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H H H
67. Society has a duty to defend life against violence and to reach out to vic-
tims of crime. The Catholic Church has accepted the death penalty in the past
for particularly egregious crimes when there was a serious continuing threat to
society and no alternative was available. But our nation’s continued reliance on
the
death penalty
cannot be justified. Because we have other ways to protect
society that are more respectful of human life, the USCCB supports efforts
to end the use of the death penalty and in the meantime to restrain its use
through broader use of DNA evidence, access to effective counsel, and efforts
to address unfairness and injustice related to application of the death penalty.
Promoting Peace
68. Catholics must also work
to
avoid war and to promote peace
. This is of
particular importance, as there is a danger in the present time of becoming
indifferent to war because of the number of armed conflicts. War is never a
reflection of what ought to be but a sign that something more true to human
dignity has failed. The Catholic tradition recognizes the legitimacy of just war
teaching when defending the innocent in the face of grave evil, but we must
never lose sight of the cost of war and its harm to human life. Nations should
protect the dignity of the human person and the right to life by finding more
effective ways to prevent conflicts, to resolve them by peaceful means, and to
promote reconstruction and reconciliation in the wake of conflicts. Nations
have a right and obligation to defend human life and the common good against
terrorism, aggression, and similar threats, such as the targeting of persons for
persecution because of their religion, including Christians. In the words of
Pope Francis, people are being killed “for the sole reason of being Christians”
(Homily, Feb. 17, 2015), and there are “more martyrs in the Church today
than there were in the first centuries” (Homily, June 30, 2014). “The blood of
our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard by
everyone who can still distinguish between good and evil. All the more this cry
must be heard by those who have the destiny of peoples in their hands” (Mes-
sage of Pope Francis to Patriarch Abuna Matthias of the Ethiopian Tewahedo
Orthodox Church, April 20, 2015). Indeed, the duty of nations to defend
human life and the common good demands effective responses to terror, moral
assessment of and restraint in the means used, respect for ethical limits on the
use of force, a focus on the roots of terror, and fair distribution of the burdens
of responding to terror. The use of
torture
must be rejected as fundamentally
incompatible with the dignity of the human person and ultimately counterpro-
ductive in the effort to combat terrorism. The Church has raised fundamental
moral concerns about
preventive use of military force
.
7
Our Church honors
the commitment and sacrifice of those who serve in our nation’s armed forces