Christianity and the Death Penalty

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Debora123 said:
Once again, no one here (especially not me!) is advocating the use of solitary confinement as torture.

Solitary confinement is torture when it is done for a prolonged period of time. Several days… a week. THAT is torture, and no one here is suggesting that. Putting a prisoner in solitary confinement for bad behavior for one day is not torture - it is punishment and reinforcement for better behavior. And THAT is what I was suggesting.
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Sorry, my mistake.

When you said
Furthermore, there are prisons out there where the prisoners are only able to leave their solo cell for 1 hour in a whole week, at which time they are escorted into a cage outside where they stand around completely alone for an hour.
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it didn’t sound like you were talking about only one day. I misunderstood.
 
Corki said:
Sorry, my mistake.

When you said

it didn’t sound like you were talking about only one day. I misunderstood.
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Don’t get me wrong, I still think assigning a dangerous, misbehaving prisoner to solitary confinement for a week is a better alternative to ending their life altogether, but doing so can do some real damage to people, and it shouldn’t be used as torture or done for that many days in a row.
 
Corki said:
I have spent years wrestling with the death penalty issue. What I posted above is one of the very first times I have tried to put the concept into words.

Revenge is personal, which is why I don’t think it is a proper role of the state. Justice, yes. Too often the calls for the death penalty (modern day, in the US) are less aimed at justice for the victims and more aimed at satisfying the blood lust of the public and the media.
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This does not make the death penalty immoral. It just means we need to emphasize the concepts of retribution and justice, and how they are different from revenge.
This is hard to articulate. I would say it is an ultimate concern for all of the parties involved, including the convicted.
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Do you remember the old westerns? Some criminal would be convicted. The judge would say “you are sentanced to hang by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul.” Now, it seems the common sentiment is not for God to be merciful but rather “and may he rot in Hell for what he’s done.”
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Yes, many of the crimes are heinous. And, I understand it is hard to express compasion for the perpetrator of many of the crimes, especially when the crime scene photos are all over the news. But it just isn’t right to wish anyone into Hell.
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According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the fact that the convicted criminal knows he will die on a certain date gives him an extra incentive to repent. Thus, capital punishment does not hinder God’s mercy. Thinking along those lines, it occurs to me that in many cases, it would be more merciful to give a murderer on the death row a Bible and the chance to go to confession. If the fear of Hell will not convince him to repent, what will?
 
**According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the fact that the convicted criminal knows he will die on a certain date gives him an extra incentive to repent. Thus, capital punishment does not hinder God’s mercy. Thinking along those lines, it occurs to me that in many cases, it would be more merciful to give a murderer on the death row a Bible and the chance to go to confession. If the fear of Hell will not convince him to repent, what will?
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” (Adam Smith)

Aquinas was very wise, but by no means anywhere near infallible. What he asserts above is highly, highly debatable. God forgave murderers even mass-murderers like King Manasseh, and not only spared their lives, but even restored them to rulership over the nation of Israel after their horrendous crimes. Again, I reiterate, those who insist on the Death Penalty (it is NOT a sin, I’m talking about whether we should relish justice over mercy), forget that murder is BY NO MEANS the only capital crime in the eyes of God.
Fornication, adultery, sodomy and a host of other sins are capital crimes in the eyes of God and under the Law of the Land of Ancient Israel, too. If the Death Penalty were applied in the USA to all the activities that GOD considers capital crimes, it is safe to say that 70% or more of “law abiding” (in their own eyes) Americans would be put to Death. And as for Adam Smith, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” (Adam Smith) , with an attitude like THAT, HE certainly wouldn’t have died on the Cross for ANYONE.

As for some people here’s contentions that solitary confinement for violent, vicious murderers is “cruel” and “torture,” you must understand that some of these people are remorseless predators and if you DON’T keep them in solitary, they will rape and kill other inmates. Watch LOCKUP on Friday and Saturday nights, overnight, on MSNBC sometime. Some of these men in solitary are interviewed, and their comments are bone-chilling sometimes. And even in Solitary, don’t ask me how, they manage to smuggle orders to the gangs they control out on the streets. Weird.**
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
Aquinas was very wise, but by no means anywhere near infallible. What he asserts above is highly, highly debatable.
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Okay, please explain why you think Aquinas is wrong.
God forgave murderers even mass-murderers like King Manasseh, and not only spared their lives, but even restored them to rulership over the nation of Israel after their horrendous crimes.
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Forgiveness does not necessarily mean a remission of punishment. Remember the Good Thief? Christ forgave him, but this forgiveness did not eliminate his just punishment.
Again, I reiterate, those who insist on the Death Penalty (it is NOT a sin, I’m talking about whether we should relish justice over mercy), forget that murder is BY NO MEANS the only capital crime in the eyes of God.
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St. Thomas Aquinas defines mercy as a feeling a sorrow at someone’s distress. This feeling moves us to help that person if we can. Keeping that in mind, would be more merciful to give a man on the death row a chance to confess his sins or would simply giving him more time be the merciful thing to do?
Fornication, adultery, sodomy and a host of other sins are capital crimes in the eyes of God and under the Law of the Land of Ancient Israel, too. If the Death Penalty were applied in the USA to all the activities that GOD considers capital crimes, it is safe to say that 70% or more of “law abiding” (in their own eyes) Americans would be put to Death.
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The death penalty does not come from the Mosaic Law, but from the Covenant with Noah, a covenant that is still in force today.
And as for Adam Smith, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” (Adam Smith) , with an attitude like THAT, HE certainly wouldn’t have died on the Cross for ANYONE.
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You are the third person on this website to misunderstand this quote. All Smith meant was that soft-on-criminals policies simply encourage crime. Encouraging crime is cruelty to the innocent, no?
 
starshiptrooper said:
This does not make the death penalty immoral. It just means we need to emphasize the concepts of retribution and justice, and how they are different from revenge.
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Yes. That is why I didn’t vote in the poll. I do not believe that the death penalty is “against Christian principals” as the thread title stated. But the current climate makes me too uncomfortable to say that I support the death penalty in the US at this time.
 
starshiptrooper said:
Okay, please explain why you think Aquinas is wrong.
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Yea, I’d like to hear that one too. After all, how many saints have Christ appear to them and personally tell that saint that he “wrote well of him”.

Or have popes declare their theology to be the “model and norm of Christian philosophy”. ( Pope Leo XIII - 1880)

Cardinal Bernadin, when asked if his “seemless garment” excluded a Thomistic understanding of the death penalty, replied that it did not, that he accepting Aquinas’ reasoning on the subject.
 
Corki said:
Yes. That is why I didn’t vote in the poll. I do not believe that the death penalty is “against Christian principals” as the thread title stated. But the current climate makes me too uncomfortable to say that I support the death penalty in the US at this time.
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I would pretty much agree.

But that is pretty much what Cardinal Dulles said, but you disagreed with him. Could I ask for more clarification on what areas you disagreed with him and why?
 
Brendan said:
I would pretty much agree.

But that is pretty much what Cardinal Dulles said, but you disagreed with him. Could I ask for more clarification on what areas you disagreed with him and why?
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I NEVER disagreed with Cardinal Dulles. That was somebody else (see post #71). 😃

I cannot find anything in the article you linked that I disagree with.
 
Debora123 said:
Either Aquinas is wrong, or JPII and the Bishops are wrong. They have very conflicting/opposite beliefs regarding the DP.
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Actually, they don’t.

They all accept ( as Cardinal Dulles noted) that the State has a inherent (and God given right) to inflict the Death Penalty, and that is certain circumstances, it is a just thing to do.

Cardinal Bernadin, as noted, fully accepted Aquinas’ teaching on the Death Penalty, and I have yet to met a bishop that rejects it.
 
I agree with the premise that since the U.S. has the capacity for permanent detention, this should be the preferred method of dealing with such extreme cases. I do think that the sentence should still be death for many of them so that if we were to lose the ability to keep them permanently locked up we would still be able to complete the execution. Effectively, they would be commuted to life w/o possibility of parole.

There are very few extreme cases where society is better off executing the person despite the ability to lock them up permanently. Charismatic leaders of terrorist organizations come to mind. Can you imagine if Bin Laden were alive in “supermax”? Even unable to see/hear or be seen/heard at all, he would present a huge danger due to the many terrorists who would think that if they just kill enough people the U.S. would be forced to free him.
 
Brendan said:
Actually, they don’t.

They all accept ( as Cardinal Dulles noted) that the State has a inherent (and God given right) to inflict the Death Penalty, and that is certain circumstances, it is a just thing to do.

Cardinal Bernadin, as noted, fully accepted Aquinas’ teaching on the Death Penalty, and I have yet to met a bishop that rejects it.
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You’re saying Aquinas’ views and JPII’s views on the DP are the same???

No, they absolutely are not.

JPII:
“May the death penalty, an unworthy punishment still used in some countries, be abolished throughout the world.”
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“A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
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St Thomas Aquinas:
Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and healthful that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since "a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump”
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Corki said:
The are not the same but they are not mutually exclusive.
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They are completely different in terms of morality… in terms of whether or not it is just.

That is what concerns this poll.
 
Debora123 said:
They are completely different in terms of morality… in terms of whether or not it is just.

That is what concerns this poll.
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Even Blessed Pope John Paul II does not say that the death penalty is inherently immoral. He says its application in the modern world is unnecessary. That is not inconstent with what Aquinas and Cardinal Dulles wrote.
 
Debora123 said:
They are completely different in terms of morality… in terms of whether or not it is just.

That is what concerns this poll.
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Justice is Moral, by Definition. God is infinitely Just and therefore what is Just is pleasing to God.

And that is the Catholic defintion of a Moral Act.
 
Corki said:
Even Blessed Pope John Paul II does not say that the death penalty is inherently immoral. He says its application in the modern world is unnecessary. That is not inconstent with what Aquinas and Cardinal Dulles wrote.
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Haha ok, w/e, word it as you’d like. Nit pick my statements as you’d like. Either way, it is what it is.

I agree with the views of the late Pope, not of those of Aquinas.
 
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