19 April 2001

McCarrick Objects To Execution Viewing

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington yesterday deplored plans to let relatives of those killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing watch Timothy J. McVeigh's execution on closed-circuit television, and he said it would bring them only temporary comfort. "It is like going back to the Roman Colosseum," said McCarrick, who became head of the Washington Archdiocese in January. "I think that we're watching, in my mind, an act of vengeance, and vengeance is never justified. Vengeance belongs to God. . . . He's the master of life." McCarrick, 70, spoke about the death penalty and other issues in a wide-ranging interview with Washington Post reporters and editors. He admitted that as the offspring of "a New York police family" he had not always opposed capital punishment and that a great number of Catholics probably still favor it despite papal teachings that it is no longer justified. The former bishop of Newark leads an archdiocese that is home to a half-million Roman C!atholics and covers the District and five Maryland counties. He said two of the archdiocese's biggest problems are a shortage of priests, particularly ones who speak Spanish, and the difficulty of keeping talented teachers in Catholic schools because of higher salaries paid by area public school systems. He said he also is concerned that less than 10 percent of the children in archdiocesan schools are Latinos, despite Latinos making up about a third of the archdiocese's Catholics. McCarrick said he was "not willing to run a school system just for wealthy people." He said that archdiocesan schools are struggling to keep tuition affordable and that he hoped that "at a certain point in time something like a voucher program would be possible." At the same time, McCarrick noted, "most of our Catholic kids" are in public schools, and he said he is a champion of the public system. "But I happen to believe that competition . . . is the way to build up that system." The cardina!l said his early impression of religious life in the Washington area is that people of all faiths are more observant here. He said that about 25 percent of Catholics attend Mass weekly in Newark, compared to about one-third of Catholics here. McCarrick was asked about Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's announcement last week that the federal government would offer closed-circuit viewing of McVeigh's May 16 execution, the first time in nearly four decades that federal authorities have made such plans. Those legally entitled to watch the execution include 285 survivors, as well as 2,000 relatives of the 168 people slain in the bombing. About 15 percent of those eligible have expressed a desire to witness the execution. "I would hope [the viewing] would not be made a spectacle," McCarrick said. "You can put somebody to death and you walk away and you say, 'I'm glad I did that.' But after five minutes, I think you're saying, 'What was that all about?' " The cardinal said he! would counsel grieving relatives that "there is another way to get closure." "It sounds Pollyannaish, but I truly believe that the only thing that gives closure . . . is the peace that comes from a relationship with God that spills over into a relationship with your neighbor," he said. "That person is in jail for the rest of his life," McCarrick said. "After a while -- unless he's crazy, and if he's crazy we shouldn't do it anyway -- the cries of those kids and the screams of the people have got to be a greater penalty than just taking his life." McCarrick, who sent a letter to Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) on Good Friday requesting a two-year moratorium on capital punishment, said he did not always oppose the death penalty. "I come from a New York police family," he said, with an uncle and a cousin on the force. "When your uncle would go out, you were hoping he'd be able to come back. He got hurt once; he got shot once. So all those things create a . . . cer!tain mind-set." He said working with disadvantaged members of society forced him to rethink the matter. "First of all," he asked, "is the person who's getting the death sentence the one who didn't have a good lawyer -- who wasn't well-educated and didn't know how to defend him or herself?" McCarrick said he was also persuaded by Pope John Paul II's insistence on the value of every human life. "When you give the state the control of life, you're taking it away from God, . . . and that's the position . . . I have come to now," he said. As for the rest of his family, he said, "I think they're coming around."