RELIGIOUS VIEWS: Catholic Bishops Oppose Expansion of Federal Death Penalty for Terrorism

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.