Ahead of Inmate’s Execution, Florida Catholic Bishops Seek Clemency

Ahead of Inmate’s Execution, Florida Catholic Bishops Seek Clemency

The Catholic bishops of Florida have asked Gov. Rick Scott to stay the execution of Manuel Valle, who was convicted in the 1978 shooting murder of a police officer. “True peace can only be achieved by forgiveness,” they said. “Governor, we ask you to stop state sanctioned killing.”

“Killing someone because they killed diminishes respect for life and promotes a culture of violence and vengeance,” the bishops said in an Aug. 3 letter. “We affirm the right and duty of the State to assure public safety and punish the guilty by incarceration, which allows the inmate an opportunity for reflection on their offenses and sorrow for the pain they have caused others.”

Valle, now 61, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Sept. 1 for fatally shooting Coral Gables police officer Louis Pena.

Read more at CNA

25 August 2011
St. Louis of France

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signofcontradiction

Aug 26, 2011

Does the state ever have the right to use the death penalty? The bishops of Florida are addressing the particular case of Manuel Valles, but does the Church forbid the death penalty in all cases?

What does the Catechism say?

2266 The State's effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. the primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.

2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.
"If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect 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.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'[John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.]