Church Teaching on Death Penalty

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IdaCatholic said:
The Pope put his opinion in the CCC. And that is his right as the pontiff. And a Catholic can disagree using historical teachings of the Church. The catechism contains the teachings of the Church. Most of them. Some infallible, some not. The purpose of the CCC is not to be a litmus test for if you can receive the Eucharist if you believe in the death penalty.

I will ask this again. Is any Catholic on a death penalty Jury culpable of sin in the delegation of justice?
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The teaching on the use of the death penalty is not the Popes ‘opinion’. There is a clear trajectory initiated by Pope St Paul VI who formally abolished the death penalty from Vatican law in 1969, then through StJPII, Benedict XVI and now Francis.

The fact that a small faction of US Catholics display an inordinate attraction to the death penalty demonstrates in itself, how toxic its use is there. The Catechism wording has had to be more and more direct so that this faction gets no traction in claiming to speak for true Catholicism.
 
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IdaCatholic said:
All those effective methods have existed for centuries. And there are so many governments and situations even in our modern world that I just don’t see how you can say it hasn’t changed.
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So you’re saying Pope St John Paul II in citing that as a reason in the Catechism, is … what? Inept? Evil? What?
 
I have generally been opposed to the death penalty because of legal and financial reasons. It is more difficult to prosecute a capital case, and more costly, and prisoners who have been sentenced to death can expect to live at least another ten years while appeals drag on, and may even die of natural causes first.
But what puzzles me about the current controversy is the meaning of the word “inadmissible.”
 
mythbuster1 said:
Because I hear people dismissing arguments about murderers continuing to kill from prison as “whataboutism,” or even referring to solitary confinement as torture. If a murderer continues to kill while in prison, and you can’t execute him, you have to deny him access to other people. Mercy cannot extend to levels which fail to incapacitate murderers.
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And what about innocent people who are wrongly convicted & sentenced to death? Are they just “the cost of doing business?”
 
There is common ground we can have here.
  1. I agree there has been a trajectory as you put it.
  2. I think that trajectory is a very small part of salvation history and is indeed a modern change.
  3. I really agree with the last paragraph and I freely admit I have an attraction to the death penalty. I don’t think it is inordinate. But I think it satisfies my sense of holy justice and leaves room for mercy.
Can a Catholic serve on a Jury that imposes a death penalty?
 
Emeraldlady said:
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IdaCatholic:
All those effective methods have existed for centuries. And there are so many governments and situations even in our modern world that I just don’t see how you can say it hasn’t changed.
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So you’re saying Pope St John Paul II in citing that as a reason in the Catechism, is … what? Inept? Evil? What?
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No why would I say that? I’m so confused by the accusation.

The death penalty opposition is new theology in the Church. Period. You cannot be a human aware of history and not see that. The teaching has changed. So why is that? Are more people being killed today than 300 years ago?
 
Ok. Can an American Catholic do that? Or a catholic in another country that has the death penalty.

Were french jurors pre 1981 in grave moral error?
 
IdaCatholic said:
The death penalty opposition is new theology in the Church. Period. You cannot be a human aware of history and not see that. The teaching has changed. So why is that? Are more people being killed today than 300 years ago?
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I am a human and I am very aware of history. I think you might be looking at only US history but there is a whole world out there who’ve dealt with these issues from a Catholic stance for a century or more. For example here is an article from a Catholic journal in Sydney dated December, 1924. Note this is nearly a century ago as the death penalty was being abolished in Australia.

“Is the Catholic Church opposed to capital punishment?”

This question, thus generally put, must be answered by a decided no. Among the words spoken by God to Noe we find also the following: ‘Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed; for man was made to the image of God’ (Gen. ix., 6). In former centuries this was almost considered a divine law. Capital punishment was practised by all Catholic Governments, including the temporal Government of the Popes., when they still had the Papal States. On the other hand, the Church has never opposed the abolition of capital punishment, because she leaves it entirely to the secular authorities to see what penalties shall be inflicted on evil-doers. If in times past the death penalty was resorted to far more frequently than now, we think this was greatly caused by the inefficiency of the police system. Since it was difficult to arrest highway robbers, firebugs, etc., those that were actually caught were punished the more drastically. Whether fewer, such criminals now escape arrest and full punishment than formerly, especially if they are rich, may be questioned. But the fact remains that what we now call the police system was extremely primitive in the days of old. Robbery on a grand scale, formerly conducted by a liberal use of physical violence, is now carried on in a more refined manner, though the effect is the same. It is left to the secular authorities to determine whether capital punishment is to be extended to other crimes beside actual murder, or is to be abolished altogether. So much seems to be sure, that the number of those has not died out who will be deterred from committing great crimes by nothing short of death."

Freeman’s Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1932) (Later to become the Catholic Weekly still being printed today)
trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/123253640

The point being that the Church has never considered the death penalty as a divine command and has never been opposed to abolition. Today, with a greater awareness of the dignity of human beings the death penalty has been abandoned by all the Christian countries apart from the US. The Church in the US are fully on board with the Church and other countries but the major problem is the small vocal faction of US Catholics trying to sabotage the natural desire for abolition over there by minimizing the Church’s authority to teach on the morality of the death penalty in today’s environment.
 
The abolition of the death penalty is made on moral arguments. What has changed from a time when most counties used it to now?
 
IdaCatholic said:
Ok. Can an American Catholic do that? Or a catholic in another country that has the death penalty.

Were french jurors pre 1981 in grave moral error?
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Before the death penalty was abolished in France in 1981, Catholics probably made a decision based on their conscience. Looking at the 52 countries that still use the death penalty it seems that very few have jury trials. They are regimes where a judge alone makes the decision.

The transition to abolish the death penalty in other countries has happened as a natural evolution or “growing moral awareness”. There was not an environment of public debate especially regarding Catholic teaching as there is in the US. I believe that the Magisterium is actually responding so directly on the issue because the natural evolution is being prevented by a false Catholic argument.
 
How does that even relate to my post? If the death penalty is ever to be used, the standard must be “proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.” It doesn’t change the fact that there are people who commit murder from behind bars, and the State has an obligation to protect society from them. If the death penalty is off the table, then they must be isolated, either in solitary confinement, or on a deserted island. Those are your choices: lock them up in solitary and throw away the key, or exile them to a society entirely consisting of murderers and leave them to their own devices.
 
phil3 said:
I am going to say that a Catholic can no longer serve on a jury where the death penalty can be a factor.
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I agree with you.

And I’ll take it a step further. No Catholic Judge should be on a capital case either. Nor should a Catholic judge marry a homosexual couple.

In my state there is a trial of a really shocking crime just starting out of a man who wandered into a 3 year old refugee birthday party and started stabbing toddlers. If found guilty I will be comfortable with him receiving the death penalty. In fact I want that to happen. But I am a Catholic. And I take my faith seriously. And though I disagree with the current teaching I could not sit on the Jury and say that my faith and my obedience would not enter into my decision. There is no election involving the death penalty here either so really, I have no real issue I feel sinful about in watching the proceedings and following the trial.
Obedience is key especially when we do not agree. Personally I think this should really extend to all Catholics. But we do have a problem. I don’t think a Catholic should sit on a death penalty jury or a judge who is Catholic hear a death penalty case. Which certainly excludes a large number of people from acting in a civic capacity.

And if I were a prosecutor I would certainly would not want a Catholic on the Jury. I wonder if those issues were considered when changing the CCC.
 
It seems that any jury on a capital case would of necessity consist only of people who accepted capital punishment as an option.

That would not please the defense particularly.
 
As there are a multiplicity of countries which have the death penalty, I don’t think it is particularly an American conservative matter.
 
The topic of my post was how to deal with people who continue to murder from prison. Rather than addressing that issue, you deflected to a discussion of wrongful convictions, which, I may add, is the very thing I pointed out that opponents of the death penalty often ignore.
 
JimG said:
But what puzzles me about the current controversy is the meaning of the word “inadmissible.”
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Ah, this came up at the General Assembly of Bishops in Baltimore where the bishops voted on whether to accept the translation of that phrase. When pressed to give an explanation of what the word actually meant the presenting bishop responded: “To my mind, the pope maintains and our version imitates a certain, if you want, eloquent ambiguity on that point.” Just…wow. It is to this that theology has descended.
IdaCatholic said:
Can a Catholic serve on a Jury that imposes a death penalty?
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Yes, without question.
Emeraldlady said:
The point being that the Church has never considered the death penalty as a divine command…
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Yeah, that’s not actually true, and not only the church but God himself commanded it.

The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. (Catechism of Trent, 1566)

…we establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to death (Pius VI, 1568)

Because God willeth and commandeth that malefactors be punished and killed, when they deserve it, that good men may be safe, and live in peace. (Catechism of St. Bellarmine, 1598)

If anyone strikes someone a fatal blow with an iron object, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death. (God - Num 35:16)
 
phil3 said:
I am going to say that a Catholic can no longer serve on a jury where the death penalty can be a factor.
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I don’t think that is exactly correct. Usually a jury only determines guilt or innocence - not sentencing. The fact that the justice system might apply the death penalty is no reason for a Catholic to refuse to find the defendant guilty.
 
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