Absolute morality

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whyeyeman said:
When Jesus was on the cross, he told one of the thieves that they were forgiven and that he would be with Christ in paradise.
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But Jesus suffered an unjust death on the cross, so the death penalty is not always fair and just.

If you are looking for a greatest absolute truth, then look to the greatest commandments, they are profound and beyond our understanding.
 
@whyeyeman, you are correct: truth is absolute. A truth cannot change. Rather, our understanding of it can be qualified or become more precise.

“Usury is immoral” is three words. You can only be so precise with three words. Someone will come and say, “well in context A it’s immoral but not in context B, therefore that truth can/needs to change.” Not true, the essence of what was meant by “usury is immoral” is and will always be true. The emergence of context B simply necessitates a more precise definition of how the truth relates to context B, and thus “usury is immoral” will be expounded as:
For that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk. - Fifth Lateran Council (1515)
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…by the Church, guided by Holy Spirit.

Some of the responses you’ve received are sloppy explanations IMO. I think your intuition to be wary when someone says truth can change is a good thing.
 
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Jesus was condemned unjustly. The good their was condemned justly. Therefore, the death penalty is sometimes permissable.
I don’t know what the greatest commandment has to do with the death penalty, but yes - it is indeed profound.
 
Thank you. Pope Saint John Paul II condemns this sort of thinking as well.

“Obedience is not always easy. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging “the truth about God for a lie” (Rom 1:25). Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn 18:38), he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself.”

Relativism is a result of Satan.
 
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tl;dr: Usury was never essentially about interest taking. The topic is often erroneously used to support reletavism or question the infallible magisterium.
The citations for the second sentence are mere dictionary entries which do not substantiate that claim nor do they shed any historical light on it.

If you look further down the article under “historical meaning” it tries again:
The First Council of Nicaea, in 325, forbade clergy from engaging in usury[13] (canon 17). At the time, usury was interest of any kind, and the canon forbade the clergy to lend money at interest rates even as low as 1 percent per year. Later ecumenical councils applied this regulation to the laity.[13][14]
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The citation (14) is from Noonan’s Development of Moral Doctrine which makes that claim further citing his Authority on Usury and on Contraception:
certainly from at least 1150 to 1550, seeking, receiving, or hoping for anything beyond one’s principal—in other words, looking for profit—on a loan constituted the mortal sin of usury.
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He further claims that the Church’s teaching on usury has changed and similarly we should expect the Church’s teaching on contraception will change. …Interesting.

However, the Catholic Answers article by David Palm The Red Herring of Usury pretty much debunks that whole line of reasoning. In it he says:
When the subject of an infallible magisterium comes up, someone always raises the question of usury. Non-Catholics and certain Catholics claim that the Church has contradicted its own teaching on usury.

In a now-famous article, “Authority, Usury, and Contraception” (Cross Currents, Winter 1966), Noonan compares the Church’s teaching on usury and contraception through the centuries and draws two conclusions. He seeks to demonstrate that usury was strongly and consistently prohibited by the magisterium of the Church, whereas the prohibitions against contraception were less frequent, although still present. He also claims that the Church’s teaching on usury has changed with changing circumstances and that we should expect the same possibility for its teaching on contraception.

Noonan argues that usury is the taking of any interest on any sort of loan. He claims that the condemnation of usury, so defined, is the teaching of Scripture and that this biblical principle was taken up by the Church Fathers and later codified in the Church’s official teaching
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He basically shows that the Church’s understanding of usury was never specifically about interest taking, but rather “The Church Fathers were concerned, as is Scripture, to protect the poor from the rapacity of the rich who oppressed them through interest-taking.”
 
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But “protection of the poor from the rapacity of the rich” means different things under different economies.
As these ethical and economic principles became fully appreciated, and as civilization progressed, it became clear that money in more modern economies—with competitive markets and almost unlimited opportunities for profitable (“fruitful”) investment—did not suffer from the same tendency to be “unfruitful” as it had before. In the face of this change, the Church defined what is meant by usury. Session X of the Fifth Lateran Council (1515) gave its exact meaning: “For that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk.”
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Anyway, all this is just to reiterate how easy it is to end up arguing past each other because we often use terms like “truth” and “teaching” and “changes” loosely.
 
Boler said:
He basically shows that the Church’s understanding of usury was never specifically about interest taking, but rather “The Church Fathers were concerned, as is Scripture, to protect the poor from the rapacity of the rich who oppressed them through interest-taking.”
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This seems quite reasonable and rationale. If one is to oppose “interest” absolutely, then it seems one should need to equally oppose all forms of rental and leasing absolutely.
 
whyeyeman said:
The basis of doctrinal development is that future statements of doctrine do not contradict past statements.
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Non-contradiction, or self-consistency, is desirable but I am not sure if it is “the basis of doctrinal development.” There are higher principles, more fundamental principles, like life and love, for example.

Existing doctrine on the death penalty probably started with “Love one another.” We love our neighbor by protecting him from violent crime. Killing a violent criminal is an effective way to protect our neighbor. However, we must also love the criminal, which mean sparing his life if possible. How can we act with love toward both the innocent and the criminal? That’s the death penalty question. The answer to that question depends on changing technological and societal factors, but the underlying principle will never change. Love was, is, and always will be the basis for death penalty doctrine.
 
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whyeyeman said:
Where has this ever been confined in church doctrine?
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Please read the papal bull Ad extirpanda and please read the entry “torture” in the New Catholic Encyclopedia (green books).
Many truths are relative to the culture. for example, as the Holy Father Pope Francis has pointed out, capital punishment is inadmissable and contrary to the gospel. And other recent Popes have also come out against the use of capital punishment in today’s culture. This goes to show that the truth of the statement:
Capital punishment is morally wrong
will depend on what point in time you are talking about and in what circumstances and in what culture.
The Holy Father, Pope Francis, has said that the official Catholic teaching should be changed on capital punishment.


Similarly with Euclidean geometry. It was thought that Euclidean geometry expressed absolute and universal truth. However, with the development of Lobachevskian geometry and Riemannian geometries, Henri Poincare was led to say that Euclidean geometry is not a universal truth but one outcome of using one particular set of rules.
 
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RandomAlias said:
Existing doctrine on the death penalty probably started with “Love one another.” We love our neighbor by protecting him from violent crime. Killing a violent criminal is an effective way to protect our neighbor. However, we must also love the criminal, which mean sparing his life if possible. How can we act with love toward both the innocent and the criminal? That’s the death penalty question. The answer to that question depends on changing technological and societal factors, but the underlying principle will never change. Love was, is, and always will be the basis for death penalty doctrine.
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Is punishment solely a matter of the protection of others from the would-be actions of a criminal?
 
AlNg said:
Many truths are relative to the culture. for example, as the Holy Father Pope Francis has pointed out, capital punishment is inadmissable and contrary to the gospel. And other recent Popes have also come out against the use of capital punishment in today’s culture. This goes to show that the truth of the statement:

“Capital punishment is morally wrong” will depend on what point in time you are talking about and in what circumstances and in what culture.
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It must be recognised that the statement is brief and could be considered to lack precision. Eg. are the words “these days” implied though not stated? For so long as the “inadmissibility” of CP rests on some prudential judgment about circumstances, it does no conflict with traditional teaching.
 
Rau said:
Is punishment solely a matter of the protection of others from the would-be actions of a criminal?
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An alternative view is that of justice. It troubles me, though, because I don’t see much difference between that and the old law that Jesus spoke of:
Exodus 21:23-25 But if injury ensues, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
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Perhaps I do not correctly understand justice. Perhaps that is not justice but retribution.

What do you think?
 
Rau said:
are the words “these days” implied though not stated?
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That goes to show that many truths, once thought to be absolute and universal, are actually dependent on the time period and are relative to the culture.
 
AlNg said:
many truths, once thought to be absolute and universal, are actually dependent on the time period and are relative to the culture
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See, I have a problem with this wording. That an emerging context requires a more precise definition does not mean the truth isn’t absolute or that it changes.

Anytime we employ language we are by necessity using shorthand and approximations. Unless someone says “CP is always wrong in every circumstance in every culture in every time and in every place” then they probably are not speaking universally to begin with if they merely say “CP is wrong.” The given-today’s-societal-structures-and-technology is silent, so to speak.
 
Boler said:
That an emerging context requires a more precise definition does not mean the truth isn’t absolute or that it changes.
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By giving a more precise definition, you are changing the definition of the truth and therefore the truth is going to be relative to the definition that you give it at that particular point in time and for that particular culture.

Take for example the idea that torture is morally wrong. I think a recent pope has said so. But the American lawyers and others simply give a more precise definition of the word torture so that it does not include waterboarding or forcing a male person to stand up for 72 hours without sleep, with his arms tied and positioned above his body and to be humiliated by being forced to wear female clothing and to listen to blaring music.
Or take slavery,. Most people will say that slavery is wrong. But others will say, no, the fact that I have a servant is not wrong, because she is not really a slave, only an imprisoned servant. I did buy her at an auction, but she is treated very nicely and she is very willing to be our servant and has said that she is satisfied with being obedient to her master. They will say that she is not a slave, but a more precise definition is that she is a servant, not a slave. And since Catholic kings and queens have had servants, there is nothing wrong with it.
 
Boler said:
“CP is always wrong in every circumstance in every culture in every time and in every place” then they probably are not speaking universally to begin with if they merely say “CP is wrong.”
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Fortunately, such verbosity is not required as the church teaches the notion of intrinsically evil acts, which are always and everywhere wrong to choose. CP has never been regarded as one of those and I doubt Francis has in mind to change the Church’s position on that.
 
Rau said:
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Eric_Hyom:
But Jesus suffered an unjust death on the cross, so the death penalty is not always fair and just.
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There is no claim anywhere that every instance of the death penalty is fair and just.
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Then how can the death penalty be an absolute truth?
 
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