The Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN) has announced a new publication presenting the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty and restorative justice. Entitled Renewing a Culture of Life: The Death Penalty, Restorative Justice, and Catholic Social Teaching,  This booklet was produced by CMN in close collaboration with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Peace, Justice & Human Development. Its purposes are to incorporate recent papal statements on the issue of the death penalty, to record the gains that have been made toward the goal of ending capital punishment in the United States, and to provide data related to this progress. This booklet aspires to fully embrace the commitment to the sanctity of human life that is central to Catholic teaching.

A sample copy of the English text of the booklet is available here.

A sample copy of the text in Spanish is available here.

Copies of the booklet in English and Spanish can be ordered by completing this order form.

(Las copias del folleto en ingles o en español se pueden comprar utilizando este formulario de pedido.)

On June 11, 2010, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) again proposed changes to the lethal injection procedures that had previously been released to the public for review twice, once in May 2009 and again in January 2010. The most recent changes came after the state agency that oversees the rulemaking process (the Office of Administrative Law) rejected the proposed regulations. Any member of the public may comment on the changes, whether or not that person commented on the proposed regulations before. The CDCR must read and respond to all relevant comments.

Summary Analysis of Changes

I.    The regulations now require that reporters who witness the execution be "reputable citizens," without explaining the term-this is confusing and potentially unfair.

Reprinted with permission from California People of Faith.

(En Español)

Rev. Michael Carson, Pastor of Queen of Apostles Church in the Diocese of San Jose and member of the State Board of California People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty, recently interviewed Jeanne Woodford, executive director of Death Penalty Focus (DPF). DPF is the largest organization working to abolish the death penalty in California.

Woodford previously served as the Undersecretary and Director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Warden of San Quentin State Prison, where she oversaw four executions. Her journey from one responsible for executions at San Quentin State Prison to running one of the largest death penalty abolition organizations in the Country is a remarkable one. Recently I had a chance to talk to her about this issue and about her work to end the death penalty in California.

Q. In what ways has your Roman Catholic faith background influenced you on the stance you have taken on the death penalty?

A. My Roman Catholic upbringing had great influence on my thinking about the death penalty. I was taught to have respect for God’s creation.

Introduction

Having adopted the U. S. Bishops' statement, The Good Friday Appeal to End the Death Penalty, we wish to put forth this document for pastors, preachers, and teachers to be used in preparation to disseminate the Church's teaching on the death penalty.

A critical hallmark of the Roman Catholic moral tradition is found in its insistence that the first right of the human person is the right to life. It does not belong to society, nor does it belong to public authority in any form, to recognize this right for some and not for others.[1]

Fr. George Horan, co-director of the Office of Restorative Justice for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and a chaplain at LA County's Men's Central Jail, questioned the requirement that a chaplain report the details of conversations with the condemned.

"Chaplains are there to be a loving and compassionate presence for those in prison," explained Fr. Horan. "They are not trained physiologists or part of the prison staff able to evaluate how something revealed in a conversation might be pertinent to the execution."

The California Catholic Conference issued this statement in September 2010, just days before a subsequent execution that was later cancelled.

Most Reverend Gerald Wilkerson, Auxiliary Bishop for the San Fernando Pastoral Region of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and President of the California Catholic Conference, released the following statement today expressing strong support for an end to the use of the death penalty in California and asking for clemency for any individual scheduled for execution.

The California Catholic Conference strongly supports an end to the use of the death penalty and affirms the 2005 statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death, which launched the U.S. Bishops Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

If any California institution was totally ineffective, cost millions of dollars without benefit and had a less expensive alternative, one might think we would at least consider eliminating it.

All these criteria describe the death penalty. So why do we still have the death penalty in California?

I have been doing anti-death penalty work since before ordination. At first, I would come ready to debate with facts, figures, studies, Church documents and moral statements. However, the only question consistently asked is, what would I do if my mother or sister were murdered? Would I not want the death penalty?