Can a Catholic Still Maintain the Death Penalty?

[Rau]

Sentences that were in the past just and legitimate have been abolished as cruel and immoral today.

Would this not be a matter of judgement for those authorities? I don’t think getting the cane in school was an example of an intrinsically evil act, but these days it is regarded as “inadmissible”. While I concur, I believe I’d be quite entitled to hold a contrary view.

 

[Ender]

Sentences that were in the past just and legitimate have been abolished as cruel and immoral today. There is no difference between those sentences and the death sentence.

I’m careful with my answers to avoid sloppy arguments, like the idea that because something was cruel in the past and has been abandoned necessarily means that whatever is abandoned today is also cruel. There is a very great difference between punishments that are evil per se (torture) and those that are not (capital punishment).

That shows that the society and the Church can come to recognize sentences as inhumane and immoral.

This deceptively blurs the distinction between what the church teaches is immoral and what societies vote to make illegal. The debate is about the morality of capital punishment, and that question is not settled by observing that most countries now prohibit it.

Society in general has rejected the death penalty through the witness of Sr Helen Prejean in large part.

That might be true, but her personal opinion has nothing whatever to do with the actual morality of that punishment or the teaching of the church.

The Church has affirmed this is due to a "heightened moral awareness’ and has now established that ideologies that are rejecting abolition aren’t Catholic.

This she assuredly has not done, nor can she until she declares capital punishment to be intrinsically evil, because if it is not evil per se then the decision to use it is a prudential judgment which properly belongs to the State.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

Austria will no doubt apply a sentence that will keep those criminals from ever hurting anyone again. It’s just how it is in most countries.

Did you not read the news story?

Fejzulai had been jailed in April 2019 for trying to join Islamic State but he was granted early release in December under juvenile law because he was under 19-years-old at the time of his offending.

Fejzulai was not deemed capable of carrying out an attack and Interior Minister Karl Nehammer admitted that the terrorist had fooled the country’s judiciary be enrolling on a de-radicalisation course.

You think he should have been executed for trying to join Islamic state?

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

Sentences that were in the past just and legitimate have been abolished as cruel and immoral today.

Would this not be a matter of judgement for those authorities? I don’t think getting the cane in school was an example of an intrinsically evil act, but these days it is regarded as “inadmissible”. While I concur, I believe I’d be quite entitled to hold a contrary view.

And the Church has left it to authorities in the past as those authorities abolished the death penalty. She only speaks now in the face of an ideology that is rejecting abolition based on it being not a state judgment, but a divine commandment.

 

[Rau]

She only speaks now in the face of an ideology that is rejecting abolition based on it being not a state judgment, but a divine commandment.

What makes you think that the motivation of Francis 1 is to provide a counterpoint to the assertion CP is a divine commandment?

If you are right, then it follows that in the absence of anyone asserting CP as a divine commandment, Francis 1 would likely have made no change to the catechism.

 

[MarysLurker]

You think he should have been executed for trying to join Islamic state?

No, I think that execution should be an option for some mass murderers, as shown by the failure of the rehab program he was put into when he was arrested for trying to join.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

She only speaks now in the face of an ideology that is rejecting abolition based on it being not a state judgment, but a divine commandment.

What makes you think that the motivation of Francis 1 is to provide a counterpoint to the assertion CP is a divine commandment?

If you are right, then it follows that in the absence of anyone asserting CP as a divine commandment, Francis 1 would likely have made no change to the catechism.

There’s no reason for the Church to have had to further define the issue other than to clarify in the face of false ideology that is claiming to be Catholic and rejecting abolition. That ideology is interfering with the natural law rejection of the sentence. Abolition has been happening around the world for more than a century without need of the Church to clarify anything because there was no interference of the sort happening in the US.

 

[WanderingPilgrim]

Pope Francis, quite frankly, is wrong. He is well within his purview to give his opinion. But he cannot make capital punishment being inadmissible a dogmatic/binding teaching for Catholics. The Church has always held that it was morally licit (of course in very specific circumstances). I think JPII got the closest to the truth on it. That it’s permissible but in today’s age, there’s rarely a case where it would be necessary (at least in developed countries). But Pope Francis, God Bless him, is doing something beyond his authority (even by Rome’s standards) in declaring some contrary to church teaching, to “be” church teaching.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

You think he should have been executed for trying to join Islamic state?

No, I think that execution should be an option for some mass murderers, as shown by the failure of the rehab program he was put into when he was arrested for trying to join.

That isn’t a thought through position.

 

[Rau]

There’s no reason for the Church to have had to further define the issue other than to clarify in the face of false ideology that is claiming to be Catholic and rejecting abolition.

Why not address the “false ideology” directly and condemn it as such?

That ideology is interfering with the natural law rejection of the sentence.

Can you articulate the natural law rejection of the sentence?

 

[MarysLurker]

Abolition has been happening around the world for more than a century without need of the Church to clarify anything because there was no interference of the sort happening in the US

You have already been shown evidence that abolition of CP was driven by socialism, not Catholicism. You have yet to respond to it.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

There’s no reason for the Church to have had to further define the issue other than to clarify in the face of false ideology that is claiming to be Catholic and rejecting abolition.

Why not address the “false ideology” directly and condemn it as such?

In my humble opinion, that will be the next step if they don’t back down. It’ll probably come in the form of a Catechism addendum.

Motherwit:

That ideology is interfering with the natural law rejection of the sentence.

Can you articulate the natural law rejection of the sentence?

I think Aquinas made that link here…

Our Lord commanded them to forbear from uprooting the cockle in order to spare the wheat, i.e. the good. This occurs when the wicked cannot be slain without the good being killed with them, either because the wicked lie hidden among the good, or because they have many followers, so that they cannot be killed without danger to the good, as Augustine says (Contra Parmen. iii, 2). Wherefore our Lord teaches that we should rather allow the wicked to live, and that vengeance is to be delayed until the last judgment, rather than that the good be put to death together with the wicked.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

Abolition has been happening around the world for more than a century without need of the Church to clarify anything because there was no interference of the sort happening in the US

You have already been shown evidence that abolition of CP was driven by socialism, not Catholicism. You have yet to respond to it.

That’s just an insulting opinion.

 

[MarysLurker]

think Aquinas made that link here…

Then why did Aquinas elsewhere say:

Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful, because according to the jurists [Cap. Significasti, De Homicid. volunt. vel casual.], “it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defense.” Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense in order to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s. But as it is unlawful to take a man’s life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, as stated above (Article 3), it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense, except for such as have public authority, who while intending to kill a man in self-defense, refer this to the public good, as in the case of a soldier fighting against the foe, and in the minister of the judge struggling with robbers, although even these sin if they be moved by private animosity.

 

[MarysLurker]

That’s just an insulting opinion

From a law review article?

https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/wp-content/uploads/sites/123/2019/12/Quigley_Production-Edits.pdf

 

[MarysLurker]

That isn’t a thought through position

The Franciscan teaching on the death penalty is based upon the notion that all criminals can be rendered inoffensive and reintegrated into society. That clearly failed with this guy.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

think Aquinas made that link here…

Then why did Aquinas elsewhere say:

Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful, because according to the jurists [Cap. Significasti, De Homicid. volunt. vel casual.], “it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defense.” Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense in order to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s. But as it is unlawful to take a man’s life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, as stated above (Article 3), it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense, except for such as have public authority, who while intending to kill a man in self-defense, refer this to the public good, as in the case of a soldier fighting against the foe, and in the minister of the judge struggling with robbers, although even these sin if they be moved by private animosity.

This just once again makes my point. “except for such as have public authority, who while intending to kill a man in self-defense, refer this to the public good”

If the death penalty does more harm than good it is forbidden. It must serve the common good to be just. If it doesn’t it is unjust. Ender uses libertarian logic as to absolve the desire to maintain the death penalty from any moral accountability, but the Church who has a unique authority to address morality, rejects that logic.

 

[MarysLurker]

If the death penalty does more harm than good it is forbidden

You are begging the question. How can you conclude that the death penalty does more harm than good in every case without seeing the evidence in each individual case?

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

That’s just an insulting opinion

From a law review article?

https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/wp-content/uploads/sites/123/2019/12/Quigley_Production-Edits.pdf

You can quote your John Quigley’s and I’ll quote another paper based on the Catholic position citing the Compendium.

The Compendium states that … The Church sees as a sign of hope a growing public opposition to the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of legitimate defence on the part of society. . . . The growing aversion of public opinion towards the death penalty and the various provisions aimed at abolishing it or suspending its application constitute visible manifestations of a heightened moral awareness.

COMPENDIUM, supra note 43 § 405.

https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1388&context=lsfp

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

If the death penalty does more harm than good it is forbidden

You are begging the question. How can you conclude that the death penalty does more harm than good in every case without seeing the evidence in each individual case?

You must think all those countries not just Europe, that have abolished the death penalty on that very premise are communist dumbies? Would that be the case?