It actually doesn’t seem that complex or difficult to me. Our methods of confining inmates are more successful today than previously. If a country is able to successfully imprison criminals and reasonably demonstrate the ability to keep the general population safe from them, the death penalty is not a moral option.
Why not? Is the teaching concerning the death penalty a doctrine of the Church?
Yes.
catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/catechism/trentc.htm
Oh, please! You are telling me that it is a matter of faith that all Catholics must believe in the legitimacy of the death penalty as a form of justice under pain of excommunication or condemnation to hell? That would be news to Pope Francis! God certainly never commanded the faithful to enact the death penalty in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus tells the adulterous woman than he does not condemn her.
What % of successful imprisonment is deemed successful? And are we to disregard crimes (including murder) while they are successfully imprisoned? Which societies today? Would you then accept countries that are less successful at confining inmates to then have legitimate recourse to the death penalty?
So was the Church in error when it taught that the State has legitimate recourse to the death penalty?
The church’s teaching on the issue that rightful public authority has the right to impose the death penalty is doctrine because it touches on a teaching of morality; i.e., is it morally licit? The Church has answered in the affirmative. Now the application of the death penalty could be deemed a discipline, I suppose.
Probably not. He understands the Church’s teachings. He is no doubt very familar with the Council of Trent. What he is asking is that States refrain from using this right.
More specifically Pope Francis would recognize that it is the same God giving us moral truth, and that moral truth is constant, as God Himself is constant.
firstthings.com/article/2001/04/catholicism-amp-capital-punishment
The assertion is made that we can confine inmates more successfully today than before, but no one has provided any support for such a claim. Life in prison is not some new punishment that has existed only in modern times; it has existed for millennia. …but if he has fallen several times into the same fault, he is to be condemned to permanent imprisonment or to the galleys, at the decision of the appointed judge. (Fifth Lateran Council, 1515)
If the primary objective of punishment was protection then this objection might be reasonable, but protection is at best a secondary objective. The primary objective of all punishment is retribution - retributive justice, and this is what justifies all punishment, capital punishment included. A punishment is just when its severity is appropriate for the severity of the crime, and it has always been held by the church that capital punishment is a just punishment for the crime of (at least) murder. This is what determines whether the death penalty is a moral option: is it appropriate for the severity of the crime?
The church has held as heresy the belief that states do not have the moral right to employ capital punishment.
Well let’s hope not.
Perhaps, but God did command it in the Old Testament and there is nothing in the New Testament to contradict it…which we shouldn’t find surprising inasmuch as it’s the same God in both cases.
There are two problems with relying on this story, the first is that the church herself does not reference it in her discussions of capital punishment. This is an entrapment story where Jesus would be condemned of violating Roman law if he said the woman should be stoned (as the Jews did not have the authority to execute people themselves), or be condemned of violating Jewish law if he said she should be released. What you do by putting this interpretation on the story is to assert that Jesus really meant to reject Jewish law, something he himself explicitly said he would not do.
I think we can safely presume that.
There’s many things that change and evolve as time goes on. That’s the nature of life on earth. The Church doesn’t dictate everything. The death penalty has been being abandoned for the last century without a peep out of the Church. She is speaking up now not to dictate some divine course… but to counter the misconception that the death penalty is a divine command to human beings and can never be wrong and should never be abandoned. Let nature take its proper course. Let the common good dictate whether it should be abandoned because that is the first and last end of human justice. She clearly addresses other immoral behaviours that are intrinsically evil and can never be good and are not subject to ‘the common good’ or evolution. The death penalty has never been spoken of in such a way. It has always been linked to the common good and human justice.
I’m a loyal daughter of the Church too and in complete agreement with 2000 years of Church teaching on the death penalty. That can’t be the reason why you are having the problem.
The world was already using death as a penalty well before the Church was established and outside of knowledge of the Church. Natural law has a place for it in the administration of human justice. When the prophets of the Old Testament and then the Church of Jesus was established… they weren’t inventing an act suddenly given over to them by God. They were addressing an act that already existed. It has always been subject to the common good or human civil justice.
Again, it seems you’re making this far more complicated than is necessary. Morality isn’t determined by percentages. That said, how many American inmates escape each year? How many escape in Bolivia? Sudan? It shouldn’t be that tricky to identify a common concept of success. And who said anything about disregarding any crimes, including murder? The death penalty isn’t about vengeance from the Church’s perspective.
Please explain why the CCC contradicts your view here and which source should be trusted.
When people say that the Pope is contradicting the cathecism I thik they are simply misreading or not understanding the above. If we read exactly what is stated above, in reality there is no circumstance that I can think (maybe a mass murder in the middle of the commission of the crime) that can possible for into the above. Hence the Pope is completely right. Nowadays there is no situation in which the death penalty can be justified.
I never said that morality is a matter of percentages. I’m asking you what percentage is required to deem a penal system successful in confining a serious criminal? Second, I never said anything about disregarding murder; I was asking whether you are disregarding murder in the context of successful confinement of an aggressor. In other words, is the confinement deemed unsuccessful if the aggressor murders another inmate or prison guard while in prison?
I never said it did. I was just curious why the Church was behind the ‘pagan’ world in understanding the moral implications of imposing the death penalty in modern society? How could a lost world figure it out before a Holy Spirit led Church?
That’s simply not true. Just 50+ years ago, the Church was clearly and unambiguously stating the moral licitness of the States’ right to impose the death penalty. Then, within the last 20 years, certain Church leaders, including JPII, said well, ok, the State has a right, but it should be quite rare now, to most recently, Pope Francis stating that recourse to the death penalty is inadmissible.
I told you why I’m having the problem. Because it appears that Church teaching is changing, and no one has put forward a valid reason why. Like I said before, all the reasons that have been proposed to justify the apparent shift in teaching were true 50, 75, 100, 1000 years ago. What is so significant about post-1985 or so?
I don’t know what ‘outside the knowledge of the Church’ means. There was never a time when the Church was not aware of the States’ right to impose the death penalty.
Why are you creating a dichotomy where there is none? They (the Old Testament and then the Church of Jesus was established) were addressing an act that already existed given by God.
And hence, my question: what is so distinct about ‘nowadays’ that makes the death penalty [virtually] inadmissible versus 50 years ago, or even just 30 years ago. What EXACTLY is it that changed that merits a shift in the Church’s position on this issue?