

The core of the Church’s position is that alternatives are at hand to deal with horrendous crimes. Thousands of papal denunciations condemning terrible crimes exist to prove this point. Never has this opposition, in the least, excused or downplayed serious crime or violence. The American bishops have also opposed capital punishment for decades. The governor obliged.įollowing this example, when Pope Francis addressed the United States Congress in 2015, he asked these federal lawmakers to abolish the death sentence. Mel Carnahan, now deceased, to commute the sentence. Louis in 1999, he learned that a convict, coincidentally, was scheduled to be killed at that same time.

John Paul II was one of the most determined opponents of the death penalty in modern times. It continues to say that capital punishment is not the way to provide this safeguard therefore, given the fact that other options exist, the death penalty should not be invoked, as priority should be given to the value of human life. The paragraph also insists that civil authority has the duty to safeguard its population from unwarranted threats to life and personal rights. Regarding capital punishment, it states that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (No. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative synopsis of Church teaching. What is the Church’s thinking about the death penalty? American Catholic leaders have protested, and these protests puzzle and even annoy many ordinary Catholics. The federal government has announced that it will adopt a more determined recourse to the death penalty for terrible crimes.
