Revisiting A Recent Television Interview

The morning of July 11, an Evansville TV reporter called asking for an interview “to discuss Catholic Church teaching on the death penalty.” A few minutes before the call, I quickly learned, convicted killer Jeffrey Weisheit got the death penalty for his crimes.

Seemed simple enough at the time – use the Catechism of the Catholic Church to explain the official teaching on the death penalty. A quick visit to the Vatican website produced the appropriate CCC paragraphs, Nos. 2266 and 2267:

“2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.⁶⁷

“2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’⁶⁸”

When the reporter arrived, I provided a printed copy of the two paragraphs above, then proceeded to discuss and answer questions about them.

From more than 10 minutes of footage, less than two minutes aired – and it left the impression that, somehow, I was announcing the Diocese of Evansville’s approval of the Weisheit sentence. I know this because of letters that have reached the Catholic Center from people who felt blindsided by what they saw and heard.

I regret that.

To be clear – Church teaching on the death penalty has not changed, and I support and fully embrace that teaching. The Diocese of Evansville’s official position on the death penalty has not changed. We all embrace the teaching, I believe, because we are one Catholic and apostolic Church. We believe in the dignity and sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. 

We also are compassionate. More than once, after noting that there continues to be disagreement in America about use of the death penalty, I noted that it seemed to me one thing we all could agree on was the need to pray for everyone involved – for the victims, their friends and family; for the jury and the judge; and for the convicted killer, his friends and family.

Please accept my sincere apology if you were offended or somehow felt betrayed by what you saw on the local news that night. I thoroughly regret any misunderstanding and/or confusion my comments created.