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Robert_Burns
Guest
Then kindly state the Christian attributes of the practise. Why its a good thing in keeping with the two most important Commandments - love of GOD and Love of Neighbor not to mention turning the other cheek…
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Again, part of my post is taken out of context and presented as though it were the sum of my beliefs regarding the death penalty.
I am also a bit insulted by three items I saw in your post:
(1) your use of the word “we” - is this the “royal we” as in “we are not amused”?
(2) your use of the word “we” which implies that there is an organized group posting in this thread that has already agreed and wants to close the gate behind it. Is there such a group? If not, why use the word “we”? Are your opinions somehow more valid and worthwhile than mine? Do I have the right to state my opinion? I thought I did. After all, I am a member of CAF and I’ve never been told by a staff member to keep my opinions to myself.
(3) your use of the term “ad nauseum” in your post which implies that my point has been discounted over and over and over and over until people are becoming nauseous.
This thread is four pages long. There aren’t enough posts yet to discount my point over and over and over and over ad nauseum.
Please don’t flame me. I have just as much right to post here as you. You are not my mentor and you are not omniscient. Please show a little respect and charity. I was trying to help the OP, who appeared to be in some distress.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Oh my. Such nasty language. Surely you can do better than this!! I can only assume, based on your previous posts and this post, that charity is way beyond you. Why do you feel you have the right to tell another poster his/her opinion is “stupid”? This has gone over the line.
I want to “correct” God? Oh, I get it. You’re one of those physics, aren’t you? You can read my mind! Wow, I am impressed, except for one thing. You read it incorrectly. God’s law states that all human life is precious. All human life. That includes Hitler, Manson, and even little sinning me. What does Moses have to do with this discussion of the death penalty? If my memory has not completely failed me, Moses is discussed in the OT. Jesus, as God incarnate, birthed by Mary, is presented in the NT and the emphasis is switched to nonviolence (turn the other cheek).
First of all, just because a person is proved guilty of first-degree murder, it does not mean that he/she is actually guilty of it. He/she is proved guilty in a courtroom, not before God. Human beings are greatly limited as to their knowledge of another person, as you have shown by incorrectly stating that I want to correct God because “our sensibilities have changed.” Second of all, I never stated that judges and governors are responsible for the deaths of “criminals” - I don’t know where you got this but it wasn’t in any of my posts.
Please don’t tell me what to do. This is not a classroom assignment and there is no CAF rule that states I must read the earlier posts on this or any other thread.
Your ridicule of my opinion has been noted. Your use of the word “stupid” has been noted. You are not being charitable. I request that you follow the second of Jesus’ Great Commandments: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Strange how you think that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI do not provide doctrine but that somehow what Thomas Aquinas said when he was a mortal sinning human being does. I read your quote. (It would have been nice if you had given a post number). Aquinas is referring to those people who have actually sinned; I have referred to people who are innocent but put to death anyway.
As for Aquinas’ statement about criminals who go to their executions unrepentant, I disagree but I wasn’t really saying anything about this in my post. Criminals are kept in prison, on death row, for years and years before the appeals process finally ends. I wasn’t referring to the time when they actually walk down The Green Mile with the priest by their side.
And yes, I know why a priest accompanies the prisoner.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
It is not irrelevant as it provides more impetus to keep people in prison for life rather than putting them to death. It is a common misconception that it costs less to put people to death than to keep them in prison for life. This is one of the reasons I have for being against the death penalty. It is also relevant because people are very protective of their money - they do not wish to fund immoral projects and practices, even if the government says they have to. People are extremely upset about the idea of paying for procured abortions; whether the government has the right to force us to pay for procured abortions or capital punishment is part of the moral issue.
You know, you could have responded to all my points in one post, but you took each one of my points out of context and ridiculed it. The points do not stand alone; they are all necessary to understand my opinion of the death penalty.
Re your bit about Down syndrome babies: Your analogy or whatever it is is fallacious. You’re missing a premise. And as I have already stated, once a person is killed, whether that person be an infant with Down Syndrome or an innocent “proved guilty criminal” the life is lost to us. The damage cannot be repaired.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Thank you for your answer. I agree 100 percent.The bolded part of your post answers the question. If they have the ability to do keep this person from ever commiting such a heinous crime again, they have the moral obligation to make use of that resource.
The goal in moral law is to do the highest good, not to execute the person. Execution of a person who commits a crime is rarely the highest good. This is why the saints and now the popes keep using such words such as “exception and just”.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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LittleSoldier
Guest
How do you expect John Paul II to communicate his admittance that the death penalty has a retributive function? He died quite awhile ago. That is why we now have a new pope.
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notredame_999
Guest
Is one a heretic if they refuse to believe in Evangelium Vitae? That is, they absolutely believe the state has a right to execute an individual for retributive means?
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JReducation
Guest
The classic definition of heresy is the refusal to believe truth. Since the Pope insists that what he says is truth and he back it up in Evangelium Vitae, then you are in a conflict with his authority. One of you has to be right and the other has to be in heresy. It’s either you or him. He documents his position rather well and then backs it up by falling back on the authority of Peter, which he states right in the document.
I don’t have the authority to call you a heretic and neither does anyone else here. But I can say this, you’re in a difficult spot. You have a pope who is claiming that he has the authority to say what he says and he backs it up with scripture and doctrine. Plus he is the highest ranking moral authority in the Church. Until another pope comes along and reviews what he wrote and says that it is no longer applicable, because circumstances have changed, Evangelium Vitae is the last authoritative word on the subject. Law is not retroactive.
The Holy Father said in Evangelium Vitae that the Church has moved away from the former position regarding the death penalty, but he also adds that he has the authority to allow that move and that he is allowing it and promoting it. The argument would have to be found that says that he does not have the authority to allow the Church to move away from its former position.
Let’s look at the facts. The man who reviewed Evangelium Vitae was the Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger. It is the Prefect’s role to point out any doctrinal or moral errors in such a document. To ensure that there are none, the Prefect works with a very intense staff of experts in many areas of theology, including moral theology. Evangelium Vitae passed the litmus test and it was issued. Now, Cardinal Ratzinger is pope. I dont’ foresee him going back and revising Evangelium Vitae, when he and his teem reviewed it before it was published and found nothing wrong with it.
My friendly suggestion is that Catholics accept a) that the pope has the authority to revize moral law without changing truth, b) that he has the authority to review previous moral teachings and say that their application (not the subject) can change and has changed, and c) that the pope has authoritatively changed the rules and made them more stringent. He has not come out and said that the death penalty can never be used. He has said that the circumstances that would require it are very rare, if they exist at all. He’s leaving that margin for the possibility that there is a need to use it. But if you notice, he is saying that the current thinking of the Church is not about retribution, but about need to use it. What the Church has moved away from is using the death penalty as retribution. Since this was never a dogma, the pope has the authority to withdraw the Church’s support of the death penalty as retribution. This was a concept, not a dogmatic teaching. It was based on a concept of justice that the Holy Father says no longer applies, because there are other ways to punish those who commit crimes. So, he’s not taking away the concept of retribution. He’s taking away the Church’s support for this form of retribution and telling Catholics that we may not subscribe to this form of retribution. He goes into great lengths to explain why not, using scripture, tradition and invoking the Ordinary Magisterium.
Are you a heretic? I have no idea. Are you in trouble? I would say that you’re in a tight spot, because it’s your authority against his. You’re not alone. There are many people out there who want to do the right thing and are in the same corner, because they are subscribing to former teachings on this matter. The problem is that these teachings were laws, not doctrines. Laws can and do change. These laws were based on what was known at the time and what was reasonable at the time. The Church has not really changed anything. She is still applying to the concept of natural consequences, which is ancient. She’s just saying that the death penalty is rarely a natural consquence and therefore, it is rarely justifiable, TODAY. It may have been once upon a time, but not today. Therefore, our anscestors were right, given their context, but so are Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Moral teachings are binding until they are loosed by a pope. This is defnitely a moral teaching, because it’s defining what is moral and immoral about this action. The Church has the right and duty to tell the states what is moral and not moral. She cannot enact civil law for the states. That’s not what she’s doing. She speaking to Catholic law makers who enact civil laws and telling them what they can and cannot vote for in law. That she can do. Catholic law makers have an a priori obligation to the Church, then to their constituency.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Andreas_Hofer
Guest
I have noticed elsewhere that you have several advanced degrees in theology - so how could you so completely elide the hierarchy of truths and their relation to the charge of heresy? Heresy is the pertinacious doubt or denial of a truth whose acceptance the Church requires de fide. The ordinary papal magisterium, on the other hand, does not require this level of assent, only the religious submission of mind and will. You will note that the point in EV where John Paul invokes his Petrine authority is, at any rate, in relation to the teaching on abortion, at which point he also does not invoke an extraordinary authority to bind on the matter, instead noting that as Peter he is pointing out the constant teaching of the universal magisterium (much as he did on the matter of an all-male priesthood, where both he and his cardinal prefect of the CDF - whom you have mentioned - unequivocally affirmed that no extraordinary magisterium had been exercised). But if we are in the realm of the ordinary magisterium, we must, as has already been said, read John Paul’s teaching in continuity with the previous magisterium.
You also continue to have a highly circumstantial notion of the moral law. The moral law itself is unchanging, although portions of it require specification through positive law. For example, one is bound to “honor the Sabbath day,” which the Church specifies as assisting at a Catholic Eucharistic liturgy any time from Saturday evening to Sunday at 11:59 pm. One could equivocally say that an ecclesiastical modification of this Sunday obligation would amount to “changing the moral law,” but what is really happening is that through positive legislation he is bringing otherwise indifferent acts into new relation to the unchanging moral law. As a teacher the pope, he expounds the eternal, as a legislator he attaches the temporal to it. He issued no positive law on the matter of capital punishment.
So it is patently false to say that “moral teachings are binding until they are loosed by a pope.” Moral teachings are true or false; true teachings can leave room for prudential application, but they cannot be overturned by a future pope. The magisterial loci cited by the critics of John Paul’s teaching on capital punishment are most certainly not ad hoc laws - they are general and unqualified statements about the justifications for the death penalty. Each one individually is also but one piece of the ordinary magisterium, but collectively they form a univocal whole throughout the history of the Church - something known as the universal magisterium, the same magisterium on the basis of which we can condemn abortion, contraception, and women’s ordination. It was on this basis that Cdl. Dulles and others well-acquainted with the tradition asserted the John Paul’s teaching must be a prudential judgment of how best to apply the truths about the death penalty (with its uncontested four ends) to present circumstances. Cdl. Ratzinger could have performed his duty just fine by adopting the same understanding.
Now we could also step back from the issue to look at it another way. You yourself keep asserting that John Paul’s teaching was meant to change the truth to fit new modern circumstances, in which case we can be assured that he did not mean to assert anything about the unchanging moral law, and thus did not mean to universally bind Catholics to a teaching. Furthermore, if his teaching is based on circumstances, Catholics would not be bound to follow him, because the pope does not have a magisterium that extends to the factual conditions of prison systems. The pope could never infallibly proclaim that St. Joseph County Jail has sufficient security measures to ensure that its prisoners harm neither the general or prison populations. Even if my shirt is in fact green, the papal magisterium does not have the authority to bind Catholics to believe it - it is not a matter of faith or morals. So if the pope cannot authoritatively establish matters of physical fact in that matter, he cannot authoritatively establish the existence of the conditions upon which you propose his alteration of Catholic truth was premised. You’re working from an inflated notion of the papacy.
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santodomingo
Guest
Did you really think I didn´t know that JPII had died?
I was using a tense which is known as the “historical present”. In the same way we could say “Shakespeare writes…” even though he died over 400 years ago.
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JReducation
Guest
First of all, I’m not trying to teach an entire course in theology. I’m attempting to answer a simple question.
Second, I never said that the truth has changed. I said that the application of the law has changes. A simple example: we conce taught that it was a mortal sin to eat meat on Fridays. We no longer teach that, because the law is no longer in place. The truth has always been that the death penalty can be used with due exercise of reason and justice. That has not changed. What has changed are the circumstances of our times. Today’s society has other means to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. The truth has always been that consequences must be just. The current position of the Church is that the death penalty is rarely justified, given the resources that we have today.
Third, the Church is not trying to make moral law for County X in Country Y. It’s handing down a principle that is universal. In simple language, if there is a means to punish the guilty and protect the innocent without using the death penalty, then there is a moral duty to us that means. This is not new, though the wording is different from the former wording.
Fourth, there is a difference between moral law and dogma. The Church never expresses moral law in dogmatic terms. She expresses dogma as such and moral law flows from dogma. The irrefutable dogma here is that all life is sacred. From there flows the moral law. Man must use all available means to protect the dignity of human life.
I don’t see what you find so wring with what Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI have said on this matter and why anyone would want to challenge it or question it. I’m not working from an inflated notion of the papacy. I’m operation from a call to and a mandate to obey the papacy. I find it very interesting that when clergy and religious dissent with the papacy, some people on these fora cry out about heterodoxy; but when we are faithful to the mandates of the rules of our religious institutes to obey without question and to teach others to do the same, then we are accused of over inflated notions of the papacy. If you want clergy and religious,you have to take us our founders founded us and accept what our founders asked us to believe and teach. Otherwise, throw the whole clerical and religious life out the window. You can’t have it both ways, have clergy and religious who will say what you want them to say, not what their founders wanted them to say.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Vixit
Guest
I believe God is the only just judge. I don’t care how certain 12 men and women are that a person is guilty of murder, I don’t even care if the guy confesses (he could be crazy and delusional for all I know). If there is any chance at all that an innocent might die (and there always is), then I’m against it. Those who support the death penalty ARE just as guilty as those who support abortion, sorry if you don’t agree. It’s fallible humans deciding to take a life, no matter what the reason.
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JReducation
Guest
I believe that you make a very valid point here. In addition to the fact that we are not the only nation on earth. Let’s get real here. Is the Church to stand by and say that the death penalty is completely at the discretion of the state when she knows that people are put to death for:
- Converting to Christianity
- Homosexual acts
- Adultery
- Political dissent
- Inability to find a lawyer to get you off the hook
- Trial w/o a jury
- Treason
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Andreas_Hofer
Guest
Br. JR,
You are consistently ignoring the point at the center of the issue. The Church most emphatically did not teach that the death penalty was justified only to protect society. Rather, as Cdl. Dulles pointed out (and a perusal of any systematic treatment of justice prior to John Paul II should reveal), the Church has always taught that there are four, count 'em four, ends of punishment, each of which is a sufficient justification for the implementation of the death penalty. Those four ends are not elements of divine positive law, rather they stem from the natural law and that nature of justice itself. The very social nature of human beings is the foundation of a society’s right to protect its achievement of the common good through lethal force. When you go from four ends of punishment, always and everywhere taught by Catholic theologians (i.e. popes, doctors, bishops, priests, and scholars of every stripe), to forbidding justification based on all but one of those ends, that is not changing application - it changes the very law itself. You claim that it has always been a moral duty to refrain from applying the death penalty outside of necessity for society’s protection, but the quarrel arises from the fact that such was demonstrably not the case.
Look, I have great respect for John Paul II - my son John Paul will be able to tell you that. But the fact of the matter is that even the theologians he most respected were forced to do theological gymnastics in order to keep his words from blatantly contradicting the universal (and thus irreformable) magisterium of the Church. What raises hackles most is not that people would seek to defend John Paul’s teaching. That is only natural, since we owe not just assent to the pope’s teaching but even a filial love to him as our shepherd. We have a positive duty, moreover, as I said, to defend his teaching such that it works, i.e. can be held in continuity with what came before. What is upsetting is that you and other seem unwilling to so much as glance at the previous teachings on punishment and capital punishment in particular. The inflated notion of the papcy is located, in part, in this magisterium of the present: “We don’t need to learn anything about the past because the current pope’s utterances can all stand on their own.” I’m not saying that’s a consciously held belief, but it does correspond all too often to practice.
That’s not the main reason, however, that I charged you with an inflated notion of the papacy. That was in quite specific reaction to your attempt to cover the entirety of the document EV with the umbrella of papal infallibility, and then based on this specious inflation of its authority hold forth the specter of heresy for those who question the prudential application of the Church’s teaching on capital punishment. Elevating an element of the magisterium in such a way is incredibly irresponsible.
You are consistently ignoring the point at the center of the issue. The Church most emphatically did not teach that the death penalty was justified only to protect society. Rather, as Cdl. Dulles pointed out (and a perusal of any systematic treatment of justice prior to John Paul II should reveal), the Church has always taught that there are four, count 'em four, ends of punishment, each of which is a sufficient justification for the implementation of the death penalty. Those four ends are not elements of divine positive law, rather they stem from the natural law and that nature of justice itself. The very social nature of human beings is the foundation of a society’s right to protect its achievement of the common good through lethal force. When you go from four ends of punishment, always and everywhere taught by Catholic theologians (i.e. popes, doctors, bishops, priests, and scholars of every stripe), to forbidding justification based on all but one of those ends, that is not changing application - it changes the very law itself. You claim that it has always been a moral duty to refrain from applying the death penalty outside of necessity for society’s protection, but the quarrel arises from the fact that such was demonstrably not the case.
Look, I have great respect for John Paul II - my son John Paul will be able to tell you that. But the fact of the matter is that even the theologians he most respected were forced to do theological gymnastics in order to keep his words from blatantly contradicting the universal (and thus irreformable) magisterium of the Church. What raises hackles most is not that people would seek to defend John Paul’s teaching. That is only natural, since we owe not just assent to the pope’s teaching but even a filial love to him as our shepherd. We have a positive duty, moreover, as I said, to defend his teaching such that it works, i.e. can be held in continuity with what came before. What is upsetting is that you and other seem unwilling to so much as glance at the previous teachings on punishment and capital punishment in particular. The inflated notion of the papcy is located, in part, in this magisterium of the present: “We don’t need to learn anything about the past because the current pope’s utterances can all stand on their own.” I’m not saying that’s a consciously held belief, but it does correspond all too often to practice.
That’s not the main reason, however, that I charged you with an inflated notion of the papacy. That was in quite specific reaction to your attempt to cover the entirety of the document EV with the umbrella of papal infallibility, and then based on this specious inflation of its authority hold forth the specter of heresy for those who question the prudential application of the Church’s teaching on capital punishment. Elevating an element of the magisterium in such a way is incredibly irresponsible.
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Andreas_Hofer
Guest
You’re setting up a straw man by introducing a false dichotomy (either the Church restricts things as JP II did or she must leave things entirely to the amoral discretion of every individual state), as well as continuing to violate the principle that abuses do not negate legitimate uses. The Church only allows for the just application of the death penalty, and any unjust applications do not detract from the justice of the permissible ones. Individual instances will stand or fall on their own merits when measured against the Church’s historical teaching regarding their legitimacy (e.g., capital punishment for treason is entirely appropriate).I believe that you make a very valid point here. In addition to the fact that we are not the only nation on earth. Let’s get real here. Is the Church to stand by and say that the death penalty is completely at the discretion of the state when she knows that people are put to death for:
And many other things that are not a threat to human life
- Converting to Christianity
- Homosexual acts
- Adultery
- Political dissent
- Inability to find a lawyer to get you off the hook
- Trial w/o a jury
- Treason
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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JReducation
Guest
I’m not telling you what you can or cannot subscribe to. I’m telling you that the Holy Father was very clear when he said that the Church was moving away from the position that it has held for a long time and he gave the reasons why.
Now, you are in a very different situation than I am. You said that you have a son. Therefore, I assume that you are a secular man or woman. I am bound by a vow that says that I must do two things: 1) obey absolutely without question and hesitation and 2) teach what the pope teaches, without hesitation and question. I will not compromise that vow for all of the historical arguments in the world, because I will not compromise my soul that way, nor my integrity.
You want me to say that Pope John Paul II was wrong, because A, B. and C. Well, I cannot do that. If I did, then I would have to endanger my soul. Our rule is very explicit on this matter. “Obey without questioning and teach what the pope orders you to teach.”
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Aramis
Guest
Pope John Paul II at some point stated that the US and UK both have sufficient means to prevent the murderers from being a threat to the people without execution of convicts. Therefore, true Catholics should not be supportive of the death penalty within the US and UK.
I don’t remember specifically when His Holiness said this, but I remember hearing him say it in English on TV.
I don’t remember specifically when His Holiness said this, but I remember hearing him say it in English on TV.
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JReducation
Guest
He said this during his visit to the US while in Baltimore. He was speaking about how the US would have a lot to answer for, because it had received many blessings from God. He was speaking about the disrespect for the dignity of life that we have in the US and the UK. He explicitly brought up abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia. It was at the Cathedral in Baltimore. I was in the audience, I remember that talk.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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SouthpawLink
Guest
“A.A.S.” stands for Acta Apostolicae Sedis, or Acts of the Apostolic See, and it is the official gazette of the Holy See, established by Pope St. Pius X in 1908.
The article under question was an address to the First International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System. The relevant passage is found down at paragraph n. 33.
The article can be found here: ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12PSYCH.htm
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