Absolute morality

[Rau]

Then how can the death penalty be an absolute truth?

What does that statement mean? Please state what you understand is being asserted as an absolute truth.

 

[whyeyeman]

Non-contradiction, or self-consistency, is desirable but I am not sure if it is “the basis of doctrinal development.”

Yes it is. That’s what Newman said. He came up with the term.

 

[whyeyeman]

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

That’s utter tripe. What you describe is called relativism. This has been condemned by the church. John Paul II explicitly says it is the work of Satan.

 

[whyeyeman]

God explicitly laid out hundreds of crimes under the old law that warranted the death penality. Is God evil?

 

[o_mlly]

When Pope Francis says he wants to change church teaching on the death penalty, he is objectively wrong.

Unlike the truth, the state’s right to execute is not absolute. The Church has always taught that the state’s right to execute is a conditional right. The circumstances of an execution – how, when, where, who, etc. – limit the just use of the state’s right. Executions that are evil in their circumstance are unjust.

Changes in society may well require changes in Church teaching on circumstances that further proscribe the just use of the death penalty.

 

[AlNg]

John Paul II explicitly says it is the work of Satan.

Where does he say that hyperbolic geometry is the work of Satan? Can you give us a link?

 

[CilladeRoma]

You would do well to be a little kinder and have a little more humility.

Yes, I know what the ordinary magisterium is. I am in process of studying for my Master’s degree in Sacramental theology and my hobby is the study of Canon Law. You?

You might want to talk to your priest about the way you understand Catholicism.

 

[whyeyeman]

He says that relativism is the work of Satan.

“[O]bedience 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.” - Veritatis Splendor

 

[Boler]

C’mon, we’re discussing faith and morals, not mathematics. But even in the case of mathematics, our coming to a better understanding of mathematical truths doesn’t mean the truth changed, it just means we had it wrong and accordingly refined our own models of the world. The problem is you’re alluding to applying this to matters of infallibly defined truths of faith and morals.

Well, when we’re talking about doctrine on faith and morals, the essential truth of the doctrine does not change.

 

[o_mlly]

The universal ordinary magisterium has defined that the death penalty is not intrinsically wrong.

I know. I do not get the point of your re-posting of this fact. Have I missed something?

 

[Boler]

death penalty is not intrinsically wrong

o_milly is not saying the DP is intrinsically wrong, but rather, it is not intrinsically right (maybe that’s not the right term). The teaching was never that the DP is always acceptable nor that it was never acceptable. So, the truth is and has always been the same, but the teaching of that truth is adapted to the circumstances.

 

[whyeyeman]

Sorry, I responded to the wrong person