A banner sponsored by the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty (CAADP) was presented in front of St. Helen’s for three weeks this month. This temporary installation was part of an Interfaith Billboard Project in participation with area churches of all denominations to promote dialog about this volatile issue. The banner, like the question of capital punishment itself, was not without controversy. Many parisioners looked up the CAADP website printed on the banner to find that it contained no links to specifically Catholic sources of information and teaching on this subject. In the future those links will be available. Catholic web sites from the Vatican down abound in clear statements of the Catholic Church’s position on the death penalty and the sanctity of life. Links to some of these resources are provided below:
USCCB: EFFORTS TO END THE DEATH PENALTY
(a typical page from USCCB)
CATHOLICS AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
(web site for the national organization)
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
(one of several Catholic web sites emphasizing activism in social justice issues)
(official teaching on capital punishment from the New Catechism - scroll to #2267)
U.S. COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS
(search results for "death penalty": 396 statements sorted by date from present)
VATICAN STATEMENT, FEB 11, 2000
(one of many available from Papal addresses, encyclicals, etc on the Vatican Web Site)
