Death Penalty

"Increasingly, our society looks to...increased reliance on the death penalty to deal with crime. We are tragically turning to violence in the search for quick and easy answers to complex human problems. A society which destroys its children, abandons its old and relies on vengeance fails fundamental moral tests....

"We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing....This cycle of violence diminishes all of us—especially our children."

—Confronting a Culture of Violence:
A Catholic Framework for Action(U.S. Catholic bishops, November 1994)

"We have a very consistent cornmitment as Church to defending the sanctity of human life. We struggle mightily against abortion; we have a commitment and concern for the poor; we deplore racial and sexual discrimination and the self -destructive use of drugs. Our position against the use of the death penalty falls into that continuum. We believe that an issue such as capital punishment is not just a question of public policy, but is at its very core a moral issue, and therefore a religious issue, and we must speak to it."

—Archbishop John Roach,
St. Paul-Minneapolis