By Rick Potts, C.Ss.R.

One of the biggest ironies of the pro-life movement is that many people who would move heaven and earth to convince a desperate, frightened mother not to kill her unborn baby would never consider trying to convince a court to spare the life of a convicted murderer or rapist. Some might even be willing to pull the switch.

The reasoning goes something like this: “Abortion and the death penalty are not the same thing. An unborn child is innocent. A convicted murderer or rapist is guilty.” That’s certainly true, but to use that argument to defend capital punishment is to miss a key teaching of the Catholic faith: Each life may not be innocent, but each life is sacred.

During his 1999 visit to St. Louis, Missouri, Pope John Paul II called for us to be pro-life in all issues, including the death penalty, which he called “cruel and unnecessary.” Yet when I speak against the death penalty, someone inevitably asks, “But what if someone in your family were murdered? How would you feel then?” In the heat of the moment, my personal and emotional response would probably be to get revenge. Human beings do things we know are wrong during moments of weakness or when we feel distant from God.

But the death penalty is not the emotional, personal, or impulsive response of a distraught victim; it’s the measured and calculated response of the state. The state doesn’t lose its temper; the state doesn’t act on impulse. The state is supposed to embody the ideal, to represent the best of us. Granted, the state has the responsibility to protect its citizens and maintain peace, but it is possible to separate dangerous people from the rest of the population without putting them to death. And in some cases, science and faith make it possible for us to transform their hearts and give them the hope of rehabilitation and redemption.

Some proponents of the death penalty argue that the separation of Church and state prohibits legislation based in religious belief. To outlaw capital punishment because it’s against someone’s religion would be unconstitutional. However, most U.S. citizens have religious beliefs (75 percent Christian, 25 percent Catholic), and faith is an essential element of who people are and how they wish to live. As a Christian citizen of the United States who is a Catholic priest, I have a moral responsibility to voice my values, even those that are the product of my religious belief in the sanctity of life and the command to forgive. If I apply my faith to saving the unborn, should I not also apply it to saving the condemned?

If we can’t protect an unborn child whose worst crime is inconvenience, how can we hope to protect people who seem to be amoral, who may even have done harm to us personally? If we profess that life is sacred, that it’s the realm of God, then we must defend everyone’s life, as the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago put it, “from the womb to the tomb.”

Maybe we have it backward: maybe if we could protect the guilty, defense of the innocent would follow. Maybe if we could convince people of the value of what we have, we could convince them of the value of what we’re losing. After all, even a murderer was once an unborn child. Does life cease to be sacred once we’re born? Does sin erase the fact that God created that life and sent his Son to redeem that person? Didn’t Jesus die for that person’s sins as well?
God said, “I am the Lord your God….You shall not kill” (Ex 20:2a, 13). We quickly added exceptions. (See Ex 21–22.)  But then Jesus proclaimed, “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Mt 5:22).
For our words to have validity when we speak in defense of the unborn, we must speak in defense of all life.