Francis rebuked his predecessors: “Let us take responsibility for the past and recognize that the imposition of the death penalty was dictated by a mentality more legalistic than Christian.” In recent years, however, the Church has been steadily moving toward a rejection of the practice. In 1995, Pope John Paul II welcomed efforts to oppose the death penalty in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, affirming that “modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime … without definitively denying [criminals] the chance to reform.” Some local groups of bishops have prioritized this issue: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, has frequently urged legislatures and governors to reject the procedure and put this issue at the center of its advocacy efforts. But the Church never quite declared its full opposition to the death penalty. John Paul II wrote that cases in which the death penalty is an “absolute necessity” are “very rare, if not practically non-existent,” but allowed for those exceptions. Until this week, the Catechism had taught that “traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty” if it’s the only way to protect human lives. Now Francis has moved to make the Church’s position on the death penalty absolute. “The death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity,” he said last fall. He called for an official change to the Catechism, which was formalized this week. A Cassandra cry against Pope Francis For all of Francis’s moral resolution, changing Church teachings is a big step, and can be controversial. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body that oversees Church teachings, justified the update based on “new” context: “increasing awareness” of the dignity of human beings, a “new understanding” of the consequences of state punishment, and the development of “more effective systems of detention” that still allow for the “possibility of redemption.” Because of this, the Church has concluded that the death penalty is “inadmissible.” The Church’s new position doesn’t actually contradict past teachings, they claimed; the context is what has changed. In general, this posture toward change has been one of Francis’s legacies: He believes Church teachings should be updated to reflect contemporary moral understandings. As he said in his 2017 address on the death penalty, “The word of God cannot be mothballed like some old blanket in an attempt to keep insects at bay!” This is a controversial position within an institution that has often declared itself a bulwark against the moral relativism of modern times. Even when Francis has clearly desired to change Church teachings on various subjects, he has framed these changes as continuous with past teachings, and has had to navigate dramatic internal Church politics along the way. The new Catholic teaching on the death penalty underscores the Church’s commitment to the preservation of life. But it’s also a case study in how the Church can choose to change to meet the moral demands of modern times.<doc-sep>Rome (CNN) Pope Francis has declared that the death penalty is never admissible and that the Catholic Church will work towards its abolition around the world, the Vatican formally announced Thursday. The change, which has been added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, makes official a position that the Pope has articulated since he became pontiff. The church now teaches that "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person" and states that it will "work with determination towards its abolition worldwide," the Vatican said. The declaration by Pope Francis, who is spiritual leader to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, may have particular resonance in the United States, where capital punishment remains legal in 31 states and as a federal punishment. The Catholic Church's teaching on the death penalty has slowly evolved since the time of Pope John Paul II, who served from 1978 to 2005.<doc-sep>Support for the death penalty remains relatively high in the United States, but it has seen diminishing returns among Americans in recent years. According to a June report from the Pew Research Center, 78 percent of U.S. adults supported the death penalty for persons convicted of murder in 1996, but in 2018 that support dropped to 54 percent. Meanwhile, opposition to its use grew more than 20 points during the same period. In recent years, Republican lawmakers have introduced bills to end the death penalty in New Hampshire, Nebraska, Utah, Missouri, Ohio, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kentucky, Kansas and Washington state. It's a growing movement that has earned the attention of those who have long advocated against the punishment. "The conservative movement is beginning to really understand all the issues," said Schieber. "They are a wonderful team to be involved with." "I don’t see [God] telling me to put people to death. That’s not the faith I’ve come to know and, the pope as the spokesperson for that faith, has happily validated that." It's that team that almost passed legislation that would have ended the death penalty in New Hampshire with bipartisan support. Both the House and Senate passed it, but New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu killed the legislation when he vetoed the bill in late June. State Sen. Kevin Avard, who is not Catholic but was raised in a Catholic family, pointed out that his bill to put a stop to executions in New Hampshire had 13 co-sponsors who came to the same conclusion for different reasons. Many cited their religious faith, some did not find death row to be fiscally feasible and others did not think the government should have that much power or feared putting an innocent man to death. "When that many people from that many different viewpoints came together amid the political hostility of late, it’s really refreshing to see that we can agree," Avard said. "And we do. It’s hazardous to ignore that." Republican sponsorship of bills that would end the death penalty have increased significantly over the past five years. Phil McCausland / Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty And for an increasing number of Catholics in politics, it's also hazardous to continue to support executions. That's why Colby Coash, a former Nebraska senator, was able to convince his fellow lawmakers to abolish the death penalty in 2015. Voters overturned that legislation in a November 2016 ballot imitative. Coash said his faith turned him from once being a supporter of the death penalty to one of its strongest opponents. "Through my faith, I don’t see [God] telling me to put people to death," he said. "That’s not the faith I’ve come to know and the pope as the spokesperson for that faith has happily validated that." But not all view the pope's declaration as enough to change the laws of their state. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, a devout Catholic, said he would not change the laws of Nebraska. Gov. Pete Ricketts and fiirst lady Susanne Shore wave to spectators lining the route of the Salute to Summer parade in La Vista, Nebraska on May 26, 2018. Nati Harnik / AP file “While I respect the pope’s perspective, capital punishment remains the will of the people and the law of the state of Nebraska,” the governor said in a statement acquired by the New York Times. “It is an important tool to protect our corrections officers and public safety. The state continues to carry out the sentences ordered by the court.” In April 2016, the Omaha World Herald reported that Ricketts, a businessman and part-owner of the Chicago Cubs, had invested $300,000 to groups working to reinstate the death penalty after the state legislature voted to repeal the practice. Now, in just over a week, the state is scheduled to execute convicted murderer Carey Dean Moore. It would be Nebraska's first execution in 21 years. But Ricketts is not the only Catholic governor in a state that maintains the practice of the death penalty. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, both Catholic Republicans, lead states that allow executions, but neither responded to multiple requests for comment on how their views might be affected by the pope's declaration. Nine offenders sit on death row in Idaho, where three people have been executed since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Two were executed under Otter's administration. Meanwhile, in Texas, 225 people face the state's death chamber. Abbott has overseen eight executions this year, and the state has put more than 550 people to death since 1977. Back in Nebraska, Coash said he didn't think that it would bring about immediate change, but future conservative lawmakers won't be able to take advantage of the Catholic Church's onetime flexible language. "In the long term it’s going to be good for the cause," Coash said. "I think it helps the church leadership with their message and it doesn't allow politicians to use a nuance as a shield. In the long term, it will help future conservative lawmakers who will want to take a stand."<doc-sep>Pope Francis threw the weight of the Catholic Church behind the death-penalty abolition movement on Thursday, releasing a new church teaching that says — quoting a speech by the pope last year — that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” That may come as a surprise to Catholics who thought the church already opposed the death penalty. And it did, in most instances, but it had carved out an exception if an execution was “the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor” (though Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1995 “Evangelium Vitae” on the sanctity of life that those circumstances “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent”). Among the reasons for the shift: Changes in detention practices now make prisons sufficient to protect the public from the homicidal. But the new teaching also notes that “there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.” Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion » Advertisement The new teaching isn’t likely to shift the weight of the debate over the death penalty, but in making the adjustment the church (finally) gets it exactly right and follows personal observations Francis has made in the past. The strongest argument here is that even those who have committed the most heinous of crimes remain human beings deserving of the dignity of life — a view that resonates with the secular world as well. But there’s a more justice-based reason to oppose the death penalty — which has propelled us to bang a steady drum. The capital punishment system in the U.S. has been rife with errors that have probably led to the execution of innocent people. In fact, one study published in 2014 by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that at least 4% of people on death row are innocent. They — and the 162 death row inmates who have been exonerated since 1973 — are victims of a system that is too susceptible to manipulation by the misdeeds of prosecutors, and the lies and errors of witnesses, to be relied on to divine absolute guilt. Which means capital punishment is not only immoral in concept, as Pope Francis points out, but also unreliable in practice. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook<doc-sep>
ROME— Pope Francis formally strengthened Catholic Church teaching against capital punishment, categorically prohibiting it as an attack on human dignity and calling for its abolition. The Vatican announced Thursday that the pope had approved revised language for the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an official compendium of doctrine, to state that the death penalty is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and that the church is working “with determination for its abolition worldwide.” Up to now, the church hasn’t entirely ruled out the death penalty if it “is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,” but noted such cases should be extremely rare. The change is the culmination of growing opposition to the death penalty by the last several popes, but also reflects the priorities of Pope Francis, who has emphasized issues of social and economic justice over sexual and medical ethics, and who late last year suggested that the church had always been wrong about the death penalty. Some conservative Catholics are likely to object that capital punishment remains at least theoretically permissible under traditional teaching. Ignatius Press, the English-language publisher of retired Pope Benedict XVI, last year published a study by two academics defending capital punishment on the basis of Catholic theology, philosophy and scripture. In 2011, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, told a law school audience: “If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign” from the U.S. Supreme Court. Catholic countries in Europe have abolished the death penalty, but the pope’s decision could fuel criticism of political leaders elsewhere, including the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte supports restoration of capital punishment. In justifying the change, the new language cites an “increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes” as well as the development of “more effective systems of detention” which can today protect society from dangerous criminals yet “do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.” The change follows a speech by Pope Francis last October, in which he called the death penalty “contrary to the Gospel,” and said that the church’s previous sanction and use of “this extreme and inhumane remedy that ignored the primacy of mercy over justice” was “dictated by a mentality more legalistic than Christian.” This is not the first change to the catechism in the direction of less tolerance for capital punishment. The original edition, published in 1992, while preferring “bloodless means” for the protection of human life, accepted as “well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.” Five years later, Pope John Paul II changed that language to match his reflections in a wide-ranging encyclical on the value of human life. The 1997 revisions have stood until the latest change by Pope Francis. Write to Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com