Remarkable circuit judge speech on capital punishment at mass

StandDown Texas Project rightly calls a “must-read” this speech that Fifth Circuit Judge Carolyn Dineen King delivered earlier this month at the Red Mass at Corpus Christi Cathedral.  The speech provides a remarkable review of “the way capital sentencing laws have developed during the last 40 years,” and it concludes with this pitch for Catholics to oppose the death penalty on religious grounds:

Catholics, the people of life, have an opportunity to advocate to our legislators changes in our laws that will align them more closely with the moral law.  For the solution to the problems that we face with the death penalty is a political one (not a judicial one), and each of us, as a Catholic citizen and voter, is called upon to promote it….

Jesus has told us that vengeance is to play no part in our lives, that forgiveness is what we should aspire to.  The Catholic bishops have recently issued a call to the Catholic community, inviting every Catholic to join in the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty, not as a partisan campaign but as a moral commitment….  The Church’s campaign has been long in coming, centuries long, but at last it is here and all of should actively and prayerfully support it.

Some related posts on religion and the death penalty:

• Senator Brownback questions death penalty and culture of life
• Debating religion and the death penalty
• Virginia governor campaign spotlights death penalty and religion
• Will SCOTUS consider Bible-influenced capital sentencing?
• New resource examining religion and the death penalty
• Sentencing and Religion
• Sister Prejean’s powerful perspective