Point to where the Church refers to these passages in this context and we can consider them. It is the Church, not me, who has singled out Gen 9:6 and I will point out again that your examples are from Mosaic Law while Gen 9:6 is something altogether different.
That’s fine, I think it’s rather obvious the Church
doesn’t require us to execute rape victims who fail to cry out loudly enough during the attack in spite of what the Old Testament says. My point was that if the Church feels unconstrained by interpreting
those passages as an obligation on Christians, I see no reason why it shouldn’t feel the same way about interpreting Gen. 9:6 in a way that only considers the
first directive I highlighted (“Thou shalt not kill”) while not obliging us to follow the second (“Thou shalt execute murderers”).
Show me a Church document that interprets this incident as you do, but if you can’t then I see no reason to accept your personal interpretation of this passage.
For someone who feels free to ignore parts of the Catechism based on what you perceive as conflicts with your interpretation of
other parts, I find it odd that you would now insist on Church documents in support of my interpretation of the Bible.
But the events described are easy enough to understand: the scribes and the Pharisees quoted the directive of Dt. 22:22 that people caught in the act of adultery “must be put to death” – there is no ambiguity in there; there is at least as direct a statement of obligation in Dt. 22:22 as there is in Gen. 9:6,
and since the protagonists were all Jews they
were bound by that law. Yet Jesus responded by saying that he who is without sin should cast the first stone, and they all left. Are you suggesting that Jesus caused them to sin by tricking them into not fulfilling their oglibations to stone the woman?
It is not merely 2260 with which 2267 disagrees but with everything the Church has ever written on the subject. There is no historical support for 2267; it is not the development of doctrine, it is solely the prudential opinion of JPII. It has no support from Church teaching.
You deny the Pope’s right to determine Catholic teaching? You deny the modern Church the right to interpret scripture in a modern context?
Moreover, you do so on the basis that you
believe the modern teaching is inconsistent with past teaching
despite accepting that past teaching never
required an execution for every murder? If the Church has never
required an execution for every murder, how can a new directive on when execution is appropriate and when it is not be
inconsistent?
2267 merely says that in the modern world the cases where execution is necessary to defend and protect people’s safety are very rare, if not practically nonexistent. In the
past that was not so, so even if 2267 had been in force for the last 2,00 years, would history be any different? It’s qualified by saying “
If … nonleathal means are sufficient”. If they are not – and for much of the past 2,000 years, they probably were not – then execution is appropriate: provided, of course, “the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined”, lest you be guilty of exactly the same crime by wrongfully executing an innocent person.
BTW, I asked my priest about this on the weekend. You may want to do the same. The Catechism
is the official and definitive Church teaching, and Catholics do not get to pick and choose which bits of the Catechism they accept and which bits they do not. I certainly assume the Church knows better than I do what the historical interpretations were and wouldn’t put obviously contradictory clauses several paragraphs apart. I feel it far more likely that
your interpretation of 2260 and historic Church teaching as
requiring us to execute murderers is in error.
