Super Grover:
Brilliant post! Pulls good sense out of this cat’s cradle.
Perhaps you can help me out here.
I am aware that the Church does not, and has never, focused only on prevention as an adequate foundational basis for capital punishment. Nevertheless, that particular criterion is the one upon which I focused my earlier posts. If it was answered by anyone, I didn’t see it.
JPII’s statement concerning capital punishment; that the danger to others presented by certain murderers is, in modern society “virtually nonexistent”. That’s clearly not true, factually, as a substantial number of murders, rapes, maimings, etc are committed by prisoners. He had to know that. Therefore, there does seem to be something missing from the Pope’s proposition. What is it?
I have sometimes thought his was an urging toward an ultimate goal which assumed certain mesne goals which he did not name, e.g., greater prison security, which he held as more proximate goals; not advocating an outright and immediate termination of all executions, no matter what.
Perhaps you would care to address the question.
Part 1 Response to RidgeRunner: This is complicated (for me at least) and will take three postings.
I appreciate you asking me, but I am not up to the task to provide clarity on capital punishment. While the issues of the taking of innocent life are clear cut, and I felt confident (and duty-bound) to address the confusion being scandalously inserted into the issue. When you talk about these other issues that are not so overarching as the issues of the taking of innocent human life, then I am admittedly less confident. I will share with you what I believe from my own study as just another lay Catholic.
The CCC makes it absolutely clear that recourse to the death penalty is only justified when necessary to defend other human beings against the person to be executed. This is a very rare circumstance. And I think that the drafters were afraid that people would try to drive a truck through the “very rare” exception, so the Church clarified that such instances would be practically non-existent.
I think that this leaves the laws, in every jurisdiction in the United States that has the death penalty, deficient in light of the CCC and JPII’s Evangelium Vitae. Typically, when someone is “death eligible” there is a finding of guilt, and then a separate penalty phase. My understanding is that this often also involves the jurors who found guilt, is the judge alone, or involves both. For instance, the jury can recommend death (advisory sentence) to the judge, which the judge will usually, but need not, accept. Usually, there must be a finding to show that the crime was exceptional in some way, such as exceptional depravity, torture of victims, things like that. The background of the convicted is often considered. But I am not aware of any jurisdiction that requires a special finding that a sentence of death is necessary to
protect others from future harm. Perhaps such a law would satisfy the CCC, but I really don’t know for sure.
Let’s admit it, many of us are confused at the Church’s teaching on this, which seemed to come almost out of nowhere. The right (indeed, the
duty) of a state to execute certain criminals was recognized at the Council of Trent. The right was recognized by three Doctors of the Church, Augustine, Aquinas, and Alphonsus, and the right has been explicitly recognized by at least two Popes in only the last 80 years. And we are rightly confused when we must ask whether the Council of Trent was wrong, three Doctors were wrong, Pope Pius XI and XII were wrong, or alternatively, whether John Paul II and Benedict XVI were and are wrong. If we do not wholeheartedly oppose virtually all capital punishment, are we sinning, are we bad Catholics, are we Protestants? But if we do oppose all capital punishment, are we contradicting the Council of Trent dogma that says the state has a right and a duty to impose death for crimes of extreme gravity? But when you find yourself asking something like that, maybe you are asking the wrong question. But if it’s irreconciliable to you, perhaps it’s time to undertake the uncomfortable task of looking at the
level of authority of the teaching. I say uncomfortable, because I don’t like being in the position of entertaining the idea that Church teachings are in conflict, but that’s where I’m led right now.
There are generally accepted to be four levels of magisterial teaching, three of which I will address but not do justice to given the text constraint, so please research these on your own (it’s fascinating, really). The first level involves “truths taught as divinely revealed.” Think infallible dogma that you must believe in complete obedience. Think Trent, think the Creed, think the ex cathedra pronouncement on the Immaculate Conception of Mary (defined dogmatically at Vatican I a few years later). Obviously there are many more.
The second level involves secondary truths flowing from the divinely revealed truths. They are “necessarily connected to divine revelation.” They can come from Councils in which bishops meet, or be declared universally even though the bishops may be all over the Earth. The universal form does not even exclude the “dead” magisterium in that it can reach back to truths held universally by long dead bishops and bishops of today for a “formal attestation of a truth already possessed and infallibly transmitted by the Church.” These “second level” teachings are also infallible and must be “firmly accepted and held.” Think of the mid-90’s formal attestation of the truth already possessed and infallibly transmitted regarding the male priesthood, and the doctrine of infallibility as having existed even prior to its “codification” at Vatican I. Obviously there are more.
