Mission Statement
The Catholic Mobilizing Network To End the Use of the Death Penalty (CMN) supports state bishops' conferences, diocesan offices, and Catholic institutions and organizations in their efforts to end the use of the death penalty in the United States, and in their restorative-justice initiatives. Working in close collaboration with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, CMN seeks to prepare Catholics for informed involvement in campaigns to repeal state death-penalty laws and expand or inaugurate state restorativ-justice programs; to proclaim the Church's unconditionally pro-life teaching and its application to capital punishment; and to infuse the public debate with that teaching. Join us in our campaign to end use of the death penalty in the United States.
"I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary."
John Paul II, St. Louis, Missouri, January 1999
"The use of the death penalty cannot really be mended: it should be ended."
Cardinal McCarrick
"Our Church's teaching exhorts us to respect human life in all its stages, and in all circumstances. As Catholics, we combine our pro-life and social-justice convictions in defense of human life and we proclaim that the penalty of death is never the answer to a difficult pregnancy, a prolonged illness or a violent crime."
Tom Grenchik, Executive Director, USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities
Welcome to CMN:
Click here for a message from
Most Rev. Edwin F. O'Brien,
Archbishop of Baltimore
EDUCATE
Educate the lay community through our programs and materials on the Church's teachings on the death penalty
FACILITATE
Facilitate respectful and informed discourse within the Catholic community and the community at large.
ADVOCATE
Encourage informed Catholic involvement in the public debate.
In the News
Group Gives Up Death Penalty Work
Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it. (New York Times)
