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HailMary90
Guest
Hello,
Is it a sin to vote for a politician who is for capital punishment?
-Thank you
Is it a sin to vote for a politician who is for capital punishment?
-Thank you
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Ender
Guest
No. The Church has always recognized the right of States to employ capital punishment. She currently prefers that they wouldn’t but she has always supported the State’s right to do so.
Ender
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smichhertz
Guest
Hi HailMary90!
There is no inherent sin in voting for a politician who supports the death penalty as it is not an intrinsic evil. There is, however, a possible sin in voting for a politician who supports abortion, depending on extenuating circumstances. For more information, please check out the following document from the Vatican in regards to how Catholics should vote:
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html
There is no inherent sin in voting for a politician who supports the death penalty as it is not an intrinsic evil. There is, however, a possible sin in voting for a politician who supports abortion, depending on extenuating circumstances. For more information, please check out the following document from the Vatican in regards to how Catholics should vote:
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html
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EasterJoy
Guest
According to the Catechism, it is not quite that simple. The right of the state to employ capital punishment is not unlimited. Therefore, you would not vote for someone who intended to enact an unjust understanding of capital punishment.
Capital Punishment
2266 The State’s effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. the primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.67
2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.
"If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender ‘today … are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’[John Paul II, *Evangelium vitae 56.]
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1ke
Guest
This is not a simple yes or no question.
The Church expects us to synthesize the moral law, social teaching, and to use our brains as we exercise our duty as citizens.
One must examine the candidates on many issues, voting record, and discernment of who will do the most good or the least harm, depending upon the situation.
The Church expects us to synthesize the moral law, social teaching, and to use our brains as we exercise our duty as citizens.
One must examine the candidates on many issues, voting record, and discernment of who will do the most good or the least harm, depending upon the situation.
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thistle
Guest
The Church allows Catholics to be in favour of or against the death penalty.
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Ender
Guest
I think that is exactly what this is. Even the current catechism recognizes this:
The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude… recourse to the death penalty …
That much of the statement is correct. Where it goes wrong is with the addition of this claim:
…*. when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. *
This statement is factually incorrect; the Church has never had such a restriction.
I hope we would not support someone who intended to enact an unjust understanding of anything - although I’m pretty sure we will disagree about what constitutes the correct understanding regarding the application of capital punishment.
Ender
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CatholicBoy1957
Guest
I think the wording of your question is misleading. Is there really anyone who is “for” capital punishment? I would not want anyone going around and saying that I am “for” capital punishment, just because I recognize that the state has a right to that penalty.
I hope you are catching the difference, as it took me quite a while to realize this myself. Let me try to explain. If I were on a jury, voting to execute a criminal is not something I would “want” to do, it would be something I would “have to” do. In other words, in a perfect world, where no crimes were committed, I would not want be “for” a death penalty. It’s not something I would engage in, just for the heck of it, the way I would participate in rides on a merry-go-round, or message therapy.
If you are thinking that I got my semantics from the abortion camp, you are right. I understand what they mean when they say that they are not “for” abortion. The problem is, that they are for the right to exercise something that no one should have a right to. They are for a right to execute a life which is always innocent, with no exceptions. Capital punishment, while mistakes are sometimes made, is not taking an innocent life.
Voting for a politician who is pro-choice-capital punishment, is probably not only not a sin, but is probably virtuous.
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EasterJoy
Guest
OK, but let us be clear: this is not like deciding whether or not the lark should be the state bird. The Church allows Catholics to be in favor of the death penalty when it is necessary, but not when it’s not. A Catholic can’t support a candidate who wants to impose the death penalty for shoplifting. There can be an honest difference of opinion about when it is necessary, but we are talking about the state taking a person’s life. It has to be a matter of defending against future crimes of a like seriousness, not an act of vengeance. A Catholic had better investigate the conditions in his or her own voting jurisdiction, and be very circumspect about getting on board with giving their particular government the power to take lives. It is allowed in under certain conditions, but it is a very heavy decision.
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Ender
Guest
True, and “when it is necessary” is what the debate should be about, although that already goes beyond the question of the OP. No one who supports capital punishment is pushing it for trivial offenses.
This is where we disagree. The primary objective of punishment, despite what 2267 implies, is retribution … the State has not just the right but the obligation to punish the offender. Defense against future crimes is a valid objective but is only a secondary one; retribution for the crime already committed is primary. As for vengeance, according to Aquinas it: *“consists in the infliction of a penal evil on one who has sinned.” *The thing about vengeance is not that it is wrong but that it is reserved to the magistrate to inflict it.
Ender
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JackyB
Guest
Once again I could not have said it better myself,
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Seatuck
Guest
Not usually. If the politician has some unusually cruel ideas such as the use of capital punishment should be expanded ore made more painful etc and you agree with that and vote for him for that reason then yeah it could be a sin.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Ender, I find it very interesting that when looking for justification for your objection to 2267 of the catechism, you are very quick to quote Cardinal Dulles when he questions 2267. However when Bishop Gomez made a statement about immigration that you did not agree with, your comment in posting #3 in that thread was “Oh swell, another bishop wanders off the reservation.”
It continues to amaze me that you can set yourself up as the judge of bishops and cardinals, saying which ones are teaching authentically and which ones are not. That is behavior is normally associated with “cafeteria Catholics”. Why can’t you work to conform your conscience to the catechism, or at least stop leading people away from the catechism by claiming to know better than those who wrote it?
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Ender
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I haven’t cited Cardinal Dulles in this thread nor are my comments about Bishop Gomez relevant to this topic. Moreover, I don’t simply give my opinions about the statements of others and leave it at that, I try to tie everything together with citations from Church documents. If you find fault with my arguments then point them out, but this I-don’t-like-the-way-you-argue challenge is unhelpful.
Then find the flaws in my arguments if you think you can.
The worst thing about disagreeable attacks like this is not that they are inappropriate but that they are irrelevant. Suppose I am the awful fellow you make me out to be … does that make my arguments invalid? I am either right or wrong and nothing about me personally has any affect on the correctness of my position. Defend your opinion with arguments, not insults.
Which catechism? Is it my fault that the 1997 version doesn’t even agree with the 1992 version, let alone those of Pius X, Baltimore, Trent, and Aquinas? Besides, my conscience is as well conformed to the current catechism as is yours. You accept section 2267 and reject 2260 while I accept 2260 (and 2266) and disagree with 2267. At least the one I oppose is (unlike the ones you oppose) almost surely not Church doctrine.
Ender
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
No insult was intended. I have no doubt that you are a fine fellow and I would be pleased to have you as my next-door neighbor. But you are claiming that the catechism of the Catholic Church is factually incorrect. That is a huge claim for a Catholic to make, and it needs more than just your personal reflections on how other Church documents say otherwise. For to follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would have to say that the leadership of the Church is either ignorant of their own primary documents or too apathetic to care that the catechism is inconsistent with those documents. I find it difficult to accept either one of those conclusions. I would rather question the logic that lead to the objection to the catechism in the first place.
Every time there is a change in Church documents, many people (not me) start claiming “See, the Catholic Church was wrong” or “There is no absolute truth because what is true changes from age to age.” But I prefer to see the Church as starting with a deposit of faith and then adding to and refining that deposit as the Spirit guides the Church closer and closer to God through time. It does not cause me much concern that some things change in the Church over time (although I would be distressed to see a change that I absolutely could not reconcile with past teaching - and perhaps that is your situation with regard to the current catechism. But in that case I would probably reexamine my understanding of past teaching to see if maybe I was the one who was misinterpreting it.)
I have never said that I rejected 2260 or any other section of the catechism. You may think that my acceptance of 2267 is proof that I reject 2260, but that would be your personal conclusion, not mine.
I would also point out that even Cardinal Dulles did not come right out and say flatly that “2267 is factually incorrect” or words of the same strength. How is it that Ender feels emboldened enough to proclaim what no bishop or cardinal or pope has dared?
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EasterJoy
Guest
I’m just saying that the idea that “the Church allows capital punishment” cannot be followed in a trivial way. The life of a violent offender is still a life, and when that life ends is still properly the decision of the Almighty, not the state. The murder of a murderer, except in the defense of life, is still a murder. It doesn’t become something else because the state pulls the lever.
There are politicians who are in favor of the execution even of offenders who have the IQ of a small child, or offenders that can be prevented from re-offending. There are situations in which capital punishment is necessary to defend life, but we can’t just say, “Go ahead, vote for the guy, the Church allows capital punishment, it is that simple.” It’s not.
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Ender
Guest
This is more than a mere opinion, nor is it mine alone.
*The most reasonable conclusion to draw from this discussion is that, once again, the Catechism is simply wrong from an historical point of view. Traditional Catholic teaching did not contain the restriction enunciated by Pope John Paul II. *(Kevin L. Flannery S.J., Pontifical Gregorian Univ., Rome)
I agree that this would be a bit much to accept … but that conclusion does not necessarily follow. It has been my position that 2267 is an opinion about the (perceived) negative consequences of using the death penalty in modern societies. What it is not is a new doctrine about the morality of capital punishment itself.
That would be my concern if I accepted 2267 as doctrine as I see no possible way to reconcile it with everything the Church has taught and teaches today on capital punishment and issues related to it.
Section 2260 cites Gn 9:5-6 which demands the execution of murderers because of the heinousness of their crime. Section 2267 requests that murderers be spared unless there is no other way to protect society. It is simply impossible to satisfy the intent of both sections; they are mutually exclusive.
Aside from the assertion I cited above from a professor at the Gregorian University, I have the evidence of my own investigations. I have comments about capital punishment from a half dozen catechisms, a half dozen popes, and any number of fathers and doctors of the Church going back over 1600 years and I have yet to find a single statement the even suggests the restriction 2267 insists is part of the “traditional teaching” of the Church. No such tradition exists.
Ender
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EasterJoy
Guest
It is not impossible to satisfy the intent of both sections. You just have to be willing to realize that though the teachings are constant, the conditions under which they have to be applied are liable to change. That is not that difficult to understand.
The citation of Gn. 9:5-6 cannot be suggesting that the Noahite law in favor of capital punishment is binding. If that were true, then the Lord could not have asked “Forgive them, they know not what they do”, without asking for a violation of the demands of the law, could he? The law must not demand that the people responsible for the murder of an innocent man be killed, or else the Lord could not have said that. St. Stephen said the same thing while he was being stoned, so it was not just the redemptive death of Jesus that may rightly ask for mercy on the offenders, then.
Also, keep in mind that the ability of the state to sucessfully and safely incarcerate murderers is not the same now as it was 1600 years ago. This is why 2267 very clearly talks about the conditions for just implementation of the death penalty are rare today. If the day comes when we are faced with same practical problems of past ages, then it will be a different story. The teaching does not change, but the conditions can and do change.
Catholic voters are charged with assessing whether or not those conditions exist in the juridiction in which they vote. They have to take into account the other candidates and other violations against life that they perhaps advocate for. They might also take into account the likelihood that one candidate or another will actually accomplish what they advocate. Yes, a Catholic may find no reason of conscience stopping a vote for a candidate who favors the death penatly. A Catholic may not safely ignore the issue entirely, though, or just decide based on his or her sentiments. The Church teaches that there are objective moral boundaries that much be kept in mind.
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Ender
Guest
The right to end the life of a criminal does belong to the State; this is something the Church has always taught.
You don’t get to redefine the meaning of the term simply because you dislike capital punishment. Executions by the State are not murders nor has the Church ever considered them to be such.
The worst thing about 2267 is that it has confused people about the nature of punishment. Defending life is a valid objective but it is only secondary. The primary objective is retributive justice, a point just made (albeit not clearly enough) in 2266. Punishment in every case must meet the primary obligation of retribution for the crime committed, not the prevention of future crimes.
Ender
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