A week or so before Christmas, a Vatican official created a minor stir over remarks he had made about the capture and subsequent treatment of Saddam Hussein.

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Holy See's former official observer at the United Nations, expressed "pity" and "compassion" for Iraq's former dictator and a concern that his capture might even do more harm than good.

"I feel pity to see this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a cow," Cardinal Martino said. "They could have spared us these pictures....Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him."

Cardinal Martino made his remarks at a press conference presenting Pope John Paul II's annual message for the World Day of Peace, which the Catholic Church observes on January 1.

This year's message contains a coded reminder to the world that the preemptive war against Iraq last spring had been launched without UN support. The pope had characterized the military operation initiated by the United States as a "defeat for humanity."

The reaction to Cardinal Martino's complaints about the treatment of Saddam Hussein immediately following his capture sparked a reaction of outrage from many sectors, including Catholic media figures like Bill O'Reilly.

The discussion of the cardinal's remarks expanded into the more ethically serious issue of capital punishment. President George W. Bush, in an interview with Diane Sawyer on the ABC television network, expressed his personal view that Saddam should be executed for his crimes. He quickly added, however, that the matter was one for the Iraqi people to decide.

The president's view is undoubtedly shared by a majority of Americans, including Catholics, many of whom have little or no idea of their church's official teaching on the subject of capital punishment.

Until recently, the traditional teaching of the church had been that there are three conditions under which the taking of a human life can be morally justified: (1) in self-defense; (2) in the course of a just war; and (3) in the execution by the civil authorities of someone convicted of a capital crime.

The first two conditions remain firmly in place, although there is a small, but growing, pacifist constituency within the Catholic Church, represented by organizations like Pax Christi. The third condition, however, has been eroding over the years and is now in full retreat.

Back in 1980 the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement opposing the use of capital punishment and challenging the argument most frequently advanced in support of it, namely, its capacity to deter others from committing murder. The bishops said that the deterrence factor had not been established statistically.

Catholic theologians had been moving even earlier in the same direction. Moral justification for capital punishment became increasingly tenuous.

The coup de grāce came in 1995 with the publication of Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"), in which the pope noted that there is "a growing tendency, both in the church and in civil society, to demand that [the death penalty] be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely" (n. 56). The pope allied himself with this view.

Citing The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 2266), he pointed out that the primary purpose of society's punishment of a criminal is "to redress the disorder caused by the offense." This can be done in almost every instance, said the pope, without resorting to the execution of the criminal.

Capital punishment, he insisted, should be employed only "in cases of absolute necessity: In other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society." Given the "steady improvements" in modern penal systems, however, "such cases are very rare if not practically non-existent."

One might have thought that the crime committed less than a month later by Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing scores of innocent people, would meet the pope's exception-rule. But not so.

The pope personally appealed to President Bush to commute McVeigh's sentence to life in prison. Mr. Bush rejected that appeal.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, remarked on the occasion of the pope's new encyclical that its teaching on capital punishment was "an important doctrinal advance" and indicated that the Catechism would have to be amended accordingly.

Does anyone seriously doubt what position the pope will take if a tribunal imposes the death penalty on Saddam Hussein?

Father Richard McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.