The Catholic Church, the Death Penalty, and "Development of Doctrine"

I think many MOJ readers will be interested in John Allen's Friday missive over at NCR (here).  Some execrpts follow:

It would probably be pushing things a bit far to suggest that Tuesday's vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations in favor of a global moratorium on the death penalty is a victory for the Catholic church. It is, however, a result difficult to imagine without the Catholic contribution.

Consider the following footprints of Catholic influence:

• The principal NGO lobbying for the measure, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, composed of 64 member organizations in various parts of the world, was founded in Rome in 2002 under the auspices of the Community of Sant'Egidio, one of the "new movements" in the Catholic church;
• Ten nations co-authored the resolution: Albania, Angola, Brazil, Croatia, Gabon, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, and East Timor. Eight of the ten are majority Catholic states, where numerous Catholic associations and activists, as well as bishops' conferences, have been in the forefront of abolitionist efforts;
• The nation that formally presented the resolution was Gabon, one of nine majority Catholic nations in Africa. In announcing its own decision in September to remove the death penalty from its statute books, the government of Gabon specifically cited the work of Sant'Egidio;
• When Egypt attempted to scuttle the measure by attaching an anti-abortion amendment, both the Philippines and the Vatican responded by saying that while they would enthusiastically support a separate resolution on abortion, they did not want the pro-life cause to be instrumentalized in order to block progress on the death penalty, thereby saving the resolution;
• Perhaps the diplomatic mainstay of the campaign for a global moratorium over the last 15 years has been Italy, with the strong backing of the Vatican.

The non-binding resolution passed by a vote of 104 nations in favor against 54 opposed, with 29 abstentions and five nations not present. The United States joined China, Iran, Sudan, Singapore and several Caribbean states in opposing it.

Though legislative success is always the result of heterogeneous coalitions, it's quite possible that without the strong anti-death penalty activism that's taken shape within global Catholicism over the last several decades, which came to a crescendo under Pope John Paul II, Tuesday's result may never have occurred. In 1996, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that Catholicism has witnessed a "development in doctrine" on the death penalty. The UN vote hints at the social capital of the Catholic church which this development has unleashed.

I sat down this week for an interview with Mario Marazziti, the leading spokesperson for Sant'Egidio after its founder, Andrea Riccardi, and a key figure in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Marazziti was in New York for Tuesday's vote.

How important has the church been?
Very important. The Catholic church, especially under John Paul II and continuing with what it's doing now, has had a real role in accompanying this change over the last 20 years, and the Philippines is one of the cases where you see that most clearly.

We've worked side-by-side with Cardinal [Renato] Martino [President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace]. He gave me a short interview to be used on Nov. 30, when we had our "Cities Against the Death Penalty" event. He said something to us that has never been said at such a high level before: "The death penalty is homicide." Unfortunately the media didn't pick up on it, but the clear meaning is that you can't answer one crime with another.

By 'the Vatican,' you mean in this case Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the nuncio of the Holy See as a Permanent Observer to the UN?
Yes. The central point was that the Holy See supports the defense of life in every circumstance, but on this very important subject we don't want to see [the resolution] instrumentalized for other questions. It was a very interesting position. Of course, the Vatican doesn't vote at the UN. Nevertheless, they said the defense of life is an important subject, but exactly for that reason it has to be without exceptions. In substance, the point was that the Holy See doesn't support the way some say, 'We have to abolish the death penalty' but don't care about abortion, and meanwhile those who were now proposing something against abortion were doing so to uphold the death penalty. We shouldn't get into deciding which lives are worth defending. It was a very sharp, well-constructed position, and I thought it was quite clear.

In the end, what does this result mean?
First of all, the death penalty has officially become a question of human rights. From the point of view of the international community, this is new. … It fixes an official standard of justice without death. Even if it's not obligatory, it creates a moral standard. It will become ever more embarrassing for those countries that still use the death penalty.

* * *

So far, most global press coverage of the UN vote has not highlighted the Catholic contribution. In Italy especially, the tendency has been to attribute the outcome to the efforts of the Italian government and various secular humanitarian groups, especially those linked to the Radical Party, which has long campaigned against the death penalty.

On Thursday, L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, carried an interview with Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in the wake of the General Assembly resolution. In part, the interview focused on a perceived lack of recognition for Catholic efforts. Martino suggested that the church's role may be more difficult to appreciate since, for Catholics, the death penalty is part of a continuum of life issues that also features war, employment, and especially abortion.