Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington and act­ing as Chairman of the Domestic Policy Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has urged House and Senate con­fer­ees work­ing on anti-ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion to report out a final bill that would not expand the fed­er­al death penal­ty for ter­ror­ists. McCarrick wrote a let­ter to House and Senate lead­ers craft­ing their final ver­sion of the National Intelligence Reform Act (S. 2845). The House ver­sion of that bill con­tains pro­vi­sions to expand the fed­er­al death penal­ty, but the Senate ver­sion does not. McCarrick wrote:

​“The cow­ard­ly acts of September 11 and their trag­ic human costs still haunt our nation. There can be no dimin­ish­ing the hor­ror of ter­ror­ism or the respon­si­bil­i­ty of those who employ wan­ton vio­lence on the inno­cent. As you know, the bish­ops of the United States oppose the use of the death penal­ty in any instance. Catholic teach­ing on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is clear: If blood­less means are suf­fi­cient to defend human lives against an aggres­sor and to pro­tect pub­lic order and the safe­ty of per­sons, pub­lic author­i­ty should lim­it itself to such means, because they bet­ter cor­re­spond to the con­crete con­di­tions of the com­mon good and are more in con­for­mi­ty to the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son (Catechism of the Catholic Church). Congress need not go any fur­ther. Secondly, we feel strong­ly that ter­ror­ists are not going to be deterred by the death penal­ty. In fact, many ter­ror­ists believe that if they die com­mit­ting an act of ter­ror­ism they will become mar­tyrs. At the very least, it would seem that exe­cut­ing ter­ror­ists could make them heroes in the minds of oth­er like-mind­ed advo­cates of ter­ror. As pas­tors, we believe that the use of the death penal­ty under any cir­cum­stances dimin­ish­es us as human beings. As we said in Confronting a Culture of Violence: ​‘We can­not teach that killing is wrong by killing,’ ”

(October 25, 2004, Statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) See New Voices and Federal Death Penalty.

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