Catholic governors inconsistent on role of death penalty

By Kate Scanlon OSV News

Some Catholic governors are embracing the use of capital punishment as part of their political platforms despite the Catholic Church’s opposition to the practice. Another Catholic governor in a southern state recently called for an end to the practice.

However, despite the support for the practice from some Republican governors, a growing number of Republican state lawmakers are backing efforts to repeal the death penalty, marking a notable shift in conservatives’ views on the matter.

On April 20, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation, SB 450, that will eliminate the state’s requirement that juries in capital punishment cases agree unanimously to recommend death sentences, lowering the number of jurors needed to hand down a death sentence from 12 to eight, the lowest threshold of any U.S. state. Florida’s Catholic bishops criticized the legislation, which is an outlier among states where the death penalty remains legal. Of the 27 states that permit capital punishment, three do not require a unanimous jury to impose it. Alabama allows a 10-2 decision, while Missouri and Indiana allow a judge to decide when there is a divided jury, according to the National Center for State Courts.

DeSantis, who is seen as a likely contender for the 2024 Republican presidential primary but has not declared his candidacy, is Catholic.

Texas has a long history of capital punishment, having carried out more executions than any other U.S. state to date, executing 583 people since 1982, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. A 1998 report by the Department of Justice found that Texas “executes more people than any other jurisdiction in the Western world.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is Catholic, has called capital punishment

“Texas justice.” Abbott oversaw five executions in 2022, tying his state with Oklahoma for most executions in the country last year.

By Beth Griffin OSV News

Sadness, relief and hope accompanied the April 13 decision by the Sisters of Charity of New York to embark on a “path to completion,” according to Sister Donna Dodge, president of the congregation founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Delegates to the group’s 2023 general assembly voted unanimously to stop recruiting or accepting new members, while continuing to live their mission to the fullest.

Sister Dodge told OSV News May 3 the immediate response of the delegates to the vote “was very moving. There was absolute silence in the room, and there were tears, but we are filled with hope and it is somewhat of a freeing experience.”

Former Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican and a Catholic who is now a U.S. senator for the Cornhusker State, helped finance a referendum in 2016 to preserve the death penalty after his state’s unicameral Republican Legislature voted to repeal it the previous year.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who is Catholic, called for an end to the death penalty in Louisiana during his final State of the State address April 10, arguing doing so would reflect Louisiana’s identity as a “pro-life state.”

Despite a push from some Republican governors in defense of the practice, Demetrius Minor, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said that support for the death penalty is not conservative.

“It’s natural to have an emotional response to tragedies that occur. But policy cannot be rooted in emotion,” Minor told OSV News. “Here are the facts about the death penalty: It’s a wasteful and expensive government program. It has an unacceptable probability of executing innocent people. It is failed policy for victims’ families. It is also arbitrarily and unfairly administered by the government.”

Minor said Texas and Florida should follow the example of “Republican states such as Ohio, where there is legislation in the Ohio General Assembly, with the GOP controlling both the House and Senate chambers, to repeal the death penalty.” In the previous two years, 11 states had GOP-sponsored bills to end the death penalty, Minor said. “Republicans are also helping lead death penalty repeal campaigns in Kentucky, Kansas and Missouri,” he added. Several decades of surveys conducted by Gallup have shown that more Americans say they favor the death penalty for a person convicted of murder. A Nov. 14 Gallup survey found support for the death penalty was at 55% last year, a significant decline from 1994, when the survey recorded its alltime high of 80%.

Justin McCarthy, a spokesperson for Gallup, told OSV News that in recent decades, “smaller majorities have supported capital punishment compared to the peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s — but still, most Americans support it.”

In his 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis cited the writings of St. John Paul II, arguing that his predecessor “stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice.”

“There can be no stepping back from this position,” Pope Francis wrote.

“Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.” In 2018, Pope Francis revised paragraph No. 2267 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church to reflect that position.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, told OSV News that “for years, capital punishment was considered a partisan issue, but over time, that’s become less and less true.”

“Today, much of the progress being made to abolish the death penalty is being spearheaded by Republican politicians,” Vaillancourt Murphy said.

Opposition to the death penalty is a consistent pro-life view, she said, and it is not surprising more Republican lawmakers and voters are embracing that view, despite the actions of some Republican governors.

“It’s not hard to see why this is,” she said. “Republicans — especially Catholic Republicans — who profess pro-life values, fiscal conservatism and a dislike for government overreach have ample reasons to oppose the death penalty. Likewise, Democrats who focus on racial equity, fairness, fighting against inequality, and health and safety recognize that capital punishment does not advance any of these goals.”

Despite growing bipartisan opposition to the practice, Vaillancourt Murphy said, “when an election season rolls around, we sometimes start to see politicians promote pro-execution rhetoric and legislation.”

“Recently, a handful of Catholic Republican leaders deviated from their party’s increasingly anti-death penalty position, and their Church’s unconditionally pro-life position, in order to ramp up executions in their states for political gain,” she said. “These leaders might believe what they’re signaling is a ‘tough on crime’ public image, but what they’re actually signaling is a willingness to compromise on deeply held Catholic principles and so-called Republican values.”

She said the Holy Spirit was present as the sisters voted and then acknowledged the outcome by singing the hymn “Ubi Caritas” (“Where there is love and charity, God is there”).

The vote was not unexpected. Sister Dodge said the congregation, like many others in the United States, has been challenged by a dearth of vocations. “In 21 years, no one entered and stayed. That was the reality; we all knew it but didn’t want to name it,” she said.

The median age of the Sisters of Charity of New York is 83. There are currently 154 members in the community. Demographic statistics suggest the congregation may have only 35 members 15 years from now, Sister Dodge said.

The Sisters of Charity are not the first to head toward completion, and congregations throughout the country are discerning their future options.

In 2022, there were 36,321 religious sisters in the U.S., according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which is affiliated with Georgetown University. That compares to approximately 100,000 sisters 30 years earlier.

The Sisters of Charity of New York belong to the Sisters of Charity Federation, which includes 14 congregations of women religious founded or inspired by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac. There are 1,871 sisters in the member congregations.

Sister Dodge said her group would refer potential vocations to the federation.

The Sisters of Charity of New York operate or sponsor programs dedicated to education, health and human services, and peace and justice in New York.

The logistics of the path to completion are complex. Sister Dodge said that the congregation’s leadership will spend the next few years working with the laypeople who lead many of the ministries to determine the best role for the sisters in those operations going forward.

She said the sisters have addressed financial and health care planning for many years, but also will now need to determine how the congregation’s property will be used, sold or repurposed, and where the archives will reside.

The Sisters of Charity began its work in New York in 1817 when the foundress, then-Mother Seton, dispatched three sisters from the group’s fledgling organization in Maryland to open an orphanage in lower Manhattan.

uBishops in Texas troubled by ’disregard for life.’ A vehicle crashed into a crowd waiting at a bus stop outside a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 10, authorities said. Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville called the crash indicative of a “corrosive tendency” to devalue vulnerable human life. Around 8:30 a.m. on May 7, a gray Range Rover crashed into a bus stop where a group of individuals were waiting for a bus, several of whom were sitting on a curb as the unmarked city bus stop lacked a bench, local police said. The driver, George Alvarez, 34, has been charged with eight counts of manslaughter, police said. The bus stop is outside the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center, where surveillance footage captured the incident. Many of the victims were Venezuelan men, local officials said, who were waiting for a bus back to downtown Brownsville after spending the night at the shelter. In another tragedy, Dallas Bishop Edward Burns addressed the faithful of that diocese “with a heavy heart” late May 6 after at least eight people, including a child, were killed during a mass shooting that afternoon at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas. “Like all of you, I am deeply troubled by the shooting in the community of Allen and the senseless disregard for life that has occurred in our community,” Bishop Burns said in a statement. “The Catholic community is in unity and solidarity with the families who have lost loved ones in this tragedy.” Late May 7, the Texas Department of Public Safety identified the gunman as Mauricio Garcia, 33, and investigators were looking into whether he had ties to extremist groups.

uPossible eucharistic miracle in Connecticut under Vatican investigation. A possible eucharistic miracle in Connecticut is now under investigation by the Vatican. Archbishop Leonard Blair told a Hartford television news station May 2 that the Dicastery (formerly Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith will examine whether an apparent multiplication of Communion hosts during a March 5 liturgy at St. Thomas Church in Thomaston, Connecticut, was supernatural. The church, along with Immaculate Conception Church and St. Casimir Church, both in Terryville, Connecticut, is part of St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish. St. Maximilian Kolbe pastor Father Joseph Crowley said in a YouTube livestream of his March 12 homily that an unnamed extraordinary minister of holy Communion at the previous week’s liturgy had begun to run out of hosts — only to find that “all of a sudden there (were) more hosts in the ciborium.” Speaking to media May 2, Archbishop Blair said he had “(sent) out an experienced priest who has knowledge of Church law, canon law, to follow procedure, (and) to just examine exactly what happened and under what circumstances.” He noted that “the guidelines for these kinds of situations do call for me to notify the (Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.” The Vatican’s investigation is expected to take approximately two weeks.

uNew eucharistic procession aims to bring Christ into the U.S. capital’s public square. When Father Charles Trullols was growing up in Spain, solemn eucharistic processions on the streets were a regular part of the Catholic way of worship. The director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington for the past six years wants to start his own annual tradition for the CIC with a Saturday, May 20, procession — not connected to any liturgical observance — through downtown Washington. Father Trullols told OSV News he found inspiration from his seven years in Rome participating in the “really beautiful” eucharistic processions of St. John Paul II. The procession begins May 20 with a 9:30 a.m. Mass at the CIC, which is just two blocks from the White House. The route is about a mile in length and includes Farragut Square, Lafayette Square and McPherson Square. The May 20 date was chosen for the probability of temperate weather “so families can come in the morning,” Father Trullols said. “The streets are quiet at that moment.” The route focuses on statues of historical figures on the squares, Father Trullols explained, “so we can pray for our country.” uAbortion bans fail in GOP-controlled Nebraska and South Carolina. Abortion bans failed in Nebraska and South Carolina, two Republican-led states, while passing in North Dakota in the final week of April. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June that overturned prior rulings by the high court — including Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which found abortion access to be a constitutional right — many states moved to either restrict or expand access to the procedure. In Nebraska, lawmakers in the unicameral Legislature came one vote short of breaking a filibuster April 27 to vote on a six-week abortion ban. In a post on its Facebook page, the Nebraska Catholic Conference said the state’s Legislature “failed to protect mothers and babies from abortion. ... The bill may have died, but we’re not done. We have all shown up and given our greatest of efforts.” In South Carolina, state senators rejected a bill April 27 that would have banned nearly all abortions in a 22-21 vote. Meanwhile, Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed a law April 24 banning nearly all abortions, with narrow exceptions in the first six weeks for cases of rape or incest, and narrow exceptions beyond six weeks for medical emergencies. If North Dakota’s law goes into effect, it is not immediately clear how much impact it would have in a state with no remaining abortion facilities. uUS religious freedom panel finds conditions ‘worsening’ around the globe. Conditions for religious freedom are “worsening” around the globe, a U.S. government body monitoring international religious freedom said in a recent report. In its 2023 report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom identified “regression” last year in countries including Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua and Russia. The annual report by the independent, bipartisan commission makes recommendations to the U.S. government for the promotion and protection of religious freedom abroad.

— OSV News