Can a Catholic Still Maintain the Death Penalty?

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AlmaRedemptorisMater said:
Could you explain further, please.
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When bin Laden was killed, the Vatican did not condemn that action but did condemn the consequent frenzied celebrations around the US. That was indicative of what the whole problem with the death penalty was. It is something that many people salivate over and experience power and dominance through. Whereas Benedict XVI quietly reminded us.

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace,’’
 
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Motherwit said:
But it does change.
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The church is of the opinion that morality is unchangeable. Our perceptions may change, but morality does not.
Your logic rules out any justification to determine any other government or ideological groups version of morality.
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I have tried for years to explain my position to you yet you still have a spectacular misunderstanding of what I’ve said.
The end of human law is the common good. – Aquinas. Regardless of any other purpose of punishment, it must serve the common good to be moral/just. That is the Catholic understanding.
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You keep repeating this as if it was some new, conclusive rebuttal to my arguments, despite the fact that I have just as repeatedly agreed with it. It is true, and nothing I have said conflicts with it.
 
Motherwit said:
We have already witnessed this in legal sentencing over time with the abolition of torture, scourging, exile etc. Those were accepted means of sentencing criminals in the past but are roundly known as inhumane and unjust now.
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You’ve neglected to address this point. Do you agree that torture, scourging, exile were regarded as just punishments in the past but are rightly known to be unjust and immoral punishments today. Hence the Church and Christian nations have a duty to condemn them?
 
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Motherwit said:
You’ve neglected to address this point. Do you agree that torture, scourging, exile were regarded as just punishments in the past but are rightly known to be unjust and immoral punishments today. Hence the Church and Christian nations have a duty to condemn them?
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There is a rather large difference between “regarded as just” at one time, and “founded in Scripture” for all time.
 
Ender said:
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Motherwit:
You’ve neglected to address this point. Do you agree that torture, scourging, exile were regarded as just punishments in the past but are rightly known to be unjust and immoral punishments today. Hence the Church and Christian nations have a duty to condemn them?
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There is a rather large difference between “regarded as just” at one time, and “founded in Scripture” for all time.
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That doesn’t enlighten me at all. If the death penalty was “founded in Scripture” for all time, does that mean it can never be abolished without creating an unjust society?
 
Motherwit said:
In my opinion the theory that people are claiming that the dp is intrinsically evil, is a strawman to keep a wedge in the door of final abolition.
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This person (me) is calling for clarity. Nothing more. I would prefer that CP were not on the books. Abolition is a matter for civil authorities and I have no great issue with the church weighing in with its judgement. I do have an objection to the interpretation of “inadmissible” as being a definitive declaration akin to “abortion is always wrong to choose”.
Motherwit said:
Are you of that mind that we have no right to condemn other governments for using inhumane and unjust laws because afterall, it’s up to them to decide what is moral or not?
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We are all entitled to take issue with behaviours we find unacceptable.
Motherwit said:
If the death penalty was “founded in Scripture” for all time, does that mean it can never be abolished without creating an unjust society?
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No - but it means its use or abolition is for us to judge.
 
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Motherwit said:
“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace,’’
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It is hard to overstate the wisdom and integrity of Pope Benedict who said those words…
 
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Here is my confusion: on one hand you have implied that the inadmissibility of the death penalty is a development of doctrine, but on the other you have expressed that certain scenarios have necessitated an exemption to that inadmissibility.
If I’m wrong, let me know, but how can there be exemptions to a morally inadmissible act?
 
Rau said:
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Motherwit:
I believe we can regard the killing of Osama bin Laden as one of those.
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Would capture and imprisonment have been inappropriate?
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By all accounts that we know now, the very real concern was that his imprisonment would cause a full on galvanized Islamic revenge. Also even having a burial place that would become a shrine of Islamic hate towards the west.
 
AlmaRedemptorisMater said:
Here is my confusion: on one hand you have implied that the inadmissibility of the death penalty is a development of doctrine, but on the other you have expressed that certain scenarios have necessitated an exemption to that inadmissibility.
If I’m wrong, let me know, but how can there be exemptions to a morally inadmissible act?
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The Popes were addressing the ‘death penalty’. That is the general law sentence that has become an institution in the US. That is with the construction of killing machines, killing rooms with a glass window and a viewing platform with seating. A ‘death row’ where the convicted languish for decades. Fanfare with a countdown to the killing and crowds with banners and hate parading outside the prison gates. It’s become a US beloved institution. No other country has seen the likes of that and it’s an off concept altogether. It sends a specific message to the society around it about the brilliance of having the power of life and death in your hands. There’s no way God ever meant for that to be a thing.

The killing of bin Laden was done in accordance with what Augustine called a special commission granted for a time to some individual. So not a sentence according to the ‘general law’, but by some other extreme justification to serve the common good.
 
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Motherwit said:
The Popes were addressing the ‘death penalty’. That is the general law sentence that has become an institution in the US.
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Well, no more an institution than the penal system - which in the US is of immense proportions.
Motherwit said:
That is with the construction of killing machines, killing rooms with a glass window and a viewing platform with seating.
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I’ve always found it quite sickening that a spectacle is made of the administering of the death penalty.
Motherwit said:
Fanfare with a countdown to the killing and crowds with banners and hate parading outside the prison gates. It’s become a US beloved institution. No other country has seen the likes of that and it’s an off concept altogether.
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Agreed.
Motherwit said:
It sends a specific message to the society around it about the brilliance of having the power of life and death in your hands.
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That’s not the message it sends me. It’s a message about the people who celebrate the killings.
 
Pro Life = thou shalt not kill = NO Death penalty. ever. under any circumstance. period. Pretty easy on this one actually.
 
But Christ is our moral compass and the assertion is that governments are permitted to make their own judgments free from an objective moral accountability. The assertion is that the Church cannot condemn the death penalty because the government is free to do whatever they want.
 
No, the assertion is that the Church cannot condemn it because the Church already teaches that it belongs to the prudential realm of judges who know what their society could use, and that the Church teaches that God himself explicitly gave the death penalty to nations and that popes have said who are we to contradict God.
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Is it your understanding that the Church can never condemn the dp in any circumstance?
 
In a letter to the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Pope Francis expressed the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty, calling it “inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed.”
 
The Magisterium is in the business of understanding the cultural effects of policy or laws. That’s why she had the authority to condemn communism, slavery, Islamic Jihad. Why doesn’t the Magisterium have the same competence to assess the effects of the death penalty?
 
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