- May 19, 2001

 Religion Journal: Catholic Prelates Press Effort Against Execution

By GUSTAV NIEBUHR W hen federal officials postponed the execution of Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, last week, they also allowed more time for death penalty opponents, particularly some prominent religious leaders, to state their case.One who did so was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Indianapolis, Daniel M. Buechlein, whose stand against the execution was described in this column last month. Archbishop Buechlein issued a statement this week saying, "Any decision not to take a human life is a good decision, even if it represents only a temporary delay."Then there was Cardinal Bernard Law, the archbishop of Boston, who asked that Mr. McVeigh's sentence be commuted to life without parole. Cardinal Law was not the only American cardinal to object to the execution, which is now scheduled for June 11. A few days earlier, when the execution was still set for last Wednesday, Cardinal William Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore, and Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, issued a joint statement deploring Mr. McVeigh's "horrible crime," but also warning that his execution would "only compound the violence." They added, "It will not bring genuine healing or closure."Polls show that most Americans support capital punishment, and a large majority favors its use against the remorseless Mr. Veigh, whose 168 victims included 19 very young children.But some religious leaders have lately said that based on their observations, they believe support for the death penalty is diminishing a bit. In an interview in New York this week, Cardinal Keeler was asked whether he shared that belief.The cardinal, who is chairman of the bishops' Pro-Life Activities Committee, replied that he thought the present was "a moment of shift" on capital punishment among at least some of the nation's Catholics. He said he believed the issue was at work "especially by church-going Catholics and those in the pro-life community."What has gotten their attention, Cardinal Keeler said, has been Pope John Paul II's declarations against the use of capital punishment in modern society - a stand the pope made most emphatic when he visited the United States in January 1999 and persuaded Missouri's governor to commute the sentence of a murderer to life without parole.The idea that opposition to the death penalty might be growing among Catholics, who are also most opposed to abortion, was explored in an article in the Jesuit magazine America in April 2000. Drawing on data from the University of Michigan's General Social Survey, the article's authors, James R. Kelly and Christopher Kudlac, a professor and a graduate student, respectively, at Fordham University, reported that even before the pope's most recent visit, a decline in support for capital punishment had occurred among Catholics who opposed abortion for any reason.In 1996, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Kudlac wrote, 62 percent of those Catholics backed capital punishment - compared with 73 percent of the general population - but by 1998, that had slipped to 52.5 percent of the Catholics.In the interview, Cardinal Keeler also cited another reason, a theological one, for supporting life without parole as an alternative."It offers the possibility for conversion," he said.In their statement, he and Cardinal Mahony voiced a similar conclusion, saying that prison, rather than a death sentence, gave a killer time to repent his crime and allowed "the possibility of receiving God's grace."Immigrant PriestsAbout this time of year, the Catholic Church prepares to receive its new priests, as seminarians graduate, are ordained and step into ranks that have been depleted by the recent decline in religious vocations. But who are the men of the class of 2001?A study by Dean R. Hoge of Catholic University of America, summarized by the United States Catholic Conference, indicated that the proportion of men in this group who were born outside the country was rising. In a study of data about 343 seminarians out of more than 400 who are to be ordained, Professor Hoge found that 5 percent had been born in Mexico and 5 percent in Vietnam, the conference said. Including other nations of origin, 28 percent of the men in his study were born outside the United States, compared with 24 percent among the new priests in a similar study conducted in 1998.