One Catholic voice on death penalty takes on another

Published: 2005-05-13

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- For years, the two most prominent voices among U.S. Catholics on the subject of the death penalty have been those of a nun who is a former schoolteacher and a Georgetown- and Harvard-educated Supreme Court justice. Sister Helen Prejean, author of two books that draw on her experiences as a spiritual adviser to men on death row, and Justice Antonin Scalia, the fourth most senior member of the Supreme Court, have come to represent the extremes of Catholic thought about capital punishment. In her newest book, "The Death of Innocents," the nun takes on the jurist over their theological and constitutional differences on the issue. With a movie, an opera and a stage play all recounting the story she told in a best-selling book, "Dead Man Walking," Sister Prejean, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, has become the most recognizable figure working to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Scalia, meanwhile, anchors the diminishing segment of the court that consistently votes to uphold the constitutionality of the death penalty. His disagreement with the court majority was vehement as those justices recently overturned death sentences for mentally retarded people and juveniles convicted of murder.

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