Church Teaching on Death Penalty

[Maximus1]

Today, use of the death penalty is cruel and unnecessary.
This is the Authoritative teaching of the Magisterium.
I have a large number of posts that address your argument I won’t rewrite.
The only addition I have is in thinking about this, the passages in John about the Adulteress which has parallels to the dynamic here.
Jesus never questions the justness of the law of Moses. He simply says," let he who is without sin, cast the first stone."
His statement is a seperate teaching from the first. Two parallel just statements of the law. You could say he left the justness of stoning an Adulteress intact, while disqualifying the stone throwers.
The effect of the second just teaching is to cancel the first. That is because nobody is worthy to throw. Not that stoning was unjust. It also speaks to God’s purview being invaded, but that is my idea.
This is the circumstances outlined by the Magisterium here.
The retributive form of justice today might be just in the natural law sense, but it’s use is immaterial today.
Among the reasons given are:
Modern knowledge is that it is applied by the state unjustly. Unequally. Innocent men are convicted. States execute politically and not justly. They didn’t have the knowledge in the past to appreciate the UNJUST application. Part of the natural law analysis ASSUMES a fair trial conviction is fair, etc. Experience and analysis tells us this is not an accurate assumption. Arbitrary and erronious state determinations of death penalty cannot possibly satisfy an idea of just in Natural Law.
Also, in modern times the public good and concern for safety from the past no longer exists. It barely existed under SPJPII, and does not today. Can that circumstance change? Possibly! Wartime (a war like WWII) where state institutions are blown up perhaps. ( If we are blown back into the stone age realities of the stone age return theoretically).
Finally, as was the case with the Adulteress in John, a parallel Doctrine emerged. Those without sin may cast the first stone. ( Theoretically) Circumstances happen to be that you can’t find enough sinless stone throwers to get a decent stoning off the ground.
In this modern example, the Gospel ideas about Human Dignity, Mercy, and the Gospel mission( that people be given an opportunity to rehabilitate, not have that chance snuffed by the state depriving that opportunity) are among these concerns.
And so the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium has reduced all this to writing. Catholics who practice the faith properly, act accordingly.

 

[Ender]

That is not and never has been the position of the universal Church as explained by Aquinas.

You seem to misunderstand pretty much everything I write so I’ll spell this out as simply as I can.

• Morality does not change with time or place.
• A punishment is just if its severity is commensurate with the severity of the crime.
• The church considered capital punishment a just penalty for (at least) murder (or she wouldn’t have acknowledged it for 2000 years).
• The severity of the crime of murder cannot change over time.
• The severity of the punishment of death cannot change over time.
• Therefore: if death was a just punishment in the past it is equally just today; if it is unjust today it was unjust in the past.

The only exception to this is when circumstances are such that applying the death penalty in a particular instance is deemed unwise or harmful (and therefore unjust). My understanding of the positions of the last three popes is that they believed the circumstances of modern societies made the use of capital punishment unwise. There is in fact no way to find a moral objection to its use today that would not condemn its use in the past.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

You seem to misunderstand pretty much everything I write so I’ll spell this out as simply as I can.

Instead of repeating yourself, why not address the specific points EmeraldLady raised? You want people to read and consider what you write. You should extend the same to others.

 

[Maximus1]

I know you are wedded to your theorems.
In a fact free non evolving world, your ideas work quite nicely.
But facts do change. Additional knowledge is gained. And when that happens, the church is not " stuck " with it’s least knowledge from the past.
Let me change subjects to abortion where your position is not consistent with that list of " If/ thens".
The history of the Church concerning abortion took a circuitous route until SCIENCE AND MODERN FACTS, settled the Doctrine we have today where ABORTION AT ANY STAGE AFTER CONCEPTION is intrinsically evil.
It was , as the Conference of Catholic Bishops point out, sin in the Didache, but by the time of one of the Churches great thinkers, Augustine, the idea of Ensoulment was drawn from Aristotle, and the belief was that a conceived child is not fully formed with a soul until roughly 60 or 90 days if I recall. ( Really doesn’t matter, they could not confirm it with science. ).
Where I differ with the attempts to massage " it was always sin" into the apologetic argument, is not with the truth of this fact( it was sin no matter what so the statement is technically true).
The whole truth however is ABSOLUTELY RELEVANT to our argument.
THIS is because an abortion at any stage was a serious crime/ sin, but BEFORE ENSOULMENT, adjudication was of the crime basically of fornication( pre-ensoulment). While after the child was " fully formed" murder.
You are already familiar with just penalty for both crimes at the time.
Saint Thomas, the other " heavyweight" if you will, restated his support of the ensoulment idea. And this remained our Doctrine until something changed it to it’s modern form in the Catechism. ( A few Popes went back and forth…as I said earlier, circuitous).
According to the Conference of Catholic Bishops, it was 1837,( think) that science had EVOLVED to the stage it appreciated Conception factually, and thereafter, the correct view of what is a fully formed human being.
What was Doctrine for many centuries changed to the modern catechism of intrinsic evil from birth of today. TRUTH WAS ALWAYS TRUTH, but Augustine and Aquinas didn’t know what truth was. They reasoned " their" truth, but not actual truth. AND THIS IS MY POINT! THINGS CHANGE!
Now the good part! We test your ideas.
So far, poor Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas have been picked on. But in truth:
According to you, the implication is that," if they were wrong now, they were wrong then.
Therefore Church law was wrong then.
Therefore everything combusts.
You see, in hindsight, ensoulment was an erronious idea. The child was always fully formed at conception.
And for many years, there were consequences. Death vs a lesser sentence was considered just.
That is your way of looking at it.
Mine is consistent. Augustine and Aquinas were limited to the facts, circumstances and knowledge of their day. They reasoned from the facts they had and considered Aristotle who was also limited by the same deficits.
Now that sounds terrible. Error! We identified it. Are you right?
No! The decleration of intrinsic evil of today used scientific knowledge to evolve our modern idea.

 

[Tolle_Lege]

In good conscience, and with the historical teaching of the Catholic Church, I fully support the use and yes, even expansion of the death penalty.

 

[Ender]

Instead of repeating yourself, why not address the specific points EmeraldLady raised? You want people to read and consider what you write. You should extend the same to others.

The idea I was advancing in the post to which she replied was that the use of capital punishment “is either just or unjust over all time” (emphasis in the original). Her response presumably went to the claim that the church considered it “the normal, just punishment for murder”, but even that point was not addressed by the citation she provided. What is there to respond to? You tell me: what was the point of the citation?

 

[Ender]

Let me change subjects to abortion where your position is not consistent with that list of " If/ thens".
The history of the Church concerning abortion took a circuitous route until SCIENCE AND MODERN FACTS, settled the Doctrine we have today where ABORTION AT ANY STAGE AFTER CONCEPTION is intrinsically evil.

This example does not make your point. As you said, the church always held that abortion at any time was a sin. The change was only in later declaring it an even graver sin. That is hardly the same as the change you are suggesting she made with capital punishment which would go from “a practice that all hold to be permitted by God” (Innocent I) to a grave, intrinsic evil.

According to you, the implication is that," if they were wrong now, they were wrong then. Therefore Church law was wrong then.

The idea of ensoulment was wrong, but church law was not. It condemned what it knew to be wrong, but it rightly did not condemn what it did not understand. It condemned early abortions as immoral - it correctly understood that - but did not condemn them as the taking of human life because it didn’t know if that was what happened.

The decleration of intrinsic evil of today used scientific knowledge to evolve our modern idea.

With abortion you’re describing the church increasing the severity of an act that was already an intrinsic evil. With capital punishment you would have her changing an act from one of paramount obedience (Trent) to one of grave, intrinsic evil. Those changes are not at all comparable.

 

[Emeraldlady]

LeafByNiggle:

Instead of repeating yourself, why not address the specific points EmeraldLady raised? You want people to read and consider what you write. You should extend the same to others.

The idea I was advancing in the post to which she replied was that the use of capital punishment “is either just or unjust over all time” (emphasis in the original). Her response presumably went to the claim that the church considered it “the normal, just punishment for murder”, but even that point was not addressed by the citation she provided. What is there to respond to? You tell me: what was the point of the citation?

The point of quoting Aquinas is the show that human laws are derived from the natural law and the conclusions based on human reason and experience. To say that a punishment is “either just or unjust over all time” is the opposite of what Aquinas states. There is no ‘default’ law that prescribes the death penalty apart from it’s service to the common good. Aquinas goes on to say in the following chapter -

Whatever is for an end should be proportionate to that end. Now the end of law is the common good; because, as Isidore says (Etym. v, 21) that “law should be framed, not for any private benefit, but for the common good of all the citizens.” Hence human laws should be proportionate to the common good. Now the common good comprises many things. Wherefore law should take account of many things, as to persons, as to matters, and as to times.

 

[Maximus1]

Before I get to why that response does not address what is material about the comparison, let me clean up a few things.
This idea about sin, and a greater sin that you make with abortion is irrelevant for several reasons. Here they are in no particular order:
The crime for aborting the fetus after the child was fully formed was murder of a human being. With punishment of Capital punishment( don’t know if they burned the mother to the stake, hung her or what). It is the penalty we are talking about here. Not if a crime was committed. I have never even raised the idea that NO CRIME WAS COMITTED OR PUNISHED.
Proportional punishment remains intact save one, for one single crime.( They already ended burning people to the stake for religious crimes like heresy, or sexual crimes…stoning or other capital punishment.
They are all gone. This conversation is about the last vestige and use of what was a large number of former capital offenses. ( And the world did not end when they stopped burning people for heresy or other punishments similar to Sharia.)
Next
The CRIME before ensoulment really wasn’t about the dead baby at all.
It was fornication. A sexual crime involving intercourse out of wedlock.
The dead baby was evidence of fornication.
So
It was a totally different crime not a species of murder or manslaughter of any kind.
The PENALTY FOR MURDER, capital punishment, was not implicated due to insuficient information. After the 1880s murder from conception did implicate just punishment for murder.
Murder and a just punishment for abortion in the first 30 days…Aquinas says NOT IMPLICATED. LATER…IMPLICATED. YOU do not address this.
A punishment for murder of the unborn in the first 30 days was not the same then as now. It WAS NOT JUST according to Aquinas reasoning then. Even though, it was just then had Aquinas been correct.
There is no hiding from that INCONSISTENCY " OVER TIME"

 

[Maximus1]

I already covered the fact the last three Pope’s determine that death penalty was intrinsically evil or unjust.
I cited Jesus and the passages involving the Death Penalty( stoning) of the Adulteress. Jesus did not change the law of Moses in terms of justness. Via a different doctrine, there were no righteous stone throwers to carry out the just punishment. That is basically what happened here in the sense that a different teaching, based on different considerations, effectively stopped the stoning, without declaring stoning forvadultary intrinsically evil.

 

[Ender]

To say that a punishment is “either just or unjust over all time” is the opposite of what Aquinas states.

First, I didn’t say that a punishment is either just or unjust over all time; I specifically said that capital punishment is either just or unjust over all time. Second, Aquinas didn’t address that point.

There is no ‘default’ law that prescribes the death penalty apart from it’s service to the common good.

You keep making that point and I keep agreeing with it. Why won’t you take yes for an answer?

What makes any punishment just? There are two criteria that must both be satisfied:

1. The punishment must fit the crime; that is it must be of commensurate severity, and
2. It must further the common good.

As for (2), that determination is made in each individual case and there is no general law that applies universally. As for (1) however, there is a universal rule at least in the case of capital punishment: if it was ever just it is always just.

The reason for that seems evident. Is the severity of the punishment (death) proportional to the severity of the crime (murder)? If the answer is no then capital punishment could never have been a just sentence, but if the answer is yes once then it is yes always. It’s not like the severity of either the crime or the punishment could change.

 

[Ender]

This conversation is about the last vestige and use of what was a large number of former capital offenses.

I am not concerned with whether the use of capital punishment was appropriate for all the crimes to which it was applied. It is sufficient to address whether it was (and is) appropriate for the crime of murder.

The CRIME before ensoulment really wasn’t about the dead baby at all.
It was fornication. A sexual crime involving intercourse out of wedlock.
The dead baby was evidence of fornication.

This is not accurate; it was the crime of abortion that was punished, and a married woman was equally guilty if she committed it. Whether there was the additional crime of fornication was irrelevant to whether the crime of abortion was committed.

The PENALTY FOR MURDER, capital punishment, was not implicated due to insuficient information. After the 1880s murder from conception did implicate just punishment for murder.

This was a very proper distinction. Given that they didn’t know exactly what was being destroyed they could not charge someone with murder if they didn’t know a murder had actually been committed.

A punishment for murder of the unborn in the first 30 days was not the same then as now.

Yes, I have acknowledged that.

There is no hiding from that INCONSISTENCY " OVER TIME"

Yes, there was a change, but it is important to note that the change was due to an increase in scientific knowledge, and not to a change in moral understanding. That inconsistency did not uncover a moral error. Deciding today that capital punishment was always wrong would be to ascribe a very serious moral error to the church.

 

[Ender]

I already covered the fact the last three Pope’s determine that death penalty was intrinsically evil or unjust.

This is a position you will find even some of your allies in opposing capital punishment disagree with you on. As I understand them, neither @LeafByNiggle nor @Emeraldlady accept that. Clearly neither JPII nor BXVI thought that inasmuch as at a minimum they allowed capital punishment in extreme cases, which by definition means they could not have considered it intrinsically evil.

The death penalty is not intrinsically evil. Both Scripture and long Christian tradition acknowledge the legitimacy of capital punishment under certain circumstances. The Church cannot repudiate that without repudiating her own identity. (Archbishop Chaput, 2005)

I cited Jesus and the passages involving the Death Penalty( stoning) of the Adulteress.

Yes you did, and then gave it your own interpretation. The church, however, has not used that episode as an argument against capital punishment. She believes instead that capital punishment is supported by scripture.

 

[Maximus1]

I thought I amended. The Popes did not determine the prior teaching intrinsically evil.
The Church did or did not is not relevant. My point was to describe how a second doctrine, ( let he who is without sin cast the first stone did not find Jesus affecting the law. )

 

[Maximus1]

You quoted me," Default" something I didn’t argue.
Next,
I never said the Popes said that the Death Penalty was formerly unjust. ( Except for a typo.).
It isn’t necessarily always just if other circumstances and facts make it immaterial. I gave actual examples of this. Your response was not my example was wrong. It was the Church didn’t point it out. The church didn’t need to.

 

[Maximus1]

You " are not concerned" that capital punishment was applicable to all the crimes…
I am.
Why are they not crimes Capital punishment ALWAYS applied to. Once just always just you say!
Obviously not.
Now your problem is this, selection of one crime and not others is ARBITRARY.
There is no accounting for why once just, not always just.
Unless your position is one of the Ten Commandments is qualitatively different than another. There is no support with qualitative differences in the Ten Commandments.
You punted on the Adulteress. Which says everything

 

[Emeraldlady]

Emeraldlady:

To say that a punishment is “either just or unjust over all time” is the opposite of what Aquinas states.

First, I didn’t say that a punishment is either just or unjust over all time; I specifically said that capital punishment is either just or unjust over all time. Second, Aquinas didn’t address that point.

There is no ‘default’ law that prescribes the death penalty apart from it’s service to the common good.

You keep making that point and I keep agreeing with it. Why won’t you take yes for an answer?

So capital punishment is a punishment, no more no less. Yes we agree.

What makes any punishment just? There are two criteria that must both be satisfied:

1. The punishment must fit the crime; that is it must be of commensurate severity, and
2. It must further the common good.

As for (2), that determination is made in each individual case and there is no general law that applies universally.

I don’t know what society you come from but the norm in most societies is that punishments are formulated in a general way to ensure justice is served. We view societies that have different punishments for different people as racist and discriminatory.

Additionally, punishments like torture, slavery and exile were once viewed as general laws but are now considered inhumane today and are abolished.

As for (1) however, there is a universal rule at least in the case of capital punishment: if it was ever just it is always just.

No, there is no universal rule that makes capital punishment ‘intrinsically’ just. You keep stating this as if its true and I’m quite sure you know it’s not. It is just if it serves the common good otherwise the society has no legitimate authority to use it because the end of human law is solely the common good. Aquinas states -

Our Lord commanded them to forbear from uprooting the cockle in order to spare the wheat, i.e. the good. This occurs when the wicked cannot be slain without the good being killed with them, either because the wicked lie hidden among the good, or because they have many followers, so that they cannot be killed without danger to the good, as Augustine says (Contra Parmen. iii, 2). Wherefore our Lord teaches that we should rather allow the wicked to live, and that vengeance is to be delayed until the last judgment, rather than that the good be put to death together with the wicked.

The Church completely acknowledges that if the common good is harmed by the death penalty it’s use is forbidden.

The reason for that seems evident. Is the severity of the punishment (death) proportional to the severity of the crime (murder)? If the answer is no then capital punishment could never have been a just sentence, but if the answer is yes once then it is yes always. It’s not like the severity of either the crime or the punishment could change.

The Church has never taught ‘eye for an eye’ as punishment.

 

[Emeraldlady]

This is a position you will find even some of your allies in opposing capital punishment disagree with you on. As I understand them, neither @LeafByNiggle nor @Emeraldlady accept that. Clearly neither JPII nor BXVI thought that inasmuch as at a minimum they allowed capital punishment in extreme cases, which by definition means they could not have considered it intrinsically evil.

The death penalty is not intrinsically evil. Both Scripture and long Christian tradition acknowledge the legitimacy of capital punishment under certain circumstances. The Church cannot repudiate that without repudiating her own identity. (Archbishop Chaput, 2005)

Right. It’s neither intrinsically evil or intrinsically just. It’s legitimacy is determined solely by it’s service to the common good.

 

[Ender]

No, there is no universal rule that makes capital punishment ‘intrinsically’ just. You keep stating this as if its true and I’m quite sure you know it’s not. It is just if it serves the common good otherwise the society has no legitimate authority to use it because the end of human law is solely the common good.

I listed two criteria that had to be met for a punishment to be just, the second of which was “It must further the common good.” You even copied that in your response, so how is it you think there is a difference between my comment and yours?

Me: “What makes any punishment just?..It must serve the common good.”
You: “No…It is just if it serves the common good…”

I don’t know how to make it any clearer.

The Church has never taught ‘eye for an eye’ as punishment.

Not literally, of course not, but she does teach that the punishment must fit the crime in terms of severity.

It’s neither intrinsically evil or intrinsically just. It’s legitimacy is determined solely by it’s service to the common good.

This is true, but saying it this way hides an important truth. Justice is a significant part of the common good, which is why public authority has a duty to impose penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime.

 

[godisgood77]

Seems like a very vague word for the Church to use, though…

I think the meaning of the word inadmissible is quite clear…

in·ad·mis·si·ble

adjective

1. (especially of evidence in court) not accepted as valid.
   synonyms: not allowable, invalid, not acceptable, unacceptable, unallowable, impermissible, disallowed, forbidden, prohibited

2.not to be allowed or tolerated.

“an inadmissible interference in the affairs of the Church”

I’m not suggesting the following to be true in your case, but it seems more and more these days that folks are using the word vague or confusing, when they mean disagree or reject.