It isn’t left to us; according to St. Paul, it is government officials who are God’s ministers exercise God’s wrath and bring punishment to the wrong-doers. And in St. Paul’s day, those “ministers of God” were pagan Romans. But he still called them “ministers of God.”
But Dave, can you reconcile this (or rather, balance it somehow) with Church teaching on limited support of capital punishment, as I referenced above? I don’t disagree with you per se, I just want to understand how you qualify bold statements about God’s ministers bringing wrath unto evil-doers (which I don’t deny is biblical) with how the Church leads us in our understanding of the just use of this “ministry”. Thanks.
But Jesus said " Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you."
Paul was not saying that those whom we usually think of as “ministers of God” (deacons, priests, bishops, etc.) are to bring the wrath of God to evil-doers. He was saying that the Roman magistrates of his day, or police officers, judges, etc. of our day, are also “ministers of God,” and that their job is to bring God’s wrath on evil-doers. The concept of “minister of God” is a lot broader than just religious leaders.
Exactly right. If I, as a faithful Catholic, am a jury member, and I am convinced by the evidence to vote “guilty” in a murder trial and recomment the death penalty, then I would expect that if I commit murder, then a jury will find me guilty and recommend the death penalty. That is having it measured out to me by my own standard of measure. Jesus does not seem to be saying not to judge, period; He seems to be saying that we should judge in the way that we would want to be judged. This verse has always looked to me like a re-statement of the Golden Rule.
I cannot believe that those who support abortion are adamantly against the death penalty!
No, I do not. To me, the evidence indicates that #2267 is prudential judgement and therefore not binding.
This is simply incorrect, the traditional teaching of the Church never stated that the only permissible reason to use the death penalty was to protect society. For instance, in the quote I posted from the Catechism of the Council of Trent, two purposes are given, punishing guilty (justice), and protecting the innocent.
I disagree with this, we are supposed to punish an offender with a punishment proportionate to the gravity of his crime. (CCC #2266) To give someone a proportionate punishment shows that we are treating him as a rational human being with free will and responsibility for his actions. The proportionate punishment for murder is execution (Gensis 9:6 and Numbers 35:33). So by executing murderers, we treat them as human beings with free will and responsibility for their actions. This approach seems more in line with human dignity than locking up murderers like mental patients.
This last sentence is an opinion about a subject not related to faith and morals and therefore is not binding.
True, but it is prudential judgement and not binding. What else can we conclude when #2267 contains at least one error, and one statement of opinion?
I don’t see anything erroneous about #2267. What is erroneous?
Hmmmm. Have you read any on what JPII wrote on the death penalty?
Dave’s comments about the passages in Genesis and Romans were nothing more than what the Church says about them. Those are the passages on which the Church’s position regarding capital punishment have always been based.
5Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
That the person deserves the punishment he receives is an obligation of justice, which is the primary objective of all punishment. What we often forget is that too lenient a sentence is as unjust as one that is too severe. The specific point here is that your earlier perspective was valid: someone who murders another person deserves to lose his own life precisely because the life of his victim was sacred.
Another point we have lost sight of is that the loss of his own life can serve as expiation for his crime (if the punishment is freely accepted), while a natural death does not. We should not assume that merely prolonging someone’s life is the best way to save his soul.
Not exactly.
The obligations to judge and to impose punishment have been given to the State, and those rights and obligations include capital punishment.
Yeah, I conceded all this in a later post. Thanks.
The claim that the traditional teaching of the Church allowed the death penalty *"**when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor" *is incorrect. The traditional teaching of the Church never included this limitation.
Yes, I have. Interestingly enough, it was through reading JP2’s statements on the death penalty that I decided the death penalty was moral. I had his writings quoted at me all the time. JP2 obviously believed that the only valid reason to use the death penalty was protection. However, he also believed it was unnecessary. This struck me as odd, the death penalty effectively protects society through deterrence and incapacitation. Why should society refuse to use such an efficacious means of protection?
Our Lord and God is forgiving. Why can’t we be? Aren’t we called to be more like Jesus? I just see the death penalty of our way of not having to deal with people anymore. Beside the morally wrong aspect of it, there have been many people on death row who have been cleared of their charges due to new evidence. This evidence, which was unavailable at the time of the trial, proves the persons innocence. There have also been persons executed and then found to be innocent. I feel that the death penalty is too risky. The death of one innocent person in my view should be reason enough to abolish the death penalty.
Though I am against the death penalty, I agree that it is a form of incapacitation. However, you state that it is a form of deterrence. This is wrong. It has been found that the time leading up to and after an execution there are more murders than any other time. The death penalty doesn’t deter people from killing other people or committing heinous crimes.
Whether or not traditional teaching of the Church included that limitation is not even relevant to the issue at hand. I thought the issue at hand was the Church’s teaching on the death penalty vs. her teaching on abortion.
Do you have a source for this claim?
Tell that to this guy.
(“Langley says Texas death penalty affected his actions during escape”, by Stephen Martin, The Daily Democrat (Ft. Madison, Iowa), 1/8/97, pg 1.)