Capital punishment...again

[Ender]

Punishment means more than penalty…even Dulles agrees to that

I disagree; the terms are synonyms.

Nor is “primary scope” the same as primary purpose.

Again, the terms are synonyms.

Nor does implied “secondary purpose” (if that was even meant) of State defence make a sensible interpretation of the CCC if you see that as meaning this is not essential for a just punishment as the CCC later makes quite clear.

Protection is a desired element but it is not an essential element of a just punishment. Neither are the other secondary objectives of rehabilitation and deterrence. There can be only one primary objective, and if in satisfying that objective a secondary objective is left unsatisfied that doesn’t make the punishment unjust.

Hence if your above interpretation of the CCC is correct then you must hold the CCC is intrinsically contradictory re State Killings.

First, why use a term like “state killing” instead of execution? Does this imply they are somehow different things? Second, I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Retribution is the primary objective of all punishment, that’s what the passage in 2266 means. 2267 simply ignores this and implies that defense is primary, but that implication is incorrect as long as 2266 remains unchanged.

So why quote part of the CCC that you like for your own defence? That is not intellectually honest.

I am so tired of these petty insults. If you have nothing useful to say, say it somewhere else.

 

[Ender]

This is all about a judgement at the level of principle. That is not called a prudential judgement. Its a doctrinal teaching.

Arguing that a judgment is not really a prudential judgment but is doctrinal is like trying to square a circle.

Yes, identifying whether actual State Killings in the US or Zambia meet these principles (and hence is unjust) is a prudential judgement.

Right, it is a prudential judgment, just as it was before. As I said, essentially nothing has changed.

 

[goout]

It is no less morally acceptable now than it has ever been, given that morality does not change with the times.

You have to realize what you are saying here.
Morality evaluates human acts in reference to the good.
The good we are referring to here is human life.

The Church observes and proclaims that it is good to be alive. And that God is the author of life. And that good should be affirmed and protected.
So morality is not merely a set of unchanging rules and prohibitions. Those are an essential part of a moral system and expression, but those are not the sum of the thing. In this particular moral evaluation, the desired end of prohibitions and the end of the whole moral system is the good of life.

And it is hard to see how the new CCC passage runs afoul of that. Doctrines develop. Expressions of doctrines change. Disciplines change. Practical considerations come and go.
The Church has not wavered on any core issue. To the contrary, we can say the Pope is reaffirming the core issue: that good which is the sanctity of life.

 

[Emeraldlady]

Ender:

It is no less morally acceptable now than it has ever been, given that morality does not change with the times.

You have to realize what you are saying here.
Morality evaluates human acts in reference to the good.
The good we are referring to here is human life.

The Church observes and proclaims that it is good to be alive. And that God is the author of life. And that good should be affirmed and protected.
So morality is not merely a set of unchanging rules and prohibitions. Those are an essential part of a moral system and expression, but those are not the sum of the thing. In this particular moral evaluation, the desired end of prohibitions and the end of the whole moral system is the good of life.

And it is hard to see how the new CCC passage runs afoul of that. Doctrines develop. Expressions of doctrines change. Disciplines change. Practical considerations come and go.
The Church has not wavered on any core issue. To the contrary, we can say the Pope is reaffirming the core issue: that good which is the sanctity of life.

That is it to a tee. When you look back at the Churchs treatment of capital punishment, it is always within the context of the 5th Commandment. Not as a principle of positive law or human justice. It is permitted if the good of society warrants it. It is defended by the Church only as a permission as a medicinal measure in serving justice.

All who sin mortally are deserving of eternal death, as regards future retribution, which is in accordance with the truth of the divine judgment. But the punishments of this life are more of a medicinal character; wherefore the punishment of death is inflicted on those sins alone which conduce to the grave undoing of others. (ST II II 108 3)

It is forbidden when the good of society is harmed by its use.

Our Lord forbids the uprooting of the cockle, when there is fear lest the wheat be uprooted together with it. (ibid.)

 

[Emeraldlady]

Emeraldlady:

Capital punishment was never ‘supported by Scripture’.

Well obviously the church thought it was.

• The Catholic Church has always taught that legitimate governments have the right to impose the death penalty on those guilty of the most serious crimes. This teaching has been consistent for centuries — in the Scriptures, in the writings of the Church Fathers and in the teachings of the popes. (Archbishop Gomez, 2016)
• Both Scripture and long Christian tradition acknowledge the legitimacy of capital punishment under certain circumstances. The Church cannot repudiate that without repudiating her own identity. (Archbishop Chaput, 2005)
• If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millennia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture (notably in Genesis 9:5-6 and Romans 13:1-4). (Cardinal Dulles, 2002)
• It is lawful for a Christian magistrate to punish with death disturbers of the public peace. It is proved, first, from the Scriptures… (St. Bellarmine, c 1600)

Because you do not have a sound understanding of the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic values, it will be difficult for you to receive the above statements as defenses against the claim that capital punishment is intrinsically evil. The statements read to you only as proclamations that abolition is illegitimate.

 

[Emeraldlady]

Society is forbidden to entertain the death penalty in law if it is harming society. It is immoral and unjust if it harms society.

I’ll say this for the last time. The determination of what harms society is a prudential judgment. It is not a moral judgment and an error in judgment is properly called a mistake, not a sin.

As for what Scripture supports, it is the morality of capital punishment in general. That it may be unwise in particular circumstances is not what it addresses.

That is all coming from your own version of what prudence entails. The Church teaches prudence relates to moral reasoning.

CCC 1806 Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it; "the prudent man looks where he is going."65 "Keep sane and sober for your prayers."66 Prudence is “right reason in action,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle.67 It is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation. It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure. It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience. The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment. With the help of this virtue we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.

Your explanation that imprudence means nothing more than unwise or a mistake is solely yours.

 

[adgloriam]

It is forbidden when the good of society is harmed by its use.

Our Lord forbids the uprooting of the cockle, when there is fear lest the wheat be uprooted together with it.

This is the bottom line. This is were the subject immediately gets changed to something else.

 

[Emeraldlady]

Emeraldlady:

Do you think that the rest of the world and all the Catholic faithful on the forum believe that this is what they are doing?

I think the real question is not what others believe but what is true. It was a heresy before to deny the legitimacy of capital punishment. If we are now required to believe what we were required to deny before then apparently the heretics were right and the church was wrong.

What we understand is that there is a difference between intrinsic and extrinsic evils. Our Church has established that capital punishment is not intrinsically evil. There was a time that it served the common good and it was heretical to claim that it was never of good service. That is what we understand in complete accordance with Church teaching.

We also understand that because it serves a medicinal purpose and is dependent on what is good for society, it is heretical now to claim that abolition is inconsistent with justice and Church teaching to that end. The Church says that while it is legitimate to have disagreement on current conditions in a society discussing the death penalty, that it is a cruel and unnecessary punishment where there are ways of protecting society without it.

Aquinas is the Churchs prolific doctor in explaining human justice.

“In the other moral virtues the rational, not the real mean, is to be followed: but justice follows the real mean; wherefore the mean, in justice, depends on the diversity of things.” (ST II II 61 2)

Justice unlike the other virtues is not fixed within itself. It is a good only in relation to how it serves society.

"As stated above (Article 9; I-II:59:4), the other moral virtues are chiefly concerned with the passions, the regulation of which is gauged entirely by a comparison with the very man who is the subject of those passions, in so far as his anger and desire are vested with their various due circumstances. Hence the mean in such like virtues is measured not by the proportion of one thing to another, but merely by comparison with the virtuous man himself, so that with them the mean is only that which is fixed by reason in our regard.

On the other hand, the matter of justice is external operation, in so far as an operation or the thing used in that operation is duly proportionate to another person, wherefore the mean of justice consists in a certain proportion of equality between the external thing and the external person. Now equality is the real mean between greater and less, as stated in Metaph. x [Didot ed., ix, 5; Cf. Ethic. v, 4: wherefore justice observes the real mean." (ST II II 58 10)

When capital punishment does not serve the common good, it is no longer good. It is unjust and immoral. As a punishment, it has no fixed, intrinsic character and is either just or unjust depending on external factors.

 

[graciew]

This is also an issue related to the dignity of persons which one doesn’t t loose for being incarcerated.
And it is something else to tackle with and improve worldwide or where needed in countries with or without CP.
It doesn’t end only by ending CP…it goes on …
Now , as far as the cases you mention , I do not recall anyone in death row who also killed sb in prison (I may be wrong…) so the case you present may be unfair for those who were and are in death row.
Nobody is talking about perfect prisons. But true is that there is a lot of room for imptovement in many areas.
As a side note, where I live, conditions in prison need to improve a lot, even some of the buildings which are almost shameful in very bad shape to be guarding human beings, but I read last week that in some of ours a new approach will be taken. Guards usually do almost everything, now sociologists, psychologists, doctors and other specialized people are going to deal with the prisoners daily in a way that guards will do strictly what they have to do. A bit poorly explained, the article was in Spanish but I thought at long last something in view of the person in prison as well as the guardians is being done for the better where I live… Made me glad…

 

[adgloriam]

Unbelievable post @Emeraldlady

And I also like your post very much @graciew very good points.

The theory of practice and the practice of theory.

 

[Dakota111]

I disagree; the terms are synonyms.

Nor is “primary scope” the same as primary purpose.

You seem to have missed my observation.

The point I am making is not that you are clearly wrong here Ender (though I note you have provided no source or authority other than your own fallible powers of reasoning to back your assertions they are perfect synonyms etc).

The point is that intelligent and educated persons who disagree with you (the last four Popes and the theologians responsible for writing the Catechism in this area) are not clearly wrong either.

Do you disagree?

If you agree then why would you, a loyal son of the Church, prefer to go the way of disharmony and strongly and publicly lobby with certainty for your own fallible take which conversely means you are implicity telling others the CCC is in error and at least Pope Francis is in heresy?

I dont believe I misread your current position which I have closely studied on CAF given you have been vocal on this topic for many many years now.

 

[Dakota111]

Arguing that a judgment is not really a prudential judgment but is doctrinal is like trying to square a circle.

That it is evil to disable my attacker by using more force than is necessary is a moral judgement at the level of principle. It is a moral teaching, a doctrine if you will.

Deciding whether Policeman Smith did so when he killed a drug dealer at a raid is a prudential judgement.

I am sorry Ender but you dont seem to understand what a prudential judgement or judgement re a moral principle is in the discussion.

As I say,

This is all about an explicit judgement at the level of principle.

The toleration of State Killings has been more limited at the level of principle. That is:
States never kill justly if a lesser penalty can be used to defend the State. They didnt know that in the past, now they do. Its now explicitly defined.

This is not a prudential judgement because its truth is not verified from assessing any concrete cases, its derived from reason and natural law…or divine revelation.

The prudential judgement is when I personally decide whether the King of Zambia had any lesser penalties available to protect the State when he hanged 5 murderers last month. Maybe not. Therefore by the above principle the State killing is just.

In the USA I may well prudentially judge the prision system is a lesser penalty that can so protect. In that case a State killing must, on the above principle, be unjust.

All fairly straight forward.

I get it you disagree with the new principle…but you are not the Pope and its his charism to make such determinations re natural law.

He sees no contradiction with other statements in the CCC, therefore if you do then your interpretation must differ.
If you think other theologians support you then it seems likely your interpretation of them is also somehow mistaken. You are a theologically untrained layman I believe? If so it is not surprising if you get the wrong end of the stick when interpretting theologians having never received an integrated theological education.

Nobody here sees the certainties in your quotes and interpretations of them that you see. That again suggests it is possible that the intellectual conflict between you and Pope Francis is in your reasoning and interpretation skills. I am not being impolite but simply taking the facts and hypothesising how this contradiction could be explained.

It seems to me over the last however many years you have been trying to explain this contradiction you always seem to end up saying others are wrong (ie the CCC or Francis).
Are you able to accept even the possibility that it is your weaker reasoning skills or lesser theological training or weak interpretative skills that may be the cause?

Is it “trivially insulting” of your person to suggest this understandable weakness in your powers as a hypothesis? I dont believe so.

It seems unreasonable and inconsistent from an intellectual analysis (which is all I really mean by “not intellectually honest”) to me that you talk like you deny the possibility…and you get upset when someone hints at the possibility.

 

[Dakota111]

Francis’s accompanying talk makes it fairly clear he is defining a universal moral principle I think.
Ill have to check your sources re how previous Popes judged the universality of the position thanks.

 

[Ender]

So morality is not merely a set of unchanging rules and prohibitions.

This is no different than what I said: morality does not change.

1958 The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history;

The Church has not wavered on any core issue.

If capital punishment was moral before (as clearly it was taught to be), and it is deemed immoral today, then what are we to say about immutability of natural law?

 

[Ender]

What we understand is that there is a difference between intrinsic and extrinsic evils. Our Church has established that capital punishment is not intrinsically evil. There was a time that it served the common good and it was heretical to claim that it was never of good service. That is what we understand in complete accordance with Church teaching.

Good, then nothing has changed, and what we are dealing with in the new version of 2267 is a personal judgment that capital punishment is harmful in today’s societies. That has been my position all along.

 

[goout]

goout:

So morality is not merely a set of unchanging rules and prohibitions.

This is no different than what I said: morality does not change.

1958 The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history;

The Church has not wavered on any core issue.

If capital punishment was moral before (as clearly it was taught to be), and it is deemed immoral today, then what are we to say about immutability of natural law?

When you think about morality, start with the good the morality refers to.
And when you can see that good and apply morality in reference to it, it is clear no moral principles have changed.

The Church affirms the sanctity of all human life. That is immutable. And we can talk about moral evaluations from there.

 

[Ender]

The point is that intelligent and educated persons who disagree with you (the last four Popes and the theologians responsible for writing the Catechism in this area) are not clearly wrong either.

I am not disagreeing with popes; I am disagreeing with your interpretation of what they said, just as you are disagreeing with mine.

If you agree then why would you, a loyal son of the Church, prefer to go the way of disharmony and strongly and publicly lobby with certainty for your own fallible take which conversely means you are implicity telling others the CCC is in error and at least Pope Francis is in heresy?

Again, I am disagreeing with you and explaining why any interpretation that has capital punishment being declared immoral would be to accept a position that was declared heretical by the church. Asserting that capital punishment should not be used because it is harmful to the society that uses it is a very different argument than saying it should not be used because it is immoral. There can be legitimate practical objections to its use, just not legitimate moral ones.

 

[Dakota111]

If capital punishment was moral before (as clearly it was taught to be), and it is deemed immoral today, then what are we to say about immutability of natural law?

We are saying nothing against the immutability of natural law principles.

Polygamy was always against natural law principles but it is not so evil as to be intolerable under certain conditions and so allowed (or even commanded?) by God in special cases.

Likewise all (direct) killings (not just the innocent) are against natural law principles and always have been. Yet killing is not so evil as to be intolerable or even commanded by God under certain conditions making it just.

In all such cases we can explain the toleration of the evil by the PODEffect and the pursuit of a proportionate greater good sought, just as the CCC states.

We get it you cannot accept this is the reason put forward by Pope Francis as the sole reason for justifying past and present (unlikely on prudential grounds) State Killings.

Nevertheless it is a logical, non self contradictory and internally reasonable position regardless of whether or not, according to your fallible interpretations, it is at odds with Dulles, Belarmine or Aquinas.

I do not believe his position is theologically assailable by a theological moral analysis. It would be odd if an untrained layman could gainsay it after being vetted by numerous Vatican theologians and a commission over 6 months or so I would think.

 

[Dakota111]

I am not disagreeing with popes; I am disagreeing with your interpretation [of the Popes including Francis]

Ender even this statement in intellectually flawed.
All interpretations are possibly valid hypotheses in the face of a personal insoluble contradiction that cannot be resolved. It doesnt matter who makes the interpretation. If it isnt internally illogical or so far from the agreed conclusions that have caused the contradiction then its on the table.

Francis has condemned all modern State Killings as unjust. You hypothesise the only solution to “square this circle” (which you personally cannot accept as consistent either with the deposit of faith or with established unbreakable moral principles) is that Francis and now the CCC is in error.

You will not go so far as to say he is in error at the level of moral principle (ie doctrinally) so your only other acceptable logic is to say he is in error “prudentially”.

I am observing your position is not “intellectually honest”. I am not insulting your person I hope. It is simply an objective way of saying that the above position, if I represented you accurately, is inconsistant in a number of ways that you seem unwilling to reflect on and see for yourself it is so and that you need to reflect more on other hypotheses that do not suffer from such internal inconsistencies.

You may not like to reflect on other hypotheses because you are nursing your own one still and you like it.

But that too is not an “intellectually honest” approach it seems to me.

Why? Because your one publicly denigrates the Pope and the CCC. If there is a hypothesis (regardless of whose it is) that still honours the CCC and Pope Francis then surely a loyal son of the Church would seriously consider it?

And that hypothesis involves the possibility that your interpretative and theological and reasoning skills are not up to the job of fully understanding/interpretting Aquinas nor Augustine nor Catholic moral philosophy/theology in this area.

Those of us who are formally trained do not see the many minor conclusions or interpretations you have reached as in any way intellectually coersive. Equally logical and plausible alternative interpretations are available for each and every allegedly silver bullet quote or source or alleged contradiction you have raised.
(In fact counter problematics have been raised against you that you simply decline to engage such as why has CP for adultery been acceptably commuted to lesser penalties).

That would give most untrained laymen pause for thought when facing off with a Pope’s new teaching.

 

[Dakota111]

Asserting that capital punishment should not be used because it is harmful to the society that uses it is a very different argument than saying it should not be used because it is immoral

Can you not see that Pope Francis is saying any State killing that does not use an available lesser penalty (that still protects the State) is already always and everywhere immoral?

Its a new moral principle.

It now newly affects any prudential judgement we then go on to make about use of the death penalty in Zambia as compared to the US.

Before this moral principle was defined such prudential judgements in these two countries could never have differed.

Now they well may.