Co-spon­sored by the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops1

A Sanhedrin that puts one per­son to death once in sev­en years is called destruc­tive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: Or even once in sev­en­ty years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiba say: Had we been the Sanhedrin, none would ever have been put to death.” Mishnah Makkot, 1:10 (2nd Century, C.E.)

A sign of hope is the increas­ing recog­ni­tion that the dig­ni­ty of human life must nev­er be tak­en away, even in the case of some­one who has done great evil. Modern soci­ety has the means of pro­tect­ing itself, with­out defin­i­tive­ly deny­ing crim­i­nals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal for a con­sen­sus to end the death penal­ty, which is both cru­el and unnec­es­sary.” Pope John Paul II, January 27, 1999, St. Louis, Missouri

Almost two mil­len­nia sep­a­rate these two state­ments, which togeth­er embody the col­lec­tive wis­dom and moral insights of our two ancient reli­gious tra­di­tions, Rabbinic Judaism and Roman Catholicism, on a burn­ing issue of our time, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. At our meet­ing of March 23, 1999, we reli­gious lead­ers, Catholic and Jewish, probed and shared our own tra­di­tions with each oth­er.2 The result was a remark­able con­flu­ence of wit­ness on how best in our time to inter­pret the eter­nal word of God.

Both tra­di­tions begin with an affir­ma­tion of the sanc­ti­ty of human life. Both, as the above state­ments imply, acknowl­edge the the­o­ret­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty of a jus­ti­fi­able death penal­ty, since the Scriptures man­date it for cer­tain offens­es3. Yet both have, over the cen­turies, nar­rowed those grounds until, today, we would say togeth­er that it is time to cease the prac­tice alto­geth­er. To achieve this con­sen­sus we ana­lyzed the state­ments of our respec­tive bod­ies going back to the late 1970’s and we agree that in them we found a grow­ing con­vic­tion that the argu­ments offered in defense of the death penal­ty are less than per­sua­sive in the face of the over­whelm­ing man­date in both Jewish and Catholic tra­di­tions to respect the sanc­ti­ty of human life.

Some would argue that the death penal­ty is need­ed as a means of ret­ribu­tive jus­tice, to bal­ance out the crime with the pun­ish­ment. This reflects a nat­ur­al con­cern of soci­ety, and espe­cial­ly of vic­tims and their fam­i­lies. Yet we believe that we are called to seek a high­er road even while pun­ish­ing the guilty, for exam­ple through long and in some cas­es life-long incar­cer­a­tion, so that the heal­ing of all can ulti­mate­ly take place.

Some would argue that the death penal­ty is need­ed as a deter­rent to crime. Yet the stud­ies that lie behind our state­ments over the years have yet to reveal any objec­tive evi­dence to jus­ti­fy this con­clu­sion. Criminals tend to believe they will escape any con­se­quences for their behav­ior, or sim­ply do not think of con­se­quences at all, so an esca­la­tion of con­se­quences is usu­al­ly irrel­e­vant to their state of mind at the time of the crime.

Some would argue that the death penal­ty will teach soci­ety at large the seri­ous­ness of crime. Yet we say that teach­ing peo­ple to respond to vio­lence with vio­lence will, again, only breed more violence.

Some would argue that our sys­tem of jus­tice, tri­al by jury, can ensure that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment will be met­ed out equi­tably to var­i­ous groups in soci­ety and that the inno­cent will nev­er be con­vict­ed. This is the least per­sua­sive argu­ment of all. Statistics, how­ev­er weight­ed, indi­cate that errors are made in judge­ment and con­vic­tions. Recent sci­en­tif­ic advances, such as DNA test­ing, may reveal that per­sons on death row, despite seem­ing­ly over­whelm­ing” cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, may in fact be inno­cent of the charges against them. Likewise, sus­pi­cious­ly high per­cent­ages of those on death row are poor or peo­ple of col­or4. Our legal sys­tem is a very good one, but it is a human insti­tu­tion. Even a small per­cent­age of irre­versible errors is increas­ing­ly seen as intol­er­a­ble. God alone is the author of life.

The strongest argu­ment of all is the deep pain and grief of the fam­i­lies of vic­tims, and their quite nat­ur­al desire to see pun­ish­ment met­ed out to those who have plunged them into such agony. Yet it is the clear teach­ing of our tra­di­tions that this pain and suf­fer­ing can­not be healed sim­ply through the ret­ri­bu­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or by vengeance. It is a dif­fi­cult and long process of heal­ing which comes about through per­son­al growth and God’s grace. We agree that much more must be done by the reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty and by soci­ety at large to solace and care for the griev­ing fam­i­lies of the vic­tims of violent crime.

Recent state­ments of the Reform and Conservative move­ments in Judaism, and of the U.S. Catholic Conference sum up well the increas­ing­ly strong con­vic­tions shared by Jews and Catholics on the evil that is capital punishment:

In bib­li­cal times, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was a search for jus­tice when jus­tice seemed impos­si­ble to reach. As the rab­bis did years ago when they con­sid­ered the use of the death penal­ty, let us take the time to ask our­selves some rel­e­vant ques­tions. Is jus­tice reached when we are tak­ing the chance of killing an inno­cent per­son? Is jus­tice reached when we are dis­crim­i­nat­ing against minori­ties in our death sen­tences? See that jus­tice is done,’ the prophet Zechariah pro­claims. If jus­tice is not done by legal­iz­ing the death penal­ty –and it is not –human decen­cy and bib­li­cal val­ues that stress the sanc­ti­ty of life require that we put an end to this gris­ly march of legal­ized death.“5

Respect for all human life and oppo­si­tion to the vio­lence in our soci­ety are at the root of our long-stand­ing oppo­si­tion (as bish­ops) to the death penal­ty. We see the death penal­ty as per­pet­u­at­ing a cycle of vio­lence and pro­mot­ing a sense of vengeance in our cul­ture. As we said in Confronting the Culture of Violence: We can­not teach that killing is wrong by killing.’ We oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment not just for what it does to those guilty of hor­ri­ble crimes, but for what it does to all of us as a soci­ety. Increasing reliance on the death penal­ty dimin­ish­es all of us and is a sign of grow­ing dis­re­spect for human life. We can­not over­come crime by sim­ply exe­cut­ing crim­i­nals, nor can we restore the lives of the inno­cent by end­ing the lives of those con­vict­ed of their mur­ders. The death penal­ty offers the trag­ic illu­sion that we can defend life by tak­ing life.“6

We affirm that we came to these con­clu­sions because of our shared under­stand­ing of the sanc­ti­ty of human life. We have com­mit­ted our­selves to work togeth­er, and each with­in our own com­mu­ni­ties, toward end­ing the death penalty.

Notes

1. The con­sul­ta­tion on Jewish-Catholic rela­tions has been meet­ing twice a year since 1987. The March, 1999 meet­ing was co-chaired by Cardinal William Keeler, Episcopal Moderator for Catholic-Jewish Relations for the BCEIA, and Rabbi Joel Zaiman of the NCS. Its pre­vi­ous joint reflec­tions have been: A Lesson of Value: A Joint Statement on Moral Education in the Public Schools (1990), A Joint Statement on Pornography (1993), On Holocaust Revisionism (1995), and A Joint Reflection on the Millennium (1998).

2. Jewish state­ments dis­cussed by the Jewish/​Catholic Consultation includ­ed the Resolutions on Capital Punishment of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1958, 1960 and 1979); the 1959 Social Action Resolution of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Opposing Capital Punishment; the 1960 Report of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards on Capital Punishment (Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly, vol. 24, 289 – 91): the 178 Statement of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism; the Rabbinical Assembly Resolution on Capital Punishments of May, 1996, and that of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations of March 22, 1999.
Catholic doc­u­ments includ­ed sev­er­al by Pope John Paul II, such as: the 1995 encycli­cal, Evangelium Vitae (no’s. 53 – 57); the 1998 Christmas Day Message To End the Death Penalty; the January, 1999 apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion, Ecciesia in America (no.63); and his homi­ly in St. Louis of January 27, 1999. Reviewed also were the state­ment of the United States Catholic Conference on March 24, 1999; the Good Friday Appeal to End the Death Penalty issued by the Administrative Board of the U.S. Catholic Conference on April 2, 1999; and state­ments issued from 1997 to 1999 by Presidents of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Chairmen of the Bishops’ Domestic Policy and Pro-Life Committees. Archbishop Renato Martino, the Holy See’s nun­cio to the United Nations, sum­ma­rized Developments in Church Teaching on the death penal­ty, includ­ing those reflect­ed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in an address pub­lished in Origins (March 18, 1999, pp. 682 – 684).

3. The Encyclopedia Judaica (vol 5, 142 – 147) notes that ston­ing, which involved the active par­tic­i­pa­tion of the whole pop­u­lace” (Lev 24:16; Num 15:35; Dt 17:17) was the stan­dard form of exe­cu­tion of judi­cial exe­cu­tion in bib­li­cal times” (Lv 24:23; Nm 15:36; I K 21:13). Many schol­ars pre­sume that this is because seri­ous crimes (blas­phe­my, mur­der, etc.) could threat­en the covenant rela­tion­ship and so were not seen sim­ply as individual infractions.

4. Since 1976, when the Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty, about eighty per­sons on death-row have had their con­vic­tions over­turned, approx­i­mate­ly one per­cent of the total sen­tenced to death in that peri­od. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion and ongo­ing, updat­ed sta­tis­tics, see the web­site of the Death Penalty Information Center: www​.essen​tial​.org/dpic.

5. Statement to the Massachusetts Legislature by Jerome Somers, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, March 221999.

6. Statement of the Administrative Committee of the United States Catholic Conference, March 241999.

Additional NCCB/​USCC Death Penalty Information

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