Can a Catholic Still Maintain the Death Penalty?

[graciew]

Thank you and in good faith here is why am looking for it.
This was a letter to the Bishop of Toulouse year 405. The words cited seem to be correct ( in light of the source I will be citing here soon as well)
It is apparently the first letter where DP appears addressed by a Pope.
And that he couldn’t find the motives and that “ we may not appear” and it being a letter disciplinary in nature about a practice has always sort of puzzled me for a long time.
Here is the “ longest” I have found:

Innocent writes, “In regard to this question we have nothing definitive from those who have gone before us. It must be remembered that power was granted by God, and to avenge crime the sword was permitted; he who carries out this vengeance is God’s minister (Rm 13:1-4). What motive have we for condemning a practice that all hold to be permitted by God? We uphold, therefore, what has been observed until now, in order not to alter the discipline and so that we may not appear to act contrary to God’s authority.”

Which I haven’t been able to check against another document

It comes from this source:

Capital Punishment and the Just Society

I know I won’t be discovering gunpowder but checking the original would at least put some of my search to rest. So thank you.

 

[graciew]

I appreciate a lot your trying.Really.
Sometimes where we are coming from depends a lot on what we are looking at.
Personally , I like the original sources.And this one in particular has puzzled me for a few years.
I enjoy reading documents in general, originals
Thanks again!

 

[graciew]

I usually go to Vatican.va , But I ll have a look at this app as well.
Thank you again, (name removed by moderator)

 

[AlNg]

JPII acknowledged the validity of capital punishment if it was necessary for the protection of society. Francis has repudiated that position by calling it an attack on the inviolability and the dignity of the person and being contrary to the gospel.

So, Catholic teaching does change with the times and with the culture? One Pope says one thing, and another Pope repudiates it?

 

[otjm]

From Dr. Edward Fesser in an article in The Catholic World Report - The Dispatch: More From CWR…: Three Questions for Catholic Opponents of Capital Punishment"

“The problem with the claim that Catholics are obliged to assent to the pope’s teaching on capital punishment is that it is never made clear exactly what we are expected to assent to. Yes, Pope Francis clearly says that capital punishment should be abolished. But when his critics say that his teaching in unclear, ;they don’t mean that part is unclear. What they mean is that it is unclear whether the pope’s opposition to capital punishment reflects a doctrinal change or merely a prudential judgment. Like the remarks he quotes approvingly from Dostoyevsky, Pope Francis’s statements about capital punishment are often so extreme that, if taken at face value, they seem to contradict traditional teaching - in which case no Catholic should accept them. Whereas, if the pope’s statements are not taken at face value, but instead as merely overheated rhetoric that is not meant to conflict with traditional teaching, then it is hard to see them in anything more that a reiteration of Pope John Paul II’s merely prudential judgement that capital punishment is legitimate in principle but better avoided in practice - a judgement with which, as then-Cardinal Ratzinger taught, Catholics are not obliged to agree.”

Italics are the author’s.

 

[AlNg]

Pope Francis clearly says that capital punishment should be abolished.

He teaches a lot more than that. Pope Francis teaches that the death penalty is an attack on the inviolability and the dignity of the person and is contrary to the gospel, No? Is this teaching correct or is it heresy?

 

[Motherwit]

otjm:

Pope Francis clearly says that capital punishment should be abolished.

He teaches a lot more than that. Pope Francis teaches that the death penalty is an attack on the inviolability and the dignity of the person and is contrary to the gospel, No? Is this teaching correct or is it heresy?

But it so happens in all areas of human development that something can serve a purpose at one time but can become cruel and unnecessary in a modern context. An example that I’d use would be the need for hysterectomy in the past was a humane treatment of a problem. Today with developed medicine, there is little need to take such a drastic step and would in fact be cruel and unnecessary in light of the knowledge we have gained.

 

[humilityseeker]

The church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” , and she works with determination for its abolition world wide.
There is increasing awareness today that the dignity of a person is not lost, even after the commission of very serious crimes. The guilty should also not be deprived of possible redemption.

This is quoted and paraphrased from Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

 

[AlNg]

The church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”

Was the death penalty always an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and contrary to the gospel, even 500 years ago or is it only today?

 

[Ender]

And of course Pope JPII made no bones about where the course of the Church was going.

Where the church was going? The church can predict what will be moral in the future but not what is moral at the moment?

The growing movement inside our Church that is attempting to strip the Magisterium of all authority as a moral teacher of mankind is a work of the devil in my opinion.

Mostly what people are doing is disagreeing with you. That’s not quite the same thing.

Well, the problem is that ‘political issues’ are rarely political alone. The mere fact an issue enters political debate does not make it stop being a moral issue or immunize it to moral or ethical criticism and thus the ambit of the pulpit, so to say.

It is true that some issues are both political as well as moral, but not so many as one might suppose.

Every encyclical or address that involves climate change and it’s social effect…

Climate change is a scientific issue and is not all that susceptible to moral analysis.

Ender regularly claims that the death penalty can never be unjust. It would merely be unwise.

I have never made that claim, and this citation does not support your charge. I really don’t understand how you can so completely misunderstand what I say.

Can you find any of these two for example from verifiable source? Original if possible?

(in Latin)
a.Epist. 6, c. 3. 8, ad Exsuperium, Episcopum Tolosanum, (20 Feb. 405), PL 20, 495
In regard to this question we have nothing definitive from those who have gone before us. It must be remembered that power was granted by God [to the magistrates], and to avenge crime by the sword was permitted. He who carries out this vengeance is God’s minister (Rm 13:1-4). Why should we condemn a practice that all hold to be permitted by God? We uphold, therefore, what has been observed until now, in order not to alter the discipline and so that we may not appear to act contrary to God’s authority

 

[otjm]

If he is saying that capital punishment is a violation of the inviolability and dignity of the human person, he is either making a prudential judgement, or he is trying to turn a 2,000 year old holding of moral law to the contrary.

Either a pope is trying to overturn a moral law held for 2,000 years, now based on “inviolability and dignity of the human person” or he is making a prudential judgement. Invoking inviolability and dignity is either a complete reversal of all the last 2,000 years of the morality of capital punishment - that is, saying the Church got it wrong for 2,000 years, or he is not. and if he is not, then it is a matter of him making a prudential judgement, which we are not required to follow.

Even JP2 held that it was a prudential judgment as to the use of CP, and Cardinal Ratzinger publicly noted that the faithful were not bound to agree.

And in fact the Pope goes farther than that. He has said that life imprisonment is wrong. Common sense would say that you don’t let a serial murderer loose just because he has turned 70.

So either Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and all popes prior to Francis got it wrong - read that as Scripture and Tradition - and we have absolutely no duty to agree with that position; or it is a prudential judgement, which we also are not required to agree with.

As a reminder, popes are not infallible when not speaking ex cathedra.

Either he is making a doctrinal change - to which no Catholic has any duty whatsoever to assent to, or he is making a prudential judgement - and which as a Catholic one may legitimately disagree, and still, as then Cardinal Ratzinger noted in 2004, “present himself to Communion”.

 

[graciew]

Thank you , Ender!!:clap:t2:

 

[AlNg]

popes are not infallible when not speaking ex cathedra .

OK. So the teaching on artificial birth control could be wrong because the teaching was not ex cathedra?

 

[stpurl]

Ex cathedra is not (and never has been) the only mechanism whereby the charism of infallibility is used.

 

[Ender]

So, Catholic teaching does change with the times and with the culture? One Pope says one thing, and another Pope repudiates it?

Well, that’s the problem with assuming those were doctrinal statements: you would have the situation where one pope can simply repudiate what another one says, which would also suggest that morality is nothing more than what a pope claims at the moment.

Understanding their comments to be prudential, however, eliminates all those problems.

 

[otjm]

But it so happens in all areas of human development that something can serve a purpose at one time but can become cruel and unnecessary in a modern context.

The issue is not “cruel and unusual”. The issue is, can the pope completely overturn a matter which both Scriptural and Tradition have held for 2,000 years?

I would submit that burning at a stake, or beheading with a sword or guillotine is more cruel than modern methods of execution. Arguments can and are made that current methods are cruel and unusual, but that is not the substance of the pope’s position.

 

[otjm]

Nothing in the statement of the pope indicates that the charism of infallibility is being used. What is indicated is a choice of two possibilities; either the pope is saying that 2,000 years of moral law as laid out by Scripture and Tradition is wrong (a reversal of doctrine), or he is making a prudential judgement, and no Catholic is bound to agreement with a prudential judgement.

 

[otjm]

OK. So the teaching on artificial birth control could be wrong because the teaching was not ex cathedra?

What does Scripture and Tradition say about it? Nothing in Pope Paul’s encyclical HV indicated that he was saying anything contrary to them. The essence of his encyclical is in line with both.

 

[stpurl]

I agree with you. I was just pointing out that as an end to your post you threw in, ‘as a reminder, popes are not infallible when not speaking ex cathedra’, and that I believe is not a complete understanding of infallibility. I do not believe Pope Francis ‘changed the teaching’ in that I believe he is more or less stating, as did Pope St. John Paul II, that the death penalty should be eliminated meaning that to be a kind of ‘in the best of all possible worlds this would be ideal’ and not that it MUST be eliminated, least of all that it was ‘ok’ once and ‘not ok’ now.

But if you attempt to argue that one cannot accept the encyclical because “he wasn’t speaking ex cathedra and it is ONLY when he speaks ex cathedra that he is infallible’ then you DO run into problems where somebody WILL say something like, “Oh then Humanae Vitae doesn’t have to be accepted EITHER because it wasn’t ex cathedra’. And that is also wrong.

It is not the ‘ex cathedra’ that ‘bestows infallibility’ and nothing else, it is whether this particular passage in the encyclical meets the infallibility requirement being part of the Deposit of the Faith if it seems to contradict the Faith.

And I say it does not meet the requirement because the ambiguity of the text and context as you note ‘appear’ to contradict the Deposit of the Faith with regard to the teaching, and so the ambiguity must be clarified to show that the Pope only used the conditional ‘should be eliminated’ as a ‘hope’ and not ‘must be eliminated’ as a ‘It was a wrong which must be righted’.
Hopefully this will all be clarified.

Until then we can certainly read the statement in the light of the Pope making a statement regarding his personal ‘hopes’ and that does not contradict the Magisterium.

 

[otjm]

Thanks for your reply. I was not trying to make a statement that “the only way…”

I am personally opposed to the death penalty for a number of reasons, including that I believe that where it might be applied, a life with no parole sentence is a very just punishment. There have been a number of people on death row (some, not a multitude) who have cut short their appeals in what has been referred to in some circles (including attorneys) as “suicide by death penalty”; some have come right out and said they cannot deal mentally and emotionally with the seemingly never ending appeals.

And that is just one of my issues, but that is a discussion for another time and place.