Can a Catholic Still Maintain the Death Penalty?

[Irishmom2]

@signit, So, let innocent people be put to death? The Innocence Project has saved many people from the death penalty. Their results alone should show how many times the law got it wrong. How many other people are on death row that are innocent?

 

[OKComputer]

I’ve never had a problem with accepting it.

Believe me, I’m as against the death penalty as you are, if not more so. For the second time, I’m just saying what I have seen. You can insert “death penalty” for any issue. Abortion, gay marriage, whatever.

Again-you don’t have to convince me on the death penalty, that’s for sure.

 

[Convert3]

It’s cheaper and better to just lock the person up and throw away the key. Also if he turns out to be innocent down the road, you can let him out.

I agree with this, plus it keeps open the possibility that the convicted felon will repent for their sins. Isn’t that what we all hope for them?

 

[signit]

@signit, So, let innocent people be put to death? The Innocence Project has saved many people from the death penalty. Their results alone should show how many times the law got it wrong. How many other people are on death row that are innocent?

No, I definitely wouldn’t want any innocent people to be put to death.

I would support a limited death penalty where (1) there is no doubt about guilt or innocence (recognizing that in practice there might still be a one-in-a-million chance of innocence) and (2) there are aggravating factors (e.g., extreme cruelty, killing a police officer).

 

[NSmith]

Ah, thank you for the clarification. However, the most recent revision is saying the same thing as the one that I quoted, except without first confirming that the death penalty in itself is confirmed as a permissible recourse in Tradition. In fact, they amount to the same effect.
The Church teaches that the death penalty should be avoided if possible, and the Church believes that it is always possible, thus the death penalty is “inadmissible”. It does not say that the death penalty is never permissible.
This is the same position as the Church on voting for abortionists. They say, it is inadmissible to vote for them for the reason that they are abolitionists, but for proportionate reasons you can vote for them. The same is true for the death penalty. It is inadmissible to exercise it for the sake of the criminal’s death, but if there are proportionate reasons for execution then it is permissible.

 

[signit]

This isn’t even a hard issue where the death penalty is providing us with all kinds of great benefits. It’s not doing much at all. It’s just costing taxpayers a whole heck of a lot of money with endless appeals and general lack of enforcement. It’s cheaper and better to just lock the person up and throw away the key. Also if he turns out to be innocent down the road, you can let him out.

Again I agree in theory, but in practice locking the person up and throwing away the key doesn’t always work.

One of the arguments against the death penalty is life without parole. But, the legislature could abolish life without parole. Last year in fact in Massachusetts they proposed abolishing it.

 

[TMC]

Ah, thank you for the clarification. However, the most recent revision is saying the same thing as the one that I quoted, except without first confirming that the death penalty in itself is confirmed as a permissible recourse in Tradition. In fact, they amount to the same effect.
The Church teaches that the death penalty should be avoided if possible, and the Church believes that it is always possible, thus the death penalty is “inadmissible”. It does not say that the death penalty is never permissible.

I think it does say that the death penalty is never permissible. I don’t see any other way of reading it. What else does inadmissible mean?

 

[NSmith]

What else does inadmissible mean?

It means that, in light of the following and in the opinion of the catechism, the death penalty lacks proportionate reasons which would justify its use:

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

This is worded very poorly, and I’m shocked it is in the catechism at all. The death penalty does not deprive the guilty of redemption, far from it. We don’t believe that redemption is constrained to worldly status, and there are saints who converted while on death row.

 

[graciew]

Human dignity is really non- negotiable.

 

[NSmith]

Exactly true, human dignity is incontrovertible. Which is why the death penalty exists, in order to confirm that the penalty for unlawfully taking another person’s life is proportionate under the law, and in order to protect the lives of the community from the aggressor.
The development on this doctrine from the Church’s perspective has been that there are now, through some unnamed innovation of mankind, apparently more humane and genteel ways of neutralizing the danger of violent offenders than execution. I assume my lawful governors are eager to figure it out with Pope Francis’ clear and thoughtful advice on the matter. There’s a lot of money in the incarceration complex of the USA, my home country.

 

[goout]

goout:

Red herring.
The question is not about the death penalty being intrinsically evil, the question is about the admissibility, or permissibility of it, in the world as we currently know it.

There are plenty of people who read the revision as declaring that the death penalty is always and everywhere at all times intrinsically evil, and based on the wording and read out of context of the history of Church teaching, it’s easy to understand why. The revision is not worded well.

I disagree that it’s not worded well. I think the problem is laypeople poking their nose into things above their vocation, competence, and sphere of influence. And when you couple that with an inordinate attachment to a political issue, understanding will be hard to come by.

 

[goout]

Alainval:

Ever since the new revision of the Catechism there has been some uproar among more conservative Catholics as to whether or not a Catholic can still hold to the proper use of the death penalty despite the Catechism rejecting it now.

All catechisms take their authority in their footnotes that cite Scripture, Tradition or the constant Magisterial teachings of the church. One would have hoped that the latest revision could cite such an authority but it does not.

Nevertheless, the prior catechism’s revision under JPII with a circular reference in his Evangelium Vitae encyclical indicates a rethinking and development of the doctrine on the issue of capital punishment.

The state’s right to execute emanates, as do all rights, from a prior duty. Arguably, the state’s duty to protect its citizens is foremost among its duties. JPII structures his development (supporting the culture of life theme) on the restoration of order in society, not retribution. If the state can meet its obligation to restore order (which includes protection from the offender) in a bloodless means then it may not execute. The right to execute has always been conditional and JPII defines a condition that reflects today’s penal technology. The execution of a criminal is evil in its circumstance, not in its moral object, if the state has access to bloodless means to protect society.

worth repeating

 

[graciew]

Let us first say that the Cathecism for us Catholics is not opinion as you may understand it.
Then , that we don’t follow Talion’s law.
Now when a decision is made to move in a certain direction as abolishing the death penalty, there are other considerations to be made as to how to reach that goal , mostly practical.
Also please don’t forget that DP is applied for all sorts of cases in different parts of the world…
It is like there are no excuses at least to start moving in that direction…

 

[NSmith]

The issue is not attachment to the death penalty. Who would desire such a fate for anyone?
The problem is that some people accept the church’s prudential guidance on one issue and then they reject it in others. I gave the example of voting for abortionists earlier. The church says it is not permissible to vote for them, except when it is done for proportionate reasons that are not related to the candidate’s support for abortion.
The church says the same for the death penalty. Execution is inadmissible, according to the current pontiff, except for all the cases prior to the modern day, which were condoned insofar as they were done with the proper standard of evidence, and in the extreme necessity where there are proportionate reasons for the exercise of the death penalty. Pope Francis’ judgement is that there are no such reasons, and he works to abolish the death penalty.
Well, there are other bishops who say there are no proportionate reasons to permit voting for abortionists, yet some large portion of Catholics are fine with it. In the end it is still prudential advice, and we owe our superiors the respect due their office, by considering what they say. It is not a sin to disagree with them.

 

[NSmith]

I agree that we should consider alternatives to the death penalty. I even agree in large part that we should work for its abolition in most cases. However, it is hugely problematic to say that it is never permissible, and that the Church was wrong about it for two thousand years. Therefore, we must accept what has been taught by the Church for all that time as true, while recognizing the words of our current head as worthy of respect and consideration.
I was also being sarcastic because I don’t consider imprisonment to be very much of an improvement as far as respecting human dignity goes. The criminal is still stripped of their rights for some long period of time, and they are place in an atmosphere that gives them very little recourse even when they are released, since felons have a terrible time finding employment. Prisoners also suffer countless indignities and are placed in near occasions of sin relentlessly while they are incarcerated. Is this what the catechism refers to as “more effective systems of detention?”

 

[christofirst]

Pope Francis made a deliberate addition to the catechism regarding the death penalty telling us it’s inadmissible. I’m no scholar or lawyer, but I think that means he wants us to stop supporting and having recourse to the death penalty. I’m pretty sure he does not want us to look for loopholes and reasons to keep on using it.

 

[Rau]

Is it permissible for a Catholic to still hold to the death penalty?

Yes. The church effectively expressed a view about the appropriateness of the death penalty in the current age. That’s a prudential position. The death penalty is not declared an intrinsic evil. Were it that, you could not support it ever.

Pope Francis made a deliberate addition to the catechism regarding the death penalty telling us it’s inadmissible.

Inadmissible - an interesting choice of words.

I think that means he wants us to stop supporting and having recourse to the death penalty.

Correct, he does. As do a number of prior popes. I agree with that direction.

 

[graciew]

Ok. At some point one must trust…
Maybe the word is tolerated, bore with us, Many things we have done were due to our limits, stubbornness, lack of understanding , whatever one can think of.
That is probably God’s patience with us.

 

[TMC]

It means that, in light of the following and in the opinion of the catechism, the death penalty lacks proportionate reasons which would justify its use:

Yes. All unjustified killing of human beings is immoral and against Church teaching. In other words, the default is that killing is immoral, but there are rare exceptions to that teaching. The Church used to teach that the death penalty could, in some rare instances, be such a justification. The Church now teaches that the death penalty cannot be justified.

This is no different than the Church’s teaching on the inadmissibility of other forms of unjustified killing.

 

[Rau]

I disagree that it’s not worded well.

If it produces great controversy & differing understandings even among the competent, the wording might be an issue?