Santa Clara Launches Website to Educate Catholics on the Death Penalty

A new website sponsored by Santa Clara University and California Catholic Lawyers Against the Death Penalty (CCLADP), www.ccladp.org, seeks to inform Catholic opinion regarding the death penalty and to actively promote the repeal of California’s death penalty law.

The website aims to be a resource for Catholics who have questions about participation in enforcing the death penalty, with resource materials for Catholic prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and jurors, as well as Catholic doctors, legislators and governors.

The website includes resource sections on how the death penalty is viewed and analyzed by the Pope, the American and California Bishops, the Bible and Catholic catechism. It also provides links to numerous websites of numerous other religious groups containing information about the death penalty.

Santa Clara University School of Law professor Gerald Uelmen, who received a grant from the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education at Santa Clara to organize and launch the website, said the genesis of the project was a public opinion poll showing that, contrary to Church teaching, Catholics registered the highest support for the continuation of the death penalty among all religious groups in California. [Santa Clara University]