I SHED a tear watching the film Dead Man Walking two years ago. So powerful were the performances of Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn that the conflict in this true life story, between the demands of both retribution and mercy, was nothing less than stark. Recently the moral issue of institutional killing has burst on the American conscience with the federal judgment to execute Timothy McVeigh for his Oklahoma bombing in which 168 people died.

The death penalty is at present available in 38 of the 50 states of the US. In 13 states criminals under 18 years are subject to execution. In nine states under 16-year-olds may receive the death penalty. Surprisingly, in 12 states there is no minimum age stipulated!

Studies have shown that states with the death penalty do not have a lower level of criminality, including murder, than those without it. Nor is there any difference between states which have established it in recent times and those without it. So the presence or absence of the death penalty doesn't seem to affect crime rates. In addition, it has now emerged that over a 20-year period 350 people condemned to capital punishment (25 of whom were actually executed) were not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted.

Since 1980 the American Catholic bishops have opposed the death penalty in any circumstances. Just now they are opposing the execution of Timothy McVeigh. This stance signals a most significant development which is taking place in the teachings of the universal Catholic Church on the death penalty, to the point at which it has become virtually excluded. While its absolute prohibition has not yet been formally enshrined in Catholic teaching, this clearly seems on the way.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in vernacular language in 1994, says that only "in cases of extreme gravity" is the death penalty moral. However, shortly after the publication of the Catechism Pope John Paul in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995) further narrowed the grounds on which church sanction of the death penalty might be possible.

The Pope wrote: "Punishment ought not to go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organisation of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent." (No.56).

In the light of the movement towards exclusion of the death penalty in Catholic teaching, a 1996 statement of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Irish bishops is important. It argues for the outright condemnation of the death penalty.

Interestingly, the Irish intervention has been adopted by all the European Justice and Peace Commissions and has recently been submitted to the top Church decision-making body known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This intervention (originating in the Irish report) may well influence the terms of the definitive, final, Latin version of the universal Catholic catechism which has yet to be published. Thus, the Irish input may prove to be historic.

THE arguments of the Irish Justice and Peace Commission against capital punishment are formidable:

1. "The basic argument relies on the Christian understanding of the dignity of all human life. Historical developments, the universal availability of long-term, custodial alternatives to judicial execution and the growing insight that a pro-life stance has to be comprehensive, make continued approval of capital punishment increasingly anomalous, even in 'cases of extreme gravity'.

While the Scriptures condemn the violation of life with great severity, to punish such violations by taking another human life appears at the least an ambivalent affirmation of the sanctity of human life. Capital punishment does not appear a self-evidently appropriate or justifiable response in moral terms." (Two wrongs don't make a right?)

2. "To continue to justify the death penalty as a means of punishment appears an increasingly discordant exception to the Church's overall witness to the sacredness of human life from conception to natural death. The worldwide pro-life witness of the universal Church would be significantly strengthened by refusing any longer to countenance the use of capital punishment under any circumstances. Conversely, its retention dilutes the credibility of the pro-life stance.

3. "The use of the death penalty greatly minimises and in the majority of cases will probably foreclose the possibility of repentance or expiation and, of course, it completely denies the opportunity of rehabilitation of the sentenced person."

The foregoing quotes are a small sampling of the 19 arguments against the death penalty submitted by the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace which may help finally to close the door on the death penalty in the upcoming, definitive version of universal Catholic teaching.

Father Tom Stack is parish priest at Milltown, Dublin, and a columnist with the Irish Catholic.