The Catholic Church has had a dramatic impact on both the structure and understanding of criminal justice up to the present. This book surveys the history of the church to suggest that despite demonstrable abuses, a humane and redemptive theory of criminal justice can be constructed that is harmonious with biblical sources, tradition, and current normative emphases in Catholic social thought.
Drawing upon Catholic social teaching, traditional writings, and Sacred Scripture, this book presents a Catholic perspective of crime and criminal justice in America. Specifically, it presents a policy framework for the criminal justice system describing how and why police, courts, and corrections should adopt the tenets of restorative and community justice. In addition, it presents how certain crime-related issues would be addressed under a Catholic perspective, particularly focusing on the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, and so-called victimless crimes.
The Catholic Church teaches that punishment must have a constructive and redemptive purpose and that it be coupled with treatment and, when possible, restitution. Rehabilitation and restoration must include the spiritual dimension of healing and hope. Since the publication of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop's 2000 pastoral statement on restorative justice, the conversation surrounding the need for criminal justice reform and restorative justice has moved forward. Redemption and Restoration responds from a Catholic perspective to help form an educational campaign to equip Catholics and their leaders to participate in the national conversation on this issue, create the programs needed to assist in healing the harm caused by crime, and restore our communities. The book develops the traditional Catholic understanding of justice, offers a theological understanding of restorative justice, explains how it can be implemented, and reflects on the practical arguments for restorative justice. Grounded in the stories of real people, Redemption and Restoration helps readers gain a deeper understanding of how this affects us all as a country and a church. It includes discussion questions to engage groups in exploring issues related to restorative justice.
Harm, Healing, and Human Dignity is a faith formation resource to help parishes, small groups, and individual believers reflect on the Catholic call to restorative justice. Through Scripture, Catholic teaching, eye-opening statistics, and personal stories, each chapter prompts prayerful consideration of the place of human dignity and the common good as we respond to harm, violence, and the death penalty in the United States. Prepared in cooperation with the highly regarded Catholic Mobilizing Network for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, Harm, Healing, and Human Dignity will help Catholics consider what it means to choose hope over death and redemption over vengeance. It's a choice that can foster healing, transform relationships, and build the culture of life to which our Catholic faith calls us.
Even for violent crime, justice should mean more than punishment. By paying close attention to the relational harms suffered by victims, this book develops a concept of relational justice for survivors, offenders and community. Relational justice looks beyond traditional rules of legal responsibility to include the social and emotional dimensions of human experience, opening the way for a more compassionate, effective and just response to crime. The book’s chapters follow a journey from victim experiences of violence to community healing from violence. Early chapters examine the relational harms inflicted by the worst wrongs, the moral responsibility of wrongdoers and common mistakes made in judging wrongdoing. Particular attention is paid here to sexual violence. The book then moves to questions of just punishment: proper sentencing by judges, mandatory sentences approved by the public, and the realities of contemporary incarceration, focusing particularly on solitary confinement and sexual violence. In its remaining chapters, the book looks at changes brought by the victims' rights movement and victim needs that current law does not, and perhaps cannot meet. It then addresses possibilities for offender change and challenges for majority America in addressing race discrimination in criminal justice. The book concludes with a look at how individuals might live out the ideals of a greater—relational—justice. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Addresses the need for a moral revolution and a renewed ethic of justice, responsibility, and community. Recognizes impressive examples in dioceses, parishes, and schools across the country.
A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013 An Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Nominee An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin -- and the brave few who fought for justice In the mid-1980s a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican's embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the United States judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him. Meanwhile, a young lawyer listened to a new client describe an abusive sexual history with a priest that began when he was ten years old. His parents' complaints were downplayed by Church officials who offered them money to go away. The lawyer saw a claim that any defendant would want to settle. Then he began to suspect he was onto something bigger, involving thousands of priests who had abused countless children while the Church had done almost nothing about it. The lawsuit he filed would touch off a legal war of historic and global proportions. Part history, part journalism, and part true-crime thriller, Michael D'Antonio's Mortal Sins brings to mind landmark books such as All the President's Men, And the Band Played On, and The Informant, as it reveals a long and ferocious battle for the soul of the largest and oldest organization in the world.
The Catholic Church has in recent decades been associated with political efforts to eliminate the death penalty. It was not always so. This timely work reviews and explains the Catholic Tradition regarding the death penalty, demonstrating that it is not inherently evil and that it can be reserved as a just form of punishment in certain cases. Drawing upon a wealth of philosophical, scriptural, theological, and social scientific arguments, the authors explain the perennial teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate—not only to protect society from immediate physical danger, but also to administer retributive justice and to deter capital crimes. The authors also show how some recent statements of Church leaders in opposition to the death penalty are prudential judgments rather than dogma. They reaffirm that Catholics may, in good conscience, disagree about the application of the death penalty. Some arguments against the death penalty falsely suggest that there has been a rupture in the Church's traditional teaching and thereby inadvertently cast doubt on the reliability of the Magisterium. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, the Church's traditional teaching is a safeguard to society, because the just use of the death penalty can be used to protect the lives of the innocent, inculcate a horror of murder, and affirm the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures who must be held responsible for their actions. By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed challenges contemporary Catholics to engage with Scripture, Tradition, natural law, and the actual social scientific evidence in order to undertake a thoughtful analysis of the current debate about the death penalty.
