Catholic Church Teaching on Execution?

[catholic4reason]

Let me observe one thing. If the death penalty were meant to be understood as only justifiable as society’s self-defense, then the executed person need not be guilty since under the Church’s understanding of self-defense, the aggressor need not be guilty to be lawfully slain. Punishment means something else. There are circumstances or purposes of punishment to evaluate when punishing
There are vindictive purposes for punishment which repay the crime with a proportional punishment (retribution) and medicinal purposes which are ordered to the healing of the common good damaged by the criminal (moral defense, physical defense, deterrence, and rehabilitation).

I recommend that everyone read Avery Cardinal Dulles’s article on this in First Things
firstthings.com/article/2008/08/catholicism-amp-capital-punishment-21

and I also wrote a paper on this myself, examining a Catholic understanding of the death penalty taking into account the 2000 year tradition of the Church. My thesis is the fact that only self-defense language is in the catechism is a prudential judgment on the pope’s part in light of the circumstances of the culture of death, and not a change in the doctrine of the Church to redefine the death penalty as death self-defense.
scribd.com/doc/55855568/The-Death-Penalty-in-the-Catholic-Church-s-Teaching-The-Problem-and-the-Solution

Finally, I quote from Pope B16, then Cardinal Ratzinger: priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/04-07ratzingerommunion.htm

1. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

 

[carn]

In which US bishops state:

"Our nation should forgo the use of the death penalty because
The sanction of death, when it is not necessary to protect society, violates respect for human life and dignity.
State-sanctioned killing in our names diminishes all of us.
Its application is deeply flawed and can be irreversibly wrong, is prone to errors, and is biased by factors such as race, the quality of legal representation, and where the crime was committed.
We have other ways to punish criminals and protect society."

and this proclamation of the US bishops is based on their profound theological knowledge and the knowledge of the scriptures in respect to crime prevention and prison management.

See the problem?

“when it is not necessary to protect society,”

This is in no way anything Bishops or the Pope have teaching authority in nor they are actually trained in this respect. They probably take the knowledge about this aspect from so called experts, which are normally social science researcher, trained in left to communist leaning universities.
And these are the same social science researchers that think there can be no doubt that homosexual parents adopting children, homosexuality in general, unregulated prostitution, early sex education and a host of other things are not problematic at all. And they are normally also convinced that the social teaching of the Church can be considered disproven by science and should have no place in our society.

So the bishops proclamation relies on anti-catholics being correct. You understand, why i am doubtful?

 

[StephenEstes]

There may well be theologians who make that argument. My point is that that argument is invalid for the reason I pointed out. Killing in self defense is allowed because what is intended is defense, not killing. It is an example of an action with a double effect: the intended good one and the unintended bad one. The reason this principle cannot apply to an execution is in that case the death is intended, not unintended.
This claim cannot be true because the justness of the punishment is determined by the nature of the crime and the nature of the crime of murder has not - and cannot - change. If death was a just punishment for murder in earlier centuries then it is an equally just punishment today.
I haven’t disregarded those statements but I do disagree with them and given that they are prudential opinions and not new doctrines I am justified in doing so. It should be apparent that estimations of the capabilities of modern penal systems could never be a doctrine. Such estimates cannot be sustained by any theological argument but would have to be supported by referencing criminal justice statistics. That is, the claim is sociological, not theological.
I have never heard an attempt by anyone to justify this claim. It is precisely because of man’s dignity that the crime of murder is so heinous and the penalty so severe. It is not the dignity of the murderer that protects his life, it is the dignity of the victim that causes him to forfeit it.

Ender

yes you right, death would be what is intended if the death penalty was used in, let’s say, the United States today, but that is because the death penalty is not the only means necessary for protection, so yes, what is intended would be death and that is precisely why it should NOT be used in countries like the US; however, at a time/place when LWOP (or another penalty) in prison could not protect the society, then death would not be inteded, protection would be, and death merely the side effect, so yes double effect and self-defense does apply and shows your claims to be incorrect

secondly, you say you disagree with these statements because they are prudential judegements, not new doctrine, we yes, you are allowed to do so, however, that would mean you are NOT being prudent and you disregard of Cardinal Dulles comment would also NOT be prudent, so you are certainly allowed to disagree but you are choosing to do so against prudent hierarchical judgement

and no crime, no matter how heinous warrants the human choice that that person has to forfeit their life, and yes it would be a human decision that they have forfeit their life, as would be made by the court system, and we have never been given authority by God to decide when another’s life ends for anything other than protection

 

[stepbackabit]

and no crime, no matter how heinous warrants the human choice that that person has to forfeit their life, and yes it would be a human decision that they have forfeit their life, as would be made by the court system, and we have never been given authority by God to decide when another’s life ends for anything other than protection

Ah, but executions do indeed protect innocents. Executing murderers saves innocent lives.

Please google the study at Emory University – one of many. With each execution at any given location, the murder rate drops. On average, a single execution will save the lives of 18 innocent people. And the sooner the sentence is carried out, the more lives it will save.

 

[Ender]

I am interested in this topic and would like to know what are you basing your statement regarding the Church not considering capital punishment as a deterrent but rather as an instrument of justice. Can you please provide something I can read on this? Thanks.

The Church identifies four objectives of punishment: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and protection with the primary objective being retribution (retributive justice). The Church has no position on whether capital punishment is or is not an effective deterrent. One of the best articles on the subject of capital punishment was written by Cardinal Dulles in 2001.

catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0461.html

Ender

 

[Ender]

I just wanted to comment that this is an extremely important topic, and one in which most Catholics are either extremely ignorant of the teachings in the Catechism or simply have chosen to disregard the Catechism (to justify their own views).

Which catechism would that be? The one that came out in 1997 or the five that preceded it going as far back as the 13th century?

I must add that in addition to a very clear directive included in the Catechism, there is also the public testimony of the Holy Father (pretty much all of them in the last 100 yrs)…

Given that even Vatican City had the death penalty on her books until 1969 it should be pretty clear that this statement is incorrect. The opposition by the clergy (as opposed to the Church) is much more recent.

Only in the last 40 years of its history has the church come out against state-sponsored executions, except in highly delimited circumstances. (Bishop Wilton Gregory, 2008)

However, the most eloquent in this regard (IMHO) are both God the Father, and God the Son. In the case of Cain, when he was afraid of someone killing him for his crime, the Lord Almighty assured him that whoever did this would be guilty ‘seven times’ over. And, in the case of the adulterous woman, a crime punishable by death, Jesus basically saved her. There is a reason these stories are included in the Bible…though I do understand that matters of interpretation can make it ambiguous. That is why we have Catechism, bishops & a Pope to guide us.

If you could show even a single example in the entire history of the Church where either of these two situations was referenced in opposition to capital punishment you might have a point. In fact, however, the Church has not referred to either of them in that context. The passages she does cite, however, show not why she opposes capital punishment but why she recognizes the validity of its use.

Ender

 

[Ender]

You could go back and read my first post which includes the whole legitimate defense section, but here’s all of 2267…

I don’t dispute what 2267 says, my dispute is about both the accuracy and the nature of its claims. Its claim about the traditional teaching of the Church, for example, is simply wrong and the claim about the capabilities of modern penal systems is quite clearly an opinion.

Note the bolded part, the Church through it’s catechism teaches that use of the death penalty is almost never acceptable in our current environment.

The current opposition to the application of capital punishment is prudential opinion; it is not doctrine. It is not that Church doctrine is opposed to capital punishment, rather it is individual clergy who oppose its use.

Again, since the Church cites the government’s responsibility to ‘defend and protect the people’s safety’ as the justification for the death penalty.

This is an interpretation based on what was and was not said in 2267. The problem is that 2266 just identified the primary objective of punishment … and that objective, which must be satisfied in every case, is not protection. It is retributive justice.

Ender

 

[Ender]

at a time/place when LWOP (or another penalty) in prison could not protect the society, then death would not be inteded, protection would be, and death merely the side effect, so yes double effect and self-defense does apply and shows your claims to be incorrect

One of the principles that must be satisfied for an action with a double effect to be valid is that the good benefit not derive directly from the evil effect but in fact the protection society receives comes directly from the death of the criminal, so it would fail the test on that point alone.

secondly, you say you disagree with these statements because they are prudential judegements, not new doctrine, we yes, you are allowed to do so, however, that would mean you are NOT being prudent and you disregard of Cardinal Dulles comment would also NOT be prudent, so you are certainly allowed to disagree but you are choosing to do so against prudent hierarchical judgement

I don’t find it all that imprudent to agree with the position the Church held at least into the 1960s.

and no crime, no matter how heinous warrants the human choice that that person has to forfeit their life, and yes it would be a human decision that they have forfeit their life, as would be made by the court system, and we have never been given authority by God to decide when another’s life ends for anything other than protection

This is another opinion directly refuted by 2000 years of Church teaching.

*“**It is lawful to kill **when fighting in a just war; when carrying out by order of the Supreme Authority a sentence of death in punishment of a crime; and, finally, in cases of necessary and lawful defense of one’s own life against an unjust aggressor.” *(Catechism of Pius X, 1905)

Ender

 

[SusanAlane]

Are we generally accepting that the United States has a penal system sufficient to protect the public?

It seems that most of the arguments here hinge on that assumption, but I do not see the evidence that such is true. We hear reports too often about violent offenders being released for a variety of illegitimate reasons, often due to overcrowding who then go out and commit more heinous crimes than those for which they were incarceratted in the first place. Just one year ago in my own home town a female officer was strangled to death by a rapist/murderer within the confines of the prison itself - in the chapel, no less. I’m sure every one of us can recall several stories from our own states that demonstrate how insufficient the system is.

I believe the Church’s teaching leaves a lot to interpretation and circumstance in this case.