Even The Pope Can't Shame Court on Death Penalty

The pope came to town yesterday to speak to the nation's Catholic faithful, including some 9,000 people on the White House lawn in a crowd that included the president and 146 Catholic members of Congress. Conspicuously missing were the very prominent Catholic Supreme Court justices, who were too busy at the courthouse paving the way for states to kill a few more prison inmates, in a decision that won't be washed away by a lifetime of Hail Marys.

Today's Supreme Court not only has a conservative majority, but a Catholic one. Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy and Roberts are all relatively devout Catholics, yet while the pope was exhorting Americans to be nicer to people, every last one of them voted to continue lethal injection, regardless of how painful it might be or how much their church opposes it. These are the very same guys who we are chomping at the bit to overturn Roe v. Wade.

No word on whether the justices will meet later with the Pontiff, but we can only hope that His Excellence might remind the brethren of how little tolerance he has for "cafeteria Catholics." After all, if they're going to let faith guide their decisions, they should at least be consistent about it. The rest of American Catholics seem to be figuring that out. According to the latest polls, nearly half of all American Catholics now oppose the death penalty, up from only 20 percent in 1994. In fact, this year, U.S. bishops used Holy Week to kick off the American bishops' latest campaign to end the death penalty. Perhaps when the justices do see the Pope, it ought to be for confession.