Action on the death penalty

Earlier this year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a background paper ( here) on the death penalty. In case you did not know, they are against it. With a death penalty bill under discussion in the state Legislature, this is a good time to review the matter. Perhaps you can use the material in the backgrounder to draft a letter to the editor (see our previous post on ten tips for writing letters).

The New York State Catholic Conference has more information available here, where they note:

In 1995 Pope John Paul II specifically addressed the death penalty issue in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. He said, “[T]he nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”