Bishops to consider follow-up to 25-year-old death penalty statement

Published: 2005-10-21

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The U.S. bishops will consider their first major statement on the death penalty in 25 years this November, calling on Catholics to take up the cause of ending the use of capital punishment. A draft proposed for the bishops' Nov. 14-17 annual fall meeting builds upon their 1980 statement that urged the abolition of capital punishment. Since then, the "Catechism of the Catholic Church," Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Evangelium Vitae" ("The Gospel of Life") of 1995, and a series of statements by the late pope have clarified church teaching on the subject. Although the catechism and the other documents acknowledge the state has a right to execute some dangerous criminals to protect the general public, they emphasize that in modern society the situations in which that is necessary are so rare as to be essentially nonexistent.

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