Capital Punishment

[Blue_Horizon]

This is different than the definitions the church uses. She identifies the three fonts as:- the object chosen; *

• the end in view or the intention;
• the circumstances of the action.
  That is, the means (object) are distinct from the ends (intent). "*
  I strongly suggest it may be better to stay well away from trying to closely analyse matters with the three fonts model if, like using “deliberate” for “direct intent”, you believe close enough is good enough in these sorts of subtle analyses .
  Most of what I opine is tentative because I am well aware of the controversies and ambiguities that rage behind almost every word I use in these discussions despite my specialised tertiary level training. May I observe you are here somewhat like a bull in a china shop if that doesn’t outrage your sensibilities too much.

Rau
the following quote may assist…it also relates to the question of a harm/good scenario when analysed as two separate moral acts (as opposed to a single double effect act).
In a double moral act means/end scenario the second act (the remote end) is to be considered a “circumstance” of the first act (the proximate end). That makes sense to me.
It is a secondary consideration re the morality of the first act…unlike a double effect scenario.

"Interestingly, in De malo, Aquinas teaches that similarly one can say of the circumstance called finis, “goal” or “end,” “that the proximate end is the same as the object and in like manner it is to be said of it as of the object.” In contrast the remote end for the sake of which an act is chosen, is not part of the object (or is not the object), but, compared with the moral substance of the act (e.g. “theft”) it is simply a circumstance. "
(Ronheimer).

As I am unfamiliar with how moral theologians use these terms, the way I use these terms is the way (I perceive) the church defines them.
Ender

 

[Blue_Horizon]

*“Without doubt one is allowed to resist against the unjust aggressor to one’s life, one’s goods or one’s physical integrity; sometimes, even ’til the aggressor’s death. This act is aimed at preserving one’s life or one’s goods and to make the aggressor powerless. Thus, it is a good act, which is the right of the victim. One is also allowed to kill other people’s unjust aggressor.” *-- St. Thomas Aquinas, (Dizionario ecclesiastico)

We can all cherry pick non referenced texts out of context to suit our purposes.
Such cherry picking is pretty much the root meaning of the word “heresy” I believe .

For example I could quote Aquinas asserting that the Common Good is the only basis for killing against your Retrib CP hypothesis:

“The slaying of a sinner becomes lawful in relation to the common good, which is corrupted by sin.” (Summa II,II, 64 a6).

But that would be foolish and malicious, we here are all old enough and ugly enough to know Aquinas says many things which if taken out of context can be picked to back whatever view we like.

The solution is in the harmonising not in the picking and choosing - the root meaning of “heresy”.
I am for orthodoxy (harmonising) , what are you for?

 

[Rau]

Nothing new here, standard Catholic conscience teachings…

I referenced my post #169 not because it was new, but because it placed in reasonable context the status of prudential judgements, even when they are the Pope’s.

 

[Rau]

Not sure I get you. Its implicit in the old teaching in so far as the possibility of restriction at a later date is not explicitly excluded by the old understanding or the new understanding does not directly contradict the old understanding…

I’ve no difficulty with evolution (within the usual limits). I was in search of the foundation for the claim (ccc2267) that “…the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, **if this is the only possible way **of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

I am not denying this statement at all. I don’t claim any superior knowledge. I am only interested to know where that traditional teaching will be found / was expressed, and its foundation.

 

[Rau]

…Disbelieve me if you wish, I can only take your horse to water, I cannot make you drink.

I understand you to be saying that you can only state your position and offer evidence, not cause others to accept it. I agree, and endure the same capability restrictions.

As even the CCC briefly hints:
“1754 The circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act.They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts… They can also diminish or increase the agent’s responsibility. Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves;”

To those who have not studied Moral Theology this seems to contradict:
"1755 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together…

If the two primary fonts are good…

Indeed the Church does describe Circumstances as “secondary”, though I do not understand the significance of that in the same way you do.

Consider a theft. We can understand clearly the “secondary” nature of the Circumstance (eg. the amount stolen). 1 penny or 1 bitcoin or 1 $squillion cannot change the **evil vs goodness **assessment of a theft, but it does influence the degree of evil. And similarly the size of a charitable donation influences the degree of good. No doubt we concur on that part.

I also understand that good and bad effects (“harms”) are to be weighed in the 3rd font, with a good balance required for the entire “human act” to be moral. Clearly, the goodness or evil of the “act itself” won’t be changed by Circumstances, which is the meaning I place on “Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves…”

CCC:
*1760 A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together. *

Compendium…
*368. When is an act morally good?

1755-1756
1759-1760

An act is morally good when it assumes **simultaneously *the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances…On the other hand, a good end does not make an act good if the object of that act is evil, since the end does not justify the means. Circumstances can increase or diminish the responsibility of the one who is acting but they cannot change the moral quality of the acts themselves. They never make good an act which is in itself evil.

It seems to me the Compendium is in fact clearer. It expresses clearly that the circumstances must be good. It states - wrt both Intentions and Circumstances - that they don’t change the moral quality (good vs evil) of the “acts themselves” or in the singular - of the “act itself”.

 

[Rau]

Regarding the purposes of CP, it to me there is potentially too much delineating of these various purposes of punishment. Redressing disorder / retributive justice, deterrence, protection - at least these - do not seem entirely independent. And rehabilitation could be included to the extent that one is drawn to rehabilitation in this life before God.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I referenced my post #169 not because it was new, but because it placed in reasonable context the status of prudential judgements, even when they are the Pope’s.

Do you think some of todays doctrines started out somewhat differently and the “thin edge of the wedge” began with “prudential statements” so as to ease the blow for the “stick in the muds”.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I’ve no difficulty with evolution (within the usual limits). I was in search of the foundation for the claim (ccc2267) that “…the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, **if this is the only possible way **of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

I am not denying this statement at all. I don’t claim any superior knowledge. I am only interested to know where that traditional teaching will be found / was expressed, and its foundation.

OK. Does my last quote from Aquinas to Ender re killing the sinner for the “common good” qualify? It seems hard to argue that “retrib justice” is about the common good. It seems more about payback time or, at the most, restoring some sort of abstract perfection of the cosmos which somehow developed a minor speed wobble because of the continued existence of the crim for Ender

 

[Rau]

Do you think some of todays doctrines started out somewhat differently and the “thin edge of the wedge” began with “prudential statements” so as to ease the blow for the “stick in the muds”.

I don’t know. Possibly prudential judgements provide the first insight and maybe at a later time other insights are uncovered.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Regarding the purposes of CP, it to me there is potentially too much delineating of these various purposes of punishment. Redressing disorder / retributive justice, deterrence, protection - at least these - do not seem entirely independent. And rehabilitation could be included to the extent that one is drawn to rehabilitation in this life before God.

I always considered rehab to refer primarily to this life myself.
As you suggest we need to understand the traditional meaning of those words.
Just relying on what they mean through the vagaries of 21stC English is not conducive to fruitful critical scholarship here.

We will likely find, as usual, that for different Doctors/Fathers they mean different things also. The monolithic nature of “tradition” is oft in the eye of the protagonist only.

In my experience “tradition” rarely means a single valid point of view but rather a universally agreed material statement qualified by subordinate clauses invariably debated by at least two Catholic sides continuously throughout history with varying degrees of heat and fire.

Pretty much like CAF really.

Take Luthor - we have recently been advised that there really never was any difference in Eucharistic doctrine, only a misunderstanding of each other’s formulations in their native languages .

 

[Rau]

OK. Does my last quote from Aquinas to Ender re killing the sinner for the “common good” qualify? It seems hard to argue that “retrib justice” is about the common good. It seems more about payback time or, at the most, restoring some sort of abstract perfection of the cosmos which somehow developed a minor speed wobble because of the continued existence of the crim for Ender

It seems that justice being seen to be done is very likely contributing to the common good - given appropriate circumstances.

 

[Rau]

I always considered rehab to refer primarily to this life myself.

Me too - in fact there is no other kind. But rehab can serve us both in this life and the next. Those Australian drug runners executed in Indonesia a while back come to mind. Apparently 1 or 2 of them were rehabilitated - now whether that was the prospect of the firing squad that did that, or something else, I do not know. And you could say that’s a case where the death penalty, noting the achieved rehab, was unnecessary, but the reasoning gets circular. Would the same rehab have occurred without the threat of death? Again, I don’t know.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Indeed the Church does describe Circumstances as “secondary”, though I do not understand the significance of that in the same way you do.
…

I also understand that good and bad effects (“harms”) are to be weighed in the 3rd font, with a good balance required for the entire “human act” to be moral. Clearly, the goodness or evil of the “act itself” won’t be changed by Circumstances, which is the meaning I place on “Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves…”

CCC:
*1760 A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together. *

Compendium…
*368. When is an act morally good?

1755-1756
1759-1760

An act is morally good when it assumes **simultaneously ***the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances…On the other hand, a good end does not make an act good if the object of that act is evil, since the end does not justify the means. Circumstances can increase or diminish the responsibility of the one who is acting but they cannot change the moral quality of the acts themselves. They never make good an act which is in itself evil.

It seems to me the Compendium is in fact clearer. It expresses clearly that the circumstances must be good. It states - wrt both Intentions and Circumstances - that they don’t change the moral quality (good vs evil) of the “acts themselves” or in the singular - of the “act itself”.

Nothing more I can say except re-read what I said and then read the article I provided.
You may not yet have the moral theology tools needed to adequately understand/engage in the issue.

 

[Rau]

Nothing more I can say…

Yes, the alternatives have been set out.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

It seems that justice being seen to be done is very likely contributing to the common good - given appropriate circumstances.

Nah, retrib justice isn’t justice being seen to be done in my book, quite the reverse…so no common good argument there!

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Yes, the alternatives have been set out.

No!
There are alternatives you may not be seeing yet.

The three fonts aren’t 3 wooden piles driven into the sand that stand in supreme isolation from each other despite the proximity.
There are hidden internal mechanisms, like a triangle made of loosely riveted joins and telescopic rods.

You do something to one font and the others change as well.

As I say, if “circumstances” appear to change the overall morality of an act its because a change in circumstances may be so great as to make pursuit of the previously good object unreasonable. This then makes the intention or the object itself bad.

Does the CCC clearly assert that there actually is such a thing as a bad moral act with ONLY bad circumstances?

Ever tried pushing down business shirts in a tub of water that has too many in it? One goes down and other invariably breaks the surface elsewhere! Nothing is static.

 

[Rau]

… is [there] such a thing as a bad moral act with ONLY bad circumstances?

I doubt it. If one only foresees harm, then what is it that one intends?

What we require for a moral act is that the bad effects in the consequences do not outweigh the good. Arguably, CP (or instances of it) in a particular time and place may be foreseen to give rise to more harm than good, and in this way what would otherwise have been a moral act becomes an immoral act.

I appreciate that when one pursues an act with greater bad consequences, one could infer ill intent, or at least a recklessness in the actor.

 

[Ender]

I believe that citation is certainly biblical and its meaning, as literal or subject to interpretation, is certainly magisterial.

A case could more readily be made that Gn 9:6 shouldn’t be taken literally if it hadn’t been used for centuries to justify capital punishment. It’s hard to suggest even today that its meaning is somehow different than what it plainly states. The catechism is schizophrenic on this point: rejecting in 2267 what it presented in 2260.

*For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning… Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image. *The Old Testament always considered blood a sacred sign of life. This teaching remains necessary for all time.​

Is the pope also bound by prior or contemporary philosophers’ or theologians’ mental constructs, e.g. the nature of punishment?

I think this misses the point. The pope is not bound by Dulles’ description, Dulles describes punishment as he did because it is what the church teaches. It is the truth that popes are bound to.

I have trouble parsing this paragraph.

Aquinas said “Retribution is reserved to the Divine Judgment.” By that he did not mean to reject retribution; he was referring only to the fact that, for those mortal sins deserving of death, the punishment was left to God where those sins were not harmful to the public.

This is the rub, I think. … “Redress the disorder” includes but is not limited to retribution which is only one purpose of punishment.

The catechism defines redress as the primary objective of punishment, but your definition rolls all the objectives under this umbrella to make them all “primary”, but this is not possible. Only one can be primary.*natural law requires that an object under consideration must have a primary end. … While something may have more than one end, all other ends are necessarily subordinate to whatever is the primary end. *(Roman Rota)

So, how does one rank and relate the notions? I see the rank as follows:

1. 
   *]Redress the disorder
   *]Punishment
   *]Retribution

1. 
   Punishment cannot be on a list defining the ends of …punishment, nor can retribution be set apart from redress even by your definition.
   

   You have given commentators’ expressions relating these notions as follows:

   This really won’t do. Some of these issues deal with matters of fact, not opinion. Either Dulles et al are right about what the church teaches or they are wrong; these are not expressions of notions. You discount them but offer nothing in their place other than your own personal opinion, but if Dulles’ judgment is inadequate, what are we left with? A statement in the catechism that no one can interpret? How about this from the USCCB:*The third justifying purpose for punishment is retribution or the restoration of the order of justice which has been violated by the action of the criminal. *
   Theirs was an unordered list (hence it was the third item they addressed) but here they express the same point Dulles and the others made: retribution is the restoration of the order of justice.
   

   A magistrate’s sentence of life imprisonment satisfies all four objectives of punishment.

   Perhaps, but it will require more than your personal assertion to make that convincing, especially as it does not satisfy the decree that God himself set.
   

   As to prudential leeway in 2266 and 2267, the prudence is limited to the question; “Does the technology exist?”

   That is a reasonable position, but one with which I disagree. I see it as a recommendation, not a moral obligation.
   
   Ender

 

[Ender]

Christians are to live under the New Law, not the Old Law.

Let’s be very clear about what is or is not still in place. Gn 9:6, wherein God himself set forth the punishment for murder is part of the Covenant with Noah, and *“The covenant with Noah remains in force during the times of the Gentiles, until the universal proclamation of the Gospel.” *(CCC 58) This is the law we’re living under.

In the New Law of Christ Christians may not punish with death.

This is a misapprehension of what Christ actually taught. Nowhere in the NT or the Gospels do the writers make this point, rather there are numerous places where this assertion is flatly contradicted.

Yet the hardness of mens hearts is such that secular society is not mature enough to well live without this Old Law so just as divorce was permitted for similar reasons so is CP tolerated by God re secular rulers.

Citation?

But for Christians it is immoral, therefore it is immoral for Church Leaders, and I therefore presume, Christian Kings.

The church is very careful to distinguish the obligations of the citizen from the duties of the magistrate. Your presumptions are not based on what the church teaches.*It is lawful for a Christian magistrate to punish with death disturbers of the public peace. It is proved, first, from the Scriptures, for in the law of nature, of Moses, and of the Gospels, we have precepts and examples of this. For God says, “Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed.” These words cannot utter a prophecy, since a prophecy of this sort would often be false, but a decree and a precept. *(St. Bellarmine)

Your unqualified acceptance of the Lex Talionis of the OT in NT times does not do justice to the subtle nature of this discussion.

The subtleties you speak of appear to have escaped certain Doctors of the Church.* when Our Lord says: “You have heard that it hath been said of old, an eye for an eye, etc.,” He does not condemn that law, nor forbid a magistrate to inflict the poena talionis, but He condemns the perverse interpretation of the Pharisees, and forbids in private citizens the desire for and the seeking of vengeance. For God promulgates the holy law that the magistrate may punish the wicked by the poena talionis; whence the Pharisees infer that it is lawful for private citizens to seek vengeance *(Bellarmine)
I can cite support for pretty much every assertion I make; do you have citations for anything?

Ender

 

[Ender]

We can all cherry pick non referenced texts out of context to suit our purposes.

Cherry pick: to provide a citation for which one’s opponent has no response and needs an excuse to ignore it.

For example I could quote Aquinas asserting that the Common Good is the only basis for killing against your Retrib CP hypothesis:

“The slaying of a sinner becomes lawful in relation to the common good, which is corrupted by sin.” (Summa II,II, 64 a6).

You could assert that, but it would be a misunderstanding of what Aquinas said given that retribution - justice - is the highest good achievable by punishment…which is probably why it is the primary objective.

I am for orthodoxy (harmonising), what are you for?

I’m for providing logical arguments based on citations demonstrating what the church actually teaches.

Ender