The Latest
September 28, 2016
Source: Catholic News Service
Bishops in California and New Mexico have urged voters to resist attempts to reinstate the death penalty
The California Catholic bishops are urging voters to support a November ballot initiative that would outlaw the death penalty.
Proposition 62 would replace the maximum punishment for murder with life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“It is time for us to end the death penalty – not only in California but throughout the United States and throughout the world,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H Gomez said in a commentary in Angelus, the online news outlet of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
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September 22, 2016
Source: Angelus News
How did the earliest Christians view the practice of capital punishment?
To borrow a phrase from social media: It’s complicated.
The issue arises in just a handful of documents from the first three centuries, and those few instances are sometimes vague, ambivalent or wavering. They resist the most ardent modern efforts to find consistency.
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September 21, 2016
Source: Angelus News
Kirk Bloodsworth had everything a young man could hope for in 1984. At 23 years old, he had served honorably in the U.S. Marines, was married, and had a good job on Maryland’s eastern shore.
But then “my entire world went sideways,” Bloodsworth recounted to Angelus News. Over a period of eight months, he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to die in the gas chamber for the brutal rape-murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton — a horrific crime he never committed.
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September 21, 2016
Source: Angelus News
On the ballot this Nov. 8 in California is Proposition 62.
This proposition would repeal the death penalty in our state and would make life in prison without parole the maximum punishment that could be imposed for crimes of murder.
My brother bishops and I in the California Catholic Conference are supporting this effort.
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September 21, 2016
Source: Angelus News
In 1980, the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States called for an end to the use of the death penalty in our country. It was the judgment of the bishops that the use of state-sanctioned executions was no longer necessary and was, in fact, unjustified in our time and under current circumstances.
They wrote that our nation should forgo the use of capital punishment because executing people, when it is not necessary to protect society, violates our respect for human life and dignity. Its application is deeply flawed and can be irreversibly wrong, is prone to errors, and is biased by factors such as race, the quality of legal representation, and where the crime was committed. We have other ways to punish criminals and protect society, they asserted.
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July 20, 2016
Source: Angelus News
“In 1978, my dad and I worked very hard to pass the Briggs initiative, which is today’s death penalty law here in California,” his son Ron Briggs, then a supervisor in El Dorado County, declared at an outdoor press conference at Grand Park near Downtown L.A. on July 14.
“We thought back then that we would deliver swift justice, that we would take care of the victims’ families and survivors and provide them closure. We thought we would save California money. We believed then a broad death penalty would act as a deterrent to crime,” Briggs explained.
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July 17, 2016
Source: Angelus News
Los Angeles, Calif., Jul 16, 2016 / 02:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Thursday, the bishops of California announced their support of a state ballot measure that would end the use of capital punishment in the state, replacing it with life in prison without possibility of parole.
“Our commitment to halt the practice of capital punishment is rooted both in the Catholic faith and our pastoral experience,” the bishops said in their July 14 statement in support of Proposition 62. The message also states the bishops' opposition to another ballot measure, Proposition 66, which is intended to expedite executions in California by limiting appeals.
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July 14, 2016
Source: California Catholic Conference
SACRAMENTO, CA - During this Jubilee Year of Mercy, we, the Catholic Bishops of California support Proposition 62 which would end the use of the death penalty in California. Our commitment to halt the practice of capital punishment is rooted both in the Catholic faith and our pastoral experience.
All life is sacred – innocent or flawed – just as Jesus Christ taught us and demonstrated repeatedly throughout His ministry. This focus on the preciousness of human life is fundamental to Christianity and most eloquently expressed in the two great commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart … love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mk. 12.30-31) Jesus makes clear that to love God we must love our neighbor. Each of us holds an inherent worth derived from being created in God’s own image. Each of us has a duty to love this divine image imprinted on every person. “Whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (I Jn. 4.20)
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June 21, 2016
Source: Crux Now
ROME- Pope Francis called for a world “free of the death penalty” in a video message supporting the sixth World Congress against capital punishment, currently being held in Oslo, Norway. He said the practice brings no justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance.
“Indeed, nowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person,” Francis said on the message released on Tuesday.
“It is an offence to the inviolability of life and to the dignity of the human person; it likewise contradicts God’s plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice,” the pope said.
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