On May 4, 2026, more than 300 “faith leaders” from at least 17 religious traditions—including Catholics, Protestants, rabbis, Muslims, Zoroastrians, and Unitarian Universalists—sent a letter to the Ohio General Assembly urging the abolition of the death penalty, declaring their opposition to “state-sanctioned murder” and invoking “restorative power of empathy and investments in transformation.” The letter was spearheaded by Ohioans to Stop Executions (OTSE) and comes as Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, a Catholic, prepares to issue a statement on the death penalty. Marsha Forson, associate director of Social Concerns at the Catholic Conference of Ohio, spoke at a news conference invoking Easter hope and declaring that “each person’s fundamental identity and value is renewed not in the good or evil [that] has done but in the invaluable self-sacrificing love of one.” The bishops of Ohio sent their own separate letter in late March also urging abolition. Brian Hickey, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, framed House Bill 72 as a way to “stand against the culture of death,” linking the death penalty to abortion and assisted suicide, and claimed alignment with “Pope” Leo XIV, who on April 24, 2026, offered “support to those who advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States of America and around the world.” This interfaith campaign, draped in the language of mercy and human dignity, represents not a development of Catholic doctrine but a wholesale capitulation to the spirit of the world—a betrayal of the Church’s immutable teaching on the state’s God-given authority to inflict just punishment, including death, upon those who commit grave crimes.
The Interfaith Coalition: A Preview of the Religion of the Antichrist
The most immediately striking feature of this campaign is its composition: Catholic “priests,” Protestant “pastors,” rabbis, Muslims, Zoroastrians, and Unitarian Universalists all united in a single moral cause. This is not accidental. It is the practical realization of the false ecumenism condemned by the Church for over a century—the very ecumenism that “Pope” John XXIII unleashed upon the Church in the 1960s and that the usurper Leo XIV continues to promote.
The Church has always taught that extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—outside the Church there is no salvation. This dogma, defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Council of Florence (1442), and reaffirmed by countless popes, means that non-Catholic religions are not vehicles of salvation but obstacles to it. To stand alongside rabbis who reject the Messiah, Muslims who deny the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, and Unitarian Universalists who profess no coherent theology at all—and to claim a common moral foundation with them—is not charity. It is apostasy.
Pius XI, in Mortalium Animos (1928), condemned precisely this kind of interfaith collaboration:
“The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.”
The false ecumenism on display in Ohio is not a bridge to unity but a highway to indifferentism—the heresy that one religion is as good as another, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (propositions 15–18) and by every pope before the conciliar revolution. When Catholic “leaders” stand shoulder to shoulder with those who deny the Faith, they do not elevate those non-Catholics; they drag the Catholic Church down to the level of naturalistic humanitarianism.
The Catholic Conference of Ohio: Modernist Mouthpiece
The participation of the Catholic Conference of Ohio—the public policy arm of the Ohio “bishops”—in this campaign reveals the depth of the conciliar apostasy. Marsha Forson’s remarks at the news conference are a masterclass in modernist rhetoric. She invoked Easter, “hope of life eternal,” and the “inestimable price of Christ’s sacrifice”—but notably said nothing about justice, sin, the gravity of murder, or the authority of the state as ordained by God. Her language is entirely horizontal: “empathy,” “transformation,” “common good.” The supernatural order—the very reason the Church exists—is entirely absent.
This is the hallmark of Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and in the 65 propositions of Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907). The modernist strips the Faith of its supernatural content and reduces it to a social gospel—a program of human betterment that any secular humanist could endorse. Forson’s statement that “each person’s fundamental identity and value is renewed not in the good or evil [that the person] has done” is a direct contradiction of Catholic teaching on merit, judgment, and the moral order. It echoes proposition 5 of Lamentabili: “Since only revealed truths are contained in the deposit of faith, the Church cannot, in any way, pass judgment on opinions concerning human abilities”—a proposition that, while condemned in its original context, finds its practical fulfillment in the modernist refusal to apply moral categories to political questions.
The Church’s Immutable Teaching on the Death Penalty
The Catholic Church, for two millennia, has unequivocally taught that the state possesses the authority to inflict the death penalty for grave crimes. This teaching is not a disciplinary policy subject to revision; it is rooted in divine revelation and natural law.
Holy Scripture is unambiguous. In Genesis 9:6, God Himself declares: “Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for man was made to the image of God.” This is not a concession to human weakness; it is a divine ordinance. St. Paul, writing under divine inspiration, teaches in Romans 13:1–4 that the magistrate “beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.” The “sword” is not a metaphor for community service—it is an instrument of lethal justice.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) explicitly affirms:
“The power of life and death is permitted to many civil magistrates… For the punishment of the wicked is sometimes a duty of justice, and often a work of mercy, both to the criminal and to the community.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, defends the death penalty in the Summa Theologica (II-II, q. 64, a. 2) with crystalline clarity:
“The life of certain pestiferous men is an impediment to the common good which is the concord of human society. Therefore, certain men must be removed by death from the society of men… Therefore, 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, in an allocution to the Italian Association of Catholic Jurists (December 5, 1954), reaffirmed this teaching against those who were already in his day questioning it:
“Even when it is a question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to existence. In fact, it is reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already disposed himself of his right to live.”
Note carefully: Pius XII does not say the state may never execute. He says the state does not dispose of the right to existence in the sense that the criminal, by his own guilt, has forfeited that right. The execution is an act of justice, not murder.
The claim that the death penalty is “state-sanctioned murder”—the very phrase used in the interfaith letter—is a calumny against God’s own law. It equates the just act of the magistrate with the unjust act of the criminal. This is the inversion of all moral order, condemned by St. Paul himself: “For rulers are not a terror to good work, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear; for he beareth not the sword in vain” (Romans 13:3–4).
The Usurper Leo XIV and the Corruption of Catholic Social Teaching
The invocation of “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) to justify the abolition of the death penalty is particularly revealing. On April 24, 2026, Leo sent a message to activists at DePaul University offering his “support to those who advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States of America and around the world” and praying that their efforts would lead to “a greater acknowledgement of the dignity of every person.”
This message, stripped of any reference to justice, the gravity of sin, or the state’s divine mandate, is entirely consistent with the theology of the conciliar sect. It reflects the “spirit of Vatican II”—the hermeneutics of rupture that has transformed the Church from a divine institution charged with saving souls into a humanitarian NGO concerned with “human dignity” in the abstract.
The authentic Catholic position was articulated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church as promulgated by John Paul II in 1992 (before the text was altered by the conciliar apparatus). Paragraph 2267, in its original form, stated:
“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.”
This was the authentic Magisterial teaching—rooted in Scripture, Tradition, and the unanimous consent of the Fathers. The subsequent modifications to the Catechism under the Bergoglio regime, which attempted to declare the death penalty “inadmissible,” represent not a development of doctrine but a corruption of it—precisely the kind of “evolution of dogmas” condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 5: “Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress”) and by St. Pius X in Pascendi.
Leo XIV’s message is not a development but a betrayal. It takes the conciliar corruption and presents it as the mind of the Church, while the faithful are expected to conform their understanding to the latest utterance of the usurper rather than to the immutable deposit of Faith.
Gov. Mike DeWine: A Catholic in Name Only
Gov. Mike DeWine is identified in the article as a Catholic. His record on the death penalty—delaying executions due to difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs—is presented in the article as a kind of de facto progress toward abolition. But a Catholic who delays justice for murderers is not being “merciful”; he is being derelict in his duty.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the punishment of the wicked is “sometimes a duty of justice, and often a work of mercy, both to the criminal and to the community.” Delaying the just punishment of a murderer does not serve mercy; it defies justice. It tells the victims’ families that their suffering is less important than the comfort of the criminal. It tells society that the taking of innocent life does not warrant the ultimate penalty. And it tells God that His law—”whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”—is outdated.
DeWine’s Catholicism, if it exists at all, is of the conciliar variety—a Catholicism that genuflects before “mercy” while trampling underfoot justice. It is the Catholicism of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as amended by Bergoglio, not the Catholicism of the Council of Trent. It is a Catholicism that has more in common with the Unitarian Universalists and Zoroastrians who signed the interfaith letter than with St. Thomas Aquinas or Pope Pius XII.
The Deeper Apostasy: Rejection of the Kingship of Christ
The interfaith letter’s language reveals a deeper apostasy than merely the death penalty. The signatories speak of being “motivated by the restorative power of empathy and investments in transformation” and of “the common good.” There is no mention of God, no mention of Christ the King, no mention of the supernatural order, no mention of sin, no mention of eternal punishment, no mention of the authority of the Church.
This is the religion of man—the cultus hominis condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925). Pius XI warned that the rejection of Christ’s kingship over civil society leads to the destruction of the foundations of authority:
“When God and Jesus Christ—as we lamented—were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.”
The interfaith coalition in Ohio is the practical realization of this warning. It derives its moral authority not from God’s revelation but from human “empathy.” It appeals not to the natural law inscribed by the Creator but to “investments in transformation”—the language of social engineering, not of Catholic theology.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat this kind of secularism:
“If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.”
The interfaith leaders of Ohio, by contrast, seek peace and order not through the recognition of Christ’s kingship but through the abolition of His law. They want a world without judgment, without punishment, without the sword of justice. They want, in short, the world that Satan promised: “You shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5)—determining good and evil for yourselves, without reference to the Divine Lawgiver.
The Victims: The Great Omission
The article notes that the faith leaders “hold deep care and respect for victims and co-victims of crime” but immediately pivots to the claim that the death penalty “offers no redemption, no closure, and no transformation for anyone involved.” This is not merely false; it is cruel.
The Church has always taught that justice is a virtue—one of the four cardinal virtues, alongside prudence, fortitude, and temperance. Justice requires that each person receive what is due to him. For the murderer, what is due is punishment—proportionate to the gravity of the crime. For the victim, what is due is vindication—the recognition by society that the wrong done to him was real, was grave, and has been addressed.
To tell the family of a murder victim that the death penalty “serves no moral purpose” is to tell them that the life of their loved one was not worth the ultimate penalty. It is to elevate the murderer’s comfort above the victim’s justice. It is to make a mockery of the virtue of justice and to replace it with a false “empathy” that serves no one but the criminal.
The interfaith letter’s claim that the death penalty “monopolizes human and financial resources that would be better spent” on victims is a utilitarian argument unworthy of any person of faith. Justice is not a resource allocation problem. It is a moral imperative. No one argues that the cost of prosecuting rapists is “better spent” on social programs. The argument is applied selectively to the death penalty precisely because it serves the agenda of those who wish to eliminate the ultimate sanction for the ultimate crime.
Conclusion: The Culture of Death Marches On
The interfaith campaign to abolish the death penalty in Ohio is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the comprehensive apostasy that has overtaken the structures occupying the Vatican and the nominally Catholic institutions that follow its lead. It combines false ecumenism, modernist theology, the rejection of divine justice, and the elevation of human “empathy” above God’s law—all wrapped in the language of “faith” and “concern for human dignity.”
The Catholic Church, before the conciliar revolution, taught with one voice that the state has the authority and sometimes the duty to inflict the death penalty. This teaching was rooted in Sacred Scripture, defined by ecumenical councils, defended by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and reaffirmed by the Magisterium up to and including Pope Pius XII. It was never a matter of opinion; it was a matter of divine law.
The conciliar sect has abandoned this teaching—not because it has discovered some new truth, but because it has capitulated to the spirit of the world. It has replaced the God of justice with the god of “empathy,” the Church of Christ with the church of man, and the sword of the magistrate with the soft tyranny of humanitarian sentimentality.
The faithful are called not to follow this apostasy but to resist it—to affirm, with the Church of all ages, that justice is a virtue, that the death penalty is lawful, and that Christ the King reigns over nations as well as over individuals. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas:
“His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.”
Let the interfaith coalitions of the world proclaim their “empathy.” The Church proclaims justice—divine, immutable, and eternal.
Source:
Catholic, interfaith leaders press Ohio lawmakers to abolish death penalty (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.05.2026