Moratorium on Executions

Catholic Dioceses, Parishes Seek State Moratorium on Executions

It is exciting to see that the Bishops Campaign to End the Death Penalty is getting more traction around the country.

Looks like a group called Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty is calling for the state's General Assembly to enact a three-year moratorium on executions in the state and to create a commission to examine the death penalty system. Sounds like a common sense action to me.

Nearly 300 groups in the state, including the four Catholic dioceses and numerous parishes, have endorsed a moratorium. On Good Friday last year the Missouri bishops issued a pastoral letter opposing executions, stating that more violence "is not a solution to society's problems."

Read more..

Still I suspect we will hear from the wingnuts who as Catholics will somehow justify the Death Penalty. Of course they will offer no explanation as to why all other options are exhausted as prescribed by Catholic Social Teaching.

The Holy Father calls recourse to the death penalty “unnecessary” and painfully reminds us that our “model of society bears the stamp of the culture of death, and is therefore in opposition to the Gospel message.” (Pope John Paul II, World Day of the Sick, Washington, DC, February 2003)