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Rau
Guest
The Catechism is about 3 inches thick in book form and the wrong version appears to be linked from the front page. That’s my issue - not whether some particular paragraph is not current. Given its the wrong version, there are likely multiple discrepancies.
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Rau
Guest
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Ender
Guest
What is even better is that the church herself has interpreted these passages for us, so we can know for certain that the objection to the use of capital punishment is a preference, not a doctrine.*Bloodless methods of deterrence and punishment are **preferred *as “they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person”. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #405)
Not according to the church.
Ender
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adrift
Guest
I believe that there are times that the death penalty is necessary for defense but that those times are rare as stated in 2267
It wasn’t a yes or no question. You phrased it to be that way in order to come to an erroneous conclusion. The answer would be no it would not be wrong. There are so many if than statements that it leaves a lot of room. The decision if those if than statements are met lies with the authority of the state as they long as it is acting under a legitimate authority. The judgment that you are suggesting, as the Catechism also states, goes against the tradition of the state.
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BartholomewB
Guest
When Rome was merged into the newly united Kingdom of Italy in 1870, the Papal State had been a sovereign political entity for over a thousand years, with the exception of the six years of the Napoleonic period. Around two hundred popes, give or take, up to and including Pius IX, had been not only the successors of Peter as the head of the Roman Catholic Church; they had also been the secular rulers of a monarchical state occupying a swath of territory across the middle tier of the Italian peninsula. As in the rest of Europe, so also in the Papal State was the crime of murder, among others, punishable by death. Executions, whether by beheading or by hanging, were a routine public spectacle. Charles Dickens describes, in Pictures from Italy, a public guillotining that he witnessed in Rome in 1845, when he visited the city during the pontificate of Gregory XVI.
When St John Paul the Great issued his encyclical Evangelium Vitae in 1995, did he see fit to criticize his two hundred predecessors for their failure to abolish capital punishment in their own monarchical state? No, of course he didn’t. On the contrary, he argues that, at the time when he was writing the encyclical in the closing years of the twentieth century, there was no longer a need for capital punishment as there had been in the past, and that it ought to be discontinued.
The question we need to ask now, twenty years after Evangelium Vitae, is this: Do the conditions that St John Paul observed in the 1990s, and from which he drew the conclusion that the time had come to discontinue the death penalty, still prevail in our own day? Arguably, they do not. There has been a significant change in the kind of violent crime that society needs to protect itself against. The change came, of course, on September 11, 2001. Muslim terrorism on a worldwide scale is a new reality that St John Paul II could not possibly have foreseen when he issued Evangelium Vitae.
St John Paul was writing in a period of unprecedented peace, less than four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Sadly, those years of peace are now behind us. The Third World War has already begun, Pope Francis told us last year (link below). Unlike the two earlier world wars, in this one there are no trenches and no clearly marked front lines. It’s a war being fought in pockets. In connection with the current trial of the Boston marathon murderer, the judge and jury need to carefully weigh the deterrent value of life imprisonment, on the one hand, and the death penalty, on the other, and to opt for whichever one of the two seems more likely to save innocent lives in the future by deterring other prospective Muslim terrorists from committing mass murder. It would a mistake for the judge and jury, or for any of us, to apply the conclusions of Evangelium Vitae unthinkingly to our own day, just as it would be a mistake to read into those conclusions a condemnation of Gregory XVI for authorizing the execution by guillotine that Dickens witnessed in a public square in the heart of Rome. Times change, often for the better, but sometimes also for the worse.
thetablet.co.uk/world-news/5/3207/we-are-in-the-midst-of-a-third-world-war-says-pope
When St John Paul the Great issued his encyclical Evangelium Vitae in 1995, did he see fit to criticize his two hundred predecessors for their failure to abolish capital punishment in their own monarchical state? No, of course he didn’t. On the contrary, he argues that, at the time when he was writing the encyclical in the closing years of the twentieth century, there was no longer a need for capital punishment as there had been in the past, and that it ought to be discontinued.
The question we need to ask now, twenty years after Evangelium Vitae, is this: Do the conditions that St John Paul observed in the 1990s, and from which he drew the conclusion that the time had come to discontinue the death penalty, still prevail in our own day? Arguably, they do not. There has been a significant change in the kind of violent crime that society needs to protect itself against. The change came, of course, on September 11, 2001. Muslim terrorism on a worldwide scale is a new reality that St John Paul II could not possibly have foreseen when he issued Evangelium Vitae.
St John Paul was writing in a period of unprecedented peace, less than four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Sadly, those years of peace are now behind us. The Third World War has already begun, Pope Francis told us last year (link below). Unlike the two earlier world wars, in this one there are no trenches and no clearly marked front lines. It’s a war being fought in pockets. In connection with the current trial of the Boston marathon murderer, the judge and jury need to carefully weigh the deterrent value of life imprisonment, on the one hand, and the death penalty, on the other, and to opt for whichever one of the two seems more likely to save innocent lives in the future by deterring other prospective Muslim terrorists from committing mass murder. It would a mistake for the judge and jury, or for any of us, to apply the conclusions of Evangelium Vitae unthinkingly to our own day, just as it would be a mistake to read into those conclusions a condemnation of Gregory XVI for authorizing the execution by guillotine that Dickens witnessed in a public square in the heart of Rome. Times change, often for the better, but sometimes also for the worse.
thetablet.co.uk/world-news/5/3207/we-are-in-the-midst-of-a-third-world-war-says-pope
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StevenFrancis
Guest
There is no declared dogma against the death penalty. The latest Church teaching on the subject is the CCC which states:
2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
I’m not sure how you’d guage that in terms of dogmatic certainty.
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LongingSoul
Guest
St John Paul II from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church writes… “The growing aversion of public opinion towards the death penalty and the various provisions aimed at abolishing it or suspending its application constitute visible manifestations of a heightened moral awareness”.
This we know is not a departure from doctrine, but it does pop the balloon of belief that the death penalty was some sort of holy command or sacrament that serves a divine purpose. The death penalty is a measure that is subject to the common fonts of morality. It can be good and it can be evil. That depends depends on circumstances and intentions.
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LongingSoul
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It’s got nothing to do with my personal approval. The version they have is an old one, incomplete, filled with printing errors, with the omission of the Apostolic Letter and Constitution, the addition of a sub heading not in any official version, compiled by ‘Intratext editorial staff’ whoever that is.
There are loads of official versions of the Catechism attached to websites of the Bishops Conferences in each country so it’s not hard to find a correct version to work from.
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LongingSoul
Guest
I had tried to find an email for the site but it doesn’t list one.
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LongingSoul
Guest
Ahhh got your cherry picker out again today. The section concludes *"The growing aversion of public opinion towards the death penalty and the various provisions aimed at abolishing it or suspending its application ***constitute visible manifestations of a heightened moral **awareness."
Morality is concerned with good and evil… not benign preference. As civilised humans, we are becoming more aware that killing people should be the absolute last resort even when a person is completely detestable.
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LongingSoul
Guest
It was only about 6 months ago that Pope Francis said… “All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment,” (Oct. 23, 2014 Pope Francis)
The position of the Church reflects a growing awareness of the dignity of the human being and how that relates to the doctrine. Humanity has the growing capacity to heal wounds more efficiently and less violently than in the past. Once we know these things we can’t unknow them and just return to the ‘old ways’ of doing things.
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adrift
Guest
You have created a straw man. What you said was
You are not accurate in stating what the Church position is. It is quite clear in the Catechism that it is not an evil in today’s circumstances. I would say the more correct stance is the state has the right to use the death penalty buI shouldn’t. IF other means will suffice. By looking at the murder rate in those states that have eliminated the death penalty it seems that the “if” is sufficient at this time. It could change a BartholomewB has pointed out. Only time will tell.
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Ender
Guest
What part of an explanation about what the catechism means is changed by public opinion? There is nothing in that paragraph that mitigates or alters the meaning of the statement that “Bloodless methods… are preferred.” Actually, I did leave out one part of that sentence - perhaps I should have included the footnote. Bloodless methods of deterrence and punishment are preferred as “they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person”.[835]
[835]* Catechism of the Catholic Church*, 2267.
It is interesting to note the similarity with Gn 9:6:*Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man. *
Section 405 states a position (Bloodless methods of deterrence and punishment are preferred…), and then explains that the position is based on man’s dignity. Gn 9:6 also states a position (Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed..), and, like 405, explains that the position is based on… man’s dignity.
The differences are noteworthy, however, given that 2267 is an expression of the preference of the Magisterium while Genesis is an expression of a command from God. Or should we assume that “shall” is mandatory when the Magisterium says it but optional when God says it?
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Ender
Guest
That was an interesting post, but I think this part misses the issue. Despite the implications of 2267, the defense of society is not the primary objective of punishment and by itself cannot justify any punishment, let alone capital punishment. We would like punishments to provide security, but it is not a requirement and often the penalty imposed provides very little. The one objective that must be satisfied in every instance is justice - retributive justice. It is required of every punishment that it be just, not that it protect.
The reason this matters is that the determination of whether a punishment is just is not dependent on whether it provides protection but whether its severity is appropriate for the severity of the crime. It may well be true (although it is certainly debatable) that capital punishment is not needed for protection, but that has no bearing on whether it is needed as a matter of justice.
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Ender
Guest
A growing awareness on the part of whom? Are you suggesting that it has taken the church 2000 years to finally understand fully “the dignity of the human being”, or is it your position that man’s dignity is better comprehended by societies that have accounted for 100 million abortions, aggressively support euthanasia, and have abandoned churches by the millions?
I rather suspect the reverse is true. It is much more likely JPII opposed the use of capital punishment not because of a growing public awareness of man’s dignity but because he saw that modern societies had completely lost any sense of man’s worth and would no longer understand why such a punishment was justified.
Ender
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Rau
Guest
It absolutely was a yes / no question and without any effort to phrase it as such. You are still free to hold the view that it is ok for the state to kill even if that is not necessary for protection. The Popes however are arguing for the abolition of the death penalty as they see morally superior options.
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Ender
Guest
Prior to 1995 the church never suggested that capital punishment was appropriate only to provide protection. She bases the justness of the penalty on whether it is of commensurate severity with that of the crime. It is the nature of the crime that determines the nature of the punishment, not the desire for protection.
I can agree that they see abolition as a prudentially better choice - and that this is why they prefer it - but I don’t see that any argument can be made that it is a morally superior one.
Ender
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Rau
Guest
What reasons do the Popes give for preferring it? Do those reasons have a moral chatacter?
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