The US bishops have voted to revise what the US Church teaches its adult members about the death penalty in a passage on the issue in the US Catechism for Adults.
The full body of bishops approved the revised passage by a vote of 194 to 8 with three abstentions. It now will need the approval, or ‘recognition’, of the Vatican.
The passage was the work of the bishops’ Committee on Evangelisation and Catechesis, chaired by Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles. On the first day of the bishops’ spring assembly in Baltimore, Bishop Barron said the wording emphasises the dignity of all people and the misapplication of capital punishment. Discussion of this wording was not meant to be a debate on the death penalty overall, he added.
The material given to bishops about the additional passage points out that last year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released the Pope’s revision to the teaching on the death penalty in the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In response to that action, the bishops’ Committee on Evangelisation and Catechesis made plans to replace its current text in the US adult catechesis with a revised statement.
The goal is to “keep our treatment of the death penalty in the US Catechism for Adults in alignment with the revised universal catechism,” Bishop Barron said.
Key features
He noted it quotes extensively from Pope Francis’ addition. Key features of it similarly emphasise “the irreducible dignity of all people, even those accused of terrible crimes” as well as the practical non-necessity of capital punishment due to developments within civil society and the danger of the “gross misapplication of this penalty”.
Bishop Barron reiterated that the bishops were not debating the change to the universal catechism itself or even the overall issue of capital punishment, but simply deciding if the added revision to the adult catechism adequately reflects recent catechism revisions.
He said the passage provides context and justification for the development of this teaching on the death penalty that highlights the dignity of the human person.