(LifeSiteNews) — A recent poll conducted by EWTN News in partnership with RealClear Opinion Research sheds light on a worrying widening gulf within American Catholicism – one rooted not merely in politics, but in deep disagreements over the Church’s moral teachings.
The survey reached out to 1,000 Catholic voters between November 9 and November 11. It found that 55 percent of them support the death penalty “for a person convicted of murder.” Only 20 percent opposed it, while 25 percent were unsure.
The study also discovered that Catholics who attend Mass regularly were only marginally more opposed to capital punishment than those who attend less often.
Among weekly Mass-goers, 52 percent support the death penalty while 26 percent oppose it with 22 percent being unsure. Among Catholics who attend Mass less than once per week, support rose to 57 percent, while opposition fell to 16 percent, with 27 percent undecided.
The poll reflects yet another issue devout lay Catholics are at odds with the hierarchy on – as the study also found that 58 percent of Catholics who attend Mass weekly support “the detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants on a broad scale.”
Notably, both the death penalty and immigration restrictions are strenuously opposed by Pope Leo, but the majority of faithful Catholics in the U.S. support them.
The Catholic Church has long upheld the teaching that the death penalty can be a necessary punishment for certain crimes.
“It is the irreformable teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate, not merely to ensure the physical safety of others when an offender poses an immediate danger … but even for purposes such as securing retributive justice and deterring serious crime,” Professors Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette wrote in a June 2017 article for Catholic World Report titled “Why the Church Cannot Reverse Past Teaching on Capital Punishment.”
Feser and Bessette were merely reflecting the teachings previously put forward by theologians and popes in the Church’s past. St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, has affirmed that “if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.” Pope Pius XII likewise defended in 1955 the authority of the state to use the death penalty because “the coercive power of legitimate human authority” is based on “the sources of revelation and traditional doctrine.”
Under the auspices of “developing” the Church’s teachings in 2018, Pope Francis revised the Catechism to drop its support for the practice. “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” it now reads. Previously, the Catechism explicitly taught that 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.”
The fissure that is growing wider between laity and Leo and other liberal-minded clerics now in charge of the Vatican was on full display earlier this year. Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago planned to honor pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin with a “lifetime achievement award.” After controversy spilled over into the media, Leo finally weighed in on the matter. He scandalously told the press outside Castel Gandalfo that someone who opposes abortion but supports the death penalty or strict immigration laws “is not really pro-life.” He further suggested that support for deportations constitutes “inhuman treatment” of immigrants.
Instead of calming the waters, Leo’s remarks made things worse given that they reflected the blasphemous “seamless garment of life” approach that seeks a moral equivalency with subjects that are not at all comparable. German Cardinal Gerhard Müller alluded to this when he told Italian newspaper Il Giornale that “abortion means killing an innocent person, and the Church has always said it is a brutal crime.” It “cannot be put on the same level as the death penalty for a criminal who has killed other men.”
Leaders at the U.S. bishops’ conference are following in Leo’s footsteps. At their annual meeting this year, they approved a “special pastoral message” that reiterates their commitment to defending illegal immigrants. Stunningly, Bishop Daniel Flores, who was appointed vice president of the USCCB at this year’s gathering, previously said that supporting mass deportations amounts to “formal cooperation in intrinsic evil.” He likened it to assisting in an abortion. Such remarks only serve to intensify disagreements.
The EWTN poll is ultimately helpful in that it reveals the continued growing disconnect between devout U.S. Catholics and their liberal-minded shepherds. Unlike other polls that show Catholics support left-wing policies like homosexual “marriage,” contraception, and cohabitation before marriage, this time the data indicates Catholics are faithful to long-standing and unchangeable moral teachings. Said another way, faithful Catholics simply want orthodoxy to be upheld. One can only hope the bishops will understand that and give them what they want.