As a Catholic, I can’t support the death penalty—not even in a case as brutal as Christa Pike’s.
Yes, what she did at 18 was horrific. Colleen Slemmer’s family has lived with unimaginable pain for thirty years, and nothing can erase that. But the Church teaches that every human life has inviolable dignity, even the life of someone who has taken another. The Catechism now calls the death penalty “inadmissible” because it attacks that dignity and is no longer necessary to protect society.
Pike was a deeply broken teenager—sexually abused from early childhood, neglected, untreated for trauma and mental illness. She has spent three decades in prison, come to genuine remorse, and says she is at peace. Killing her now does not bring justice; it simply ends the chance for further conversion and healing. The botched lethal injections only underline how degrading and uncertain this process remains.
God alone is the final judge. Our call is to mercy, not vengeance. Life without parole already protects the public. Taking a life when we don’t have to is not justice—it’s a failure of the hope the Gospel demands of us
