Death penalty

[Ender]

So, you are pro-death penalty? The more the better? As I have never met any person who defended this theory, would you mind to tell me the reason? for vengeance? So that he Society may become safer?
Why?

Punishment has four objectives: retribution, deterrence, defense, and rehabilitation. Of these four the primary one is retribution - justice. Keeping society safe is a valid objective but it is only a secondary one and of itself cannot justify the punishment. What justifies it is if it is just - that is, if the severity of the punishment is proportionate to the severity of the crime. For the crime of murder there is only one punishment that rises to the level that could be called proportionate. The crime of murder is the ultimate evil because the life of the victim was sacred.

Regarding vengeance, I don’t think you have a proper understanding of it. Aquinas defines it as *“the infliction of a penal evil on one who has sinned.” *We also need to recognize that, far from rejecting vengeance, the State has a duty to exact it. It is the individual who is banned from exacting vengeance, not the State, just as it is the individual who is commanded to forgive.

Someone who sins incurs a debt that only punishment can pay; it is all that can expiate his sin and that debt has to be paid, either in this life or in the next. We do not pay his debt by forgiving him; we forgive him for what it does for us and as an aid in his rehabilitation - but the debt of punishment remains.

Ender

 

[Joe_5859]

The real question is whether or not CCC 2267 is doctrine or a prudential opinion about the use of the death penalty in modern society.

I think that’s a good, succinct way of putting it. I think that CCC 2267 touches a bit on both. I think the first two paragraphs touch on the doctrinal aspects, while the third paragraph is a prudential judgment (I think “judgment” is a more apt descriptor than “opinion”) about the application of that doctrine in the present day.

But I always keep a mind to 25Lumen Gentium in these instances:

In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

I would say that there is certainly much more room for discussion on this issue than on those things that are intrinsically disordered (abortion, euthanasia, etc.). So I wouldn’t call anyone a “bad Catholic” for supporting the death penalty. But for me, I cannot see a good enough reason not to give religious assent to what is the manifest will of the pope and the bishops in union with him on this issue.

 

[Ender]

Maybe but I understand why certain Catholics are pro-Capital Punishment: politics.

Did you not understand what I just said about charges like this? Either you can support an argument for your position on capital punishment or you can’t, but insults are not arguments. Let my try again: even if I make the arguments I do solely for political reasons, the arguments themselves are either right or wrong independent of the reason I make them. Even if your claim was right it wouldn’t change the validity of my argument. I’m happy to discuss the issue with you but you need to do your part and indicate a willingness to listen.

Ender

 

[puzzleannie]

I see a lot threads about abortion. What is your opinion on death penalty? Shouldn’t death penalty be against Catholic faith too?

you can look it up in the catechism if you are really interested in the actual teaching.

since you ask for my opinion, and not the official teaching, my opinion is that a condemned person on death row here in Texas has had due process of law and is convicted of the most dire crimes against persons and socity (to the extent that the great state of Texas is able to administer that law justly).

The victim of abortion is completely innocent, has committed no crime, is denied even the rights enunciated in the US Constitution–its right to life–without due process of law, also violating several constitutional amendments, and is murdered moreover with the connivance of its own parents, the full support of the government and society which conspires against its life, and the crime is carried out in what nature has designed to be the safest place in the universe, its own mother’s womb.

if someone cannot discern the difference between these two scenarios they are for one thing unfit to hold public office in the United States since they are ignorant of the Constitution which they take an oath to uphold, and in addition they are morally bankrupt, and since you are asking for my opinion, possibly psychotic.
It is as the bible says a crime that cries out to heaven for vengeance.

 

[Ender]

I think that’s a good, succinct way of putting it. I think that CCC 2267 touches a bit on both. I think the first two paragraphs touch on the doctrinal aspects, while the third paragraph is a prudential judgment (I think “judgment” is a more apt descriptor than “opinion”) about the application of that doctrine in the present day.

Good, let’s discuss this. The first paragraph may touch on doctrine … but it is in error. *“Traditional Catholic teaching did not contain the restriction enunciated by Pope John Paul II.” *(Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. Pontifical Gregorian Univ. Rome) There is no documentation to support the claim that paragraph makes. In fact you have to wonder how that claim could be made in light of what the Church said only five years earlier in the 1992 version of the same Catechism.

“The traditional teaching of the church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.”

Are we supposed to believe that the “traditional teaching of the Church” changed in those five years?

As you said, the third paragraph is a prudential judgment. I don’t think there is any reasonable argument that such a claim could be considered doctrinal.

Regarding paragraph two, this seems to reverse the meaning of the scripture passage the Church has traditionally used as the basis for her position on capital punishment. We are told in Gen 9:6 that the life of a murderer is forfeit because the life of his victim was sacred, but the paragraph in 2267 claims that the life of a murder is protected because his life is sacred.

One of the aspects of 2267 I find most damaging is that it has helped us lose our understanding of the nature of punishment to the extent that not only do we not recognize that retribution is its primary objective but the idea that it is even a valid objective is called into question. We have also completely lost any sense of the loss incurred not just by the victim and the families involved but by society as well. The entire focus has turned into solicitation for the welfare of the criminal.

I cannot see a good enough reason not to give religious assent to what is the manifest will of the pope and the bishops in union with him on this issue.

I don’t dispute that JPII and most of the bishops oppose the use of capital punishment. What I dispute is that their position is doctrine. Religious assent is an obligation we owe Church doctrine but it is not an obligation we owe prudential judgment - even that of popes and bishops.

Ender

 

[Lui]

So why do you assume the fault is with those who are in continuity with the 2000-year tradition of the Church, as well as the 6000-year tradition of mankind?

Since I assume that mankind is more than 200000 years old, I assume they had death penalty way before 6000 years ago but that’s a different discussion.

Did you not understand what I just said about charges like this? Either you can support an argument for your position on capital punishment or you can’t, but insults are not arguments.

I actually didn’t ask what the Church says about death penalty anyway. I asked the personal opinions of a Catholic. I think that killing is wrong if there is an option like giving a life-sentence in prison. This is my argument against capital punishment.

Maybe in some extreme cases like the fanatic right wing Fundamentalist Christian who killed 90 innocent people in Norway, I could see that death penalty would avoid him from getting cult followers who start to worship him and follow in his footsteps just like Neo-Nazis worshiped imprisoned Nazis like Rudolph Hess.
At the end I actually still feel uneasy with any official form of execution, no matter what the case is.

 

[Nate13]

Why don’t we get rid of the death penalty and make prisons less like hotels so people don’t want to be there? As a start, no one in a prison should be living any better than any of our troops in the field. This would save a lot of money and we wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally killing innocent people through the death penalty. The looming threat of the death penalty would be replaced by the looming threat of even having to spend a decent amount of time in prison.

 

[Ender]

Why don’t we get rid of the death penalty and make prisons less like hotels so people don’t want to be there?

We shouldn’t get rid of the death penalty because it has a valid and important purpose, although I’ll admit that that purpose has been largely forgotten or misunderstood. The awfulness of the penalty should remind us of the awfulness of the crime but this is what we have lost: the proper sense of the awfulness of the crime of murder. We not only have become much to complacent and blase about such acts of violence but our interest has slowly shifted from compassion for the victim to concern for the killer. Did he grow up in poverty? Was he beaten as a child? What can we do to save him and others like him?

I don’t resent the concern shown the killer but that concern should not shape our understanding of the nature of the crime or of the response appropriate to it. If the penalty for murder is little different than the penalty for lesser crimes how are we to believe that murder is not of lesser gravity as well? For a punishment to be just it must be commensurate with the gravity of the crime; where we do not punish severely we are proclaiming that the crime was not severe.

Ender

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

Punishment has four objectives: retribution, deterrence, defense, and rehabilitation. Of these four the primary one is retribution - justice. Keeping society safe is a valid objective but it is only a secondary one and of itself cannot justify the punishment. What justifies it is if it is just - that is, if the severity of the punishment is proportionate to the severity of the crime. For the crime of murder there is only one punishment that rises to the level that could be called proportionate. The crime of murder is the ultimate evil because the life of the victim was sacred.

Regarding vengeance, I don’t think you have a proper understanding of it. Aquinas defines it as *“the infliction of a penal evil on one who has sinned.” *We also need to recognize that, far from rejecting vengeance, the State has a duty to exact it. It is the individual who is banned from exacting vengeance, not the State, just as it is the individual who is commanded to forgive.

Someone who sins incurs a debt that only punishment can pay; it is all that can expiate his sin and that debt has to be paid, either in this life or in the next. We do not pay his debt by forgiving him; we forgive him for what it does for us and as an aid in his rehabilitation - but the debt of punishment remains.

Ender

Just to confirm if I understood well: so the proportionate punishment for murder is death penalty, right? Let us make it even worse: the proportionate punishment for a serial killer is the death penalty: yes, no, …?

 

[Ender]

Just to confirm if I understood well: so the proportionate punishment for murder is death penalty, right?

Yes.

Let us make it even worse: the proportionate punishment for a serial killer is the death penalty: yes, no, …?

Yes and no. The maximum punishment may not be fully proportionate to the extent of the crime, but since one cannot go beyond the maximum, it practical terms it doesn’t matter. If a person owes $1000 and has a $1000 he would be expected to pay the debt in full. If he owes $2000 but has only $1000 he would still be expected to pay what he can notwithstanding that he cannot pay the full debt. I think the same principle holds whether a person kills one person or a hundred.

Ender

 

[Lui]

We shouldn’t get rid of the death penalty because it has a valid and important purpose, although I’ll admit that that purpose has been largely forgotten or misunderstood. The awfulness of the penalty should remind us of the awfulness of the crime but this is what we have lost: the proper sense of the awfulness of the crime of murder. We not only have become much to complacent and blase about such acts of violence but our interest has slowly shifted from compassion for the victim to concern for the killer. Did he grow up in poverty? Was he beaten as a child? What can we do to save him and others like him?

I don’t resent the concern shown the killer but that concern should not shape our understanding of the nature of the crime or of the response appropriate to it. If the penalty for murder is little different than the penalty for lesser crimes how are we to believe that murder is not of lesser gravity as well? For a punishment to be just it must be commensurate with the gravity of the crime; where we do not punish severely we are proclaiming that the crime was not severe.

Ender

I’m surprised that as a Catholic you don’t care at all what made a murderer a murderer and just think he needs to be punished with death, period. Is he not your brother? Do you actually think Jesus would agree with you? What about St. Paul? Wasn’t he a murderer when he was still Saul?

.

 

[Joe_5859]

I’m surprised that as a Catholic you don’t care at all what made a murderer a murderer and just think he needs to be punished with death, period. Is he not your brother? Do you actually think Jesus would agree with you? What about St. Paul? Wasn’t he a murderer when he was still Saul?

.

And didn’t God tell everyone explicitly not to kill Cain?

 

[Brendan]

I’m surprised that as a Catholic you don’t care at all what made a murderer a murderer and just think he needs to be punished with death, period. Is he not your brother? Do you actually think Jesus would agree with you? What about St. Paul? Wasn’t he a murderer when he was still Saul?

.

It was Jesus Himself who commanded the Death Penalty in the Old Testament.

And as for St. Paul, look what he wrote about the power of the government.

Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who does evil.

Romans 13:3-4

When the government ‘bears the sword’ against one who does evil, the government is acting as a agent of God.

 

[Lui]

It was Jesus Himself who commanded the Death Penalty in the Old Testament.

That’s a bold statement. Show me where?

 

[Ender]

I’m surprised that as a Catholic you don’t care at all what made a murderer a murderer and just think he needs to be punished with death, period.

There is no justification for this assumption. You have no idea whether I “care at all” about murderers; all you know is that believe justice needs to be served and that usually calls for severe punishment for severe crimes. Here is a relevant comment by JPII on this subject:

Having said this in the clearest and most unequivocal way, one must add at once that there is one meaning sometimes given to social sin that is not legitimate or acceptable, even though it is very common in certain quarters today. This usage contrasts social sin and personal sin, not without ambiguity, in a way that leads more or less unconsciously to the watering down and almost the abolition of personal sin, with the recognition only of social guilt and responsibilities. According to this usage, which can readily be seen to derive from non-Christian ideologies and systems which have possibly been discarded today by the very people who formerly officially upheld them–practically every sin is a social sin, in the sense that blame for it is to be placed not so much on the moral conscience of an individual but rather on some vague entity or anonymous collectivity, such as the situation, the system, society, structures, or institutions. (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia #16)

Is he not your brother? Do you actually think Jesus would agree with you?

If I understand this quote from JPII then: yes to both.

For example, some are inclined to replace exaggerated attitudes of the past with other exaggerations: From seeing sin everywhere they pass to not recognizing it anywhere; from too much emphasis on the fear of eternal punishment they pass to preaching a love of God that excludes any punishment deserved by sin (Ibid #18)

Ender

 

[Brendan]

That’s a bold statement. Show me where?

Genesis 9:6 is a good one.

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

That one is outside the Law of Moses, so no claim can be made that it was abrogated in the same way as dietary restrictions are ( even though that was never part of the Moral Law)

Of course, there ARE the ones in the Pentatuch such as

The Death Penalty for

murder (Exodus 21:12), kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), bestiality (Exodus 22:19), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13), being a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:5), prostitution and rape (Deuteronomy 22:24)

There is also when Christ commanded David to cleanse the kingdom of wickedoers daily

Psalm 101:8

In fact, The Council of Trent noted that very Psalm when it showed the Justice inherent in the correct use of the death penalty.

On the 5th Commandment

Execution Of Criminals

Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. 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. The end of the Commandment� is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord Ps 101:8

All those are the words of Christ, unless you believe it was some other god than Christ that gave us the first books of the Bible.

 

[Lui]

The Death Penalty for

murder (Exodus 21:12), kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), bestiality (Exodus 22:19), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13), being a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:5), prostitution and rape (Deuteronomy 22:24)

So you believe adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, rape and being a false prophet deserve the death penalty too?

Wasn’t slavery permitted in the Bible as well? Do you think slavery was ok too then?

 

[Brendan]

So you believe adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, rape and being a false prophet deserve the death penalty too?

God said so, who am I to say He is wrong.

Wasn’t slavery permitted in the Bible as well? Do you think slavery was ok too then?

The slavery the Jews practiced was not chattle slavery. They owned the labor, not the person.

So yes, what the Jews practiced back then IS permissable. Morality does not, and cannot change, as God is unchanging.

What the Jews practiced is no different from our current system of using convicts to make license plates.

 

[Lui]

God said so, who am I to say He is wrong.

Oddly Jesus didn’t think Mary Magdalene deserved death and made her to one of his disciples.
If you think that gay people, adulterers and prostitutes deserve the death penalty, then you’re a right wing fanatic in my eyes. I don’t know if that attitude has anything to do with being a Christian.

 

[Brendan]

Oddly Jesus didn’t think Mary Magdalene deserved death and made her to one of his disciples.

First of all, the Church has not held that it was Mary Magdalene, only a woman caught in adultery.

Secondly, I think you are missing the point of that Gospel passage.

The Bible specifically says that the Pharisess brought the woman to Christ to TEST Him.

If Christ advocated the stoneing, the Pharisess could have brought Him to the Romans for violating Roman law (only the Romans could sentance someone to death)

If He freed her, He would be violating the Law of Moses (something that Christ Himself gave). If the violated the Mosaic Law, then they could arrest Christ on heresy charges. It would also mean that Christ could contradict Himself, which would mean that He was not God.

What He did was very sublime. Under the Law the Pharisees WERE sinless. The hallmark of Pharisetics was a total following fo the Law, to the letter.

So Christ told the Pharisees that they COULD stone the woman, but did it in a way that the Pharisees could not bring charges against Christ to the Romans. No Roman procurator would believe that the Pharisees were ‘sinless’.

The Pharisees were caught in their own trap. Christ did not deny the Mosaic Law (something He could not do, since He Himself gave that Law). They could not go to the people with proof that He was really a fraud or a heretic.

And the Pharisees had no case to bring before the Roman authorities.

Of course, the Pharisees could not stone the woman anyway, for the same reason as they could not cruxify Christ themselves. Roman law prohibited the Jews from implementing the death penalty themselves, they needed Roman approval, a verdict by the Roman court to condem someone

They all knew that, so they left. The eldest (wisest) first, as they knew that Christ had escaped their trap.

You will note that Christ had no problems with repealing aspects of the ceremonial Law, the law of what was clean and unclean, and telling the Pharisees that in no uncertain terms.

If the Moral Law was changeable, do you not think that Christ would have told the Pharisees off, like He did with laws regarding washing or healing on the Sabbath?

No, He did not. He did not deny the Law He gave to Moses, rather, He showed that Mercy can be shown to those who do deserve death.

If you think that gay people, adulterers and prostitutes deserve the death penalty, then you’re a right wing fanatic in my eyes. I don’t know if that attitude has anything to do with being a Christian.

I was quoting the very Word of God, what He Himself gave.

It seems you are claiming one of two things.

1. God made a mistake when He gave those commands to Moses
2. God is a right wing fanatic in your eyes.

Which one are you claiming.

BTW, I am not denying that those who commit those crimes cannot be shown Mercy and Love; what I am claiming is what God stated, that those crimes deserve death.