Dialogue Document
To End the Death Penalty (1999)
To End the Death Penalty: A Report of the National Jewish/Catholic Consultation, Co-sponsored by the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 9, 1999
"A Sanhedrin that puts one person to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: Or even once in seventy years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiba say: Had we been the Sanhedrin, none would ever have been put to death." Mishnah Makkot, 1:10 (2nd Century, C.E.)
"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary." Pope John Paul II, January 27, 1999, St. Louis, Missouri
Almost two millennia separate these two statements, which together embody the collective wisdom and moral insights of our two ancient religious traditions, Rabbinic Judaism and Roman Catholicism, on a burning issue of our time, capital punishment. At our meeting of March 23, 1999, we religious leaders, Catholic and Jewish, probed and shared our own traditions with each other. The result was a remarkable confluence of witness on how best in our time to interpret the eternal word of God.