During their June 11-13 meeting in Baltimore, the U.S. bishops are looking at what the U.S. church teaches its adult members about the death penalty and they will vote about adding a revised passage to the U.S. Catechism for Adults about this.
In response to the Supreme Court's May 30 decision to allow the execution of an Alabama death-row inmate, a Catholic group seeking to end the death penalty said in a tweet: "Our work to build a more restorative criminal justice system continues."
On May 30, New Hampshire lawmakers garnered enough votes to abolish the death penalty in the state, overriding a veto from Gov. Chris Sununu and becoming the 21st state to ban capital punishment.
Although the Supreme Court justices chose not to take up two petitions for review submitted by death-row inmates from Alabama and Tennessee May 13, they didn't do so with a simple one-sentence rejection. Instead, they made their reasonings and their divided views
In two recent actions, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed its death penalty decisions are hardly cut and dried.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CNS) — The Catholic bishops of California welcomed the March 13 decision by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. “We appreciate this recognition that the state has the adequate means to defend human dignity and public safety without recourse to capital punishment,”
Official Catholic teaching now holds that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” The Church also has committed itself to work “with determination” for the worldwide abolition of capital punishment, according
It will happen. The recent words of Pope Francis stating that the death penalty, under any circumstances, is wrong will not likely be music to the ears of many Americans, including many Catholics. Our country has remained the only major, developed democracy
The move by Pope Francis, announced Aug. 2, to change the Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that capital punishment is “inadmissible” in all cases prompted reactions that those who follow news in the Church will find predictable. As in so