CNA Staff, Jan 9, 2021 / 05:00 am
In an online panel Friday, the incoming chair of the U.S. bishops' doctrine committee discussed the Church's opposition to the death penalty as a matter of fighting the "throwaway culture."
"[B]asically the Church is stating the state cannot and should not exercise this power [to execute]," Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville said.
Bishop Flores, who was elected in November to be the new chair of the doctrine committee of the U.S. bishops' conference, spoke at an online panel "Killing in Our Name: Federal Executions and Pro-Life Witness," hosted by Georgetown University. He will begin serving on the USCCB's doctrine committee after the conference's Fall, 2021 assembly.
The panel was held amid a spate of federal executions; after a nearly-two-decade moratorium on the federal use of the death penalty, the Justice Department announced in 2019 that executions would resume.