Campaign set against executions

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States plan tomorrow to launch what they are calling a major campaign to end the use of the death penalty.

The bishops, according to an aide, have been emboldened by two recent Supreme Court decisions limiting executions, and by polling that they say shows a dramatic increase in opposition to capital punishment among Catholic Americans.

Their campaign, which is to be announced by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick at a news conference in Washington, is to include legislative action, legal advocacy, educational work, and a new website to be named www.ccedp.org, for the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

''We think that, with a lot of work, the time will come, not too far down the road, when the US no longer uses the death penalty," said John Carr, director of social development and world peace at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. ''Because of what we believe, and the leadership we've gotten from the Holy See, we ought to be in the forefront of that effort."

Carr said the bishops have been stepping up their activity in opposition to the death penalty in recent years. He cited as examples the bishops' decision to file amicus curiae briefs in two Supreme Court cases, one last year regarding the execution of juveniles and one in 2000 regarding the execution of the mentally ill. In each case, the court issued rulings limiting the use of the death penalty, and in the earlier case the court majority cited the bishops' brief.

''I can't remember such a vigorous effort on our part, and I can't remember as many victories, or as much progress in terms of the attitudes of the Catholic community," Carr said. ''What's different about this is that it's a campaign -- it's not just words -- it's how we teach, it's in our textbooks, it's how we preach, and it's our role in the public square."

The campaign is being launched in part to mark the 25th anniversary of the US bishops' first major statement against the death penalty. In that 1980 statement, the bishops declared that abolition of the death penalty would be ''a challenge to us as a people to find ways of dealing with criminals that manifest intelligence and compassion rather than power and vengeance."

The news conference is being scheduled at the start of Holy Week because, Carr said, at this time of year Catholics are reflecting on the execution of Jesus.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group that opposes capital punishment, 956 people have been executed in the United States since 1976; 119 death row inmates have been exonerated.

The Roman Catholic Church does not oppose capital punishment in principle, but instead teaches that it is not justifiable in contemporary society because it is possible to guarantee public safety through other means. The US bishops voted to oppose capital punishment in 1974, but their activity has intensified as a result of repeated and outspoken criticism of the death penalty from Pope John Paul II, who declared on a visit to St. Louis in 1999 that ''the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil."

''Traditionally the argument had been that society has the right to defend itself against people who were serious threats to the common good as a whole, but the argument has developed in recent years that there are very substantial ways to protect society that don't involve taking a life of a person who is guilty of a crime," said the Rev. David Hollenbach, a professor of theology at Boston College. ''This pope has taken an increasingly vigorous position in opposition to the death penalty, and that opposition is now contained within the catechism."

Many Catholic bishops have been outspoken in their opposition to capital punishment on the local level; for example, Carr said, three bishops in New Mexico were deeply involved in a hard-fought but unsuccessful recent effort to end the use of the death penalty there.

In Massachusetts, one of 12 states where the death penalty is prohibited, Cardinal Bernard F. Law spoke out repeatedly against proposals to re-impose the death penalty here in 1985, and several times in the late 1990s.

And the current archbishop, Sean P. O'Malley, reacted strongly last year to a proposal by Governor Mitt Romney to reinstate the death penalty. O'Malley, writing in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Pilot, called capital punishment ''a barbaric practice" and ''state-sponsored violence."

At tomorrow's news conference, McCarrick is to be joined by Bud Welch, a Catholic who became an outspoken opponent of the death penalty after his daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, and Kirk Bloodsworth, who became a Catholic while on death row for a murder conviction. Bloodsworth was the first death-row inmate to have been exonerated because of DNA evidence.

At the news conference, McCarrick is to announce the results of a new poll, commissioned by the bishops' conference, that shows a ''dramatic rise in Catholic opposition to the death penalty," the bishops' conference said in a statement. Pollster John Zogby declined to provide specifics in advance of the news conference, but said the change in attitude follows years in which a majority of Catholics supported capital punishment despite the bishops' opposition.

''There's been a noticeable decline in support, so that Catholics are just about split on the death penalty," Zogby said. ''Catholics, like the rest of the nation, were strongly in support of the death penalty just 10 years ago."

Zogby said that younger Catholics, those who are members of ethnic minority groups, and those who frequently attend Mass are most likely to oppose the death penalty.

According to the Gallup Poll, general public support for the death penalty has ranged from a low of 42 percent in 1966 to a high of 80 percent in 1994. Last year, based on two national polls on the subject, Gallup said 68 percent of Americans said they support the death penalty.

Among Catholics, as many as 75 percent supported the death penalty in the 1990s, according to Thomas C. Berg, a codirector of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. But a more recent poll of Catholics, taken in 2003 by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, found that 54 percent of Catholics support the death penalty and that 44 percent were opposed.

''The numbers have now shifted, and it's a very significant change," Berg said. ''This really got a head of steam around 2000 or 2001 with a lot of findings of innocence , but then Sept. 11 kicked in and took the issue off the priority list."

Some politically conservative Catholics have questioned the status of the church's position against capital punishment, which they view as less central than the church's opposition to abortion. The former Oklahoma governor, Frank Keating, for example, was a supporter of capital punishment and suggested that church leaders had misunderstood church doctrine.

''Some people dismiss the teaching as merely prudential, rather than a bedrock teaching," Berg said. ''But whatever arguments there are about the exact status of it, if you look at the symbolic message, there's been a strong symbolism of the pope and the bishops being against the death penalty."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.