What do Catholic Teach and Believe About the Death Penalty?
"Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending public order and ensuring peo-ple?s safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behavior and be rehabilitated. It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of exe-cuting the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."
—The Gospel of Life, #56, 1995
Pope John Paul II
The bedrock of Catholic social teaching is the firm belief that human life is sacred because it is created in God?s "image and likeness." This is true of every life from the moment of conception until natural death ...
—The Value of Life, A Consistent Ethic, 1985
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin
Capital Punishment is the opposite of Baptism: it is slowly taking a person out of the human family.
—Sr. Helen Prejean 1995
We maintain that abolition of the death penalty would promote values that are important to us as citizens and as Christians. First, abolition sends a message that we can break the cycle of violence, that we need not take life for life, that we can envisage more humane and more hopeful and effective responses to the growth of violent crime.
—Statement on Capital Punishment, 1980
U.S. Catholic Bishops
For the Church to be consistently and credibly "pro-life", it must also stand in opposi-tion to capital punishment. In upholding this position, we recognize that we are clearly in the minority and that an overwhelming majority of Californians, and even Catholics, support the death penalty. Nonetheless, moral and ethical principles cannot and will not be dictated by public opinion polls. We must stand firm in this belief.
—Statement on the Use of the Death Penalty, 1992
Cardinal Roger Mahony
"[The death penalty is] a misguided attempt to improve public safety ... morally repugnant and pragmatically ineffective. ... We believe this practice [using biblical texts to support the death penalty] is flawed. There is a clear progression of teaching that moves forward greater and greater protection of human life. The ministry of Christ was redemptive and restorative. Christ rejected revenge and retribution by teaching forgiveness and reconciliation.... The death penalty opposes and undermines God?s gracious movement in history toward human wholeness in community.
—1996 Statement signed by 30 Christian Leaders in North Carolina including the State?s 2 Catholic Bishops
"After prayerful reflection on these themes [of forgiveness, love and prayer in the Gospels], we conclude first of all that the death penalty is inconsistent with Jesus? own example of forgiveness that offered hope and the possibility of conversion. It is our judgment that putting human beings to death is a rejection of hope toward the con-demned persons and it may deny them the opportunity to move from sin to repentance. Second, the death penalty is inconsistent with the biblical vision of human beings as worthy of love regardless of their merit. Finally, the death penalty is inconsistent with our belief as Christians that what we do to other human beings is an indication of our relationship with God."
—"Choose Life" Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, Reissued December, 1996
I can remember so clearly when my father died thinking, "I hope they don?t kill the man who killed him." I can remember lying in bed and praying, "Please God, don?t let them kill him." I didn?t want any other family to have to go through what our family was going through. That was an instinctive reaction, not a tutored one. But I am pleased to know that someone I hold in great esteem shared it: my father. "Whenever any American?s life is taken by another American unnecessarily," he said, "whether it is done in the name of the law or in defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence ? whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded."
—M. Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy
Our opposition to capital punishment is based on our strong belief in the in-herent sacredness of human life and on our obligation to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ, which call us to reconciliation and to forgiveness of those who wrong us.
—Catholic Bishops of Texas, 1992
"We encourage public officials to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment. While public opinion currently favors executions, we believe public opinion on this issue has been shaped by misconceptions, overstated fears, and a desire for easy solutions."
—Statement by the Catholic Bishops of Ohio, June 28, 1996
Yet serious research and prayerful reflection lead us to the conclusion that capital punishment is not the best response we can make as a society to violent or even heinous crime. Moreover, we are concerned that the morality of capital punishment may be too readily taken for granted and its destructive consequence too easily overlooked.
—A Call to Discipleship, 1985 California Catholic Conference
