Church Teaching on Death Penalty

[Ender]

I wrote about what Jesus, himself said. And I was right.
You didn’t address what Jesus said. Making your claim specious.

I cited those exact words, and provided an explanation of them given by a Doctor of the Church, so while your personal interpretation might be more accurate it seems unlikely.

I imagine the entire passage must shock you. It is clear that Jesus is clearly supplanting the law of the OT in this passage from Matthew 5.

The entire OT? Most people are only comfortable with dismissing everything Moses said, but you’ve extended to everything in the entire Old Testament, which begs the question of why we actually read it at every mass. Anyway, Gn 9:5-6 is part of the covenant with Noah which will never be supplanted.

The eye for an eye was an idea that retribution and revenge not exceed the offense.

For retribution to be just it must be of comparable severity with the offense. It is not merely that it not exceed it but also that it not be deficient.

But Jesus teaching to love enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

The important thing to understand here is there is a huge difference between the duties and obligations of the individual and those of the State. The individual is both obligated to forgive and forbidden to exact revenge, while the State has no obligation to forgive, but rather is obligated to punish so whatever may be true of the individual means nothing whatever with regard to the State.

In fact if you charted all of the quotes Jesus is said to have referenced in the Gospel, they are limited, specific, and do not include many " favorites" of the retributive justice fans.

I guess I hadn’t noticed.

If any man is for captivity, into captivity he goeth: if any man shall kill with the sword, with the sword must he be killed. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. (Rev 13:10)

Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Heb 10:28)

What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” (Lk 20:15-16)

He replied, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them bring them here and kill them in front of me.’ (Lk 19:26-27)

 

[Isearch]

Wouldn’t the previous teaching and the current teaching on the Death Penalty be comparable with the Roman Catholic change on the doctrine of slavery?

 

[Elf01]

Imagine there is no death penalty and a powerful drug lord is facing life in prison. And he orders his minions to kill the prosecutor, the judge and the foreman of the jury. The worst you can do is give him more life sentences!! On the other hand, where will you find a judge, prosecutor and juror who will try him? He’ll get off scot free and so will other dangerous criminals who see they can’t make their situations worse, no matter how many people there are.

Imagine there is a death penalty and he was sentanced to death for his crimes.

 

[Maximus1]

I didn’t say anything about the ENTIRE OT. I wrote very specifically. I took the time to type verbatim a specific example.
Another example would be Divorce. Where the law of Moses existed when men had " hard hearts" but it " was not always this way."
There are express examples and there are more general examples of Jesus teachings supplanting the OT law of Moses. But I never said, everything.
The" sermon" was a radical message of love, and mercy. And yes it did change. Jesus is a fulfilment of revelation. And history is an evolution of the Christian message.
Further, the more troubling and conflicting OT passages must be read " in pari materia" with the NT messages. Christian history makes many suggestions in this regard.
One, which conveys the idea, is to read the OT through reflection of Christ and the cross. This as opposed to literally thinking we should be riding around smoting this guy and that.
Specifically, your idea that Justice requires an Eye for an Eye, is misstated in my opinion. You seem to suggest that punishment should rise up to the level of the offense in order that it is just. This is not what I understand as a Christian reading.
The emphasis is not to achieve a floor. It is to be mindful of not exceeding a ceiling. This is the just message in terms of revenge and retribution of the OT. LIBERAL thinking in it’s time.
Jesus life and teaching was clearly an amendment. An upgrade!
Beyond the injustice of Christ’s Crucifiction politically and temporally, the Crucifiction is the ultimate amendment to an eye for an eye.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, is a profound amendment.
The crucifix is the central symbol of our faith. Have you ever stopped to think how radical it is as a symbol of faith? Every other faith puts forward a deity that is overtly symbolized in , power, dominance, glory, " golden" if you will.
Our faith is symbolized by a deity who is a " forgiving victim." Humbled by being stripped naked and hung on a tree to die. Have you ever taken the time to reflect on how troubling that is for us. How in history, so many visions of Jesus as reflected in our icons, and art, rebel against God’s will in terms of the choices of incarnation? Perhaps our nature’s force us to think this way. Perhaps it was the addition of Roman to Catholic. In my own church, relatively new, I cannot sit there through a mass without being distracted by the cross . Jesus is clad in a " designer tunic" and looks generally cumfy. Small smudge of red. My first thought when I saw it was that it seems to be missing him holding a cold Diet Slice. And the point is ( there is one) that being Catholic is radically different than what comes before. James 1:10-13 talks about the peril and doom of the law of JUDGEMENT and the promise of the law of Mercy. This was a true radical" upgrade". This Law of Freedom is a radical difference.
It is reflected in the contemporary teaching of the Church on capital punishment. It is inspired by the Gospel message.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Imagine there is a death penalty and he was sentanced to death for his crimes.

Imagine if there were no death penalty and your family were killed by a man who had already earned the death penalty.

Consider this: Death Penalty justice is the BEST justice we have. Persons facing the death penalty have rights and privileges other accused persons do not have. If we are wrongfully convicting people facing the death penalty, how many people facing lesser penalties are being wrongfully convicted?

The death penalty is the canary in the mine – thousands and thousands of persons must be wrongfully imprisoned. Why do you not campaign to fix that?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Are you saying they cannot incarcerate such people?

How? Who will prosecute when prosecutors are murdered? Who will find them guilty when jurors are murdered? Who will sentence them when judges are killed?

I was working a training project for the Bureau of Prisons. I could only use ACTUAL events when constructing training scenarios. Let me present you with one of those scenarios:

You are the warden of a prison. You have learned that an inmate has given a photograph to a Corrections Officer. The photograph shows the Corrections Officer’s six-year old daughter playing in the back yard.

What is your assessment of this? What should you do?

 

[Maximus1]

If a photo was presented in a prison, there has been a prosecutor, a jury, a judge, and likely an appeals process is engaged. A summary execution was not necessary.
I am not unfamiliar with your scenario. There was a time courthouses did not engage metal detectors. I clerked for a judge who handled a terrible divorce dispute. The wife’s attorney was shot in the courthouse. The judge, my employer, was threatened" next". Thereafter all courthouses have metal detectors.
The judge showed me his Glock he purchased and kept concealed under his robe. These are tough jobs. Law enforcement and corrections as well. Not for everyone. That " Husband/ murderer died in prison.
I also had a grandfather, detective in Harlem. Described as a witness, the old electrocutions in NYC. YOU are not going to remove dangers from these jobs. But you cannot kill someone for having a picture. And you cannot sentence someone to death because you think they might have one some day.

 

[Elf01]

You are the warden of a prison. You have learned that an inmate has given a photograph to a Corrections Officer. The photograph shows the Corrections Officer’s six-year old daughter playing in the back yard.

My point is that if there is danger from a lifer there is danger from a death row inmate. If there isn’t then the policies applied to death row can be applied to life imprisonment.

The Death Penalty is not needed for safety.

 

[vern_humphrey]

The Death Penalty is not needed for safety.

If you believe that, why don’t you apply for a job as a Corrections Officer in a supermax prison?

 

[Ender]

Wouldn’t the previous teaching and the current teaching on the Death Penalty be comparable with the Roman Catholic change on the doctrine of slavery?

I don’t think there is really anything comparable about them at all. The church was slow to oppose slavery, but her teaching on its acceptability was absolutely nothing like her teaching on capital punishment. The most you could say was that for a long time she was ambivalent. There was never a time when she was ambivalent about capital punishment. It was acknowledged to be permitted by God himself from the very beginning.

Virtually all the Fathers, all of the Doctors, all the councils, popes, and Magisteria (that addressed the subject) accepted the God given right of a state to use capital punishment. It was a heresy to disbelieve this. None of this is true of slavery.

 

[Ender]

I didn’t say anything about the ENTIRE OT. I wrote very specifically. I took the time to type verbatim a specific example.

I misunderstood your point then. So let me say again: that passage applies to individual behavior; it in no way applies to the rights and duties of States. It is simply not relevant to the question.

There are express examples and there are more general examples of Jesus teachings supplanting the OT law of Moses.

The implication here is that because some of Mosaic Law was abrogated we should assume it all was, but that clearly cannot be inasmuch as Moses gave us the ten commandments. These examples are simply not relevant.

…the more troubling and conflicting OT passages must be read " in pari materia" with the NT messages.

There is no conflict between the OT passages I cited in post #189 and the NT passages I cited in #221. The church has always considered a State’s right to capital punishment to be based soundly on scripture.

Specifically, your idea that Justice requires an Eye for an Eye, is misstated in my opinion. You seem to suggest that punishment should rise up to the level of the offense in order that it is just. This is not what I understand as a Christian reading.

And I think this is exactly what the church teaches, and is the precise meaning of this:

2266 …Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime.

It is not just that the state is allowed to punish at the level of the crime, but that it is positively obligated to do so. And again, this is because the rights and duties of the State are entirely different than those of the individual.

The emphasis is not to achieve a floor. It is to be mindful of not exceeding a ceiling.

It is both, as Aquinas said:

Two vices are opposed to vengeance: one by way of excess, namely, the sin of cruelty or brutality, which exceeds the measure in punishing: while the other is a vice by way of deficiency and consists in being remiss in punishing

 

[Maximus1]

Your position continues to ignore the modern Church position.
This position began with Saint Pope John Paul II.
THE death penalty was no longer an appropriate form of punishment except I cases of absolute necessity.
Saint Pope John Paul II followed that up with the determination that the tiny exception was virtually non existent in the modern world.
Pope Francis carried on that legacy by eliminating the tiny vestige remaining.
I don’t see the point in looking back hundreds and thousands of years.
My theory is that some Catholics are attracted to " when men had harder hearts"… they don’t t feel comfortable with ideas like mercy…
Slavery, Capital punishment…an eye for an eye…all except abortion.
Interestingly, the Church has followed a circuitous route to it’s modern ideas in abortion. Really, it wasn’t until the late 1800’s. Which is much more genuine that Baptists for example, who were clearly pro choice in 73 when Roe was issued.
There is no arguments from Aquinas or Augustine made to support our modern viewpoint about abortion because we no longer retain Aristotle’s ideas about ensoulment. Why is an interesting topic. But we are talking CATHOLOCISM today. And today, they remain an evolving theology involving HUMAN DIGNITY.
IDEAS like ensoulment, the issues involving antepods, an eye for an eye, the death penalty or putting your wife away, are incompatible with the teachings of the modern Church.
With all respect to Aquinas, there can be mitigation of punishment. Such was the effect of Jesus teaching at the potential stoning of the adulteress. The Judgement of Mercy in James 2:10-13. And the infallible teachings of Saint John Paul II AND those of Pope Francis continuing those pronouncements.

 

[Maximus1]

PS.
Your idea that duties of states differs from positions of individuals based on religion belief.
From the point of view of our religion your idea confused.
Take abortion. That other state sanctioned homicide. We do not accept private opposition and public support. Do we?

 

[Ender]

Your position continues to ignore the modern Church position.

Be more specific. I cited the passage on punishment from the current catechism; you can’t get any more “modern” than that. I am also not at all comfortable with the implication that “old” teachings somehow carry less importance or that there is no real need for consistency between what the church used to believe and what she believes today.

THE death penalty was no longer an appropriate form of punishment except I cases of absolute necessity.

What makes a punishment “appropriate”? I would have thought that it was “appropriate” if it was just, and that it was just if was - as the catechism says - commensurate in severity with the crime. We know at least that much is true of capital punishment because the church accepted it for two millennia.

What about a punishment is necessary? Again, that it be just.

Pope Francis carried on that legacy by eliminating the tiny vestige remaining.

How did he do that? Did he declare it to be intrinsically evil? Understand the implication of that position: if it is true then the church taught evil as good since her creation.

I don’t see the point in looking back hundreds and thousands of years.

I consider this to be a seriously harmful argument in that it suggests that no matter how old a doctrine is it can be simply reversed from one pope to the next. There are few beliefs more damaging to the concept that the church’s doctrines are more than simply the personal opinions of the current papacy.

And the infallible teachings of Saint John Paul II AND those of Pope Francis continuing those pronouncements.

There have been no infallible teachings from those popes, and the “pronouncements” they have made on this subject are prudential judgments, not new doctrines.

 

[Ender]

Your idea that duties of states differs from positions of individuals based on religion belief.
From the point of view of our religion your idea confused.

There are any number writings on the differences between the duties and obligations of the State and those of the individual; it is a significant part of church doctrine.

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; just as from the fact that the law said, “Thou shalt love thy friend,” they infer that it is lawful to hate our enemies; but Christ teaches that these are misinterpretations of the law, and that we should love even our enemies and not resist evil, but rather that we should be prepared, if necessary, to turn the other cheek to him who strikes one cheek. And that Our Lord was speaking to private citizens is clear from what follows. For Our Lord speaks thus: “But I say to you not to resist evil, but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, etc.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Maximus1:

Your position continues to ignore the modern Church position.

Be more specific. I cited the passage on punishment from the current catechism; you can’t get any more “modern” than that.

I’m pretty sure Maximus1 means CCC 2267. Especially the last sentence.

I am also not at all comfortable with the implication that “old” teachings somehow carry less importance or that there is no real need for consistency between what the church used to believe and what she believes today.

If there is an apparent contradiction between old teaching and new teaching, it is likely not really a contradiction, but a misunderstanding on the part of the reader. In the case where the new teaching is less ambiguous than the old teaching, it is likely that the misunderstanding is with the old teaching. That is all the more likely when one considers drift in the meaning of words over time. In that case I would defer to current Church leaders for guidance on how to interpret these teachings.

THE death penalty was no longer an appropriate form of punishment except I cases of absolute necessity.

What makes a punishment “appropriate”?

I don’t know. How do you interpret 2267 regarding what punishment is appropriate?

I would have thought that it was “appropriate” if it was just, and that it was just if was - as the catechism says - commensurate in severity with the crime. We know at least that much is true of capital punishment because the church accepted it for two millennia.

We don’t know that capital punishment is always just. All we know is that capital punishment can be just. There is nothing in the catechism that requires it.

I don’t see the point in looking back hundreds and thousands of years.

I consider this to be a seriously harmful argument in that it suggests that no matter how old a doctrine is it can be simply reversed from one pope to the next.

It does not imply that. One can say that there is no point in looking back hundreds and thousands of years for moral guidance for the laity because the Church has summarized that teaching in documents especially suited to the laity, e.g. the catechism and other modern documents. I trust that our Church has done a sufficiently good job presenting the deposit of faith in an accessible form to make it unnecessary for me to read original transcripts of the Council of Trent.

And the infallible teachings of Saint John Paul II AND those of Pope Francis continuing those pronouncements.

There have been no infallible teachings from those popes, and the “pronouncements” they have made on this subject are prudential judgments, not new doctrines.

Nevertheless, teachings of the popes recent popes should not be dismissed so casually.

 

[Ender]

I’m pretty sure Maximus1 means CCC 2267. Especially the last sentence.

Perhaps, perhaps not. That’s why I asked for clarification.

If there is an apparent contradiction between old teaching and new teaching, it is likely not really a contradiction, but a misunderstanding on the part of the reader.

This is all vague and imprecise, and suggests what it does not say. Generalities are not a good substitute for clarity.

How do you interpret 2267 regarding what punishment is appropriate?

2267 doesn’t address that question; it is addressed in 2266 which is quite clear on the point: it must be of commensurate severity with the crime absent extraordinary circumstances.

One can say that there is no point in looking back hundreds and thousands of years for moral guidance for the laity because the Church has summarized that teaching in documents especially suited to the laity, e.g. the catechism and other modern documents.

More generalities. There should never be a contradiction between old and new, and it is never true that because a doctrine is old it has somehow lost its validity. What typically happens is an older teaching that contradicts a position expressed here is dismissed as being no longer relevant simply because it is old, with no attempt made to show how it is in error.

 

[Maximus1]

You omitted 2267.
You omitted citation to Evangelium Vitae, made in footnote 68 in 2267.
The section clearly states non- lethal means is more in keeping with the " concrete conditions of the public good, and more in keeping with the dignity of the human person.
In 1995, the cases of potential application of the death penalty are declared by the catechism, " practically non- existent."
The remaining theoretically existent application involved a completely different emphasis than yours.
In 1999, in a mass in Saint Louis, Saint John Paul II renewed his appeal for a consensus to end the death penalty entire, on the basis that it is both cruel and unnecessary.
Today the greater cornerstone and Catholic emphasis is," the inviolatile dignity of human persons."
Pope Francis did in fact remove the remote exception. No longer applicable, and directed Catholics to," abolish the death penalty as an affront to human dignity.“Today, application by the state is ,” morally inadmissable."
It has been pointed out how those who cling to your argument undermine the dignity based arguments of the unborn.

 

[Maximus1]

What punishment is appropriate remains a consideration.
Under 2267 it is that punishment short of lethal punishment that is appropriate.
And
What has happened is the values of concurrent doctrine involving human dignity, became the emphasis. Not former ideas that Capital punishment was just.
I am sure you are satisfied that your doctrine remains, but no longer is authority for the death penalty on the basis of Justice. Sleep well.

 

[Emeraldlady]

I am also not at all comfortable with the implication that “old” teachings somehow carry less importance or that there is no real need for consistency between what the church used to believe and what she believes today.

The “old” teachings were of the same nature as today’s teaching. ie prudential judgement. It was not doctrine in and of itself. The Church responds with authority on the moral issues of the times.