The correlation is not one of numbers but of attitude. The death penalty reinforces the false sense that human beings have the capacity to take anothers life on principle when it was only ever permitted by natural law and God to protect people from the problem of an unjust aggressor. It is that false sense that allows for the scourge of abortion.
Is it really a false sense that allows for abortion? That isn’t how Catholics in past ages thought. They didn’t justify abortion on account of the death penalty. Abortion was punishable by the death penalty.
St. Basil (c. 329-379)
To Anfilochius, Bishop of Iconia:
“…She who has intentionally destroyed [the fetus] is subject to the penalty corresponding to a homicide. For us, there is no scrutinizing between the formed and unformed [fetus]; here truly justice is made not only for the unborn but also with reference to the person who is attentive only to himself since so many women generally die for this very reason.”
The death penalty was commanded by God and is compatible with natural law morality and was practiced by Catholic governments throughout the history of Christendom and condoned by the Church and saints. And it was never merely about dealing with the problem of unjust aggressors. It was about punishment and the need to “purge the evil from your midst.” That included those who committed sodomy.
St. Clement of Alexandria :
“All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and a teacher of the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians.” (Exhortation to the Greeks 2 [A.D. 190])
“The whole earth has now become full of for*nication and wickedness. I admire the ancient legislators of the Romans. These men detested effeminacy of conduct. The giving of the body to feminine purposes, contrary to the law of nature, they judged worthy of the most extreme penalty.”
St. Augustine:
“Those foul offences that are against nature should be everywhere and at all times detested and punished, such as were those of the people of Sodom, which should all nations commit, they should all stand guilty of the same crime, by the law of God, which hath not so made men that they should so abuse one another. For even that very intercourse which should be between God and us is violated, when that same nature, of which He is the Author, is polluted by the perversity of lust.” (Confessions; III.8)
Pope Saint Pius V :
“That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene cities were burned by virtue of divine condemnation, causes Us most bitter sorrow and shocks Our mind, impelling it to repress such a crime with the highest possible zeal."
“Having set our minds to remove everything that may in some way offend the Divine Majesty, We resolve to punish, above all and without indulgence, those things which, by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures or by most grievous examples, are most repugnant to God and elicit His wrath; that is, negligence in divine worship, ruinous simony, the crime of blasphemy, and the execrable libidinous vice against nature. For which faults peoples and nations are scourged by God, according to His just condemnation, with catastrophes, wars, famine and plagues. . . . Let the judges know that, if even after this, Our Constitution, they are negligent in punishing these crimes, they will be guilty of them at Divine Judgment and will also incur Our indignation. . . . If someone commits that nefarious crime against nature that caused divine wrath to be unleashed against the children of iniquity, he will be given over to the secular arm for punishment; and if he is a cleric, he will be subject to analogous punishment after having been stripped of all his degrees." [of ecclesiastical dignity]
St. Alphonso Liguori (1759) :
“As for the punishments for sodomites, they are to be condemned to death by burning.”
Compendium Salmanticense, Antonio de San José (1779)
On the punishments of sodomites
Q1. What are the punishments imposed on sodomites?
A. This execrable crime is punished in the first instance by divine law with the death penalty: If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, both have committed an abomination and they shall be put to death (Lev. 20.13). St Paul assigns the same penalty of death in Rom. 1 not only to those who commit this detestable offence but also to those who consent to it. According to St Thomas, every sodomite died before the night of the Lord’s birth, so that the nature which he assumed should not be defiled with such impurity. The lifeless sea washed over the locations of Sodom and Gomorrah, so that the land infected by that crime should not be seen any longer.
By human law, even among the gentiles, sodomites were punished with the penalty of death by burning. According to the civil law in the Liber Authenticarum, they are similarly subject to the death penalty. Under Spanish law, they are deservedly punished with death by burning and the confiscation of their property. Canon law punishes sodomitical laymen with the penalty of excommunication. In a constitution published in 1568, Pius V decreed that clerics, whether regular or secular, apart from the other punishments inflicted by the common law, should lose their office and be handed over to the secular power.
