imposes the death penalty.”
The US bishops have issued numerous statements opposing the death penalty since 1974, and they have overwhelmingly approved two major statements on the issue, a Bishops’ Statement on Capital Punishment (1980) and A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death (2005). The 1980 statement was approved by a margin of 145-31, but with a remarkable 41 abstentions. The 2005 document, however, which came after Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae and the 1997 revision of the death penalty teaching in the Catechism, was approved by an overwhelming 237-4 margin. More recently, in June 2019, the US bishops voted 194 to 8 with three abstentions to update language on the death penalty in the US Catholic Catechism for Adults to conform with the universal Catechism (still overwhelming, especially given the complicated relationship of the US bishops with Pope Francis). If opposition to the death penalty is the consensus of the bishops in the US (of all places), it’s safe to suggest that this is the case throughout the world. It’s likely that none of us will see a reversal in the foreseeable future.
This historical continuum demonstrates that Pope Francis’s development in 2018 was not an aberration but a culmination. It was a recognition that the consistent message of the Gospel — mercy, redemption, and the dignity of the person — is incompatible with state-sanctioned killing.
For those who reject this development, where have you been?
The Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty and the reasons for it have been clear for a long time and have only grown stronger. This development, rooted in respect for human dignity, began long before any Catholic alive today was born, and will likely (and hopefully) continue long after we are gone.
This begs the question: Is the opposition rooted in a genuine concern for orthodoxy and upholding the Church’s teachings, or is it reflective of a deeper unwillingness to reconcile personal beliefs with the Magisterium — the living tradition of the Church? Are Catholic death penalty supporters living in denial? Are they clinging desperately to a vision of the Church that is hopelessly based on a fantasy?
To be continued… (Click here for Part 2)
Image: Adobe Stock. By JJ Gouin
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. He and Jeannie Gaffigan co-host Field Hospital, a U.S. Catholic podcast.
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