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Steve Chapman’s penetrating observation on the execution of Timothy McVeigh is quite right: “The point is vengeance.” The U.S. Catholic Bishops offered a similar critique in 1999 (“A Statement of the Administrative Board of the U.S. Catholic Conference,” April 2, 1999) that the continued use of the death penalty would promote vengeance in our culture.
The federal use of the death penalty panders to the nation’s lowest common denominator. What is needed here is a break in the myth that killing brings healing.
