WASHINGTON (CNS) — When the Supreme Court weighs in on the constitutionality of the lethal- injection executions in Oklahoma this year, its ruling will not likely be a tipping point in eliminating capital punishment in the U.S., but some experts say it could be the beginning of the end of this practice.

“It’s not this problem that will end it, but it’s another straw,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center based in Washington.

Dieter noted that a lot of public discussion about lethal injections took place last year after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, who writhed in pain for 40 minutes before dying of apparent heart failure.

The execution was “quite a shock” and “got a lot of attention,” which he said explains why the drugs used to execute him deserve a review.

In April, the court will hear oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross, a case brought by four death-row inmates in Oklahoma. One of the plaintiffs, Charles Warner, was executed Jan. 15 after the court rejected a stay in a 5-4 vote. The court announced Jan. 23 it would take the case and five days later it agreed to stay the upcoming executions of the other three inmates until it issues a decision.

The case sounds somewhat familiar because in 2008, the court ruled in Baze v. Rees that a three-drug protocol used in Kentucky executions did not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In this drug combination, the first drug causes unconsciousness, the second brings about paralysis and the third stops the heart.

But in recent years, a shortage of those drugs has caused states to try a variety of drug combinations in their lethal injections, not the drugs the court considered and upheld in 2008. Some combinations, as shown by Lockett’s botched execution, do not always work as intended.

Currently, the 32 states that have the death penalty use lethal injections. If they are going to continue with that method, the deaths can’t take a significant period of time, said Meg Penrose, professor of constitutional law at Texas A&M’s University School of Law.

“The court is saying let’s at least pause and get more information,” she said, adding that she doesn’t think the court would “overturn the death penalty as a method of punishment” but the justices might determine that until better medication is available, states should “use another method.”

According to the plaintiffs’ case, the drug midazolam, the first drug used in Oklahoma executions, does not sedate the prisoner sufficiently thus creating the risk of excessive pain, which violates the standards set in the Baze ruling and in the Constitution.

One of the other plaintiffs, Richard Glossip, was scheduled to be executed Jan. 28 before the stay was announced. Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph and a longtime anti-death penalty activist, has been a spiritual adviser to 51-year-old Glossip and has said she will accompany him to the execution chamber if he loses his appeals.

During a Jan. 27 news conference at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City, Sister Prejean said: “There is no humane way to kill a conscious, imaginative human being. We the citizens have our name on that gurney.”

According to the Gallup poll last fall, a majority of Americans still support capital punishment, but some feel the tides are slowly turning.

Dieter said the lethal injection cases illustrate the “ambivalence people have about the death penalty” noting that they might be willing to have it but they aren’t “comfortable with the way it’s working.”

He also said people say they support capital punishment yet they vote for legislators and governors who have said they will abolish it.

Marc Hyden, advocacy coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a group which formed in 2013, acknowledged that conservatives have not always been at the front of the anti-death penalty bandwagon but he said that they are starting to shift their opinion, recognizing that it is a pro-life issue and limited-government issue.

Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty, said Catholics also are becoming more galvanized in their views against capital punishment.

She said the botched death by lethal injection is not only a “stark reminder” of the dignity of human life, but it also raises public awareness of the death penalty and gives groups such as hers more opportunities to educate Catholics about what Church teaches.

Last October, Pope Francis called on Christians and all people of good will “to fight … for the abolition of the death penalty … in all its forms” out of respect for human dignity.

The U.S. bishops have been advocating against the death penalty for more than 40 years. In 2005, they initiated the Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty and continue to work closely with state Catholic conferences, the Catholic Mobilizing Network and other groups to abolish the death penalty in the United States.

Clifton said in recent years more Catholics have been against the death penalty because they have recognized it as a pro-life issue.

“We are executing the marginalized in our society,” she said, noting that the Scriptures are full of references to how “we will be judged by how we treat the least among us.”

— By Carol Zimmermann, Catholic News Service. 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Violence against women, cultural pressures regarding women’s physical appearance, attitudes that subjugate women or that ignore male-female differences and the growing alienation of women from the Church in some parts of the world are themes the Pontifical Council for Culture is set to explore.

The council has chosen to discuss the theme, “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference,” during its plenary assembly Feb. 4-7 at the Vatican. A news conference was scheduled for Feb. 2, but the council published its discussion document on the topic in late January.

The document, drafted by a group of women appointed by the council, looked at the continuing quest to find balance in promoting women’s equality while valuing the differences between women and men; the concrete and symbolic aspects of women’s potential for motherhood; cultural attitudes toward women’s bodies; and women and religion, including questions about their participation in church decision-making.

The council said the theme was chosen “to identify possible pastoral paths, which will allow Christian communities to listen and dialogue with the world today in this sphere,” while recognizing that in different cultures and for individual women the situation will be different.

While cautioning against generalizations, the document rejects the notion that there are no differences between men and women, and that each person “chooses and builds his-her identity; owns him-herself and answers primarily to him-herself.”

In preparing the document and the plenary discussions, the council sought input from women around the world. However, the process was not without criticism, particularly for the English version of a video featuring an Italian actress, Nanci Brilli, asking women to send in their experiences. Many women felt the use of a heavily made-up actress ran counter to the point of seeking input about the real lives of most women. The council quickly took the English version off YouTube.

In the section on women and the Church, the document described “multifaceted discomfort” with images of women that are no longer relevant and with a Christian community that seems to value their input even less than the world of business and commerce does.

Many women, it said, “have reached places of prestige within society and the workplace, but have no corresponding decisional role nor responsibility within ecclesial communities.”

Council members are not proposing a discussion of ordaining women priests, the document said and, in fact, statistics show ordination “is not something that women want.” However, it said, “if, as Pope Francis says, women have a central role in Christianity, this role must find a counterpart also in the ordinary life of the Church.”

The vast majority of Catholic women today do not want a bishop’s “purple biretta,” it said, but would like to see Church doors open “to women so that they can offer their contribution in terms of skills and also sensitivity, intuition, passion, dedication, in full collaboration and integration” with men in the Church.

The preparatory document looked at how much pressure women face regarding their body image and the way women’s bodies are exploited in the media, even to the point of provoking eating disorders or recourse to unnecessary surgery.

“Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the ‘season’ that is being lived out,” it said.

“‘Plastic surgery is like a burqa made of flesh.’ One woman gave us this harsh and incisive description,” the document said. “Having been given freedom of choice for all, are we not under a new cultural yoke of a singular feminine model?”

The document also denounced violence inflicted on women: “Selective abortion, infanticide, genital mutilation, crimes of honor, forced marriages, trafficking of women, sexual molestation, rape — which in some parts of the world are inflicted on a massive level and along ethnic lines — are some of the deepest injuries inflicted daily on the soul of the world, on the bodies of women and of girls, who become silent and invisible victims.”

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service.